Azure Moon, also known as the Blue Lions route of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fire Emblem: Three Houses, has a significant presence among fans. Considering the popularity of Dimitri, this route's lord character, it's no surprise that many praise the ꧅route itself for a great number of things. But Azure Moon actually has something of an open secret: it's the bad ending of the game.
Before we get into it, a bit of clarification - this isn't going to be making a blanket statement that another route is the "ideal" route. Three Houses included four branching storylines, and there are fans of all of them. This article is examining why Azure Moon specifically fails to address issues that led to the game's five year war, and why that makes its ending wrap-up tragic, despi﷽te the fanfare.
Azure Moon Forgot About The Agarthans
The most glaring issue with Azure Moon is the route's failure to address the Agarthans, referred to more often throughout the ღother routes as "Those who slither in the dark". In every other route of the game, these hidden adversaries are revealed to the player by Edelgard or, in the other routes where you side against her, a postmortem letter from Hubert. Azure Moon is unique in that the true nature of the dark forces at play in Fodlan...never quite make it to the surface. In fact, in the final battle, a dark mage even retreats from the field implying this won't be the end.
Narratively, this isn't a necessarily a complete failure of the writing. Since much of Dimitri's character revolves around letting go of his revenge and looking towards the future, showing him learning the ugly truth of the Agarthans could complicate that. It would, after all, result in him realizing they were the actual culprits behind the Tragedy of Duscur꧅ tha🅷t plagued him for so long. Including an extra chapter where he hunted them down, as Claude and Rhea did in their routes, might have seemed contradictory.
However, making it into a gameplay chapter wasn't the only path forward. In Crimson Flower, Edelgard's route (and ostensibly most inseparable from the Agarthans in the plot) it's stated that she and Hubert wiped out the Agarthans in the epilogue. This begs the question: why didn't Dimitri get a letter, as Claude and Rhea did, disclosing the truth? Or, at the very least, why didn't he learn about the Agarthans some other way? Anyone who'd plಞayed a route other than Azure Moon would know about them, and they'd committed plenty of atrocities against characters like Lysithea. The motivation players have to defeat them is obvious.
Faerghus' Military Culture Has Serious Issues
Faerghus' culture has a laundry list of problems, and nearly every character from the region is deeply impacted by them. The value placed on Crests in Faerghus appears far more severe than elsewhere (see: Ingrid and Sylvain's personal crises), the way death on the battlefield is glorified via characters like Rodrigue is enough to make you cry, and Gilbert abandoned a loving wife and daughter for yeꦜars on end due to a mangled sense of duty and honor.
One might think, being close with so many deeply affected by such things, that Dimitri might advocate for some change. And he is a very kind ruler in his endings. However, the military culture goes unaddressed. In fact, looking at some of the paired endings unique to Azure Moon, it's going strong. In Felix and Leonie's paired ending in all other routes, they work as mercenaries but soon start to run out of work, then become performers. In Azure Moon, there's no need - mercenary work isn't drying out. This seems to imply much m♐ore unrest in the post-war world of AM compared to all other routes.
They Decided To Patch A Better Ending In With DLC
There's still hope, though. For players who are ride-or-die Blue Lions teachers, but hate the idea that the underground society hell bent on resurrecting Nemesis and his goons (while using human children as lab rats and sparking a genocide) just got to keep doing their thing, there is one remedy. Dimitri was given a ꦗpaired end🍷ing with Hapi, a DLC character and, more importantly, one more of the Agarthans' many victims. If she and Dimitri marry, she tells him about the Agarthans and they defeat them. Probably all of them. Maybe.
It doesn't do much for the toxic culture of Faerghus and its presumed expanse across the whole continent, but it doඣes a lot more for lasting prosperity in AM than the base game did. For just $25 and the decision to forfeit getting any other paired ending for Dimitri, Azure Moon players can also take steps to prevent the next Tragedy by defeating the Agarthans.
You know, like what happens in all of the other routes - without ওthe extra cost.