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[vrdantwind]

"Hey, this is Claude! Pretty sure I'm doing this correctly. You can leave me a message here, and I'll get to it as soon as I can. Talk to you soon~."

Comments

[vrdantwind]

My parents had...questionable parenting tactics of their own, let's say. I've had multiple people freak out when I've described some of the things they did with me that I personally don't think are that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, which I think is mostly cultural differences but may also be a little them being extreme...though from my perspective, I couldn't tell you how much of one or the other there is. That said, I don't consider my relationship with them bad, even if it's not effusively close, either, so...I don't think I can say I'm in the same camp as you, or even Lorenz.

Although as far as Lorenz goes, I do have very different political ideas from my father, and I wouldn't mind completely going against his policies on any number of things if I have the chance. No sense of filial duty would convince me to follow my father down a course I didn't believe was a good one. So maybe that's why I can't understand Lorenz too well.

I'm sorry your father's as bad as that, though, Sylvain. You deserve better.

You're not wrong about history. It just feels miserable actually living it out. When you're just reading about it, it's simple - these things already happened, there's no changing them. Maybe this or that event could have been averted if the right thing had happened at the right time, if the right information had been had, but those things didn't happen and people didn't know, so things played out this way or that. But when you're living in the moment...there's this awful, constant feeling that you could fix this, if you could make the right things happen. If you could make the right call at the right moment, or catch someone before they can make a terrible mistake, or convince someone to change their mind.

In the moment, you reach those crisis points, those divergences...and you always think it's possible, you must be able to change things, they're happening right now and you're part of them. But despite your best efforts...you still end up with bad outcomes. And you're left to wonder if you could have avoided them somehow, if you had your chance to change things for the better and you fumbled it. And when people, a century from now, read the historical accounts of our time...will they be kind? Or will our legacies be "if they'd just done this instead, so much could have been averted"?

Well...I say 'our'. But I guess this is something only commanders really have to worry about much. Edelgard, Dimitri, and me. And Teach.

[gautsome]

You say that, but you'd be wrong. I've had to command my own men -- Gautier men -- over the last five years. My father might give the order to defend the border, but at the end of the day, it's me in the thick of it telling them to charge forward or retreat, to make a pincer or do something else.

It's not quite the diplomacy that you are referencing, but don't count me out as having to not worry about it.

[vrdantwind]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to talk down to you. Obviously you've got your own burdens of command, and so do a lot of the people we went to school with. I guess I was just thinking of people who are in charge of the countries embroiled in this whole mess. Teach isn't quite the leader of a country, but between advising Dimitri and having the Knights of Seiros backing them, and no Rhea in sight, they're practically a fourth power at the table by this point.

I just meant that at the end of the day, you serve Dimitri. And you take orders from him, or at least people working with him - I don't know if he was commanding you guys directly when he was at his lowest. You won't be judged the same way for following Dimitri's orders, even if they happen to be bad, that Dimitri will be judged for giving them. There's no higher authority for him, either. He can confer with advisors, but at the end of the day all he can do is try to decide what's right and wrong, and then command a nation to act on that decision. That's a different weight to carry than leading a battalion.

Ugh, I'm just rambling, aren't I? And probably offending you. Sorry.

[gautsome]

I think you're just making a mountain out of a molehill. Everybody has massive decisions to make. And hell, maybe it's worse just being in charge of a battalion. Think about it -- our decisions are going to weigh on you in the end. If we make a bad call, it goes back to Dimitri, who made a bad call as well by putting me in that role.

I think it's apples to oranges in the end, but there are some similarities. And there is a lot of weight that comes with any position like that.

But I'm not offended. Mostly.

[vrdantwind]

Mostly, huh? That's not too bad, but it still seems pretty far from ideal.

Anyway, don't think I haven't noticed you've switched to writing all formally. I don't know if that's from the gravity of the subject or if it's a sign of your mental state, but either way, I feel like maybe I'm doing something wrong if you're not able to relax like you normally do.

So, want to talk about something less unpleasant? I shouldn't be brooding over this stuff anyway, much less burdening other people with it.