older secret santa Lorenz/Lysithea comic drawn for Hotzo Thotzo on twitter! I still think it's cute!

I’m almost at the end of Edelgard’s route (my first one, and I’m about to fight Dimitri) and I’m still deciding the pairings I want. I still haven’t gotten a lot of the A and A+ supports because I didn’t want to grind too many levels and turn the gameplay into a joke.

Anyway, my pairings for this first route:

I was debating between pairing Edelgard with Byleth or Hubert. I think I’m going with Byleth because of Edelgard’s obvious and massive crush. Like, damn, the woman has been painting a probably enormous portrait of Byleth for two months and is being super blushy and bashful about it. While in her A support with hubert she seemed more interested in seeing who Hubert liked because she wanted to support her best friend more than because she wanted to be the one he liked. Also, her whole thing is wanting to abolish the bloodline based crest nobility system so there is no better “Fuck You” to that than having a big lesbian imperial wedding between the two women that have the most powerful crest in the world. They’ll just choose the next emperor based on a merit system, or make Fodlan into a democracy. 

Besides, Edelgard and Hubert have been very co-dependent for most of their lives, in an us-against-the-world kind of way, but part of that was because they had no-one else to rely on. Hubert wanted to kill Byleth pre-timeskip because he was convinced Byleth would betray them, and Edelgard seemed resigned to being abandoned by Byleth and the rest of the Black Eagles after unmasking herself, only to be surprised and delighted when they chose her instead of Rhea. 

So ultimately it is a good thing for Edelgard and Hubert to choose other people as intimate partners, because they are finally learning to truly trust other people aside of each other again. 

Hubert is probably going to end either with Ferdinand or Bernadetta, and Ferdinand either with Hubert or Dorothea. I’m not going to lie, I absolutely love Ferdinand and Hubert’s dynamic of enemies to friends to lovers, it’s amazing. But I also want to see their A supports with Dorothea and Bernie as well, since the support chain was interesting and I may end up doing those pairings instead. Also, Hubert would absolutely murder Bernie’s abusive bastard of a father, if he hasn’t killed him already in his initial purge at the start of Edelgard’s reign. That’s always a plus. And I want to know why Ferdie reminds Dorothea of a bee. 

I’m pairing Linhardt with Lysithea because he’s researching how to cure her crest condition and I’ve heard it saves her life. 

Caspar and Petra also have an interesting dynamic because of how much conflict there was between their families in their parents’ generation. 

And then there are my non-BE units that I’ve recruited. Of those, the pairing I have more clear is Manuela/Hanneman, because how couldn’t I pair these two disasters together. 

Sylvain and Mercedes seem like a good match too, because of how disillusioned they are with the crest system, and because Sylvain is finally being genuine with a girl for once. EDIT: Wow Sylvain and Dorothea are also very, VERY good together. Both of their romance anxieties were based on other people only wanting them for shallow reasons instead of because who they really were, so they know where the other was coming from, and growing old with a person who truly appreciates her for who she is was Dorothea’s dream from the beginning. I’m probably going to pair these two up as well. 

The others I’ve recruited are Ingrid, Felix, Ashe, Leonie, Ignatz, Lorenz, Shamir and Alois. Ingrid and Ashe are cute together, and they have their admiration of knights in common, so I’ll probably pair them. No idea how I’m going to pair the rest.