dolorem | APPLICATION - Edelgard von Hresvelg

PLAYER INFO

Player Name: Melodie
Player Contact: lorulean
Character(s) In-Game: N/A

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Edelgard von Hresvelg
Age: 23
Canon: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

World Description: Fódlan - Fire Emblem Wiki

History: Edelgard - Fire Emblem Wiki

Death: At the end of the Black Eagle storyline, Edelgard and Byleth slayed down the Immaculate One. In so so doing, they brought about an end to the war and united Fódlan under imperial rule. So far, this is what happened in canon. Now, for an unexpected twist— In the midst of the celebrations following the final battle, a desperate enemy soldier rushed into a suicide attack to take down Edelgard in the name of his fallen commander. Edelgard was striked down with a sword, her soldiers too distracted by their victory to see the attacker coming. Before dying however, she was able to officially name Byleth as her successor and asked of Hubert to assist them the same way he had always assisted her. With her last wishes spoken, she died.

What are your plans for this character in-game? To take over the world, of course! Okay, more seriously— Edelgard will seek to find out the truth about Beacon, about this "afterlife." Based on her TDM threads so far, it is likely she will assume this is not meant to be where she should be. Her world is one where conspiracy theories are not theories but facts. Was she kidnapped? Is she actually still alive? Is she being used to fight a battle that isn't her own? She doesn't know but she wants to find out. Her ultimate goal would be to cheat death thanks to Beacon and return to her homeworld, so she can finish what she started. Not so much because she refuses to die, but more so because she has unfinished business and cannot bear to know her life work may have been for nothing.

What aspects of this game and/or its setting are you most interested in having this character engage with? The mystery surrounding beacon and the setting's dark atmosphere, the horror themes that appear to be more atmospheric and mental than gorey, and most importantly the presence of an overarching plot that characters can interact with and influence. Someone like Edelgard would never function in a slice-of-life setting.

How does your character generally get along with other people? She can lie just as well as she can breath, she won't have any issues socializing. Not that all of her interactions are lies— Far from it, actually. Her specialty would be lies by omission, rather than outright incorrect facts. But the person Edelgard presents to the world differs quite a bit from who she is beneath the facade.

What is your character's mental state upon entering the game? Absolutely devastated. She died just as she unified the entire continent under her rule. It's like winning lottery after a lifetime of poverty, and suddenly you're told money has been abolished. Horrifying.

Skills/Abilities: Edelgard bears two crests: a minor Crest of Seiros and the Crest of Flames. Bearing a crest means she can uses certain magics tied to her crests, most of which manifest in Combat Art. Combat Art channel the magic into her weapon, resulting in more powerful axe attacks than if she attacked with just her axe. However, using these powerful moves wear down her weapon. Were she to try spamming them, she would break down her weapon after a couple blow. So she'll only use them occasionally, especially as fixing her axe in this setting may prove tricky.

She also has spells, but likewise she cannot just spam them. Using magic is consuming and she can only do it a limited number of times a day before she exhausts her reserves. The spells she has access to are as follow:

- Luna Λ: A weak dark magic spell, it ignores all the defenses to magic an enemy may have. Practically speaking, this means the spell can be as powerful as its user is and will hit anyone indiscriminately. Great for targets normally immune to magic, but mediocre on everyone else.
- Hades Ω: Most powerful dark magic spell, single target.
- Nosferatu: A light magic spell that drains the target energy to restore the caster's. Technically works as a healing spell for self only, but cannot heal wounds.
- Seraphim: A light magic spell that is super effective against monsters. Mediocre against everyone else.

In an effort to nerf Edelgard, she won't have access to the following spells: her Fire spells (so she can't have access to any source of light) and her Healing spells.

Flaws/Weaknesses: One could probably write a book for this section alone. Edelgard's moral compass is broken. She has good intentions and wants to do what is best for her people and the world. However her traumatic past affects her still to this day and she believes no one but her can bring about the changes the world needs. As such, she is prone to become a well-intentioned extremist. She went as far as becoming a monstrous demon in an alternate timeline to keep on fighting. This never happened to her in the route I play her from— Because she had the support from Byleth, who acted as her moral compass. But without the support of others, this is a flaw that may come back to haunt her.

Speaking of her past, the time when she was experimented on and all of her siblings died, leaving her the only successful experiment, is what drives her every action and still traumatizes her to this day. It clouds her judgment, so much so that she waged war on the entire continent to ensure this would never happen again. As far as people are concerned, Byleth and Hubert are her weaknesses. The former is her teacher and tactician, whom she trusts and value above anything else. The only time she is seen crying in the game is when Byleth is believed to have died. The later, Hubert, is her best friend, confident and adviser. Without him, she wouldn't have had the strength to go that far. These are the only two people in the world she would trust with continuing her fight, and the only ones whom she would not be able to sacrifice even for the greater good.

Her uncle would also be weakness. He is the one who conducted the experiments on her and her sibling, and he leads Those Who Slither in the Dark. For her world to be perfect, she had planned to wage a silent war against him and his group following her victory. But now she'll never be able to.

Physically speaking, there is not much in the way of weaknesses, besides her being a slow unit due to fighting with an axe and lacking in agility. Her lifespan is greatly reduced due to the experiments she was subjected to, not that it matters much since she died. She is afraid of the ocean, as she cannot swim. Edelgard also has a deadly fear of rats.

Personality: Edelgard is driven by her beliefs that Crests and the system of nobility are a poison to the world. This belief of her originates from her trauma as a child, when her uncle and his group had her and her siblings kidnapped to experiment on them and force the Crest of Flame into them, resulting in all of them dying. Edelgard did not die, she was the only success, but the experience traumatized her. She went through immeasurable physical and mental pain, and her lifespan got drastically reduced as a result of bearing two crests. She is ready to wage war upon the entire world if needed to bring about an end to the system that caused her so much pain, so that it wouldn't happen to anyone ever again.

She firmly believes her way is the best and only way, even if she makes morally ambiguous decisions. For example, she did ally with her uncle and his group to take out the Church, a more pressing threat, even though her uncle is the one who led the experiments on her. Even though she planned to take him out later, one could question the morality of such a decision.

She believes everyone should be equal, hence her desire to bring the nobility system down. Deep down though, she wishes she could sometimes daydream and live a happy, normal life. Something she'll never have a shot at, seeing how she has such a short lifespan and needs to change the world while she is still alive.

Items: Her armor, obviously. The relic Aymr. It's a battle axe which she wielded upon dying, allowing her to channel the power of her Crest into it for a specific Battle Art that is super-effective against dragons.