Hey, I'm a doofus who just for some reason forgot to put Roy and RevCorrin in the final tally. They both got 13, along with Robin, Eirika, and Ephraim.
That's a fair point, but I'll raise you a "It aint a warcrime the first time." Nobody on Tellius knows what a Geneva is let alone its conventions. If it isn't a breech of setting appropriate rules of conduct/engagement or an in-setting inter/national agreement/policy then it's not a warcrime, it's all being fair in love and war, and your Lord unit is fresh out of love.
They even attempt to carry out an assassination of the enemy king whilst in a neutral territory, through use of a magical disguise conjured by an ex enemy general and a debilitating magic song. All this done under the false premise of being part of an operatic production.
@@Zerorenren4761 Bit of a correction, but this is a bit of a misconception. I've took the time to look through the script, and it's actually only a few chapters where there's no casualties, and all of those are cases of which it was explicitly said as such. Following in line with that: No Deaths: 8, 11, 20 Attempted Sparing of Enemy Army, Ends in Slaughter: 13, 21 All Enemy Soldiers Die: 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, Endgame Yes, I've counted from the script. It's an easy misconception to make, but it's still a thing to keep in mind.
_"It is worth noting that PoR Ike is a mercenary, so technically he is exempt from [War Crimes]."_ Every FE protag: *"Write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN!!"*
The benefit of all Healers being gauntlet-users, thus technically armed, and a lot of the time enemies being Corrupted. -Although looking at some of the others on this list, they should also have 4 or 5 cases of "forced to fight against their own home country"-
@@Justic_basically all the elusians and maybe Veyle since shes from Gradlon (although to be fsir technically so is alear) (also Mauvier doesnt count since he's firenese)
@@Justic_ Actually, only Anna was forced to fight her home country (if she even has one anymore), the rest all defected willingly, which I would think stops it from being a war crime.
when rout maps came up i started laughing preemptively knowing what it would do to the valentian lords’ counts. also the fact that thracia 776 is just a war crime simulator is hilarious to me
@@willbill6942 Celica?! Robin would be even higher, what with every single bonus episode plus every single legacy character recruit episode being about killing Risen.
It matches Thracia’s gameplay style, where the only thing that matches the level of BS the enemy can perform against you is the amount of BS you can perform against the enemy
According to the Fates art book Corrin's kidnapping took place 15 years before the events of games. Since Sakura was old enough to hear and understand rumors that she was (allegedly) the actual target of the kidnapping, we can conclude that Sakura is, at a bare minimum, older than 15. There's not enough info to know her exact age but I'd guess she's around 16 - 18. So she's not quite a child soldier, at least by your rules, but she's also not far off.
@@willbill6942 Np! The 15 year time frame helps a lot with making educated guesses about Fates character ages. We also know Hinoka was 7 years old when she started training to be a sky knight, which she began in response to Corrin's kidnapping. So we can surmise Hinoka is ~22 years old, which helps place Corrin, Ryoma, Takumi, and Sakura's ages. Like I said, it's still mostly guess work, but there are at least a few reference points!
Funnily enough, you can also count compelling prisoners of war into service for Edelgard, Claude and Dimitri, because in 3 Hopes vast majority of out of house recruited characters are stated to be war prisoners and they often comment on how they're forced into fighting their friends and country against their will
They talk about ALL OF THE TIME, right? In my current replay of Azure Gleam, we just recruited Dorothea and the FIRST THING she says to me in camp is "I'm being forced to fight my home, now, great. Life sucks."
Wait, what? Isn't this mostly/only an issue with recruiting imperials on the Azure Gleam route? On Scarlet Blaze, this only really applies for Lorenz for like less than a chapter before he's given a seat at the table, and it becomes moot after the midway point. With Ashe, Lonato and Rowe were in negotiations to defect before the war even started. And even then, don't Rodrigue and Dimitri acknowledge it as a choice out of family? With Golden Wildfire, I think it might apply more than Scarlet Blaze when it comes to Ashe. With imperials, again, it becomes moot by the end.
@@wanderlustwarrior Pretty sure you can also count Hapi and Constance in Golden Wildlife for that, hell they are upset at Claude over what happens in their joining chapter, not sure how it is with Yuri and Balthus since they are mercs at the end of the day. But yeah, it is mostly a thing with BE characters since Ashe and Mercedes are the only BL recruits and GD students have politics in the background to justify them not being war prisoners (although it's hard to actually say they fight the Alliance fully out of their free will)
When Seliph was mentioned, I laugh and about to say "Damn, Sigurd. You know how to raise a kid." But I cracked when Leif committed 3 times of what Seliph did. Yeah, this bloodline knows what's up.
It's so funny seeing Micaiah on the lower end of the war crimes ranking seen as she had to command the "enemy army" in Part 3 and she did that stunt, causing people to point that out as a crime each time Micaiah's ever talked to be a good person.
@@amazinggrapes3045 in-universe, I wouldn't say the flack was unfair at the time. Sure, perhaps the traumatizing due to a near death experience with Sothe was rough, but at least it didn't cause permanent damage... The problem is that she couldn't tell her atrocious situation to anyone, and they were trying to help her. In fact, more confrontations during part 4 about this stuff would have helped everyone. Out of universe, though... Yeah it's unfair because most people don't seem to understand her full situation. Or there are shitposters who want to talk about war crimes for fun, and I believe they made Micaiah out to be this gremlin which can and WILL do several of these. Though as of shitposting nature, I don't know whether the opinions are sincere or exaggerated for funsies.
@@BloomBox36 I thought it was unfair in-universe because it didn't strike me as any worse than anything else people had been doing in the games. I thought taking out a leader rather than mowing down hordes and hordes of people was infinitely more humane, and easily justifiable when it's the leader of a country that is holding your own country hostage (though it's unfortunate that the leader herself is innocent, but I'm not even sure if Micaiah and co even knew that at the time). I also thought it was nuts that people made such a fuss about trying to set them on fire in a setting where enemy soldiers routinely light one another on fire. It just didn't make any sense that this was seen as uniquely and specially bad. I would have done the same.
@@amazinggrapes3045 Think of it like this: whether or not Micaiah actually intended to set the Apostle's army on fire (or, more plausibly, it was bait to shoot down Sanaki), they thought of it as such. Also Sanaki did forgive Micaiah and co. shortly afterwards, as told by Sigrun and Jill's battle dialogue in 3-E. The crux of the flack she got in-universe was her being "insane" because she insisted so hard in fighting as they thought that Daein didn't belong in the war. And they kind of treated her as such as people like Ike and Jill (if defected) constantly worry about her when on the battlefield. And I would believe Ike's worried about her at that point also due to Rafiel confirming what she was before. So it's not like she got treated as a bad person by the opposing army... But in dire need of therapy. Which isn't too far off considering she was almost at her wits' end, carried by sheer resolve.
I don't know which Geneva Convention Robin violated when she slaughtered Valm's entire navy with unmanned, exploding boats, but it's GOT to be at least one of them 🔥
With regards to Tharja, she didn't hesitate in joining Chrom's army as she didn't want to needlessly die for a crazed king, especially after she was ordered to kill Chrom's army which would have led to her death had Chrom not recruit her when he did.
Goes for a lot of the characters. Natasha joined because she was going to be murdered by solders of her home country, Cormag joined to get revenge for the death of his brother at the hands of his own country, Zihark joined to fight racism, Silas joined as your "best friend" and Jacob and Felicia join as your indentured servants (which I guess now we think about it Corrin themselves is also a victim of this war crime in both games as they are forced to fight against their home country and their birth country), Kaze also always joins of his own accord and I'm not at all sure about the 3H characters because they're all recruited to your house, not your country and as so I guess they join up after the time skip of their own accord if they were not originally in your house. Forcing Ashe to fight his father is 100% a war crime though but I think that's down to Reia not Byleth.
If you eliminate the war crimes that are pure gameplay mechanics/tropes throughout the series (like child soldiers or rout maps) Corrin/Xander from Conquest commits by FAR the most war crimes in the series. From launching attacks from civilian sites to exterminating entire neutral villages to executing surrendering civilians... my little homeless dragon does it all! That's kind of the point of Conquest I guess, I just find it funny that even though the game went out of its way to keep Corrin's hands clean, s/he still makes the protagonists of Three Houses look like goody two-shoes.
Conquest is so weird, Corrin is merciful and rarely kills, but it's canon that the entire kitsune village got massacred by his forces, and we can murder a guy for his timbs because he might be untrustworthy
Ah, gotcha. Thank you for bringing that up. I had no idea. She already kinda felt like an outlier from the typical little girl manakete archetype, it's good to know she would be a legal/ethical soldier if not for her immortality.
i always put in doubt age codes, if it is not something tell on history it is then not canon cause was not intended to be shown, and i specially mean it cause saphir is a good example, nothing suggest she have the age of her code, no, the lindon supports doesnt confirm it neither, but people still likes to bring it up
@@alexmauriciovazques1473That's a problem with ages in Engage, not Three Houses. All of the assigned ages that we see in-game and in the code of 3H are all reasonable.
@@kaiserphoenix2038 well, no, no They are not, just cause the simple reason we know flayn Is not 17 yo, maybe her mental age, sure, maybe, but she of course Is not only 17 yo so just that proves that the video Is not canon at all, again, if was not intended to be seen then Is not canon
@@alexmauriciovazques1473 Yeah no shit Flayn isn't 17, but it's obvious it lines up perfectly fine with how she's designed physically, so there's no reason to think that fact can't be used to say that Flayn isn't a child soldier regardless of whether you take into account her heritage.
Also while its not a rout map Seteth says "give them no quarter" in a map in Silver Snow. And Dimitri famously says "Kill every last one of them" in To War at Gronder. Also do we count their war crimes as enemies or only in their own routes? And how far does guilt by association/conspiracy go?
Yeah, for this video, I only counted war crimes as the player army (so Dimitri's would count for his route, since he says it in every route). Thank you for the reminder tho, as I'll have to note that down for the church's war crimes whenever i make the follow up to this video
Dimitri may say kill every last one of them on the cutscene, but that Grondor map objective only requires you to defeat Claude and Edelgard, neither of which dies because both immediately retreat. Which means you can end this map (in both AM and VW) without killing a single person.
@@IcePrincessZeroK The game map objectives are set. You can willingly choose to route but the map ends immediately after you defeat those mandatory bosses. Thus the map objectives take precedence here. Cutscenes and dialogue don't. Dimitri and Edelgard say a lot of shit about "showing no mercy, leave none alive," etc. But the map objectives don't always have those same objectives.
@@l.n.3372 yes so that war crime doesnt count against Azure Moon Byleth. But Dimitri did still give an order of no quarter. Byleth can just choose to ignore said order. Thus it still would count against Dimitri but not AM Byleth.
Some miscellaneous war crimes: Roy has a secret treaty with Etruria that he springs on Narcia. Roy's liberation of the Western Isles can technically be a warcrime, since he's inciting rebellion in an allied country. No one is going to give a damn about such basedness, though. Dark magic in FE6/7 destroys your soul through unknown means, and employing characters like Canas is the equivalent of forcing your soldiers to use steroids. Some of the performance-enhancing items (Spirit Dust, Strength Tonic) are pretty questionable and forcing your soldiers to use them could be considered a warcrime. Promoting healers on-map so they can attack should be considered a war crime. Funnily enough, the only healer incapable of fighting that you *have* to promote in the middle of a battle with legitimate combatants is Lana/Muirne and Coirpre/Charlot, so points to Seliph. Animal cruelty via mounted units on some of the indoor/underground maps, especially ones that involve volcanos or ice.
Some more miscellaneous war crimes: The metafiction for the true ending of FE6 requires you to commit a technical war crime. After you liberate Etruria, the rebels hole up in a holy temple and historical site holding a holy weapon. Now, while you are allowed to launch attacks on holy sites if it's a military objective, FE6 also lets you skip the level, raising questions of just how militarily necessary the attack really was. Improvised weapons are allowed so long as they aren't modified to increase the suffering inflicted. Funnily enough, FE11/FE12 allows you to decrease the might on weapons FOR NO REASON, so there's a possible war crime. I have no idea why you would want to do that, though, it's not even that economical for boss abuse. Under the category of 'so based that no jury would convict them', we have Wallace exterminating all of the Taliver bandits with the explicit intention of giving them no quarter. They are still technically civilians, and due to their numbers (big enough to destroy the Lorca) they could be considered a militia -- and while NPC bandits are sort of like the goblins in Goblin Slayer, we could consider that a war crime depending on their numbers. Funnily enough, Canas (and Kushina) also accidentally causes Eligood and friends to potentially retroactively commit war crimes in his A support with Renault when he points out that morphs have souls. Well, all not them not named Sonia and perhaps Limstella are *also* severely mentally disabled if so. Assassination attempts, even if you change your mind at the last minute, against civilian targets is a war crime, and while Jaffar/Nino did it before they joined Eligood's army them protecting them afterwards makes them accessories after the fact unless Queen Hellene forgave them. Knowing her, I don't think she'd let the two off all that lightly if she knew the details. Launching attacks from a historical site, hospital, or place of worship is a war crime. Since you can directly prepare for the next battle in My Castle, like, keeping the stat boosts from a meal you ate a few minutes ago, that's just another war crime added to Corrin's list. Marching through neutral territory without permission and/or declaring legitimate war against it is also a war crime. Again, another war crime added to Corrin's list, especially for how in Conquest he also COMMITS FURRY GENOCIDE WTF? Deputizing soldiers to use as police officers to prosecute civilian crimes is a war crime. Making Sanaki, who deployed the Begnion army to maintain long-term control of Daein is, you guessed it, a war crime.
@@Jason-ut2cx All I'm picturing is the "consumption" of Secret Books. How does it just disappear? Did the reader literally devour it for stat gains? Or people breaking a Goddess Icon, sniffing the dust, and wondering what does it do.
@@maltheopiawould launching military attacks from a place of worship also give points to every three houses lord since there is monastery exploration every month?
Some of these are a bit of a stretch. Like I would consider it “compelling her to fight against her country” when Milady literally flies up to Roy and asks to fight for him.
The unarmed medics section was kind of funny to me since I've played through the entirety of Genealogy without killing a single one several times specifically because it's a war crime and I feel bad. That also allowed me to discover a very funny quirk of their AI--once their leader is dead and there's no one to heal, they'll just sort of pick one of your units and follow them around until you seize their home castle and they disappear. It was usually one of my weaker units, so I think it might be them trying to "attack," but I couldn't say for sure.
@@agirlinsearchof9057 the only healers that were even annoying were the three near Arvis in the penultimate chapter because he's hard to one-round. Silence is your friend for that part lol (though I suppose if we're counting that as a bio weapon you'd have to figure something else out)
@@wingedjellifish11235 I probably wouldn’t call it a bioweapon. Rendering someone temporarily unable to speak isn’t something that that harms them long-term, at least in the contexts we’re presented with. (Now, if the Silence spell were described as actively damaging part of the person’s body, that would be something different and probably cause it to qualify as a bioweapon, in my book.) Would it count as a war crime to interfere with an enemy medic’s work, though? That’s the real question.
For child soldiers, wouldn't Donnel count as well? Lissa is 15 pre time skip and in her C support with Donny she states that he is "one of the few people in the army younger than her" and Mozu propably counts as well (though on that one I'm not 100% sure). I was to going to say why Nanna counts for Leif and not Seliph, but i suppose a year passes during Thracia's events so Seliph *technically* gets a pass. Compelling the soldiers to fight against their own country sounds like a stretch since most of these characters decide to fight against their country on their own volition. Haar's home country is Begnion, not Daein. If Tharja counts, then why Henry doesn't? Yeah you don't fight Plegia when he joins, but from ch21 they become enemies again.
@@Buraiyan333 I guess, but at the same time he volunteered, so while he would be a child soldier he wasn't forcefully conscripted so I'm not sure about it.
Few things I have gripes with: Flayn is presented as being 17 in Three Houses. A lot of the soldiers that are "forced to fight" against their home countries are rebels/revolutionary forces that weren't compelled by the commander but rather did so on their own. Dimitri did NOT kill Randolph, that was Byleth but might not matter much but it's an important distinction.
@@erickpoorbaugh6728 yes and no their are two characters that fit that description but can be re-recruited later in the story and flayn who can’t be re-recruited.
@@amazinggrapes3045 Methinks it's still important considering he Dimitri didn't order Byleth to kill Randolph. Sure he probably most likely would have tortured and killed the dude later but it's still important he didn't order the kill nor did he do it. Still though, his torture, murder and destruction of supply lines of the Adrestian army in those 5 years would probably net him far more war crimes anyways which oddly unaccounted for.
i'd say the issue i have is with the "forcing someone to fight their home nation" is that a lot of them aren't forced, a lot of them join of their own accord. Also...what about Robin? they are born in Plegia, and actively have to fight their country AND own father and adopted sister, Validar and Aversa respectively
@@jokx4409 Aversa is Validar's adopted daughter, it's something that i am not sure is mentioned normally, but it IS brought up in Aversa and Robin's supports, specifically Male robin, where Aversa constantly teases him with "big brother"
I would not count Lachesis and Tailtiu as forced to fight their own country considering Lachesis was already being besieged by Augustria before Sigurd ever showed up, while Tailtiu is hired by/assigned to protect Father Claud who Grannvale is forcibly trying to arrest so she’s along the lines of a personal body guard or mercenary. I would also not count every city or castle conquered by Sigurd/Seliph otherwise you’d have to do that for everyone, so pretty much every seize map and most kill boss maps in EVERY game have to go on this list as well. Also not only does Salem not have to use dark magic, but dark magic when used by the player cannot inflict poison, as well as any poison weapons stolen from enemies lose those effects. PoR Ike is not exempt from any war crimes because chapter 17 on he is acting as the main general and as a declared lord of Crimea, which is more official than anyone else in the world can say regarding Crimea’s liberation. I hate to be the “well actually” guy but hey, this is the Fire Emblem community!
That's a fair point. I didn't consider Tailtiu being a mercenary technically, that does exclude her from being counted in regards to war crimes. I mostly counted Sig/Celice's castle sieges and not the others due to the fact that they set up base there and use the castles for sometimes years at a time. I totally forgot that Ikes promotion happened mid PoR, I still counted all his war crimes, but I guess I'd have to go through and figure out which ones would be enforceable before/after ch 17 I appreciate you being the um actually guy. I deffo made mistakes here, I'm happy people who remember certain games better than I do can point them out
@@willbill6942 is all good man, the video’s still fine, just some talking points for fun and because both of us are passionate. I can say I like the games but you like them so much you’ve actually made videos on them!
@@willbill6942 The thing about Ike would also apply to his crimes befor 3-11, since before that he isn't an official part of the gallia army, he is just the leader of the grail mercenaries, who have been employed by the gallian army, but on the other side, you could count jill and zihark as being forced to fight against his nation again since you can recruit them to fight for the grail mercenaries on part 3
Correction: Shura wasn’t hoshidan, he was from a different ninja nation kogha which had been conquered and destroyed. So while he totally was forced into service, technically Corrin did that to a pirate/outlaw not an enemy soldier or citizen of another nation that he fought against. Probably still a war crime, but not the one you cited. Also, I disagree with the three houses war crimes of ‘making them fight against their own nations’ as there wasn’t coercion there at all. Since they all came to you willing and volunteered before any major battles (though the sparing recruitment is pretty sus.) Also I think this could apply to many more like Thatja who were convinced with words to switch sides, not by physical force.
Wait, isn't the war crime to compel somebody (so force them against their will) to fight against their home country? That being the case, Byleth would be safe since students recruited from other houses fight against their home countries voluntarily
That's why Byleth is safe, but the Lords aren't. We're only counting Byleth's crimes for the pre-timeskip section, any warcrimes commited post-timeskip, like recruiting enemy units after defeating them in battle, are the crimes of the Lords. I don't think it's fair to say that units you choose to take prisoner are fighting your war willingly; they're being compelled under threat of death.
Stand outs to me were Edelgard amusingly having the lowest score of the Three Houses Lords and Conquest Corrin scoring lower than Birthright. Personally I would ask whether or not we should count all of Byleth’s crimes in white clouds towards Rhea as she is the one ultimately in charge but as she isn’t playable on any main story route I suppose it doesn’t count. I do question counting Tharja’s recruitment as a war crime as she isn’t being forced in the dialogue and it’s heavily implied she was looking to desert or defect already. You could slap a treason charge on her for that but given the mass desertion and mutinies the Plegian army quickly suffered after the events of that chapter I suspect she just slipped through the cracks.
To be fair he didn't count Edelgard launching a surprise attack against a Neural territory with tons of priests and civilians. Just the stuff in gameplay. Otherwise we have to count ICBMs being used on Arianrhod.
@@kimoota-kun no we wouldn’t, we’d have to count that as Thales who did so specifically as a warning shot against Edelgard pushing her luck against him in the future. As for invading a neutral territory I think everyone technically gets that one when it comes to the alliance do to the confused political situation Claude created to basically stay out of the war until he saw an opportunity to win it for himself.
@@ranger24ff I consider both Thales and Edelgard under the same aggressive force even in Crimson Flower, even if she's not in command of Thales, the destruction of Arianrhod via ICBMs would still have been partially her fault so I'd still count it against here. True but it's multiple layers of violations for Edelgard since Garreg Mach is not only a neutral zone but also a holy site, a place of education, a research facility, an institution to care for the sick & other charitable causes and houses the biggest archive in all of Fódlan. I'm pretty sure the convention states you cannot attack any of those facilities. Also fun fact that's unrelated to Edelgard's war crimes, Dark Magic in Three Houses is associated with TWSITD and was born from horrific human experimentation.
@@kimoota-kun technically speaking as Garreg Mach is also a military fortress of the Knights of Seiros its protections would actually be waved. Given it’s also basically the capital of the church of Seiros which Edelgard declared war against it would not actually be considered Neutral but the enemy capital in the same way one could technically declare war on Vatican City. The matter of Thales and Edelgard’s relationship seems pretty cut and dry to me that they are considered separate entities ultimately. Thales is responsible for his own actions while Edelgard is responsible for her’s you might need an international criminal court to sort out what counts for what though. I was in fact not referring to Garreg Mach on that matter but the actions surrounding the great bridge on all routes. Also worth pointing out this video covers war crimes from when we are playing with each lord as protagonist.
I included in the spreadsheet, I must've forgotten to mention in the video, thank you for bringing it up. The whole battle of Gorndor Field is a pretty massive war crime all around.
@@willbill6942 Yeah but that's one of the easiest maps in 3H to avoid killing altogether. In AM/VW, all you need to do is defeat 2 bosses to end the map entirely. No deaths required since both bosses will always survive and retreat. This means it can have the least casualties of any map in 3H.
@@willbill6942 If we're gonna count what characters say in cutscenes tho, I'm pretty sure all the 3H Lords are more ... um ... visceral in dialogue than in their actions. For example, Edelgard will talk a lot of shit in boss dialogue etc. But in actuality, the map objectives don't change depending on how harsh Edelgard or Dimitri are in their dialogue. It would be pretty interesting tho to have a FE game where there are 2 map objectives and you get a morality score based on whether you defeated the boss or chose to route all for experience xD
Part of me wants to see a Max Warcrimes run of these games. Just quantify the optimal route to achieve as many warcrimes as possible per map while still beating the game.
Top is still gonna be Thracia. The combination of thieves being able to steal weapons (and thus being able to kill unarmed enemies AND use their property, two for one) with capture-and-steal also being an entirely viable factor for enabling use of status staves (another two for one).
Equating rout maps with no quarter is a bit iffy. It's not as if the enemy is ever giving up fighting either, other than temporarily when healing AI kicks in. Is it a no quarter case, or just enemies fighting to the last? In some games, you could feasibly headcanon that there might be some enemies to whom a quarter is given, but they are not represented as enemy units due to gameplay reasons. All of this is pedantics of course, Leif will top the list no matter where you draw the lines.
"Hannibal was forced to fight against Thracia." ...No. Like, demonstrably, objectively, no. He was forced to fight *for* Thracia. Travant was the one who forced him. He *gladly* fought against Thracia after Seliph rescued his held-hostage adopted son. Honestly in that whole section you're really stretching with the definition of "forced", but that's the most egregious example I have to point out.
I'm not certain, but by the Geneva Conventions, killing a child soldier is better than recruiting one, as long as you give them the option to surrender
I feel like some of the gambits from 3H and the fire dragon veins from engage that set fire to the ground should count as as war crime due to the damage to the environment that doubtledsly causes. Aditionally, the use of incendiary weapons are prohibited, so Roy, Ike (and whoever else used a fire sword I may be forgetting about) would also have a war crime added to their list. Aditionally, judging on the way Corrin's sword is designed I imagine it counts a serrated weapon, which is also a war crime. (Aditionally, many other games may have weapons that have serated edges to them)
Ragnell doesn't have any fire in the games except in the final blow on Ashera. Its projectile is just some sort of shockwave, which doesn't appear to be more indiscriminate than any other projectile weapon. Although given that the flame lance and fire magic exist he probably runs afoul of this anyways.
wouldn't 'using an attack knowing it would cause incidental loss/damage to the environment' also include robin's stunt with the valmese naval fleet? great video btw love war crime simulator game :)
to be fair the greil mercenaries were on the run for half of fe9 and still actively kept mist and rolf from fighting because they were only children. they only took up arms as a means of survival and began fighting before actually going to war
Salem doesn't actually cause poison, he's a good Dark Mage Some characters fight against their home country out of their own choice, so I'd excuse some of them. Some like Ashe should still counts I'd argue
Between all three routes, Zola commits: perfidy twice (disguising as Izumo civilians, has the Hoshidans disarm under a false truce in Conquest), taking of hostages three times (holding the Archduke prisoner in his own palace, capturing the Hoshido royals and trying to kill them, attempting to take Sakura hostage in Rev), and some combination of mass destruction of civilian property/Attacking or bombarding towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives/weather modification (dropping that snow bomb in Rev). That’s a minimum of 6 war crimes, and this doesn’t account for the other stuff like violating the general rule of war by being belligerents to a non combatant neutral nation & its civilians -or his greatest crime of all, which is not being in FEH yet-
Gonna point out at 5:25 that Elen actually approaches Roy and offers to join, no compulsion needed. Miledy joins to protect Elen, and Gale isn't recruitable. That leaves Zeiss at most.
Im not going to question what makes a war crime cuz honestly its out of my depth and im mostly uninterested but im just confused as to why someone willingly turning against their home country counts as a war crime for anyone involved. I know its a crime to go into battle wearing the other sides clothing but if someone like miledy, who just kinda flew over and said "yeah i dont agree with my country" joins roy in war (and lets say she doesnt wear bern armor), what exactly is the crime there?
Compelling POWs to turn against their home country is the war crime. POWs also aren't allowed to waive their rights, as they're in such a precarious position. If a POW changes sides to their captor, there's an implicit threat of force or even just wanting better living conditions. However it's totally ok to accept defectors who betray their home government all on their own.
Some specific ones I know; Serrated weaponry, which more accurately encompasses weapons designed to rip flesh from the body (so barbed wire weapons count despite not being serrated) could apply the wyrmslayer signature weapons as in lore these are designed to rip the scales off dragons when cutting them. Which would apply to Marth alm Roy Lyn hector eliwood and edelgard though exclusively through raging storm meaning it’s debatable if it’s the weapon that’s meant to do this or she knows how to get that result. Due to the Etruria arc, having Perceval klein and Cecelia fight Douglas, an unwilling combatant fighting for the same king those three align with they also can be considered conscripted against their own military. The elder revelation as a chapter involves defiling a sacred temple that’s also a historical landmark in order to rob a bern of its historical artifacts. Guinevere gives no ok for this unlike say Etruria giving Roy the a ok to take their legendary weapon. Shannan may break 3 at once in gen 1, he’s conscripted by his nation’s opposition in a war, he’s a pow enlisted in that, and he’s oifey’s age making him underage. He’s also used as leverage for ayra by sigurd. Elencia in RD lays down her weapon and announces her force as a non combatant. In the same chapter when attacked she doesn’t order a retreat but stands her ground despite having ample opportunity to make a retreat and that might constitute as a false surrender. Napalm is a weapon on some engage maps. Yeah. Really. Zihark might be okay because he’s a civilian who immigrated during fe9. He’s back on the table in 10 though. Lyn hector and eliwood may also be technically be off the hook. They technically aren’t in a war. Meaning it’s purely self defence committed by people who happen to be government officials. Churches in fe4 are a crime tile. It is super illegal to defile a church in war so using it for cover and attacking people on it definitely counts. And lastly because I don’t know if this applies but I’m pretty sure you can’t have soldiers with a known criminal record. And the clearest example I can think of is Lilina recruiting Garret. It’s nice that Lilina wanted to give a black man a job but he’s a murderer who’s got a history of robbing ppl and setting their houses on fire. Especially considering he is in service to the Etrurian army by the next chapter. The government he’s been robbing and killing ppl in for a minimum of 10 years.
Defending oneself from being attacked after putting down her arms does not make it a false surrender. It means the terms of surrender were rejected, and hostilities have been reignited. That is not a war crime on Elincia/Crimea's part.
"Damn, I sure hope that these people won't be killing us here considering that we surrendered. Would be a shame if they'de decide to kill us here, after all we can't defend ourselves, that would be a warcrime."
One time on tumblr years ago somebody was bitching about being able to pair up Corrin and Azura when theyre unknowingly cousins (a fact hidden away in a 3rd dlc route) saying how morally wrong it was and a reply thats stuck in my head someone made was 'ma'am this is the child solider simulator series, we have bigger fish to fry'
In defense of FE7 Nils was a noncombatant. Also, to Rout the enemy just means to defeat the enemy to the point where they break formation and flee, not "Kill every last one of them" (Dimitri should get a bonus point for the attempt). I'd say it's usually implied on rout maps that either there are enemies off screen that stop fighting or the enemy voluntarily fights to the last man. Besides, rout as an objective is mostly external from the story
@@spiralgodking9877 They are still motivating the enemy. Killing drummers after the soldiers are killed or captured is considered disgraceful but killing them during an actual battle is not a war crime.
Did we count disguising your soldiers as the enemy for edel as well? Thats how she surrounded and infiltrated the church. Also using the disappearances of civilians to lure the inights of seiros and let the dark knight hunt Also shes the one in charge of keeping flayn and monica kidnapped if u lose the mission.
Compelling a prisoner of war into service also counts for Fire Emblem Fates. Orochi/Niles can Capture enemy units and if you have a prison, they go there. After that you can harass them until they join your army - and you have a prisoner of war fighting for you. There are 13 Named units you can do this to, some exclusive to specific routes (and several hundred more generics)
Tbf most of them are just outlaws while Haitaka and Daniela are actually commanders of the opposing army (Haitaka leads a bunch of soldiers occupying Fort Dragonfall in Conquest, and Daniela leads a bunch of soldiers guarding the Nohr border wall). I’m not sure if Kumagera in Conquest is a commander of the Hoshido army or just an unrelated guy who wants to kill Garon
If some characters have high ranking positions like Sanaki I dont think they exactly count, since shes an Apostle Also Dew kinda gets a pass I feel like, considering hes a criminal as-is hes far past the point of being a child soldier and if anything Sigurd should be tried for harboring an prison escapee Also Flayn joins Byleths class so she becomes a student of the military academy, like the other students gets a pass to go out and fight/learn/kill militaristic stuff Cyril is clearly sneaked out though so he doesnt get a pass
That's fair, considering I excluded people like Roy as the leader of his army, Sakaki prolly shouldn't count. Drew's just giving the Anti-Chalphy Conspiracy more ammo :'( That's a fair point for Flayn, she was kinda in a weird spot for the manakete archetype already. Luckily Cyril turns 15 during part 1, meaning Byleth goes down to 3 war crimes after that.
The Bern soldiers from FE6 deserted of their own free will and follow Guinivere who is the the princess of Bern, They also genuinely belive that king Zephiel must be stopped, so the whole "forced against their own" argument falls apart because these are moreso bringing outsiders into a rebellion. Also why is Gale there? He's not a recruitable unit and doesn't attack the Bern recruits.
Heres the thing about 3H part 1. Byleth shouldn't be held accountable for any War Crimes because they answer directly to Rhea, so she would be on the hook for such actions no?
But isn't that a "just following orders" excuse? After all, Byleth makes his own decisions on the battlefield. The map objective might say "defeat boss" yet Byleth himself might prefer to route all enemies for experience for their team instead. Thus, they followed orders but went against orders too, maximizing casualties for exp.
12:14 Fun fact: the Loptyr cult has some kind of insane anti-piracy spell on their tomes, with rare/exclusive tomes turning into common junk if you try to steal them, and even the basic Jormungandr can't inflict poison if Salem uses after he's recruited to your side.
If the lopt sect abandoned that whole "revive our dark god" and "perform child hunts" they would make a killing selling anti piracy tomes to nobles and bodyguards and probably also mercs
I don't think anyone pointed this out, but we got to take into account the time period the fire emblem series tends to fall under and what was and wasn't acceptable in war under our own ages.
I'd also count Edel setting Gronder Field on fire in the tree way battle as a war crime against the environment, but that doesn't change the results that much. Thanks for the video, was pretty fun to watch!
she does also do so with Bernadetta right in the middle of it, effectively using her own soldier as bait since players dont want the archer in the ballista to continue firing at them
@@Ninjaananas not in my game. She sets it on fire if you get close enough to it, usually people deal with bernie before that happens but i will admit that i think the ballista itself doesnt catch fire for the sake of being usable by the player. Some people go for petra first or hubert and have mentioned that it also triggers the fire. In mine I just sent someone straight at bernie to get her out of the way and i think the turn after (she was still alive) the fire was lit.
@@j.a.r.5974 Defeating Bernadetta is one of the trigger conditions. There is another way but it is much more convoluted and as you already said, her tile is never on fire. There is a reason why Bernadetta of all people does not react to the fire.
@@Ninjaananas idk why people don't bring up that last point of yours as often as they should. everyone should know damn well that if Bernadetta was purposefully by Edelgard and intentionally by the devs lit aflame, that she would be screaming her damn lungs off. hell, she makes notions more than once about burning people, she's probably the one who suggested the hill being ignited in the first place
Good video but I think it would be better if when you listed chapters in which certain crimes were comitted you showed a screenshot of the map to help the viewer picture and remember which is which, rather than leaving the screen blank for long stretches
I appreciate the feedback, I will definitely take this to heart. Tbh, I was going to but got lazy since editing was already taking me a few hours. Looking back on it now, I really should have.
Yeah it was difficult to find canon ages for a lot of the games. There are many games with conflicting sources, and others with no official sources. Most of the mothers from FE4 did actually survive the Battle of Belhala. It made calculating things difficult
@AaronPICAR I must have misremembered from somewhere. Though Nino's timeline is all sorts of messed up, since she acts like she grew up with the Fang, but they also say Sonia's only been there for a year
@@Rezkeshdadesh I can’t give Nino a paired ending because they’re all tragic. In my headcanon she goes into hiding during FE6 after putting the twins in a orphanage and finds them afterwards.
Not sure if it counts but in Thracia 776 you can have Eda and Dean fight against the green southern thracian dracoknights that attack you in the chapter they join. While the war in FE5 is mostly against the Empire, Leonster and Southern Thracia are legally at war with each other since the tragedy of the Gáe Bolg And idk if Leif lying to Hannibal about who he is counts as perfidy, since while he doesn't fight him he does kill a bunch of dracoknights two chapters later and gets spared by Altena for being under Hannibal's protection
That's fair. I think you could argue that Southern Thracia is sorta part of the empire, at least subservient to them, but that is honestly a bit of a stretch. That's fair about Leif, but even if he was 100% honest, Hannibal prolly would've overlooked it, since he was kinda against Thracia and only helping them because of Corpre.
So you’re telling me Edelgard’s route has the LEAST amount of war crimes of all possible paths in 3H??? LOL gotta be some of the greatest news I’ve seen all day 🙏🏼
Isuka. Let´s poison the water.. Micaiah. no. That´s bad. Ike: Mercenary groups are pretty illegal I think XD Rimworld players: Oh boy, these are below rookie numbers
Haha, that would be a lot of work to math out. In lots of Games with true stealing like Thracia and the Tellius games, you can steal nearly everything, which makes calculating that all very difficult. With this video I did go for more of a minimum/low average assuming all characters are recruited, tho the numbers would look a bit lower for most characters if you cut those optional ones out. I do plan on making a follow up video, tho on the games' antagonists
I thought that the elemental magics would be counted as war crimes for being more suffering than necessary. Namely the Incendiary spells & weapons. Not the same as starting forest fires, but there's a lot of restrictions in incendiary weapons. Same with weather type stuff, that's probably not great. Like Fimbulvetr for example, I imagine that's not good. But I don't know the specifics But most offensive magic is probably chock full of war crimes, not just status staves & poison tomes. I don't know how to rank light or dark magic though
Flayn's roughly the "same" age as the other students. She's definitely "older" than Lysithea. Not in the "really an ancient dragon" sense, but in the "how she presents despite being an ancient dragon" sense. She's not a 10 year old like most of hee counterparts in the series.
She uses magic and her closest subordinates as well, and while using incendiary weapons and electrocution is not classified as a war crime when used agaisnt enemy combatants its still very moraly reprehensible as that's an uncesary amount of suffering. So she is being a hypocrite and holier than thou despite having a pretty moraly grey army force
Us Edelgard stans are gonna take this video and run with it. I love all of them but she gets unnecessary hate when the other lords and Rhea do terrible things too. I love how morally grey everyone in 3H is, it makes the characters way more interesting
Really just depends on who you've talked to. I've personally seen plenty of Edelgard fans who give Dimitri and Rhea fans lots of unnecessary hate. But Claude fans as a whole tend to be the least confrontational. And Rhea fans tend to get shit on the most, by far, because she's attacked almost unilaterally by Edelgard stans who blame everything on her.
Well Claude's no better as if you side with him, a lot of people will die as Dimitri and Cornelia will end up destroying the Kingdom of Faerghus, the Adrestian Empire falls apart after Edelgard's death, Nemesis comes back to life and starts killing anyone on sight, the war lasts way longer than both Crimson Flower and Azure Moon, and of course, if female Byleth marries Claude, he ends being a dead beat king who leaves Fodlan so he can rule Almyra without realizing that some of the Adrestian provinces end up revolting against the United Kingdom fo Fodlan to regain their independence.
@@samflood5631 you can't blame Claude for most of the things you mention. Dimitri killing civilians and Cornelia fragmenting Faerghus are things he has absolutely nothing to do with. VW also ends the war slightly sooner than in AM, if we go by a chapter basis. Nemesis's resurrection also wasn't his fault, that was Thales acting out of spite more than anything else. Yeah, leaving a power vacuum in Adrestia is terrible, but what exactly could he have done that wouldn't upset people? If he placed someone new in command, people would accuse him of selecting a puppet ruler or forcing Adrestia under Almyran occupation. And whether he liked it or not, he had to take over rule of Almyra one day. He wouldn't be a "dead beat king" if he had any say in it. And considering how xenophobic Fodlan as a whole is, staying would have put the people he cared about in danger. The best he could do was bust open Fodlan's Locket and try to work on improving relations between the two countries.
@@nataliecoronado4206 You're right that the things that happened on Claude's route in other territories don't have anything to do with him, but I don't think Claude *did* ever have to take control of Almyra one day; Shahid is plenty interested in inheriting the Almyran throne, after all, and Khalid was taken from Almyra purposefully to live as Claude. Hell, Cyril knows more about Almyra and has more lived experience in that culture than Claude does. It seems to me that the best course of action would have been to stay in Fodlan to manage the unification (reunification? It was all Adrestia way before the story began), and work toward building peace with Almyra by working with Shahid or whoever takes the Almyran throne, one ruler on each side of Fodlan's Throat to bridge the gap. The thing about defeating an enemy army is that if you don't control the territory you take, you will lose it. Claude had a responsibility to the people of Adrestia after removing their system of government to supply a new one. He definitely learned that in War Crimes School, and for a guy who likes strategy so much, it's probably something he knew before heading to the Academy. Leaving the power vaccuum is the worst choice he could have possibly made, because it left room for an uncontrollable element to fill that void, and the common people don't have any choice but to follow along. He could have put *any* Adrestian of notoriety in there to hold the territory, given them the support necessary to quash rebellion before it got too big, and held true to his goal of unification and border opening.
@@raeoverhere923He doesn't leave a power vacuum, though. IIRC, Claude always leaves Byleth in charge of the Church, and since 2/3rds of Fodlan's governments are gone, that puts Byleth as the one with power to fix the continent.
10:02 Does Birthright chapter 9 count as an instance of perfidy? Hinoka and I think also Azura briefly disguised themselves as Nohrian soldiers, in order to blend in with said soldiers who had just gotten done committing perfidy by dressing as civilians of a neutral nation. They take out a couple Nohrian soldiers, *then* reveal themselves, and the map starts shortly after that. Is double perfidy a thing? Would they both be in trouble for perfidy, or only the Nohrians?
Ive gotnto contest some of the 'forced to fight their home country' entries on the point that willing defection doesnt count. It has to be the commander compelling the change of allegiance.
If this video primarily focused on playable Lords, it's not really taking into account their actions as enemies. And Edelgard as playable in CF would have additional crimes if you add up her actions on AM/VW/SS. Ditto for Claude and Dimitri too. Not to mention scale of crimes aren't always equal either. Edelgard starting the war itself is what leads to everything else, making her the indirect cause of many war crimes on every side of the spectrum.
I figured before even watching that Leif was going to be high on the list. The fact that you're basically leading a poor ramshackle guerilla force is one of my favorite aspects of that game.
Great video! If you plan to do stuff like this in the future, I recommend some visual guides to show on screen, to help people not get lost and not have dull blank screens. In this case, for example, I'd show the crimes and the game currently being discussed. Cheers!
Y'a know, I always had curiosity about Genealogy and Thracia, but never really bothered much, but knowing that after Leif's count, I think my curiosity just peaked
Play Thraica! It's really fun. It has a reputation for being hard (and definitely is at some points), but the game is incredibly goofy with all the stuff you can do. FE4's story is also amazing : )
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 63 | คู่เอก "ยอดภูผา vs โซเนอร์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RGVmBsegKEI/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey, I'm a doofus who just for some reason forgot to put Roy and RevCorrin in the final tally. They both got 13, along with Robin, Eirika, and Ephraim.
General gist of this video: How many warcrimes in Thracia776?
TOO FUCKING MANY.
Its all good, your selection of FE music used throughout the vid makes up for it
Too real😂😂😂
The correct answer is zero, since I won all those wars and sure as hell not gonna prosecute myself.
For this brutal, irrational system, there is only one thing we can blame...
The Military-Industrial Complex
That's a fair point, but I'll raise you a "It aint a warcrime the first time."
Nobody on Tellius knows what a Geneva is let alone its conventions. If it isn't a breech of setting appropriate rules of conduct/engagement or an in-setting inter/national agreement/policy then it's not a warcrime, it's all being fair in love and war, and your Lord unit is fresh out of love.
This guy gets it.
That is the right answer
And then there's the Death Knight forcing Edelgard to let him serve his time for his crimes
I heard if your professor commits 15 or more war crimes you’re legally allowed to leave class
Best comment I read all day, lmao
Ahahahaha oh god!
LMAO nice
No wonder edelgard started a war in fodlan
That was true! Teach committed war crimes most days and we didn’t really learn much in class besides how to commit war crimes.
Whenever a character brings up how great a strategist someone is, it just means they break the Geneva convention
The Geneva Convention is for crimes against humans, so Bern and Nohrian soldiers don't count. Hope that clears things up!
Claude: "War crimes in motion!"
Geneva convention more like Geneva suggestions
Robin is a war-crimes hero, then.
Now we gotta do "which strategist commits the most war crimes"
Birthright Corrin really took that whole "we'll teach them our peaceful ways _by force."_ thing seriously.
Don't worry tho, they nonleathally massacred the Nohrians
Meanwhile CQ Corrin managed to put all of his enemies into casual mode smh(with a few exceptions and Kitsunes)
They even attempt to carry out an assassination of the enemy king whilst in a neutral territory, through use of a magical disguise conjured by an ex enemy general and a debilitating magic song. All this done under the false premise of being part of an operatic production.
@@Zerorenren4761 Bit of a correction, but this is a bit of a misconception. I've took the time to look through the script, and it's actually only a few chapters where there's no casualties, and all of those are cases of which it was explicitly said as such. Following in line with that:
No Deaths: 8, 11, 20
Attempted Sparing of Enemy Army, Ends in Slaughter: 13, 21
All Enemy Soldiers Die: 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, Endgame
Yes, I've counted from the script. It's an easy misconception to make, but it's still a thing to keep in mind.
Nohrians are treated as less than human for some reason.
_"It is worth noting that PoR Ike is a mercenary, so technically he is exempt from [War Crimes]."_
Every FE protag: *"Write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN!!"*
Byleth is also a merc, so same applies.
...Also if your Church forgives it, does it still count? :V
@@gigaslave I mean, when you're the Religious Head of State, I'd imagine you can pardon yourself from anything lmao
Also works if you win the war
Once again proof that you make a SpongeBob reference out of anything
Ike became a Noble in Path of Radiance..But Yeah.
"Only Naga can judge me" (Burns a village to the ground)
Bro literally said Allahu Akbar in the most fire emblem way 💀
Leif really out here making the Geneva Convention look like a bucket list.
Mans got a rule break for every original Pokémon
I love how Alear had like 3 crimes from the child soldiers, then absolutely none through the whole video until the end that they suddenly got 20
The benefit of all Healers being gauntlet-users, thus technically armed, and a lot of the time enemies being Corrupted.
-Although looking at some of the others on this list, they should also have 4 or 5 cases of "forced to fight against their own home country"-
@@Justic_basically all the elusians and maybe Veyle since shes from Gradlon (although to be fsir technically so is alear) (also Mauvier doesnt count since he's firenese)
@@Justic_ Actually, only Anna was forced to fight her home country (if she even has one anymore), the rest all defected willingly, which I would think stops it from being a war crime.
It's the 20 dagger uses
And those 20 are Yunaka.
Hiya Papaya!
I feel like Seliph and Leif fighting against the Empire of War Crimes itself gives them an ethical pass.
Means don't always justify the ends
Edit: Ends don't always justify the means
@@sidharthbommineni7780they sacrifice children to their dark god. Idk how the means aren’t justified?
@@user-Blissful_Death ethical laws are strictly lawfull Good, they don't care why you did it, they just want to know if you did it regardless.
@@user-Blissful_Deathi mean, fuck them kids 🤷
@@sidharthbommineni7780"Bruh" *said August* "lmao" *added he*
How could you not include Dimitri’s iconic line?! There’s literally a cutscene of him demanding his troops to route the enemy 😂
I'm telling you, that man has got to outpace Leif in war crimes on routes other than his own. Probably the others, too.
He would never tell his troops to "Kill every last one of them!", that's adrestian propaganda
"Kill every last one of them" idk what youre talking about that seems like ethical martial practices
when rout maps came up i started laughing preemptively knowing what it would do to the valentian lords’ counts. also the fact that thracia 776 is just a war crime simulator is hilarious to me
Thankfully the Geneva Convention doesn't extend to the undead, otherwise Celica would be right up there with Alm.
Undead Lives Don't Matter.
@@willbill6942 Celica?! Robin would be even higher, what with every single bonus episode plus every single legacy character recruit episode being about killing Risen.
"Free us emblem of war crimes!" - Alear probably
It matches Thracia’s gameplay style, where the only thing that matches the level of BS the enemy can perform against you is the amount of BS you can perform against the enemy
According to the Fates art book Corrin's kidnapping took place 15 years before the events of games. Since Sakura was old enough to hear and understand rumors that she was (allegedly) the actual target of the kidnapping, we can conclude that Sakura is, at a bare minimum, older than 15. There's not enough info to know her exact age but I'd guess she's around 16 - 18. So she's not quite a child soldier, at least by your rules, but she's also not far off.
Oh, that's good to know, thank you for sharing that info. I had no idea the art book had that info!
@@willbill6942 Np! The 15 year time frame helps a lot with making educated guesses about Fates character ages. We also know Hinoka was 7 years old when she started training to be a sky knight, which she began in response to Corrin's kidnapping. So we can surmise Hinoka is ~22 years old, which helps place Corrin, Ryoma, Takumi, and Sakura's ages. Like I said, it's still mostly guess work, but there are at least a few reference points!
@@willbill6942 Also, Xander especifically states that Elise is already an adult despite her looks, so yeah, that
@@GaleonXZThat was pretty obviously only put in the localization to justify her getting S-supported, so idk about that
That fact that you can breed her and Elise makes me (hope) their at least 18
"Again it is difficult to quantify the number of war crimes committed in Thracia" based
Kaga did it first 💪😎
I mean that whole set of games is basically fire emblem war crimes
How many war crimes does it take to stop the evil empire from sacrificing children to bring back an evil god
203, very respectable
Leif has a war crimes for each of the Kanto Pokemon
War crimes! Gotta commit'em all!
I've decided porygon gets one of the child soldier crimes
@@Knightgobsad thing is, Porygon gets a bad rap when it was Pikachu who caused the lights in question.
@@lanereynolds4567 poor guy, free my blud porygon Z he ain't do nun
Funnily enough, you can also count compelling prisoners of war into service for Edelgard, Claude and Dimitri, because in 3 Hopes vast majority of out of house recruited characters are stated to be war prisoners and they often comment on how they're forced into fighting their friends and country against their will
They talk about ALL OF THE TIME, right? In my current replay of Azure Gleam, we just recruited Dorothea and the FIRST THING she says to me in camp is "I'm being forced to fight my home, now, great. Life sucks."
@@amandachristen3454 Maybe not all the time, but Dorothea on Azure Gleam does this the most frequently out of everyone
Wait, what? Isn't this mostly/only an issue with recruiting imperials on the Azure Gleam route?
On Scarlet Blaze, this only really applies for Lorenz for like less than a chapter before he's given a seat at the table, and it becomes moot after the midway point. With Ashe, Lonato and Rowe were in negotiations to defect before the war even started. And even then, don't Rodrigue and Dimitri acknowledge it as a choice out of family?
With Golden Wildfire, I think it might apply more than Scarlet Blaze when it comes to Ashe. With imperials, again, it becomes moot by the end.
@@wanderlustwarrior Pretty sure you can also count Hapi and Constance in Golden Wildlife for that, hell they are upset at Claude over what happens in their joining chapter, not sure how it is with Yuri and Balthus since they are mercs at the end of the day. But yeah, it is mostly a thing with BE characters since Ashe and Mercedes are the only BL recruits and GD students have politics in the background to justify them not being war prisoners (although it's hard to actually say they fight the Alliance fully out of their free will)
Also fun fact, none of 3 Hopes counts, since it's non canon to the Fodlan story
Leif names each of his crimes after gen1 Pokémons
"This one was kind of boring, so I'll call it Charizard."
- Leif, probably
When Seliph was mentioned, I laugh and about to say "Damn, Sigurd. You know how to raise a kid."
But I cracked when Leif committed 3 times of what Seliph did. Yeah, this bloodline knows what's up.
I hereby forgive my favorite lords for their war crimes.
It's not a war crime if you can't get war caught.
this might be the best youtube title I’ve ever seen
Thank you! That means a lot to me (the research took over a week 😭)
did you get inspired by the punch out video?
It's so funny seeing Micaiah on the lower end of the war crimes ranking seen as she had to command the "enemy army" in Part 3 and she did that stunt, causing people to point that out as a crime each time Micaiah's ever talked to be a good person.
She gets a lot of unfair flak in-universe and out for that kinda stuff imho
@@amazinggrapes3045 in-universe, I wouldn't say the flack was unfair at the time. Sure, perhaps the traumatizing due to a near death experience with Sothe was rough, but at least it didn't cause permanent damage... The problem is that she couldn't tell her atrocious situation to anyone, and they were trying to help her. In fact, more confrontations during part 4 about this stuff would have helped everyone.
Out of universe, though... Yeah it's unfair because most people don't seem to understand her full situation. Or there are shitposters who want to talk about war crimes for fun, and I believe they made Micaiah out to be this gremlin which can and WILL do several of these. Though as of shitposting nature, I don't know whether the opinions are sincere or exaggerated for funsies.
@@BloomBox36 I thought it was unfair in-universe because it didn't strike me as any worse than anything else people had been doing in the games. I thought taking out a leader rather than mowing down hordes and hordes of people was infinitely more humane, and easily justifiable when it's the leader of a country that is holding your own country hostage (though it's unfortunate that the leader herself is innocent, but I'm not even sure if Micaiah and co even knew that at the time). I also thought it was nuts that people made such a fuss about trying to set them on fire in a setting where enemy soldiers routinely light one another on fire. It just didn't make any sense that this was seen as uniquely and specially bad. I would have done the same.
@@amazinggrapes3045 Think of it like this: whether or not Micaiah actually intended to set the Apostle's army on fire (or, more plausibly, it was bait to shoot down Sanaki), they thought of it as such. Also Sanaki did forgive Micaiah and co. shortly afterwards, as told by Sigrun and Jill's battle dialogue in 3-E.
The crux of the flack she got in-universe was her being "insane" because she insisted so hard in fighting as they thought that Daein didn't belong in the war. And they kind of treated her as such as people like Ike and Jill (if defected) constantly worry about her when on the battlefield. And I would believe Ike's worried about her at that point also due to Rafiel confirming what she was before.
So it's not like she got treated as a bad person by the opposing army... But in dire need of therapy.
Which isn't too far off considering she was almost at her wits' end, carried by sheer resolve.
I don't know which Geneva Convention Robin violated when she slaughtered Valm's entire navy with unmanned, exploding boats, but it's GOT to be at least one of them 🔥
Is it though? I mean that were at war, and the navy was attacking them.
With regards to Tharja, she didn't hesitate in joining Chrom's army as she didn't want to needlessly die for a crazed king, especially after she was ordered to kill Chrom's army which would have led to her death had Chrom not recruit her when he did.
Yeah, there should be a follow-up video on the war crimes the enemy does Gangrel and Walhart would be crazy high.
Yeah most of the turncoatsin Fates (Silas, Kaze, the servants) volunteered to switch sides without Corrin asking them to.
Goes for a lot of the characters. Natasha joined because she was going to be murdered by solders of her home country, Cormag joined to get revenge for the death of his brother at the hands of his own country, Zihark joined to fight racism, Silas joined as your "best friend" and Jacob and Felicia join as your indentured servants (which I guess now we think about it Corrin themselves is also a victim of this war crime in both games as they are forced to fight against their home country and their birth country), Kaze also always joins of his own accord and I'm not at all sure about the 3H characters because they're all recruited to your house, not your country and as so I guess they join up after the time skip of their own accord if they were not originally in your house. Forcing Ashe to fight his father is 100% a war crime though but I think that's down to Reia not Byleth.
Yeah it's more like she defected, she wasn't compelled.
And yet she refuses to marry Prince Chrom and chooses to stalk the Prince's tactician.
If you eliminate the war crimes that are pure gameplay mechanics/tropes throughout the series (like child soldiers or rout maps) Corrin/Xander from Conquest commits by FAR the most war crimes in the series. From launching attacks from civilian sites to exterminating entire neutral villages to executing surrendering civilians... my little homeless dragon does it all!
That's kind of the point of Conquest I guess, I just find it funny that even though the game went out of its way to keep Corrin's hands clean, s/he still makes the protagonists of Three Houses look like goody two-shoes.
It's ok because as long nobody died, Corrin is innocent lol
@@Zerorenren4761 arguably worse for corrin though his hands appearing clean just makes him look efficient and sinister towards those he's conquering.
Conquest is so weird, Corrin is merciful and rarely kills, but it's canon that the entire kitsune village got massacred by his forces, and we can murder a guy for his timbs because he might be untrustworthy
I believe with Flayn she’s presenting as 17 according to the game’s code so she doesn’t count as a child soldier
Ah, gotcha. Thank you for bringing that up. I had no idea.
She already kinda felt like an outlier from the typical little girl manakete archetype, it's good to know she would be a legal/ethical soldier if not for her immortality.
i always put in doubt age codes, if it is not something tell on history it is then not canon cause was not intended to be shown, and i specially mean it cause saphir is a good example, nothing suggest she have the age of her code, no, the lindon supports doesnt confirm it neither, but people still likes to bring it up
@@alexmauriciovazques1473That's a problem with ages in Engage, not Three Houses. All of the assigned ages that we see in-game and in the code of 3H are all reasonable.
@@kaiserphoenix2038 well, no, no They are not, just cause the simple reason we know flayn Is not 17 yo, maybe her mental age, sure, maybe, but she of course Is not only 17 yo so just that proves that the video Is not canon at all, again, if was not intended to be seen then Is not canon
@@alexmauriciovazques1473 Yeah no shit Flayn isn't 17, but it's obvious it lines up perfectly fine with how she's designed physically, so there's no reason to think that fact can't be used to say that Flayn isn't a child soldier regardless of whether you take into account her heritage.
This guy: describing in detail all the horrific war crimes committed across the franchise
The music: 🌄
I don't care how many war crimes Dimitri has, I'm still going to marry him 💯
Least down bad Fire Emblem fan
Also while its not a rout map Seteth says "give them no quarter" in a map in Silver Snow. And Dimitri famously says "Kill every last one of them" in To War at Gronder. Also do we count their war crimes as enemies or only in their own routes? And how far does guilt by association/conspiracy go?
Yeah, for this video, I only counted war crimes as the player army (so Dimitri's would count for his route, since he says it in every route). Thank you for the reminder tho, as I'll have to note that down for the church's war crimes whenever i make the follow up to this video
Dimitri may say kill every last one of them on the cutscene, but that Grondor map objective only requires you to defeat Claude and Edelgard, neither of which dies because both immediately retreat. Which means you can end this map (in both AM and VW) without killing a single person.
@@l.n.3372 yes but the game letting you ignore his order doesnt change the fact that he gave the order.
@@IcePrincessZeroK
The game map objectives are set. You can willingly choose to route but the map ends immediately after you defeat those mandatory bosses. Thus the map objectives take precedence here. Cutscenes and dialogue don't.
Dimitri and Edelgard say a lot of shit about "showing no mercy, leave none alive," etc. But the map objectives don't always have those same objectives.
@@l.n.3372 yes so that war crime doesnt count against Azure Moon Byleth. But Dimitri did still give an order of no quarter. Byleth can just choose to ignore said order. Thus it still would count against Dimitri but not AM Byleth.
Some miscellaneous war crimes:
Roy has a secret treaty with Etruria that he springs on Narcia.
Roy's liberation of the Western Isles can technically be a warcrime, since he's inciting rebellion in an allied country. No one is going to give a damn about such basedness, though.
Dark magic in FE6/7 destroys your soul through unknown means, and employing characters like Canas is the equivalent of forcing your soldiers to use steroids.
Some of the performance-enhancing items (Spirit Dust, Strength Tonic) are pretty questionable and forcing your soldiers to use them could be considered a warcrime.
Promoting healers on-map so they can attack should be considered a war crime. Funnily enough, the only healer incapable of fighting that you *have* to promote in the middle of a battle with legitimate combatants is Lana/Muirne and Coirpre/Charlot, so points to Seliph.
Animal cruelty via mounted units on some of the indoor/underground maps, especially ones that involve volcanos or ice.
There are some absolute banger points here I never even considered. Absolutely genius man!
Some more miscellaneous war crimes:
The metafiction for the true ending of FE6 requires you to commit a technical war crime. After you liberate Etruria, the rebels hole up in a holy temple and historical site holding a holy weapon. Now, while you are allowed to launch attacks on holy sites if it's a military objective, FE6 also lets you skip the level, raising questions of just how militarily necessary the attack really was.
Improvised weapons are allowed so long as they aren't modified to increase the suffering inflicted. Funnily enough, FE11/FE12 allows you to decrease the might on weapons FOR NO REASON, so there's a possible war crime. I have no idea why you would want to do that, though, it's not even that economical for boss abuse.
Under the category of 'so based that no jury would convict them', we have Wallace exterminating all of the Taliver bandits with the explicit intention of giving them no quarter. They are still technically civilians, and due to their numbers (big enough to destroy the Lorca) they could be considered a militia -- and while NPC bandits are sort of like the goblins in Goblin Slayer, we could consider that a war crime depending on their numbers.
Funnily enough, Canas (and Kushina) also accidentally causes Eligood and friends to potentially retroactively commit war crimes in his A support with Renault when he points out that morphs have souls. Well, all not them not named Sonia and perhaps Limstella are *also* severely mentally disabled if so.
Assassination attempts, even if you change your mind at the last minute, against civilian targets is a war crime, and while Jaffar/Nino did it before they joined Eligood's army them protecting them afterwards makes them accessories after the fact unless Queen Hellene forgave them. Knowing her, I don't think she'd let the two off all that lightly if she knew the details.
Launching attacks from a historical site, hospital, or place of worship is a war crime. Since you can directly prepare for the next battle in My Castle, like, keeping the stat boosts from a meal you ate a few minutes ago, that's just another war crime added to Corrin's list.
Marching through neutral territory without permission and/or declaring legitimate war against it is also a war crime. Again, another war crime added to Corrin's list, especially for how in Conquest he also COMMITS FURRY GENOCIDE WTF?
Deputizing soldiers to use as police officers to prosecute civilian crimes is a war crime. Making Sanaki, who deployed the Begnion army to maintain long-term control of Daein is, you guessed it, a war crime.
I never gave any thought to how stat boosters are "consumed" and now I'm picturing magic units all coked out after taking a bump of Spirit Dust.
@@Jason-ut2cx All I'm picturing is the "consumption" of Secret Books. How does it just disappear? Did the reader literally devour it for stat gains? Or people breaking a Goddess Icon, sniffing the dust, and wondering what does it do.
@@maltheopiawould launching military attacks from a place of worship also give points to every three houses lord since there is monastery exploration every month?
Some of these are a bit of a stretch. Like I would consider it “compelling her to fight against her country” when Milady literally flies up to Roy and asks to fight for him.
Right and Gale doesn't even join Roy's army. He's pretty much the Camus of the game
The unarmed medics section was kind of funny to me since I've played through the entirety of Genealogy without killing a single one several times specifically because it's a war crime and I feel bad. That also allowed me to discover a very funny quirk of their AI--once their leader is dead and there's no one to heal, they'll just sort of pick one of your units and follow them around until you seize their home castle and they disappear. It was usually one of my weaker units, so I think it might be them trying to "attack," but I couldn't say for sure.
That’s funny! I probably should do a “minimum war crimes” playthrough of FE4.
@@agirlinsearchof9057 the only healers that were even annoying were the three near Arvis in the penultimate chapter because he's hard to one-round. Silence is your friend for that part lol (though I suppose if we're counting that as a bio weapon you'd have to figure something else out)
@@wingedjellifish11235 I probably wouldn’t call it a bioweapon. Rendering someone temporarily unable to speak isn’t something that that harms them long-term, at least in the contexts we’re presented with. (Now, if the Silence spell were described as actively damaging part of the person’s body, that would be something different and probably cause it to qualify as a bioweapon, in my book.)
Would it count as a war crime to interfere with an enemy medic’s work, though? That’s the real question.
@@agirlinsearchof9057I wounder if you can do a max war crime playthrough
@@lodestarlondon8850 at that point just play Thracia.
For child soldiers, wouldn't Donnel count as well? Lissa is 15 pre time skip and in her C support with Donny she states that he is "one of the few people in the army younger than her" and Mozu propably counts as well (though on that one I'm not 100% sure). I was to going to say why Nanna counts for Leif and not Seliph, but i suppose a year passes during Thracia's events so Seliph *technically* gets a pass.
Compelling the soldiers to fight against their own country sounds like a stretch since most of these characters decide to fight against their country on their own volition. Haar's home country is Begnion, not Daein. If Tharja counts, then why Henry doesn't? Yeah you don't fight Plegia when he joins, but from ch21 they become enemies again.
Even if he doesn't count as a child soldier, given his recruitment map, doesn't he fall under using civilians?
@@Buraiyan333 I guess, but at the same time he volunteered, so while he would be a child soldier he wasn't forcefully conscripted so I'm not sure about it.
@@Xertaron. Donnel voluntered and his starting map is kinda the equivalent of starting boot camp
Mozu looks and sounds very baby but is never regarded as such from what I remember. She's just small and baby-faced I guess
I suppose that Henry doesn't count because neither Chrom nor Robin asked him to join, he just kinda showed up and didn't leave
Few things I have gripes with:
Flayn is presented as being 17 in Three Houses.
A lot of the soldiers that are "forced to fight" against their home countries are rebels/revolutionary forces that weren't compelled by the commander but rather did so on their own.
Dimitri did NOT kill Randolph, that was Byleth but might not matter much but it's an important distinction.
Also, I'm pretty sure there are instances in Three Houses where you recruit units from other houses and don't fight their homelands thereafter.
@@erickpoorbaugh6728 yes and no their are two characters that fit that description but can be re-recruited later in the story and flayn who can’t be re-recruited.
And byleth only killed him to stop Dimitri from torturing him💀
@@amazinggrapes3045 Methinks it's still important considering he Dimitri didn't order Byleth to kill Randolph. Sure he probably most likely would have tortured and killed the dude later but it's still important he didn't order the kill nor did he do it.
Still though, his torture, murder and destruction of supply lines of the Adrestian army in those 5 years would probably net him far more war crimes anyways which oddly unaccounted for.
@@kimoota-kun I think its fascinating how Dimitri is actually at his most evil in his own route.
i'd say the issue i have is with the "forcing someone to fight their home nation" is that a lot of them aren't forced, a lot of them join of their own accord. Also...what about Robin? they are born in Plegia, and actively have to fight their country AND own father and adopted sister, Validar and Aversa respectively
Aversa is supposed to be gangreil's (is that his name?) adopted daughter?? First I've heard of it
@@jokx4409 Aversa is Validar's adopted daughter, it's something that i am not sure is mentioned normally, but it IS brought up in Aversa and Robin's supports, specifically Male robin, where Aversa constantly teases him with "big brother"
@@sirdemon456 huh, I had no idea. And idk why I couldn't remember his name lol
I would not count Lachesis and Tailtiu as forced to fight their own country considering Lachesis was already being besieged by Augustria before Sigurd ever showed up, while Tailtiu is hired by/assigned to protect Father Claud who Grannvale is forcibly trying to arrest so she’s along the lines of a personal body guard or mercenary. I would also not count every city or castle conquered by Sigurd/Seliph otherwise you’d have to do that for everyone, so pretty much every seize map and most kill boss maps in EVERY game have to go on this list as well.
Also not only does Salem not have to use dark magic, but dark magic when used by the player cannot inflict poison, as well as any poison weapons stolen from enemies lose those effects.
PoR Ike is not exempt from any war crimes because chapter 17 on he is acting as the main general and as a declared lord of Crimea, which is more official than anyone else in the world can say regarding Crimea’s liberation.
I hate to be the “well actually” guy but hey, this is the Fire Emblem community!
That's a fair point. I didn't consider Tailtiu being a mercenary technically, that does exclude her from being counted in regards to war crimes.
I mostly counted Sig/Celice's castle sieges and not the others due to the fact that they set up base there and use the castles for sometimes years at a time.
I totally forgot that Ikes promotion happened mid PoR, I still counted all his war crimes, but I guess I'd have to go through and figure out which ones would be enforceable before/after ch 17
I appreciate you being the um actually guy. I deffo made mistakes here, I'm happy people who remember certain games better than I do can point them out
@@willbill6942 is all good man, the video’s still fine, just some talking points for fun and because both of us are passionate. I can say I like the games but you like them so much you’ve actually made videos on them!
@@willbill6942 The thing about Ike would also apply to his crimes befor 3-11, since before that he isn't an official part of the gallia army, he is just the leader of the grail mercenaries, who have been employed by the gallian army, but on the other side, you could count jill and zihark as being forced to fight against his nation again since you can recruit them to fight for the grail mercenaries on part 3
I absolutely adore it when people are that guy & I appreciate this
And didn’t Ike abdicate his nobility after PoR (and went back to being a mercenary, so RD Ike would ALSO be exempt)?
Correction: Shura wasn’t hoshidan, he was from a different ninja nation kogha which had been conquered and destroyed. So while he totally was forced into service, technically Corrin did that to a pirate/outlaw not an enemy soldier or citizen of another nation that he fought against. Probably still a war crime, but not the one you cited.
Also, I disagree with the three houses war crimes of ‘making them fight against their own nations’ as there wasn’t coercion there at all. Since they all came to you willing and volunteered before any major battles (though the sparing recruitment is pretty sus.) Also I think this could apply to many more like Thatja who were convinced with words to switch sides, not by physical force.
Tharja didn't have any deep loyalty to serve Gangrel either. She just did it out of being a citizen of the country.
Wasn't Shura's ninja clan a part of hoshido or something?
@@collegestuff2511it already said, he was from a separate nation which had been conquered
Wait, isn't the war crime to compel somebody (so force them against their will) to fight against their home country? That being the case, Byleth would be safe since students recruited from other houses fight against their home countries voluntarily
That's why Byleth is safe, but the Lords aren't. We're only counting Byleth's crimes for the pre-timeskip section, any warcrimes commited post-timeskip, like recruiting enemy units after defeating them in battle, are the crimes of the Lords. I don't think it's fair to say that units you choose to take prisoner are fighting your war willingly; they're being compelled under threat of death.
Leif: "I'll take it back, ALL of it!"
Stand outs to me were Edelgard amusingly having the lowest score of the Three Houses Lords and Conquest Corrin scoring lower than Birthright. Personally I would ask whether or not we should count all of Byleth’s crimes in white clouds towards Rhea as she is the one ultimately in charge but as she isn’t playable on any main story route I suppose it doesn’t count.
I do question counting Tharja’s recruitment as a war crime as she isn’t being forced in the dialogue and it’s heavily implied she was looking to desert or defect already. You could slap a treason charge on her for that but given the mass desertion and mutinies the Plegian army quickly suffered after the events of that chapter I suspect she just slipped through the cracks.
To be fair he didn't count Edelgard launching a surprise attack against a Neural territory with tons of priests and civilians. Just the stuff in gameplay. Otherwise we have to count ICBMs being used on Arianrhod.
@@kimoota-kun no we wouldn’t, we’d have to count that as Thales who did so specifically as a warning shot against Edelgard pushing her luck against him in the future.
As for invading a neutral territory I think everyone technically gets that one when it comes to the alliance do to the confused political situation Claude created to basically stay out of the war until he saw an opportunity to win it for himself.
@@ranger24ff I consider both Thales and Edelgard under the same aggressive force even in Crimson Flower, even if she's not in command of Thales, the destruction of Arianrhod via ICBMs would still have been partially her fault so I'd still count it against here.
True but it's multiple layers of violations for Edelgard since Garreg Mach is not only a neutral zone but also a holy site, a place of education, a research facility, an institution to care for the sick & other charitable causes and houses the biggest archive in all of Fódlan. I'm pretty sure the convention states you cannot attack any of those facilities.
Also fun fact that's unrelated to Edelgard's war crimes, Dark Magic in Three Houses is associated with TWSITD and was born from horrific human experimentation.
Yeah, Tharja didn't feel like dying in a dumb war for Gangrel, so she mostly defected on her own terms to Ylisse.
@@kimoota-kun technically speaking as Garreg Mach is also a military fortress of the Knights of Seiros its protections would actually be waved. Given it’s also basically the capital of the church of Seiros which Edelgard declared war against it would not actually be considered Neutral but the enemy capital in the same way one could technically declare war on Vatican City.
The matter of Thales and Edelgard’s relationship seems pretty cut and dry to me that they are considered separate entities ultimately. Thales is responsible for his own actions while Edelgard is responsible for her’s you might need an international criminal court to sort out what counts for what though. I was in fact not referring to Garreg Mach on that matter but the actions surrounding the great bridge on all routes. Also worth pointing out this video covers war crimes from when we are playing with each lord as protagonist.
9:40 I'd say the absence of the "Kill every last one of them!" quote is a war crime.
I included in the spreadsheet, I must've forgotten to mention in the video, thank you for bringing it up. The whole battle of Gorndor Field is a pretty massive war crime all around.
@@willbill6942
Yeah but that's one of the easiest maps in 3H to avoid killing altogether. In AM/VW, all you need to do is defeat 2 bosses to end the map entirely. No deaths required since both bosses will always survive and retreat. This means it can have the least casualties of any map in 3H.
@@l.n.3372 yeah, I didn't count it as a route map, but he still declares no quarter, even if the army doesn't follow through
@@willbill6942
If we're gonna count what characters say in cutscenes tho, I'm pretty sure all the 3H Lords are more ... um ... visceral in dialogue than in their actions. For example, Edelgard will talk a lot of shit in boss dialogue etc. But in actuality, the map objectives don't change depending on how harsh Edelgard or Dimitri are in their dialogue.
It would be pretty interesting tho to have a FE game where there are 2 map objectives and you get a morality score based on whether you defeated the boss or chose to route all for experience xD
Part of me wants to see a Max Warcrimes run of these games. Just quantify the optimal route to achieve as many warcrimes as possible per map while still beating the game.
That would be incredible
Top is still gonna be Thracia. The combination of thieves being able to steal weapons (and thus being able to kill unarmed enemies AND use their property, two for one) with capture-and-steal also being an entirely viable factor for enabling use of status staves (another two for one).
In Celica's route you can achieve that by not ussing any of the mercenaries and killing every last one of them (which Celica does canonically)
That’s my boy Leif! Big number=based
Equating rout maps with no quarter is a bit iffy. It's not as if the enemy is ever giving up fighting either, other than temporarily when healing AI kicks in. Is it a no quarter case, or just enemies fighting to the last? In some games, you could feasibly headcanon that there might be some enemies to whom a quarter is given, but they are not represented as enemy units due to gameplay reasons.
All of this is pedantics of course, Leif will top the list no matter where you draw the lines.
Yeah, it was a bit difficult to get the exacts. I made sure to exclude route maps with undead, and route maps like Fuga in Birthright
Also I believe in fe7 Cog of Destiny the black fang say they will fight until the end, and several characters plead with Lloyd/Linus to not fight.
"Hannibal was forced to fight against Thracia."
...No. Like, demonstrably, objectively, no. He was forced to fight *for* Thracia. Travant was the one who forced him. He *gladly* fought against Thracia after Seliph rescued his held-hostage adopted son. Honestly in that whole section you're really stretching with the definition of "forced", but that's the most egregious example I have to point out.
One issue I have with the count is that you don't always have to field any particular unit to fight against their homeland
Time for me to play a "Can I finish Fire Emblem X without committing any War Crimes run"
@@danimarch2639No, but "Minimum War Crimes" should become a challenge category
I'm not certain, but by the Geneva Conventions, killing a child soldier is better than recruiting one, as long as you give them the option to surrender
@@thelossensei It depends if it forces them to fight against their own country, because then you're doing 2 war crimes at once. I think.
Well to be fair is it really a war crime if they voluntarily join you to fight there homeland
I feel like some of the gambits from 3H and the fire dragon veins from engage that set fire to the ground should count as as war crime due to the damage to the environment that doubtledsly causes.
Aditionally, the use of incendiary weapons are prohibited, so Roy, Ike (and whoever else used a fire sword I may be forgetting about) would also have a war crime added to their list.
Aditionally, judging on the way Corrin's sword is designed I imagine it counts a serrated weapon, which is also a war crime. (Aditionally, many other games may have weapons that have serated edges to them)
Excellent points all around, thank you for the comment!
Ragnell doesn't have any fire in the games except in the final blow on Ashera. Its projectile is just some sort of shockwave, which doesn't appear to be more indiscriminate than any other projectile weapon. Although given that the flame lance and fire magic exist he probably runs afoul of this anyways.
wouldn't 'using an attack knowing it would cause incidental loss/damage to the environment' also include robin's stunt with the valmese naval fleet? great video btw love war crime simulator game :)
to be fair the greil mercenaries were on the run for half of fe9 and still actively kept mist and rolf from fighting because they were only children. they only took up arms as a means of survival and began fighting before actually going to war
Salem doesn't actually cause poison, he's a good Dark Mage
Some characters fight against their home country out of their own choice, so I'd excuse some of them. Some like Ashe should still counts I'd argue
You're right, I totally forgot about that. Luckily he can still status staff people.
I don't know why, the very accurate description of Leif as a terrorist made me laugh so much haha
a good question is how many war crimes are committed by the enemies
That's a good question. I wonder how they'd stack up against the protags of each game in that regard.
@@willbill69422 hour video letsgooo
It is only a War Crime if you lose,Fei.
Gheb alone gets like 6
Between all three routes, Zola commits: perfidy twice (disguising as Izumo civilians, has the Hoshidans disarm under a false truce in Conquest), taking of hostages three times (holding the Archduke prisoner in his own palace, capturing the Hoshido royals and trying to kill them, attempting to take Sakura hostage in Rev), and some combination of mass destruction of civilian property/Attacking or bombarding towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives/weather modification (dropping that snow bomb in Rev).
That’s a minimum of 6 war crimes, and this doesn’t account for the other stuff like violating the general rule of war by being belligerents to a non combatant neutral nation & its civilians -or his greatest crime of all, which is not being in FEH yet-
14:21 Alear official artwork is the best
Gonna point out at 5:25 that Elen actually approaches Roy and offers to join, no compulsion needed. Miledy joins to protect Elen, and Gale isn't recruitable. That leaves Zeiss at most.
Im not going to question what makes a war crime cuz honestly its out of my depth and im mostly uninterested but im just confused as to why someone willingly turning against their home country counts as a war crime for anyone involved. I know its a crime to go into battle wearing the other sides clothing but if someone like miledy, who just kinda flew over and said "yeah i dont agree with my country" joins roy in war (and lets say she doesnt wear bern armor), what exactly is the crime there?
None
Stealing another soldiers equipment isnt a warcrime either.
Compelling POWs to turn against their home country is the war crime. POWs also aren't allowed to waive their rights, as they're in such a precarious position. If a POW changes sides to their captor, there's an implicit threat of force or even just wanting better living conditions. However it's totally ok to accept defectors who betray their home government all on their own.
Some specific ones I know;
Serrated weaponry, which more accurately encompasses weapons designed to rip flesh from the body (so barbed wire weapons count despite not being serrated) could apply the wyrmslayer signature weapons as in lore these are designed to rip the scales off dragons when cutting them. Which would apply to Marth alm Roy Lyn hector eliwood and edelgard though exclusively through raging storm meaning it’s debatable if it’s the weapon that’s meant to do this or she knows how to get that result.
Due to the Etruria arc, having Perceval klein and Cecelia fight Douglas, an unwilling combatant fighting for the same king those three align with they also can be considered conscripted against their own military.
The elder revelation as a chapter involves defiling a sacred temple that’s also a historical landmark in order to rob a bern of its historical artifacts. Guinevere gives no ok for this unlike say Etruria giving Roy the a ok to take their legendary weapon.
Shannan may break 3 at once in gen 1, he’s conscripted by his nation’s opposition in a war, he’s a pow enlisted in that, and he’s oifey’s age making him underage. He’s also used as leverage for ayra by sigurd.
Elencia in RD lays down her weapon and announces her force as a non combatant. In the same chapter when attacked she doesn’t order a retreat but stands her ground despite having ample opportunity to make a retreat and that might constitute as a false surrender.
Napalm is a weapon on some engage maps. Yeah. Really.
Zihark might be okay because he’s a civilian who immigrated during fe9. He’s back on the table in 10 though.
Lyn hector and eliwood may also be technically be off the hook. They technically aren’t in a war. Meaning it’s purely self defence committed by people who happen to be government officials.
Churches in fe4 are a crime tile. It is super illegal to defile a church in war so using it for cover and attacking people on it definitely counts.
And lastly because I don’t know if this applies but I’m pretty sure you can’t have soldiers with a known criminal record. And the clearest example I can think of is Lilina recruiting Garret. It’s nice that Lilina wanted to give a black man a job but he’s a murderer who’s got a history of robbing ppl and setting their houses on fire. Especially considering he is in service to the Etrurian army by the next chapter. The government he’s been robbing and killing ppl in for a minimum of 10 years.
Very good points. You've singlehandedly doubled Elincia's war crimes
@@willbill6942 Renning would be so proud.
Defending oneself from being attacked after putting down her arms does not make it a false surrender. It means the terms of surrender were rejected, and hostilities have been reignited. That is not a war crime on Elincia/Crimea's part.
"Damn, I sure hope that these people won't be killing us here considering that we surrendered. Would be a shame if they'de decide to kill us here, after all we can't defend ourselves, that would be a warcrime."
Natasha is a traitor to Grado tho.
That hardly makes Eirika herself guilty.
One time on tumblr years ago somebody was bitching about being able to pair up Corrin and Azura when theyre unknowingly cousins (a fact hidden away in a 3rd dlc route) saying how morally wrong it was and a reply thats stuck in my head someone made was 'ma'am this is the child solider simulator series, we have bigger fish to fry'
In defense of FE7 Nils was a noncombatant.
Also, to Rout the enemy just means to defeat the enemy to the point where they break formation and flee, not "Kill every last one of them" (Dimitri should get a bonus point for the attempt). I'd say it's usually implied on rout maps that either there are enemies off screen that stop fighting or the enemy voluntarily fights to the last man. Besides, rout as an objective is mostly external from the story
Yeah, Nils is equivalent to drummer boys during the American revolution or the Civil War.
@@spiralgodking9877
They are still motivating the enemy.
Killing drummers after the soldiers are killed or captured is considered disgraceful but killing them during an actual battle is not a war crime.
Did we count disguising your soldiers as the enemy for edel as well? Thats how she surrounded and infiltrated the church. Also using the disappearances of civilians to lure the inights of seiros and let the dark knight hunt
Also shes the one in charge of keeping flayn and monica kidnapped if u lose the mission.
Compelling a prisoner of war into service also counts for Fire Emblem Fates. Orochi/Niles can Capture enemy units and if you have a prison, they go there. After that you can harass them until they join your army - and you have a prisoner of war fighting for you.
There are 13 Named units you can do this to, some exclusive to specific routes (and several hundred more generics)
Tbf most of them are just outlaws while Haitaka and Daniela are actually commanders of the opposing army (Haitaka leads a bunch of soldiers occupying Fort Dragonfall in Conquest, and Daniela leads a bunch of soldiers guarding the Nohr border wall). I’m not sure if Kumagera in Conquest is a commander of the Hoshido army or just an unrelated guy who wants to kill Garon
If some characters have high ranking positions like Sanaki I dont think they exactly count, since shes an Apostle
Also Dew kinda gets a pass I feel like, considering hes a criminal as-is hes far past the point of being a child soldier and if anything Sigurd should be tried for harboring an prison escapee
Also Flayn joins Byleths class so she becomes a student of the military academy, like the other students gets a pass to go out and fight/learn/kill militaristic stuff
Cyril is clearly sneaked out though so he doesnt get a pass
That's fair, considering I excluded people like Roy as the leader of his army, Sakaki prolly shouldn't count.
Drew's just giving the Anti-Chalphy Conspiracy more ammo :'(
That's a fair point for Flayn, she was kinda in a weird spot for the manakete archetype already.
Luckily Cyril turns 15 during part 1, meaning Byleth goes down to 3 war crimes after that.
The Bern soldiers from FE6 deserted of their own free will and follow Guinivere who is the the princess of Bern, They also genuinely belive that king Zephiel must be stopped, so the whole "forced against their own" argument falls apart because these are moreso bringing outsiders into a rebellion. Also why is Gale there? He's not a recruitable unit and doesn't attack the Bern recruits.
Heres the thing about 3H part 1. Byleth shouldn't be held accountable for any War Crimes because they answer directly to Rhea, so she would be on the hook for such actions no?
Yeah, that's pretty fair.
But isn't that a "just following orders" excuse?
After all, Byleth makes his own decisions on the battlefield. The map objective might say "defeat boss" yet Byleth himself might prefer to route all enemies for experience for their team instead. Thus, they followed orders but went against orders too, maximizing casualties for exp.
Terrorize us, Emblem of War Crimes!
12:14 Fun fact: the Loptyr cult has some kind of insane anti-piracy spell on their tomes, with rare/exclusive tomes turning into common junk if you try to steal them, and even the basic Jormungandr can't inflict poison if Salem uses after he's recruited to your side.
If the lopt sect abandoned that whole "revive our dark god" and "perform child hunts" they would make a killing selling anti piracy tomes to nobles and bodyguards and probably also mercs
Ike being exempt because he's a merc is the best kind of technicality
History is written by the victors. There are no war crimes.
Since castles are considered legitimate military targets, and fortifications, I don't believe using them would constitute a war crime.
Yeah I was quite surprised by this crime. I get razing heritage sites, but occupying castle fortifications is kinda… the schtick with war campaigns
I don't think anyone pointed this out, but we got to take into account the time period the fire emblem series tends to fall under and what was and wasn't acceptable in war under our own ages.
I'd also count Edel setting Gronder Field on fire in the tree way battle as a war crime against the environment, but that doesn't change the results that much. Thanks for the video, was pretty fun to watch!
she does also do so with Bernadetta right in the middle of it, effectively using her own soldier as bait since players dont want the archer in the ballista to continue firing at them
@@j.a.r.5974
The fire gets ignited after Bernadetta is dead.
@@Ninjaananas not in my game. She sets it on fire if you get close enough to it, usually people deal with bernie before that happens but i will admit that i think the ballista itself doesnt catch fire for the sake of being usable by the player. Some people go for petra first or hubert and have mentioned that it also triggers the fire. In mine I just sent someone straight at bernie to get her out of the way and i think the turn after (she was still alive) the fire was lit.
@@j.a.r.5974
Defeating Bernadetta is one of the trigger conditions. There is another way but it is much more convoluted and as you already said, her tile is never on fire. There is a reason why Bernadetta of all people does not react to the fire.
@@Ninjaananas idk why people don't bring up that last point of yours as often as they should. everyone should know damn well that if Bernadetta was purposefully by Edelgard and intentionally by the devs lit aflame, that she would be screaming her damn lungs off.
hell, she makes notions more than once about burning people, she's probably the one who suggested the hill being ignited in the first place
Given that Leif and Seliph were opposing a empire that committed war crimes daily, I think they get a pass
Good video but I think it would be better if when you listed chapters in which certain crimes were comitted you showed a screenshot of the map to help the viewer picture and remember which is which, rather than leaving the screen blank for long stretches
I appreciate the feedback, I will definitely take this to heart. Tbh, I was going to but got lazy since editing was already taking me a few hours.
Looking back on it now, I really should have.
I think Nino is canonically 16 and I think everyone in Gen 2 of FE4 has to be at least 17, since the BBQ is 17 years before Gen 2 starts.
Yeah it was difficult to find canon ages for a lot of the games. There are many games with conflicting sources, and others with no official sources.
Most of the mothers from FE4 did actually survive the Battle of Belhala. It made calculating things difficult
Nino is 14, she tells Rebecca ,13, her age in their C support convo
Nino is 14, she tells Rebecca ,13, her age in their C support convo
@AaronPICAR I must have misremembered from somewhere. Though Nino's timeline is all sorts of messed up, since she acts like she grew up with the Fang, but they also say Sonia's only been there for a year
@@Rezkeshdadesh I can’t give Nino a paired ending because they’re all tragic. In my headcanon she goes into hiding during FE6 after putting the twins in a orphanage and finds them afterwards.
Not sure if it counts but in Thracia 776 you can have Eda and Dean fight against the green southern thracian dracoknights that attack you in the chapter they join. While the war in FE5 is mostly against the Empire, Leonster and Southern Thracia are legally at war with each other since the tragedy of the Gáe Bolg
And idk if Leif lying to Hannibal about who he is counts as perfidy, since while he doesn't fight him he does kill a bunch of dracoknights two chapters later and gets spared by Altena for being under Hannibal's protection
That's fair. I think you could argue that Southern Thracia is sorta part of the empire, at least subservient to them, but that is honestly a bit of a stretch.
That's fair about Leif, but even if he was 100% honest, Hannibal prolly would've overlooked it, since he was kinda against Thracia and only helping them because of Corpre.
So you’re telling me Edelgard’s route has the LEAST amount of war crimes of all possible paths in 3H??? LOL gotta be some of the greatest news I’ve seen all day 🙏🏼
Common Edelgard win.
You forget, Edelgard's route is also the shortest route
@@clarehidalgo
That does not matter because the war crimes are frontloaded.
That's because she did nothing wrong
Marth not being the number one War crime machine is a surprise
Isuka. Let´s poison the water..
Micaiah. no. That´s bad.
Ike: Mercenary groups are pretty illegal I think XD
Rimworld players: Oh boy, these are below rookie numbers
Also micaiah: lets do a racial massacre and set sanaki's knights on fire
Really interesting original video idea,
Which is harder to do these days so very well done to you sir
Huh, where does Roy's army rank? Or did I miss something??
I may have forgotten him 💀
He's still on the spreadsheet tho, he got 13
When you confuse Pokemon with Warcrimes and try to catch them all
As one of my friend once quoted from somewhere "Geneva conversions? More like Geneva suggestions"
What even is a Geneva anyways@@clarehidalgo
At this point with the comment section we need a follow up video. Maybe with a minimum and maximum potential of war crimes per character.
Haha, that would be a lot of work to math out. In lots of Games with true stealing like Thracia and the Tellius games, you can steal nearly everything, which makes calculating that all very difficult. With this video I did go for more of a minimum/low average assuming all characters are recruited, tho the numbers would look a bit lower for most characters if you cut those optional ones out.
I do plan on making a follow up video, tho on the games' antagonists
I thought that the elemental magics would be counted as war crimes for being more suffering than necessary.
Namely the Incendiary spells & weapons. Not the same as starting forest fires, but there's a lot of restrictions in incendiary weapons.
Same with weather type stuff, that's probably not great. Like Fimbulvetr for example, I imagine that's not good. But I don't know the specifics
But most offensive magic is probably chock full of war crimes, not just status staves & poison tomes. I don't know how to rank light or dark magic though
Flayn's roughly the "same" age as the other students. She's definitely "older" than Lysithea. Not in the "really an ancient dragon" sense, but in the "how she presents despite being an ancient dragon" sense. She's not a 10 year old like most of hee counterparts in the series.
Yeah, that'd my bad for not realizing that. She shouldn't have counted
“Conscript them by bribing them” so in other words, hiring them?
Hiring mercenaries means no war crimes for you!
Celica has an awful lot of war crimes considering how she treated Alm for fighting against Rigel.
She uses magic and her closest subordinates as well, and while using incendiary weapons and electrocution is not classified as a war crime when used agaisnt enemy combatants its still very moraly reprehensible as that's an uncesary amount of suffering.
So she is being a hypocrite and holier than thou despite having a pretty moraly grey army force
Us Edelgard stans are gonna take this video and run with it. I love all of them but she gets unnecessary hate when the other lords and Rhea do terrible things too. I love how morally grey everyone in 3H is, it makes the characters way more interesting
Really just depends on who you've talked to. I've personally seen plenty of Edelgard fans who give Dimitri and Rhea fans lots of unnecessary hate. But Claude fans as a whole tend to be the least confrontational. And Rhea fans tend to get shit on the most, by far, because she's attacked almost unilaterally by Edelgard stans who blame everything on her.
Well Claude's no better as if you side with him, a lot of people will die as Dimitri and Cornelia will end up destroying the Kingdom of Faerghus, the Adrestian Empire falls apart after Edelgard's death, Nemesis comes back to life and starts killing anyone on sight, the war lasts way longer than both Crimson Flower and Azure Moon, and of course, if female Byleth marries Claude, he ends being a dead beat king who leaves Fodlan so he can rule Almyra without realizing that some of the Adrestian provinces end up revolting against the United Kingdom fo Fodlan to regain their independence.
@@samflood5631 you can't blame Claude for most of the things you mention. Dimitri killing civilians and Cornelia fragmenting Faerghus are things he has absolutely nothing to do with. VW also ends the war slightly sooner than in AM, if we go by a chapter basis. Nemesis's resurrection also wasn't his fault, that was Thales acting out of spite more than anything else.
Yeah, leaving a power vacuum in Adrestia is terrible, but what exactly could he have done that wouldn't upset people? If he placed someone new in command, people would accuse him of selecting a puppet ruler or forcing Adrestia under Almyran occupation. And whether he liked it or not, he had to take over rule of Almyra one day. He wouldn't be a "dead beat king" if he had any say in it. And considering how xenophobic Fodlan as a whole is, staying would have put the people he cared about in danger. The best he could do was bust open Fodlan's Locket and try to work on improving relations between the two countries.
@@nataliecoronado4206 You're right that the things that happened on Claude's route in other territories don't have anything to do with him, but I don't think Claude *did* ever have to take control of Almyra one day; Shahid is plenty interested in inheriting the Almyran throne, after all, and Khalid was taken from Almyra purposefully to live as Claude. Hell, Cyril knows more about Almyra and has more lived experience in that culture than Claude does. It seems to me that the best course of action would have been to stay in Fodlan to manage the unification (reunification? It was all Adrestia way before the story began), and work toward building peace with Almyra by working with Shahid or whoever takes the Almyran throne, one ruler on each side of Fodlan's Throat to bridge the gap.
The thing about defeating an enemy army is that if you don't control the territory you take, you will lose it. Claude had a responsibility to the people of Adrestia after removing their system of government to supply a new one. He definitely learned that in War Crimes School, and for a guy who likes strategy so much, it's probably something he knew before heading to the Academy. Leaving the power vaccuum is the worst choice he could have possibly made, because it left room for an uncontrollable element to fill that void, and the common people don't have any choice but to follow along. He could have put *any* Adrestian of notoriety in there to hold the territory, given them the support necessary to quash rebellion before it got too big, and held true to his goal of unification and border opening.
@@raeoverhere923He doesn't leave a power vacuum, though. IIRC, Claude always leaves Byleth in charge of the Church, and since 2/3rds of Fodlan's governments are gone, that puts Byleth as the one with power to fix the continent.
10:02 Does Birthright chapter 9 count as an instance of perfidy? Hinoka and I think also Azura briefly disguised themselves as Nohrian soldiers, in order to blend in with said soldiers who had just gotten done committing perfidy by dressing as civilians of a neutral nation. They take out a couple Nohrian soldiers, *then* reveal themselves, and the map starts shortly after that.
Is double perfidy a thing? Would they both be in trouble for perfidy, or only the Nohrians?
Yeah, I forgot about this. This is absolutely an instance of perfidy for both parties involved.
Whoever looses the war would be in trouble for it, realistically
Ive gotnto contest some of the 'forced to fight their home country' entries on the point that willing defection doesnt count. It has to be the commander compelling the change of allegiance.
Glad to see some Original Mystery of the Emblem appreciation
What a great concept for a video! I love this
Best introduction to a video ever
Elise and Sakura are both adults, both just have a childish character. This is remarked on in most every support for Elise, and some for Sakura too.
Edelgard committing the least War Crimes out of the Three Houses Lords is so ironic considering how half of the 3H fandom bashes her for it
Yeah, I was right there with them back then. It just goes to how how differently everyone is portrayed outside their own route
I mean.... the war WAS started by her. And did shoot up her school.
If this video primarily focused on playable Lords, it's not really taking into account their actions as enemies. And Edelgard as playable in CF would have additional crimes if you add up her actions on AM/VW/SS. Ditto for Claude and Dimitri too.
Not to mention scale of crimes aren't always equal either. Edelgard starting the war itself is what leads to everything else, making her the indirect cause of many war crimes on every side of the spectrum.
I figured before even watching that Leif was going to be high on the list. The fact that you're basically leading a poor ramshackle guerilla force is one of my favorite aspects of that game.
Great video! If you plan to do stuff like this in the future, I recommend some visual guides to show on screen, to help people not get lost and not have dull blank screens. In this case, for example, I'd show the crimes and the game currently being discussed. Cheers!
As a friend, you are… replaceable.
FAREWELL
Y'a know, I always had curiosity about Genealogy and Thracia, but never really bothered much, but knowing that after Leif's count, I think my curiosity just peaked
Play Thraica! It's really fun. It has a reputation for being hard (and definitely is at some points), but the game is incredibly goofy with all the stuff you can do.
FE4's story is also amazing : )
To this day historians look back and wonder how these incomprehensible strategies ever lead to victory
“As a friend, you are replaceable.”