Dorothea and Ferdinand aren't being COMPELLED to battle with the empire as the statute defined the element of compulsion as "coerced one or more persons, by act or threat." They return to service as foreign volunteer forces after having acted as resistance fighters in the time skip. Technically all the former black eagles are foreign volunteer forces.
@matmil5 Petra is compelled to serve the /black eagles/ under their prior leader. You don't force her to return to service when you launch the resistance campaign.
international law student here, that was amazing ! you were more cautious than people usually are when taking the geneva conventions into account so props to you. very impressed
Yeah, I think in a lot of cases he went much further than he had to (e.g. the militia, which would be considered combatants), and certainly following the law better than major contemporary nations like the United States who has spent significant resources on interpreting the law in such a way that allows them loopholes. Its both refreshing, and quite impressive. Do correct me if i got something wrong, im far from an expert on international law, and mostly just read through a lot of the relevant conventions and protocols out of interest and a certain feeling of civic duty to be informed
@@RepChris Doing a bit of reading, it seems like you’re absolutely right he was a lot more cautious than he needed to be. The way I’m interpreting things, he could’ve used the former Black Eagles students as they are volunteer forces in the Resistance Army against the Adrestian Empire during the war arc, same goes for the former Blue Lions against Gwendal in chapter 15.
@@dabbingperson9236 You could even make a compelling argument that the rampaging civilians in chapter 8 can be considered to be actively participating in hostilities, even if they are being supernaturally compelled by a third party.
As brutal and overkill of an attack as Atrocity is, I don't think it would count as a war crime, since it doesn't prolong pain, quite the contrary in fact. It would be akin to blowing a guy up with a granade.
To be clear the villagers picking up weapons and attacking other villagers probably makes those villagers out of the bounds of the rules of war, since you'd have to let villagers die by inaction (when you could take action) to save them.
Also of important note is that if they pick up weapons and they attack your military force and your military force is caused to defend itself from them to the point of lethality puts them out of bounds of that particular clause as well. So if you defend and they attack you and that results in their injury or death that is not a war crime committed by you.
@dragonstouch1042 that would also remove it from the list. I will be honest. It's been ages since I've seen any of the story stuff and I think some might have been skipped even then.
The moment when there’s no loopholes to justify attacking rampaging villagers in Remire Village despite how very inhumane the actual experimentation is
The units are marked as hostiles by the game and will attack you without provocation; I can't think of a more clear-cut case that they are participating in hostilites and therefore no longer civilians. Doesn't matter if they were compelled; It's legal to attack child soldiers, militias, and conscripts in the course of normal warfare.
@@jwil4286I suppose the question of what is “excessive” becomes the split hair, there. Rioters that charge at soldiers with makeshift weaponry are not mercilessly gunned down in an indiscriminate hail of gunfire, for example, but they ARE subdued with nonlethal tactics, weaponry and armor. Does Three Houses allow for nonlethal takedowns of combatants? If not… well shite. Come to think of it, the villagers were clearly coerced into attacking the soldiers (literally being turned “berserk”). In this case, they would be victims of the conflict, and not consciously taking part in the war. Therefore, they would not be combatants by definition, because they did not choose to fight that battle; the ones who turned them berserk would be the actual combatants.
Just to mention the flèche thing isn’t applicable. She joins the war effort directly before the battle and latterly the attack does count as being a combatant.
The "no quarter" is stipulated because it can imply "no prisoners" as is another stipulation. Obiously any sane peron will nevee trial this because is inane to investigate where any person surrender correctly or any other war crime implemented. Its also used to cover civilians, but this is a clear battlefield, so no participant cant be inbetween.
Makes sense that it's War Crime simulator though. It's like the Middle Ages in this game meanwhile the Geneva Convention happened in the Late 19th Century
Okay, Verdant Wind Analysis Time: Chapter 13: Sane as Silver Snow, just different students. Chapter 14: Same as Silver Snow, including blocking the Swordmaster to prevent the War Crime. Chapter 15: Same as Silver Snow. Chapter 16: Same as Silver Snow. It should be noted that Acheron used to be a lesser Alliance Noble before joining the Empire, so it would be the best if Geneva just kills him and his knights to not have countrymen fight fellow countrymen, even if only former. Chapter 17: One unique chapter, shifting every following chapter by 1. There is a Fire Bombing of the central ballista, but it's done by EDELGARD, not Claude. (+1 enemy War Crime) Chapter 18: Same as Chapter 18 from Silver Snow, however in the cutscene it shows Claude with parts of the Army IN YELLOW UNIFORMS! 100% War Crime Free, unless you somehow want to mark the involvement of a foraign power as one somehow... Chapter 19: Same as Chapter 18 of Silver Snow. Chapter 20: Same as Chapter 19 of Silver Snow. Chapter 21: Same as Chapter 20 of Silver Snow. Chapter 22: The other of only 2 chapters that are different between Silver Snow and Golden Deer. You even no longer need to apply any War Crime Rules, as all enemies are Agarthian Remnants and it basically becomes an EASIER final Mission than Silver Snow. Child Soilder Rulings: Golden Deer At the start of the game, Leonie, Hilda and Lorenz are over 18. For the Students that are 17, the birthdays are: 18.5 Raphael (Chapter 2) 24.7 Claude (Chapter 4) 23.11 Marianne (Chapter 8) 14.3 Ignatz (Chapter 12) Lysithea being 15 (turns 16 by chapter 11) means she has to wait till post Timeskip to be used if at all. Edit: I petition to release Claude from War Criminal Jail!
he uses poison unfortunately even if it is as a joke rather than a weapon considering the fact that the monastery is a military location for multiple nations poisoning his fellow students is a warcrime.
At the start of the battle for Fort Merceus they may be in yellow, but the nuke scene at the end still contains Byleth with soldiers in Imperial Uniforms that are clearly on Byleths side. And the point still is that Byleth is responsible for everyone. Also, just because we don't see the Alliance Troops in Imperial Uniform doesn't mean they didn't stick to the plan off cam.
I love the idea that if you included Flayn, you would like have to display a sign in front of her saying “not a war crime she’s a 1000 year old dragon”
@@Estarile Yeah that's the biggest issue with 1000 year loli. Since they're always just fiction people the topic shifts to "why did the creators make this anicent being look like a preteen girl?"
@@DisplayThisOkay honestly, I think Dance in the Vampire Bund (+sequels) is the only series that did anything interesting with it. Mainly because it was an actual plot point that she looked so young and when she gets the opportunity to grow up she jumps on that.
16:36 Flayn: but, but im actually over 1,000 years old Lawyer: and it says here the age of majority for manaketes is 5,000. You are legally still a child.
Arguably, you can beat any path without committing war crimes, if you win in the end, but I guess its good to know you can beat white and yellow routes with a clear-ish conscience.
@@weepingdalek2568why is it then when anyone says that they're almost always mad their psycho murder empire lost. Seriously it's always used in the context of fucking world war 2 which is about as clear cut of a moral war as you can get, or the american civil war which a) has a losing side whose entire existence was to prolong slavery and b) has a losing side that very much created the most successful post war disinformation PR campaign to make itself sound good and justified
Um, I think that it should be pointed out the choosing to use any of the blue lions will lead to a problem while still in the academy arc, which is that lord Lonato is a lord of their homeland which isn’t technically a civil uprising until demtri goes to fight him, which only happens in the blue lions route after being told to be the church, which is quite literally compelling a nationals to take part in hostile action against their own country, which means that slyven wouldn’t have been able to take part. It’s a point that you don’t bring in this segment and slyven can be seen here 9:51. I just thought I bring it up since there are multiple cases in which you took a rule that you could have avoided to make things easier such as limiting to 18 years old rather than 15, and not using Flayn since she looks like a child.
Would that still apply? I don't recall, but affiliations change if the support is high enough. So Sylvain's banner for Blue lions would turn to the Black eagles banner.
So, one question here that is never really answered is whether the Church of Seiros is a soveriegn subject of international law, or if the Monastery and the Central Church are legally in a country but treated as semi-autonomous or something. Even leaving that aside, I don't think the prohibition applies - they voluntarily joined the Church's military operations and weren't conscripted to fight, so where's the compulsion?
@GRK_21387 Well don't I have news for you! Seteth can only marry F byleth though unfortunately :( and it IS actual romance, not the weird brother/family things some of the others do
@@Error403HRD arent they related as well? like i think seteth is related to rhea and rhea is kinda the daughter of byleth but also the grandmother of byleth(rhea did "make" sitri) as well. but tbf that isn't as weird as marrying rhea herself
@@GRK_2024Seteth and Flayn, who both can marry Byleth, are a bit tricky, since blood relation between all of them is a bit ambiguous and from what i have seen, people have different opinions about how much they are all related to each other. Biggest question here is, how much of Sothis is in Byleth. They are not literally her and not even a reincarnation or something similar. In a sense Byleth is still there own person. If we are only looking at DNA, they just got a heart transplation of Sothis and I normally wouldn't count organ or blood donations as reason for incest. Now the whole Byleth and Sothis fusion has also be taken to account. I don't know if there is an official statement about what exactly happened, but I have seen people Interpret it as more as fusion of Sothis's power that she lends Byleth, then them becoming one as a person. Still weird, especially while romancing Rhea, because her whole plan was to make them her mother and in turn she tries to see her in them. With Sethet and Flayn at least, they first of all didn't know about in and secondly they seem to see Byleth as their own identity and not Sothis. On the others site i have seen the argument that people don't see Rhea as her grandmother, since Sitri is not related by blood to her. In my eyes it still counts since she created her and if i for example adopted a child or created a Frankenstein creation, i would see me as a parental role, even If we technically don't share DNA. Which makes romancing Rhea weird for me, but Seteth and Flayn also didn't know about the whole Sitri thing (I think). At least we see Seteth beeing left in the dark by Rhea and not getting answers, after He suspected that she did something to Byleth. He also didn't seem to know Jeralt before he came back to the Academy with Byleth. Which is reason to suspect that he might even never met Sitri. Reason why i personally find this important is, that first while he is blood related to Rhea in a sense, he isn't to Sitri and secondly he also didn't have really a familiar relationship with her. (For example beeing her uncle or however else he is related to Rhea). So yeah, relation between them depends mostly in how you Interpret Byleth as Sothis. Also about Seteth beeing married once, his wife died thousand or more years ago, so him remarring shouldn't be the Problem.
The post battle conversation event after the Great Bridge of Myrddin shows Byleth suggesting to Seteth that they use disguises to get into Fort Merceus. And while we're excusing the disguises because they're removed before combat, the same thing happens in Verdant Wind.
35:15 Edelgard (well, probably Hubert, actually, considering he's the one that handles the nasty parts of the work and would probably make a decent lawyer) could actually realistically defend this accusation at tribunal saying the Kingdom Army which allies itself with the Church of Seiros through thick and thin uses Crest Stones in their vaults in the Tailtean Plains map on Crimson Flower to voluntarily transform into Demonic Beasts, which is both a war crime and a tactic of war, meaning she could be in the right to destroy or remove the Crest Stones from them to ensure this doesn't happen. When it turns out the Crest Stones are actually the hearts of a sacred race of divine dragons, things get muddied a bit, and I think it could also be argued that she's pillaging a sacred place, which is definitely a no-no, but just thought I'd add that.
I personally consider the Empire's raid to be graverobbing, since the tomb's primary function is to be a resting place for the dragons who were robbed of their hearts to create the Crest Stones. It's called the Holy Tomb, not the Holy Weapon's Vault.
@@nataliecoronado4206 And yet Rhea is using those same stones to feed to Cardinals and power her Church Golems. Honestly the Nabteans just seem to have this weird cultural thing where they treat graves as their weapon stashes when convenient for them, while demanding humans keep their hands off; see the SotC, Seteth's wife, the Holy Tomb.
@@RichardOnADragon Rhea wasn't using the crest stones to give to the Cardinals or power the Golems, she was using her own blood. She only let Byleth have the Sword of the Creator because them being able to use it meant they were Sothis's host. And the spear Seteth gets after visiting his wife's grave is literally just the weapon he used during the war, no blood magic or anything.
@@nataliecoronado4206 Seteth says the Cardinals were given power both through Rhea's blood and through consuming fragments of Crest Stones; "White beasts... Are they the ones Rhea shared her blood and stones with?"/"In this rite, one pledges to serve the goddess and in return, receives a Crest Stone fragment and blood." The Church Golems are also all shown to be powered by a Crest Stone at the center once their armour is broken, and there's only one place Rhea would have had the dozen-odd Crest Stones to create all those golems. The spear doesn't have to be blood magic, the mere fact that Seteth sees no problem opening the grave to take the weapons stored there means that it is, effectively, a supply dump for him.
@@RichardOnADragon I actually didn't know that the Golems have a crest stone in them if you break their armor. They appear so rarely that I guess I never noticed it. Though, it is possible the Golems are actually Agarthan in origin and the Church simply repurposed them. As for Seteth, I would hardly call him taking the spear he buried with his wife as treating her grave like a supply depot. The point of that paralogue was to remind him that he can't keep clinging to the past forever, and that blaming himself for his wife's death and his daughter's injury won't change anything. Him taking the spear was supposed to represent him finally moving forward. Calling the location of that paralogue "Seteth's supply dump" is in really bad faith.
That was an awesome video! I'd love to see this with other FE games too (or at least a "minimum crime counter" for the games where you can't avoid it due to unavoidable story reasons).
A better question becomes which FE game has the most War Crimes which being honest and slightly bias I believe to be Awakening or Fates ESPECIALLY Conquest on Fates
Man it feels weird to be watching three houses footage again. It's only been a couple years but it makes me feel "nostalgic" for when the game first came out. Sitting in my college dorm and watching a playthrough of Edelgard's route that someone who got the game early posted.
I really liked this video! You explained everything in a very easy to understand way and put a huge amount of thought into how you'd work around the story trying to stop you.
Even if she was a civilian, she's still a would be assassin struck down mid-attempt. Byleth responded with appropriate force to contain an imminent threat to life. The only crimes here are the ones Fleche herself committed.
"War crimes are never the answer. They are the question. And the answer is yes" - Seteth 'There Is No Geneva Convention Here Because There Is No Geneva' Fire Emblem
@@nickelakon5369 yeah cool, as he said in the video even if you don't count that one Dmitri still commits a warcrime later on so that route is still off limits and this argument is irrelevant
I mean, as far as Byleth is told for much of things, she _is_ human. Her being secretly a dragon has no bearing on things if Byleth wasn't made privy to that information _before_ deploying her onto the battlefield.
Wait, is it actually stated in the text that it only applies to humans? So we'll have to inevitably rewrite it in the future when sufficiently advanced AI gets recognized as people, or we run into aliens? x)
@@sleepysera I don't know if it's explicitly stated that it's only humans, but if it's not the case, then you can't use dogs at all in war for example, the few that live to 18 will be too old to be useful.
16:30 Flayn is the older than the rest of your party combined at this point in the game! Though I suppose Byleth wouldn't know that when deciding whether to deploy her or not.
I'm just commenting for the algorithm. I was skeptical of this at first, but listened to the whole thing while I was at work, and it wasn't obnoxious like a lot of other more recent challenge vids I've seen so I give you props for being easy to listen to!
I feel that the Blue Lions is still possible! Fleche is an enemy combatant and a card carrying member of the Imperial Army when she attacks Dimitri and while Dimitri technically does give the 'Kill every last one of them' command, I'd argue that at that point, he's more of a (homicidal) figurehead than a leader. Byleth and Gustave are the ones in charge of the actual running of the army at that point, and they can choose to ignore Dimitri - the actual mission objective is to defeat the enemy commanders rather than to rout everyone, suggesting that no one in Faerghus Army who's not insane actually has any intention of giving no quarter. I know Dimitri is the king, but I'd argue that Byleth can't be accountable for the rantings of a crazy person who DOES still listen to her commands regarding not killing everyone if gameplay is taken into account.
Any civilian entering in combat with soldiers, withouth soldier inciting the interaction, become clacified as a rougue unit. This can join a faction oficially. Until so they are concider soldier WITHOUTH ANY RIGHTS. As they are not with a faction surremder is not concider as long anything else I know as it come up while talking about ukrain and civilian joining forces in the field withouth being enlisted.
And the fact you can’t use any of them against lord lonato, and even then they are actively told to fight him by the church, which as so mind you includes the adopted son of said lord, Ash. (Adding on after the fact, I guess you could potentially get Ash killed before this point so that your byleth doesn’t have that talk with him.)
If Dimitri is under Byleth's lead, then certainly as the king of a nation Byleth would have to be held responsible for his declaration, regardless of his mental state. Regardless, Blue Lions should still be impossible because Dimitri mentions torturing several enemy soldiers of the Empire after the timeskip, and he then goes on to torture Randolph, an enemy general, which are both war crimes. This is followed up by Byleth then beheading Randolph, which is killing a Prisoner of War, which is also a war crime.
Following a homocidal figurehead who casually talks about warcrimes because "he's not really a leader" is not exactly going to fly in the war tribunal mate. It's "just following orders" level not gunna fly even. Additonally Dimitri ADMITS to you about his constant warcrimin during your nap. A truely warcrimeless Byleth would send him to jail, not support him in rebuilding his Kingdom.
@@SapphicSara arguably seteth and flayn were lying to hide their descendants, but I Believe that they didn't have kids, and that those people with their crests are instead descendants of people who were given a blood transfusion, much like with Jeralt and Yuri. We know that the Difference that made Byleth a legitimate Sothis carrier was that they were a combination of a homunculus made from Rhea's blood and a human who had been infused with Rhea's blood. Plus I really Flayn would've married and had kids with her great however many times grandson (linhardt) and great however many times nephew (Ferdinand). I know it's incest emblem but I have to believe. Plus seteth is just SO overprotective of Flayn, who went into a coma while young and only recently awoke, I really doubt she's had kids as she's so enamored by the idea of innocent romance. Plus Seteth is still mourning his wife 1000 years later, and only remarries after the war (outside of his paired ending with Flayn). This says to me that he was focused on raising/protecting her, and didn't want to have another relationship while she was dependent on him.
All Flayn needs to do to show her actual age is transform into her natural form. She's thousands of years old. One of the statues in the church that you repair with renown is of her.
I have never played a Fire Emblem before (clicked cause I'm a fan of videogame challenges) and honestly the way the video presents information is so clear and concise I felt like I understood everything I needed to. Great vid
@@foureyesisafish7968yeah, just like how Seteth was talking about using fire on the invading force, but he was just joking about that ... right, random green swordmaster?
@33:59 that Pokémon Colosseum jingle gave me whiplash. I love you so much for using that. Would love to watch you do a Colosseum playthrough of some kind.
wow what a gem of a youtuber ive stumbled across. fantastic challenge and incredibly well done video! i expected way more subs... guess when you become famous i get to say i was an early viewer!!
Objection! In the cutscene following the battle at the fort, you can see Byleth being followed by her soldiers in Adrestian colors. You are guilty my good sir, guilty!
@@matthewbullion7935 Silver Snow was made first, so the cutscene was animated with it in mind. (And the other route it's in is Verdant Wind, where Byleth is with the Alliance, who wear yellow, so the Adrestian colours are still a false flag there)
I can't imagine the amount of time, energy and dedication that this video took, but boy did it pay off! What a fantastic run concept, brilliantly researched and so informative. Would love to see more of this kind of run in future. Thank you for all the effort!
There were a couple of times where I was like, "Ah, but surely you could argue that they were willing/volunteers/engaged in combat," and then I realized...yes, but this is a CHALLENGE, and erring on the side of caution is extremely appropriate when it comes to avoiding war crimes, actually!
I feel like some of their backstories might complicate things. Hapi comes to mind in particular with the whole "lied to by the church" thing. Not a Geneva expert, so have no idea if that would matter
We know of 3 of the wolves' affilliations, though. Balthus was from the Alliance, Constance was an Empire noble, and Yuri hails from the Kingdom. Hapi is from the village of Timotheos, with the rest of her backstory implying she's from the Kingdom as well. For this run, that would only mean Constance is excluded for the fights against the Empire, while the other three are fair game
22:20 or somewhere around there you talk about how you can’t get out of the combat but you can by pressing the quit option, unfortunate time waste but hey you overcame it well
Very interesting and well done run. Since you went with Black Eagles, it has me thinking about Petra's status in all this. I understand why you didn't use her out of caution, but she's not really an Adrestian national. From a very pedantic perspective, her entire status as a political hostage could be considered a violation of the Geneva Convention by Adrestia. An enduring war crime from the previous war.
Question: how culpable would we be in Rhea’s academy phase war crimes such as the execution of prisoners of war? Do we get an attempted war crime for trying to kill Edelgard in the holy tomb? Is Rhea likewise committing an illegal order by ordering us to execute Edelgard in the tomb? Does the logic applied to absolve the Edelgard execution apply to the optional executing of Dimitri on Crimson Flower as it was pretty unambiguous that if he could he would keep fighting and trying to kill us?
Edelgard was not a prisoner, as she didn't surrendered nor was captured. And people should stop criticizing the order because Edelgard was the aggressor.
@@fandemusique4693 right so she just volunteered to be thrown in a dungeon tortured and experimented on and then spend the rest of life surrounded by everyone who did it? I am also sure that that incident during crimson flower where Thales nuked a city after she killed Cornelia was just a happy accident and not a warning shot. Just because she was the aggressor doesn’t change the situation at least as far as the Geneva convention which is what matters in regard to this video.
@@ranger24ff are you an idiot? It have no bearing on the situation, I didn't speak of the Agarthans. Edelgard invaded the holy tomb, so rhea was entitled to demand her execution since Edelgard did not intend to surrender and did this invasion without a prior declaration of war.
@@ranger24ff that's utterly stupid, it have nothing to do with the matter. Why the hell are you bringing the Agarthans? I was talking of what happened in the Holy tomb. Edelgard wasn't a prisoner of Rhea, so ordering her execution wasn't "ordering to kill a prisoner of war" or something
@@fandemusique4693 oh wrong part sorry, got confused because it wasn’t very specific and thought you were referring to something else. As for the situation itself, it seems to be implied from the context that Edelgard has been beaten and is in theory at least at the mercy of Rhea and Byleth. Mind you Edelgard escaped but the context still feels shaky to me from a legal standpoint given the framing of the scene.
This was extremely interesting it gives an entirey different thought process to how we play Fire Emblem it was beyond entertaining to think about and watch because it's really not something you'd ever consider
14:15 I remember during my Silver Snow run of the game, I had Shamir snipe the Death Knight for fun to get some chip damage on him, and she accidentally crit and ended the whole chapter in the first turn This made me laugh so hard that I decided to keep that run of chapter 6 and continue on
35:20 It can be argued whether the bodies of the Nabateans are protected under the 1949 stipulation about treatment of the wartime dead since they died long before this war, but that's another potential crime since the Crest Stones are their hearts and therefore this is desecration of a body.
Couple things I kinda am unclear on. I understand the compelling nationals of a hostile party to take part in combat against their home country war crime but only up to a point. But the time skip when your Adrestian companions rejoin ready to take the fight to Edelgard with their allegiance firmly no longer to the Empire wouldn't they be allowed to deploy against imperial forces? Especially since you're not compelling them at that point, it's a choice they've made. Also do we think that dark magic with all it's debuffs should perhaps count as biological weapons?
As I finished watching (as of posting), I’ve learned about the Geneva Conventions and all the intricacies about what’s considered a war crime while watching Three Houses. Entertaining, but certainly an interesting way to go about playing.
I'm curious how this challenge would go in other Fire Emblem games. Notably in Fates half of the time after the map Corrin says something along "and we did it all without killing anyone!". There's also the capture mechanic allowing to subdue rather than kill
Surprised you went with Silver Snow honestly as it features the same disguise plan as Verdant Wind which disqualified that route in the beginning. In Crimson Flower, Edelgard doesn't follow up on any of the war crimes she commits during White Clouds: no more demonic beasts, no more disguises, no more raids on civilian targets....
The story tries to blame all the war crimes to those who slither in the dark, in order to ensure none of the paths are truly evil. Which ironically makes Edelgard the most ethical if you side with her. Since she stops using them. Meanwhile the other groups have to use a warcrime or two in order to overcome the slitherers. Well that and Dimitri is kinda nuts for a bit.
Hubert's paralogue reveals that Adrestia is still helping Agartha do Crest beast experiments on unwilling civilians, so that's a war crime, along with having to fight Flayn. Edelgard also knows that the javelins of light already exist and the Agarthans are willing to use them, so she knows that Arianrhod will be destroyed and lets the civilians be killed then lies to her own forces followed by blaming the bombing on the church. Furthermore, Edelgard will murder Dimitri when he clearly can't fight anymore unless the alternate cutscene was unlocked by defeating Dedue before he can transform. Crimson Flower still has a number of war crimes even if Edelgard's prior actions are blamed solely on the Agarthans.
@@nightscout9979 Flayn is a combatant, why is fighting her a war crime? I refute what you said about Arianrhod. Edelgard suppressed information about the javelins once they were deployed, yes, but there was no evidence suggesting that she knew about those weapons previously or that she knew Thales was going to deploy them against Arianrhod. When Tales tells Edelgard he doesn't want the Empire to become "another Arianrhod", she has no idea what she's talking about, and Hubert struggles to maintain his composure when giving her the report. Likewise, Hubert's paralogue doesn't suggest Adrestia is actively helping Agartha with its Demonic Beast experiments. Thales comes and "requests" Hubert help clean up an experiment gone wrong. That's it. As for Dimitri, I also don't know why that's a war crime either. He was defeated, but he wasn't surrendering. Plus, the Kingdom army definitely wouldn't surrender with Dimitri still alive. This wouldn't be a case of no quarter as the Kingdom army retreats after Dimitri's death. Edelgard has to take responsibility for her actions as the Flame Emperor, but I maintain that she commits nothing further in Crimson Flower beyond associating with Agartha.
@@jedimasterpickle3 Flayn is a child, and one that people like Byleth can easily spare, so ending her life is unnecessary too. Edelgard also comments that no Nabatean can be allowed to have any power over the public, and with her own allies' fears that she'd innately want to kill Indech, Edelgard likely has a racial prejudice against Flayn to boot. The only way Flayn can survive is if she enters perpetual hiding lest the Adrestian government kills her over her ethnicity. Edelgard had to have known about the javelins of light previously, otherwise she wouldn't have been leveraging every bit of control and influence she had to make sure she was Rhea's jailer. Hubert's note speaks of the importance of taking Rhea along in the attack on Shambhala, thus recognizing that she could fly and try to intercept the missiles. Furthermore, in the Fort Merceus mission, the Death Knight, an Edelgard loyalist, knows that the javelins of light are coming well in advance despite none ever being deployed before in the war. If it was entirely left up to the Agarthans as to who would be Rhea's jailer, they'd have likely never assigned Edelgard to oversee one of their most hated enemies who could mitigate or perhaps even counter some of their greatest weapons. Edelgard has been Rhea's jailer throughout the war too, so Edelgard would have to arrange for that very soon after Byleth entered a coma. There's ample evidence that Edelgard and her closest allies have known what the javelins of light were since before the time skip, even if they strive to hide that from Byleth. As for Hubert's paralogue, the fact that the Agarthans are allowed to continue those experiments by Adrestia makes Adrestia liable for war crimes. Edelgard currently isn't fielding Crest beasts in her personal vanguard, but she is in fact allowing them to still be made and likely used in battle, and the experimental site is in the Sealed Forest to boot, a place quite close to her base of operations. Dimitri was clearly incapable of fighting anymore, he doesn't have to surrender for Edelgard to have conducted a war crime. The man was very visibly wounded, even without accounting for the several arrows stuck in his body. Dimitri also can't teleport, so there's no possible argument that he could have warped out of any prison and had to be killed. Killing a leader like that can additionally risk emboldening a nation to continue fighting, whereas capturing the leader is a better negotiation tactic (and if Edelgard cared to do so, she could have tried to share knowledge of her ancestors' records and Fodlan's history with any prisoners to persuade them to work alongside her). Also, based on how Edelgard has the title of "Flame Emperor" in Crimson Flower's ending, she is potentially trying to glorify her actions as the Flame Emperor before the war arc instead of acknowledging and atoning for them. Ultimately, Edelgard is comitting a number of war crimes in Crimson Flower.
I'm impressed you managed to prevent the the "Seteth orders no quarter to be given" line and thus that ding against him, but despite that doesn't SS have two unavoidable War Crimes focused on Enbarr? The first is the plan Seteth comes up with to get the army close to Enbarr- "Under the guise of surrender, they secretly prepare for a surprise attack on the Imperial capital.” I'm fairly sure that false surrenders are war crimes. The second is how the Church starts organizing the mass summary execution of Imperial captives after Enbarr, up until Bergliez surrenders to be executed in place of all the captive soldiers. I also believe that planning to no-process mass-execute a whole bunch of helpless captives is a War Crime. I guess you can kinda avoid at least finding out about the second as it only is raised by Caspar and Dorothea in Exploration, but the first is unavoidably and directly said by the omniscient narrator.
This is the kind of challenge run I’ve been waiting for! Very impressed by the research, that bit about the Germans changing uniform before attacking was particularly interesting.
45:00 One thing it's possible to happen here is that if you defeat Ashe as Byleth, you can actually convince him to join you side (same with Lysithea in the Crimson Flower route). Now, this is curious because both of them at first surrender (which makes them tecnically POWs), but then they are immediatelly invited to switch sides; in this case, they are now defectors and fully betraying their respective nations. I don't think treason is a war crime (instead it's more of a military crime in every nation), but I thought it would be curious to point this out. Great video, I really enjoyed watching it!
fun game mechanic fact, every single class certification is predetermined at the beginning of each day, so you can save scum each class upgrade, save dont get one load and try another.
Personally, I believe the Church of Seiros has also been committing war crimes under your definition of child soldiers. During the academy arc, the classes Byleth does not teach are taught by Manuela and Hanneman. Those classes are also going on real combat missions assigned by the higher ups of Garreg Mach Monastery. Based on the strength of the opposing classes during the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, we can assume that even the children were deployed on those missions to gain experience. At the same time, the Officers Academy run by the Church of Seiros has been in operation for a 200 years, from establishment in the Imperial Year 980 to the current class of Year 1180. We can reasonably assume that if violations are happening now, that at least one other violation has happened since the founding. On top of that, Catherine, unflinchingly affiliated with the Church of Seiros, wields the Thunderbrand, a Hero's Relic like the Sword of the Creator, exclusively - until she is under Byleth's command. Although you opted to be cautious regarding using the Relics, I'd argue that due to a Relic's ability to transform an incompatible wielder into a Demonic Beast, that would make deploying any Relic a violation of the Rome Statute.
Alright time for fire emblem three houses but with as many war crimes as possible challenge
So as many poison weapons as possible?
@@viviblue7277 and fire magic
Excelblem: Allow me to introduce myself
@@viviblue7277 considering the series in question I think that would be the least "war crimey" thing we can do lmao 💀
@@kinga6347 sacrificing soldiers for nothing isn’t a war crime it’s just…a unique strategy.
"The reason I'm not a child soldier."
1.) I'm a dragon.
2.) I ate the last prosecutor who asked.
Nom
Dorothea and Ferdinand aren't being COMPELLED to battle with the empire as the statute defined the element of compulsion as "coerced one or more persons, by act or threat." They return to service as foreign volunteer forces after having acted as resistance fighters in the time skip. Technically all the former black eagles are foreign volunteer forces.
Yeah, compulsion is forceing. If they volunteer...
Yeah nah it is Compulsion. And especially apparent for Petra, who is there as a political hostage to begin with 💀
@matmil5 Petra is compelled to serve the /black eagles/ under their prior leader. You don't force her to return to service when you launch the resistance campaign.
Very similar to what the Foreign Legion is in France
@@Stormthorn67 So, if someone develops a stockholm syndrome its not compulsion, got it chief
is it even still a fire emblem game if nobody commits a single war crime?
Engage ?
@Echoes-dz2ur
Child soldiers, Jean is like 10 I believe.
@@RubyGaymingand killing unarmed medics (healers)
Nope,
Ezh4 or l
international law student here, that was amazing ! you were more cautious than people usually are when taking the geneva conventions into account so props to you. very impressed
Yeah, I think in a lot of cases he went much further than he had to (e.g. the militia, which would be considered combatants), and certainly following the law better than major contemporary nations like the United States who has spent significant resources on interpreting the law in such a way that allows them loopholes. Its both refreshing, and quite impressive.
Do correct me if i got something wrong, im far from an expert on international law, and mostly just read through a lot of the relevant conventions and protocols out of interest and a certain feeling of civic duty to be informed
@@RepChris Doing a bit of reading, it seems like you’re absolutely right he was a lot more cautious than he needed to be. The way I’m interpreting things, he could’ve used the former Black Eagles students as they are volunteer forces in the Resistance Army against the Adrestian Empire during the war arc, same goes for the former Blue Lions against Gwendal in chapter 15.
@@dabbingperson9236 You could even make a compelling argument that the rampaging civilians in chapter 8 can be considered to be actively participating in hostilities, even if they are being supernaturally compelled by a third party.
Dimitri using Atrocity: Whaaaaaa nooooooo war crimes? What war crimes? I've never seem a war crime around here!
As brutal and overkill of an attack as Atrocity is, I don't think it would count as a war crime, since it doesn't prolong pain, quite the contrary in fact. It would be akin to blowing a guy up with a granade.
@@hectorhernandezaleman3836 I’m more thinking about the name
@@thod-thod Oh, then yes, absolutely.
To be clear the villagers picking up weapons and attacking other villagers probably makes those villagers out of the bounds of the rules of war, since you'd have to let villagers die by inaction (when you could take action) to save them.
Also of important note is that if they pick up weapons and they attack your military force and your military force is caused to defend itself from them to the point of lethality puts them out of bounds of that particular clause as well. So if you defend and they attack you and that results in their injury or death that is not a war crime committed by you.
@@Quandry1the scene before confirms the knights and the students aren’t even using lethal force I’m pretty sure
@dragonstouch1042 that would also remove it from the list. I will be honest. It's been ages since I've seen any of the story stuff and I think some might have been skipped even then.
The moment when there’s no loopholes to justify attacking rampaging villagers in Remire Village despite how very inhumane the actual experimentation is
im pretty sure they would be allowed to attack them if i was informed right. (big if in the misinformation age)
If they attack you first, you can easily claim self-defense.
The units are marked as hostiles by the game and will attack you without provocation; I can't think of a more clear-cut case that they are participating in hostilites and therefore no longer civilians. Doesn't matter if they were compelled; It's legal to attack child soldiers, militias, and conscripts in the course of normal warfare.
@@EuphemiaRem exactly! and (unless you respond excessively) self-defense usually wins out
@@jwil4286I suppose the question of what is “excessive” becomes the split hair, there. Rioters that charge at soldiers with makeshift weaponry are not mercilessly gunned down in an indiscriminate hail of gunfire, for example, but they ARE subdued with nonlethal tactics, weaponry and armor. Does Three Houses allow for nonlethal takedowns of combatants? If not… well shite.
Come to think of it, the villagers were clearly coerced into attacking the soldiers (literally being turned “berserk”). In this case, they would be victims of the conflict, and not consciously taking part in the war. Therefore, they would not be combatants by definition, because they did not choose to fight that battle; the ones who turned them berserk would be the actual combatants.
Just to mention the flèche thing isn’t applicable. She joins the war effort directly before the battle and latterly the attack does count as being a combatant.
but she's a child soldier, so doesn't she need to be protected even if she's clearly with the enemy? though then still it's just self-defense
i think Dimitri would still count as a warcriminal due to the no quarter thing and torturing an enemy genereal (Randolph)
The "no quarter" is stipulated because it can imply "no prisoners" as is another stipulation.
Obiously any sane peron will nevee trial this because is inane to investigate where any person surrender correctly or any other war crime implemented.
Its also used to cover civilians, but this is a clear battlefield, so no participant cant be inbetween.
@@embieABCdoesn’t byleth kill Randolph before Dimitri can torture him
@@serpifeu5836 attacking child soldiers is not a war crime, but making use of them is afaik.
i think of them more of as geneva suggestion
I like to think of it as a Geneva checklist.
Guidelines
You mean the To-do list
We need a Geneva bingo card and see who completes theirs first :D
i see we found another Chuckles fan here
"We figured they were more like guidelines."
Aint no way he is being law abiding in war crime simulator 56
Makes sense that it's War Crime simulator though.
It's like the Middle Ages in this game meanwhile the Geneva Convention happened in the Late 19th Century
Okay, Verdant Wind Analysis Time:
Chapter 13: Sane as Silver Snow, just different students.
Chapter 14: Same as Silver Snow, including blocking the Swordmaster to prevent the War Crime.
Chapter 15: Same as Silver Snow.
Chapter 16: Same as Silver Snow. It should be noted that Acheron used to be a lesser Alliance Noble before joining the Empire, so it would be the best if Geneva just kills him and his knights to not have countrymen fight fellow countrymen, even if only former.
Chapter 17: One unique chapter, shifting every following chapter by 1. There is a Fire Bombing of the central ballista, but it's done by EDELGARD, not Claude. (+1 enemy War Crime)
Chapter 18: Same as Chapter 18 from Silver Snow, however in the cutscene it shows Claude with parts of the Army IN YELLOW UNIFORMS! 100% War Crime Free, unless you somehow want to mark the involvement of a foraign power as one somehow...
Chapter 19: Same as Chapter 18 of Silver Snow.
Chapter 20: Same as Chapter 19 of Silver Snow.
Chapter 21: Same as Chapter 20 of Silver Snow.
Chapter 22: The other of only 2 chapters that are different between Silver Snow and Golden Deer. You even no longer need to apply any War Crime Rules, as all enemies are Agarthian Remnants and it basically becomes an EASIER final Mission than Silver Snow.
Child Soilder Rulings: Golden Deer
At the start of the game, Leonie, Hilda and Lorenz are over 18. For the Students that are 17, the birthdays are:
18.5 Raphael (Chapter 2)
24.7 Claude (Chapter 4)
23.11 Marianne (Chapter 8)
14.3 Ignatz (Chapter 12)
Lysithea being 15 (turns 16 by chapter 11) means she has to wait till post Timeskip to be used if at all.
Edit: I petition to release Claude from War Criminal Jail!
he uses poison unfortunately even if it is as a joke rather than a weapon considering the fact that the monastery is a military location for multiple nations poisoning his fellow students is a warcrime.
@@michaell8000 He Jokes about it
Just like how Seteth Jokes About Giving no Quarter every chapter.
At the start of the battle for Fort Merceus they may be in yellow, but the nuke scene at the end still contains Byleth with soldiers in Imperial Uniforms that are clearly on Byleths side.
And the point still is that Byleth is responsible for everyone.
Also, just because we don't see the Alliance Troops in Imperial Uniform doesn't mean they didn't stick to the plan off cam.
@@shadoukoa5045 I think that's the same cutscene on both sides. So you could argue that it's an unavoidable crime
@@danelo13 oh my god do you think they wrote the Alliance using disguises so that cutscene could pull double duty for the routes
That'd be SO funny
Honestly I was surprised that you were able to complete the game without committing any war crimes, great job!
I mean Seteth did declare no quarter… but no one heard him say that so I guess we ignore it. Agreed MCL a very surprising and impressive run.
I love the idea that if you included Flayn, you would like have to display a sign in front of her saying “not a war crime she’s a 1000 year old dragon”
I thought we as a society decided that the "I swear, officer, this loli is actually 1000 year old" excuse isn't accepted 😂
@@sleepyseradepends, is there a narrative reason beyond "well shes 1k, lets make her look like a kid for fanservice?"
@@Estarile Yeah that's the biggest issue with 1000 year loli. Since they're always just fiction people the topic shifts to "why did the creators make this anicent being look like a preteen girl?"
@@DisplayThisOkay honestly, I think Dance in the Vampire Bund (+sequels) is the only series that did anything interesting with it.
Mainly because it was an actual plot point that she looked so young and when she gets the opportunity to grow up she jumps on that.
@@sleepysera 1000 year old teenagers are allowed to do war but not sex
16:36
Flayn: but, but im actually over 1,000 years old
Lawyer: and it says here the age of majority for manaketes is 5,000. You are legally still a child.
If we're going by the game code itself, she's actually 17.
CHECKMATE, GENEVA!
@@Demonboy007 HELL YEAH
"age of majority for manaketes is 5,000."
Me having married Tiki in FE Awakening: *@#$%*
@@cjvs1604bro is not living the allegations
Arguably, you can beat any path without committing war crimes, if you win in the end, but I guess its good to know you can beat white and yellow routes with a clear-ish conscience.
History is written by the winners after all
Yellow still kinda questionable because claude still poisoning people
@@littlekuribohimposte Does he ever deploy poison in combat? I'm not recalling an instance of that.
@@ejharris8667 I’d need to go back and play Three Houses, and given the Academy phase is boring AF, I probably never will
@@weepingdalek2568why is it then when anyone says that they're almost always mad their psycho murder empire lost. Seriously it's always used in the context of fucking world war 2 which is about as clear cut of a moral war as you can get, or the american civil war which a) has a losing side whose entire existence was to prolong slavery and b) has a losing side that very much created the most successful post war disinformation PR campaign to make itself sound good and justified
Um, I think that it should be pointed out the choosing to use any of the blue lions will lead to a problem while still in the academy arc, which is that lord Lonato is a lord of their homeland which isn’t technically a civil uprising until demtri goes to fight him, which only happens in the blue lions route after being told to be the church, which is quite literally compelling a nationals to take part in hostile action against their own country, which means that slyven wouldn’t have been able to take part.
It’s a point that you don’t bring in this segment and slyven can be seen here 9:51. I just thought I bring it up since there are multiple cases in which you took a rule that you could have avoided to make things easier such as limiting to 18 years old rather than 15, and not using Flayn since she looks like a child.
Would that still apply? I don't recall, but affiliations change if the support is high enough. So Sylvain's banner for Blue lions would turn to the Black eagles banner.
So, one question here that is never really answered is whether the Church of Seiros is a soveriegn subject of international law, or if the Monastery and the Central Church are legally in a country but treated as semi-autonomous or something. Even leaving that aside, I don't think the prohibition applies - they voluntarily joined the Church's military operations and weren't conscripted to fight, so where's the compulsion?
What is slyven?
I think Garreg Mach is like Vatican City in our own world
@@ThePsh07I think they're trying to say Sylvain lol
Love how Seteth keeps suggesting war crimes. No regret on always marrying him 😂
Wish M Byleth could marry him 😔, sometimes you just want a War Crime committing husband...
wait i thought u couldn't marry seteth cause he already is married and has a daughter(even tho his wife died)
@GRK_21387 Well don't I have news for you!
Seteth can only marry F byleth though unfortunately :( and it IS actual romance, not the weird brother/family things some of the others do
@@Error403HRD arent they related as well? like i think seteth is related to rhea and rhea is kinda the daughter of byleth but also the grandmother of byleth(rhea did "make" sitri) as well. but tbf that isn't as weird as marrying rhea herself
@@GRK_2024Seteth and Flayn, who both can marry Byleth, are a bit tricky, since blood relation between all of them is a bit ambiguous and from what i have seen, people have different opinions about how much they are all related to each other.
Biggest question here is, how much of Sothis is in Byleth.
They are not literally her and not even a reincarnation or something similar.
In a sense Byleth is still there own person.
If we are only looking at DNA, they just got a heart transplation of Sothis and I normally wouldn't count organ or blood donations as reason for incest.
Now the whole Byleth and Sothis fusion has also be taken to account.
I don't know if there is an official statement about what exactly happened, but I have seen people Interpret it as more as fusion of Sothis's power that she lends Byleth, then them becoming one as a person.
Still weird, especially while romancing Rhea, because her whole plan was to make them her mother and in turn she tries to see her in them.
With Sethet and Flayn at least, they first of all didn't know about in and secondly they seem to see Byleth as their own identity and not Sothis.
On the others site i have seen the argument that people don't see Rhea as her grandmother, since Sitri is not related by blood to her.
In my eyes it still counts since she created her and if i for example adopted a child or created a Frankenstein creation, i would see me as a parental role, even If we technically don't share DNA.
Which makes romancing Rhea weird for me, but Seteth and Flayn also didn't know about the whole Sitri thing (I think).
At least we see Seteth beeing left in the dark by Rhea and not getting answers, after He suspected that she did something to Byleth. He also didn't seem to know Jeralt before he came back to the Academy with Byleth.
Which is reason to suspect that he might even never met Sitri.
Reason why i personally find this important is, that first while he is blood related to Rhea in a sense, he isn't to Sitri and secondly he also didn't have really a familiar relationship with her. (For example beeing her uncle or however else he is related to Rhea).
So yeah, relation between them depends mostly in how you Interpret Byleth as Sothis.
Also about Seteth beeing married once, his wife died thousand or more years ago, so him remarring shouldn't be the Problem.
Excellent video! I enjoyed how much you went into detail and explained each instance of a potential violation. This deserves more interaction!!
Thank you!
The military: where did you learn your knowledge on the rules of war before this?
Recruit: it's complicated
the one villager ending his turn standing in fire is just my mental state in the middle of a challenge run
The post battle conversation event after the Great Bridge of Myrddin shows Byleth suggesting to Seteth that they use disguises to get into Fort Merceus. And while we're excusing the disguises because they're removed before combat, the same thing happens in Verdant Wind.
Can’t that be considered espionage
About the first mock battle:
Because it’s a mock battle, it’s not a war crime to have all students take part.
35:15 Edelgard (well, probably Hubert, actually, considering he's the one that handles the nasty parts of the work and would probably make a decent lawyer) could actually realistically defend this accusation at tribunal saying the Kingdom Army which allies itself with the Church of Seiros through thick and thin uses Crest Stones in their vaults in the Tailtean Plains map on Crimson Flower to voluntarily transform into Demonic Beasts, which is both a war crime and a tactic of war, meaning she could be in the right to destroy or remove the Crest Stones from them to ensure this doesn't happen.
When it turns out the Crest Stones are actually the hearts of a sacred race of divine dragons, things get muddied a bit, and I think it could also be argued that she's pillaging a sacred place, which is definitely a no-no, but just thought I'd add that.
I personally consider the Empire's raid to be graverobbing, since the tomb's primary function is to be a resting place for the dragons who were robbed of their hearts to create the Crest Stones. It's called the Holy Tomb, not the Holy Weapon's Vault.
@@nataliecoronado4206 And yet Rhea is using those same stones to feed to Cardinals and power her Church Golems. Honestly the Nabteans just seem to have this weird cultural thing where they treat graves as their weapon stashes when convenient for them, while demanding humans keep their hands off; see the SotC, Seteth's wife, the Holy Tomb.
@@RichardOnADragon Rhea wasn't using the crest stones to give to the Cardinals or power the Golems, she was using her own blood. She only let Byleth have the Sword of the Creator because them being able to use it meant they were Sothis's host. And the spear Seteth gets after visiting his wife's grave is literally just the weapon he used during the war, no blood magic or anything.
@@nataliecoronado4206 Seteth says the Cardinals were given power both through Rhea's blood and through consuming fragments of Crest Stones; "White beasts... Are they the ones Rhea shared her blood and stones with?"/"In this rite, one pledges to serve the goddess and in return, receives a Crest Stone fragment and blood." The Church Golems are also all shown to be powered by a Crest Stone at the center once their armour is broken, and there's only one place Rhea would have had the dozen-odd Crest Stones to create all those golems.
The spear doesn't have to be blood magic, the mere fact that Seteth sees no problem opening the grave to take the weapons stored there means that it is, effectively, a supply dump for him.
@@RichardOnADragon I actually didn't know that the Golems have a crest stone in them if you break their armor. They appear so rarely that I guess I never noticed it. Though, it is possible the Golems are actually Agarthan in origin and the Church simply repurposed them.
As for Seteth, I would hardly call him taking the spear he buried with his wife as treating her grave like a supply depot. The point of that paralogue was to remind him that he can't keep clinging to the past forever, and that blaming himself for his wife's death and his daughter's injury won't change anything. Him taking the spear was supposed to represent him finally moving forward. Calling the location of that paralogue "Seteth's supply dump" is in really bad faith.
33:58
Claude is HITTIN that harmonica solo loolllll
That was an awesome video! I'd love to see this with other FE games too (or at least a "minimum crime counter" for the games where you can't avoid it due to unavoidable story reasons).
A better question becomes which FE game has the most War Crimes which being honest and slightly bias I believe to be Awakening or Fates ESPECIALLY Conquest on Fates
Man it feels weird to be watching three houses footage again. It's only been a couple years but it makes me feel "nostalgic" for when the game first came out. Sitting in my college dorm and watching a playthrough of Edelgard's route that someone who got the game early posted.
So glad I found this! Great editing, writing, and an interesting challenge! Hope you get more visibility, you did a great job!
9:20
"Italians are unlocked throughout the game"
Prohibiting skirmishes feels silly when it’s almost strictly more advantageous to spend your weekend growing stat boosters.
Souls have no hit
Shooters have speedruns
Platformers have coin less
We tacticians have a convent.
And true madlads have all of the above AT ONCE
I really liked this video! You explained everything in a very easy to understand way and put a huge amount of thought into how you'd work around the story trying to stop you.
33:59 Claude on the damn harmonica KILLS ME😂
Wait hold on fleich isnt a civilian shes an empire soldier,she just disguises herself to avenge her brother
Even if she was a civilian, she's still a would be assassin struck down mid-attempt. Byleth responded with appropriate force to contain an imminent threat to life. The only crimes here are the ones Fleche herself committed.
@@Oscar_Milde Well, that and executing a prisoner of war.
Your martial prowess is as informed as it is respectable, soldier! Another day another war crime avoided! o7 o7 o7
"War crimes are never the answer. They are the question. And the answer is yes" - Seteth 'There Is No Geneva Convention Here Because There Is No Geneva' Fire Emblem
4:50 im fairly sure trying to kill a king is enough to promote you from civilian to assassin lol
Well he lied too, she isn't a civilian, she's a soldier disguised as one. You literally see her in an imperial soldier armor before.
@@nickelakon5369he kinda explained immediately after how that doesn't matter even if it's the case
@shadow-faye it doesn't matter, his argument doesn't hold up because she's not unarmed or a non-combatant.
@@nickelakon5369 yeah cool, as he said in the video even if you don't count that one Dmitri still commits a warcrime later on so that route is still off limits and this argument is irrelevant
@shadow-faye the argument is about what he counted as a war crime, not if that route has any.
Excellent video! Its a war crime that you don't have more subs
Okay the Edelgaurd did nothing wrong dissertation is actually pretty funny. Props to you.
Flayn should be allowed to participate, not because of her age, but because the "child soldier" thing only applies to humans, which she is not.
This implies Geneva have let a squad of foals or saplings alike as legal,
I mean, as far as Byleth is told for much of things, she _is_ human.
Her being secretly a dragon has no bearing on things if Byleth wasn't made privy to that information _before_ deploying her onto the battlefield.
@@brolytriplethreat You're right, it wouldn't be a war crime, but she can't be used as Byleth wouldn't know it isn't.
Wait, is it actually stated in the text that it only applies to humans? So we'll have to inevitably rewrite it in the future when sufficiently advanced AI gets recognized as people, or we run into aliens? x)
@@sleepysera I don't know if it's explicitly stated that it's only humans, but if it's not the case, then you can't use dogs at all in war for example, the few that live to 18 will be too old to be useful.
16:30 Flayn is the older than the rest of your party combined at this point in the game! Though I suppose Byleth wouldn't know that when deciding whether to deploy her or not.
I'm just commenting for the algorithm. I was skeptical of this at first, but listened to the whole thing while I was at work, and it wasn't obnoxious like a lot of other more recent challenge vids I've seen so I give you props for being easy to listen to!
The best 3 Houses war crimes video imo. Very well done!
I feel that the Blue Lions is still possible! Fleche is an enemy combatant and a card carrying member of the Imperial Army when she attacks Dimitri and while Dimitri technically does give the 'Kill every last one of them' command, I'd argue that at that point, he's more of a (homicidal) figurehead than a leader.
Byleth and Gustave are the ones in charge of the actual running of the army at that point, and they can choose to ignore Dimitri - the actual mission objective is to defeat the enemy commanders rather than to rout everyone, suggesting that no one in Faerghus Army who's not insane actually has any intention of giving no quarter. I know Dimitri is the king, but I'd argue that Byleth can't be accountable for the rantings of a crazy person who DOES still listen to her commands regarding not killing everyone if gameplay is taken into account.
What about what he did to Rudolph (aka torture).
Any civilian entering in combat with soldiers, withouth soldier inciting the interaction, become clacified as a rougue unit.
This can join a faction oficially.
Until so they are concider soldier WITHOUTH ANY RIGHTS.
As they are not with a faction surremder is not concider as long anything else
I know as it come up while talking about ukrain and civilian joining forces in the field withouth being enlisted.
And the fact you can’t use any of them against lord lonato, and even then they are actively told to fight him by the church, which as so mind you includes the adopted son of said lord, Ash. (Adding on after the fact, I guess you could potentially get Ash killed before this point so that your byleth doesn’t have that talk with him.)
If Dimitri is under Byleth's lead, then certainly as the king of a nation Byleth would have to be held responsible for his declaration, regardless of his mental state.
Regardless, Blue Lions should still be impossible because Dimitri mentions torturing several enemy soldiers of the Empire after the timeskip, and he then goes on to torture Randolph, an enemy general, which are both war crimes. This is followed up by Byleth then beheading Randolph, which is killing a Prisoner of War, which is also a war crime.
Following a homocidal figurehead who casually talks about warcrimes because "he's not really a leader" is not exactly going to fly in the war tribunal mate. It's "just following orders" level not gunna fly even. Additonally Dimitri ADMITS to you about his constant warcrimin during your nap. A truely warcrimeless Byleth would send him to jail, not support him in rebuilding his Kingdom.
Flayn being benched despite being hundreds of years old and provably so sure is a decision.
we know that, but does byleth? 🤔 not when she’s recruited at least
You try telling that government secret to the court
"hundreds of years old" is still a child by Manakete/Nabatean standards. They live longer and thus age & mature slower than humans.
@@SilverHairedFreak25 There are people who have her crest, seems like she passed it on.
@@SapphicSara arguably seteth and flayn were lying to hide their descendants, but I Believe that they didn't have kids, and that those people with their crests are instead descendants of people who were given a blood transfusion, much like with Jeralt and Yuri. We know that the Difference that made Byleth a legitimate Sothis carrier was that they were a combination of a homunculus made from Rhea's blood and a human who had been infused with Rhea's blood. Plus I really Flayn would've married and had kids with her great however many times grandson (linhardt) and great however many times nephew (Ferdinand). I know it's incest emblem but I have to believe. Plus seteth is just SO overprotective of Flayn, who went into a coma while young and only recently awoke, I really doubt she's had kids as she's so enamored by the idea of innocent romance. Plus Seteth is still mourning his wife 1000 years later, and only remarries after the war (outside of his paired ending with Flayn). This says to me that he was focused on raising/protecting her, and didn't want to have another relationship while she was dependent on him.
Thank you for making this! I really enjoyed watching it and I also learned a lot about military law
A top notch video, good editing, this deserves more view with the work put in.
All Flayn needs to do to show her actual age is transform into her natural form.
She's thousands of years old. One of the statues in the church that you repair with renown is of her.
I have never played a Fire Emblem before (clicked cause I'm a fan of videogame challenges) and honestly the way the video presents information is so clear and concise I felt like I understood everything I needed to. Great vid
49:00 does those mean Claude’s actually in the clear?
Of the three house leaders, he's definitely got the best argument for it, yeah!
@@TheOneandAli just get him out of his poison fixation and we’re solid!
@@Blackacre438 i mean I don't think he ever actually uses it so we're good all around.
@@foureyesisafish7968yeah, just like how Seteth was talking about using fire on the invading force, but he was just joking about that ... right, random green swordmaster?
This was a wonderful video. I thoroughly enjoyed it
@33:59 that Pokémon Colosseum jingle gave me whiplash. I love you so much for using that. Would love to watch you do a Colosseum playthrough of some kind.
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I love this idea! It's a miracle you could complete this challenge, so hats off to you!
wow what a gem of a youtuber ive stumbled across. fantastic challenge and incredibly well done video! i expected way more subs... guess when you become famous i get to say i was an early viewer!!
Objection! In the cutscene following the battle at the fort, you can see Byleth being followed by her soldiers in Adrestian colors. You are guilty my good sir, guilty!
The cutscene seems to just be reused from another route so I chalk that up to lazy programming
@@matthewbullion7935 Silver Snow was made first, so the cutscene was animated with it in mind. (And the other route it's in is Verdant Wind, where Byleth is with the Alliance, who wear yellow, so the Adrestian colours are still a false flag there)
I can't imagine the amount of time, energy and dedication that this video took, but boy did it pay off! What a fantastic run concept, brilliantly researched and so informative. Would love to see more of this kind of run in future. Thank you for all the effort!
This is a brilliant and unique concept. I never thought about the Geneva Convention when playing a Fire Emblem game.
Hoh boy that Remire Village chapter was tense, huge kudos for getting through it!
There were a couple of times where I was like, "Ah, but surely you could argue that they were willing/volunteers/engaged in combat," and then I realized...yes, but this is a CHALLENGE, and erring on the side of caution is extremely appropriate when it comes to avoiding war crimes, actually!
Wouldn't chapter 8 be considered a riot?
Also the ashen wolves would have helped out a lot as they are not really affiliated and are all over 18
I feel like some of their backstories might complicate things. Hapi comes to mind in particular with the whole "lied to by the church" thing.
Not a Geneva expert, so have no idea if that would matter
We know of 3 of the wolves' affilliations, though. Balthus was from the Alliance, Constance was an Empire noble, and Yuri hails from the Kingdom. Hapi is from the village of Timotheos, with the rest of her backstory implying she's from the Kingdom as well.
For this run, that would only mean Constance is excluded for the fights against the Empire, while the other three are fair game
Constance hails from the Empire
22:20 or somewhere around there you talk about how you can’t get out of the combat but you can by pressing the quit option, unfortunate time waste but hey you overcame it well
Very interesting and well done run. Since you went with Black Eagles, it has me thinking about Petra's status in all this. I understand why you didn't use her out of caution, but she's not really an Adrestian national. From a very pedantic perspective, her entire status as a political hostage could be considered a violation of the Geneva Convention by Adrestia. An enduring war crime from the previous war.
Question: how culpable would we be in Rhea’s academy phase war crimes such as the execution of prisoners of war? Do we get an attempted war crime for trying to kill Edelgard in the holy tomb? Is Rhea likewise committing an illegal order by ordering us to execute Edelgard in the tomb? Does the logic applied to absolve the Edelgard execution apply to the optional executing of Dimitri on Crimson Flower as it was pretty unambiguous that if he could he would keep fighting and trying to kill us?
Edelgard was not a prisoner, as she didn't surrendered nor was captured.
And people should stop criticizing the order because Edelgard was the aggressor.
@@fandemusique4693 right so she just volunteered to be thrown in a dungeon tortured and experimented on and then spend the rest of life surrounded by everyone who did it? I am also sure that that incident during crimson flower where Thales nuked a city after she killed Cornelia was just a happy accident and not a warning shot.
Just because she was the aggressor doesn’t change the situation at least as far as the Geneva convention which is what matters in regard to this video.
@@ranger24ff are you an idiot? It have no bearing on the situation, I didn't speak of the Agarthans.
Edelgard invaded the holy tomb, so rhea was entitled to demand her execution since Edelgard did not intend to surrender and did this invasion without a prior declaration of war.
@@ranger24ff that's utterly stupid, it have nothing to do with the matter.
Why the hell are you bringing the Agarthans? I was talking of what happened in the Holy tomb.
Edelgard wasn't a prisoner of Rhea, so ordering her execution wasn't "ordering to kill a prisoner of war" or something
@@fandemusique4693 oh wrong part sorry, got confused because it wasn’t very specific and thought you were referring to something else. As for the situation itself, it seems to be implied from the context that Edelgard has been beaten and is in theory at least at the mercy of Rhea and Byleth. Mind you Edelgard escaped but the context still feels shaky to me from a legal standpoint given the framing of the scene.
(Character turns 18): CONGRATULATIONS you have been drafted.
I didn't realize we were in China
This was extremely interesting it gives an entirey different thought process to how we play Fire Emblem it was beyond entertaining to think about and watch because it's really not something you'd ever consider
Seteth repeatedly throwing Geneva under the bus for his war crimes is peak Fire Emblem. Maybe he was the player character analogue all along.
14:15 I remember during my Silver Snow run of the game, I had Shamir snipe the Death Knight for fun to get some chip damage on him, and she accidentally crit and ended the whole chapter in the first turn
This made me laugh so hard that I decided to keep that run of chapter 6 and continue on
I like to think that whenever Geneva adds someone to her team, she hands them a copy of the Geneva conventions.
"Ferdinand, you're a hero!"
Yes, yes he is ;w; we salute Ferdinand von Aegir!
35:20 It can be argued whether the bodies of the Nabateans are protected under the 1949 stipulation about treatment of the wartime dead since they died long before this war, but that's another potential crime since the Crest Stones are their hearts and therefore this is desecration of a body.
5:46 Heck yeah! Happy birthday to the best boy 😄
Couple things I kinda am unclear on. I understand the compelling nationals of a hostile party to take part in combat against their home country war crime but only up to a point. But the time skip when your Adrestian companions rejoin ready to take the fight to Edelgard with their allegiance firmly no longer to the Empire wouldn't they be allowed to deploy against imperial forces? Especially since you're not compelling them at that point, it's a choice they've made. Also do we think that dark magic with all it's debuffs should perhaps count as biological weapons?
Yeah. They're foreign volunteers, not combat slaves
Should note that Claude sets Acheron's house on fire in Verdant Wind, so I'm pretty sure he's still disqualified.
He had it coming though.
Alternative title : fire emblem 3 houses but im specialized in damage control of my geneva suggestion pile allied
As I finished watching (as of posting), I’ve learned about the Geneva Conventions and all the intricacies about what’s considered a war crime while watching Three Houses.
Entertaining, but certainly an interesting way to go about playing.
Now time to do Tracia 776 while commiting the most amount of Warcrimes possible?
I'm curious how this challenge would go in other Fire Emblem games. Notably in Fates half of the time after the map Corrin says something along "and we did it all without killing anyone!". There's also the capture mechanic allowing to subdue rather than kill
Funny enough there is actually a video here on RUclips where someone goes through a pacifist run on Conquest.
Great video! This actually makes Silver Snow entertaining and not incredibly painful to watch.
39:20 "despite her (edelgard's) treacherous warcrimes" wait, there's no enforcement of the geneva conventions in-universe lol
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear noble, happy birthday to you. Now, off to WAR!
I’m a simple man. I see Ferdinand in a birthday hat + Claude playing harmonica in prison & I click like. 😄
7:45-ish I'm gonna call it now: he's your S rank
Happy to see 3houses still being played and getting views on RUclips, been hungry for more 3h content
There’s so many reasons why this video is simply incredible
48:47 wait does that mean that claude doesn't actually commit a warcrime?
He does talk about poisoning people a lot, though I’m not sure if he ever actually does it.
Surprised you went with Silver Snow honestly as it features the same disguise plan as Verdant Wind which disqualified that route in the beginning. In Crimson Flower, Edelgard doesn't follow up on any of the war crimes she commits during White Clouds: no more demonic beasts, no more disguises, no more raids on civilian targets....
The alliance with TWSITD still counts since Adrestia funds their experiments, a la Hubert Paralogue.
The story tries to blame all the war crimes to those who slither in the dark, in order to ensure none of the paths are truly evil. Which ironically makes Edelgard the most ethical if you side with her. Since she stops using them. Meanwhile the other groups have to use a warcrime or two in order to overcome the slitherers. Well that and Dimitri is kinda nuts for a bit.
Hubert's paralogue reveals that Adrestia is still helping Agartha do Crest beast experiments on unwilling civilians, so that's a war crime, along with having to fight Flayn. Edelgard also knows that the javelins of light already exist and the Agarthans are willing to use them, so she knows that Arianrhod will be destroyed and lets the civilians be killed then lies to her own forces followed by blaming the bombing on the church. Furthermore, Edelgard will murder Dimitri when he clearly can't fight anymore unless the alternate cutscene was unlocked by defeating Dedue before he can transform. Crimson Flower still has a number of war crimes even if Edelgard's prior actions are blamed solely on the Agarthans.
@@nightscout9979 Flayn is a combatant, why is fighting her a war crime? I refute what you said about Arianrhod. Edelgard suppressed information about the javelins once they were deployed, yes, but there was no evidence suggesting that she knew about those weapons previously or that she knew Thales was going to deploy them against Arianrhod. When Tales tells Edelgard he doesn't want the Empire to become "another Arianrhod", she has no idea what she's talking about, and Hubert struggles to maintain his composure when giving her the report. Likewise, Hubert's paralogue doesn't suggest Adrestia is actively helping Agartha with its Demonic Beast experiments. Thales comes and "requests" Hubert help clean up an experiment gone wrong. That's it. As for Dimitri, I also don't know why that's a war crime either. He was defeated, but he wasn't surrendering. Plus, the Kingdom army definitely wouldn't surrender with Dimitri still alive. This wouldn't be a case of no quarter as the Kingdom army retreats after Dimitri's death. Edelgard has to take responsibility for her actions as the Flame Emperor, but I maintain that she commits nothing further in Crimson Flower beyond associating with Agartha.
@@jedimasterpickle3 Flayn is a child, and one that people like Byleth can easily spare, so ending her life is unnecessary too. Edelgard also comments that no Nabatean can be allowed to have any power over the public, and with her own allies' fears that she'd innately want to kill Indech, Edelgard likely has a racial prejudice against Flayn to boot. The only way Flayn can survive is if she enters perpetual hiding lest the Adrestian government kills her over her ethnicity.
Edelgard had to have known about the javelins of light previously, otherwise she wouldn't have been leveraging every bit of control and influence she had to make sure she was Rhea's jailer. Hubert's note speaks of the importance of taking Rhea along in the attack on Shambhala, thus recognizing that she could fly and try to intercept the missiles. Furthermore, in the Fort Merceus mission, the Death Knight, an Edelgard loyalist, knows that the javelins of light are coming well in advance despite none ever being deployed before in the war.
If it was entirely left up to the Agarthans as to who would be Rhea's jailer, they'd have likely never assigned Edelgard to oversee one of their most hated enemies who could mitigate or perhaps even counter some of their greatest weapons. Edelgard has been Rhea's jailer throughout the war too, so Edelgard would have to arrange for that very soon after Byleth entered a coma. There's ample evidence that Edelgard and her closest allies have known what the javelins of light were since before the time skip, even if they strive to hide that from Byleth.
As for Hubert's paralogue, the fact that the Agarthans are allowed to continue those experiments by Adrestia makes Adrestia liable for war crimes. Edelgard currently isn't fielding Crest beasts in her personal vanguard, but she is in fact allowing them to still be made and likely used in battle, and the experimental site is in the Sealed Forest to boot, a place quite close to her base of operations.
Dimitri was clearly incapable of fighting anymore, he doesn't have to surrender for Edelgard to have conducted a war crime. The man was very visibly wounded, even without accounting for the several arrows stuck in his body. Dimitri also can't teleport, so there's no possible argument that he could have warped out of any prison and had to be killed. Killing a leader like that can additionally risk emboldening a nation to continue fighting, whereas capturing the leader is a better negotiation tactic (and if Edelgard cared to do so, she could have tried to share knowledge of her ancestors' records and Fodlan's history with any prisoners to persuade them to work alongside her).
Also, based on how Edelgard has the title of "Flame Emperor" in Crimson Flower's ending, she is potentially trying to glorify her actions as the Flame Emperor before the war arc instead of acknowledging and atoning for them. Ultimately, Edelgard is comitting a number of war crimes in Crimson Flower.
It would be neat to see a followup to this where the comments are taken into account and addressed.
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Nothing did very very wrong! You might want to reign them in. Wonderful!
Watching this while visiting Geneva. It came up in my recommendations at the best time.
Ah the Geneva guidelines. Don’t get me wrong, I love rules. But in the same way that a brick loves a window, or me to your mother’s hymen
I'm impressed you managed to prevent the the "Seteth orders no quarter to be given" line and thus that ding against him, but despite that doesn't SS have two unavoidable War Crimes focused on Enbarr? The first is the plan Seteth comes up with to get the army close to Enbarr- "Under the guise of surrender, they secretly prepare for a surprise attack on the Imperial capital.” I'm fairly sure that false surrenders are war crimes. The second is how the Church starts organizing the mass summary execution of Imperial captives after Enbarr, up until Bergliez surrenders to be executed in place of all the captive soldiers. I also believe that planning to no-process mass-execute a whole bunch of helpless captives is a War Crime.
I guess you can kinda avoid at least finding out about the second as it only is raised by Caspar and Dorothea in Exploration, but the first is unavoidably and directly said by the omniscient narrator.
This is the kind of challenge run I’ve been waiting for! Very impressed by the research, that bit about the Germans changing uniform before attacking was particularly interesting.
Question. About child soldiers. People are usually considered as adults at the age of 15 in medieval ages. These students might be legal soldiers.
He explained that they are to the Geneva convention too and then explained why he's going with 18 anyway
45:00 One thing it's possible to happen here is that if you defeat Ashe as Byleth, you can actually convince him to join you side (same with Lysithea in the Crimson Flower route). Now, this is curious because both of them at first surrender (which makes them tecnically POWs), but then they are immediatelly invited to switch sides; in this case, they are now defectors and fully betraying their respective nations. I don't think treason is a war crime (instead it's more of a military crime in every nation), but I thought it would be curious to point this out. Great video, I really enjoyed watching it!
fun game mechanic fact, every single class certification is predetermined at the beginning of each day, so you can save scum each class upgrade, save dont get one load and try another.
Happy birthday Ferdinand Von Aegir. 🎉 Here's a Lance, now go fight your fellow students.
I have watched a lot of challenge videos over the years and this one is by far the most compelling and interesting.
was not expecting a wwii precedent to be featured, incredible research
Personally, I believe the Church of Seiros has also been committing war crimes under your definition of child soldiers. During the academy arc, the classes Byleth does not teach are taught by Manuela and Hanneman. Those classes are also going on real combat missions assigned by the higher ups of Garreg Mach Monastery. Based on the strength of the opposing classes during the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, we can assume that even the children were deployed on those missions to gain experience.
At the same time, the Officers Academy run by the Church of Seiros has been in operation for a 200 years, from establishment in the Imperial Year 980 to the current class of Year 1180. We can reasonably assume that if violations are happening now, that at least one other violation has happened since the founding.
On top of that, Catherine, unflinchingly affiliated with the Church of Seiros, wields the Thunderbrand, a Hero's Relic like the Sword of the Creator, exclusively - until she is under Byleth's command. Although you opted to be cautious regarding using the Relics, I'd argue that due to a Relic's ability to transform an incompatible wielder into a Demonic Beast, that would make deploying any Relic a violation of the Rome Statute.