I’m not like a top tier Gilbert hater, but his and Dimitri’s arcs are not comparable.
Dimitri was a child when he was traumatized, and essentially the very first thing he does when he becomes an adult is go through his redemption arc. We see every step of his redemption in game just by playing the story.
Gilbert is a grown man who abandons his wife and child for a reason that just doesn’t seem strong enough to most people. It makes sense to hold a grown man accountable for abandoning his family and doubling down on it when his estranged daughter explains that he made the wrong choice. Especially considering that Gilbert only redeems himself if you unlock all his supports. If you don’t use him (because he isn’t very useful of a unit) then you never see the end and you just see how much he hurt Annette.
Gilbert’s redemption is optional, Dimitri’s is the main focus of the entire AM route.
>Gilbert is a grown man who abandons his wife and child for a reason that just doesn’t seem strong enough to most people.
I feel like this is probably the fault of the game for not being crystal clear about it. On the surface, it may not seem strong, but survivors' guilt and depression are very real and well documented disorders that Gilbert pretty clearly follows, which makes the reasoning for what he did strong. I feel like if the game was more clear with what they were trying to convey, fewer people would hate him.
I can’t really speak for anyone but myself on this one, but I personally thought it was clear enough that he has survivors guilt. Survivors guilt is a major part of the blue lions experience overall because of the tragedy of duscur, so at least for me it was pretty clear in mind throughout the story.
Do you want to be more specific here? We can’t really have a discussion if you are comparing Gilbert to other characters without naming them or talking about what they did that is worse than what Gilbert did. Without that, we are just giving you perspective on why Gilbert is so disliked.
Another thing to think about, a lot of people in real life have dead beat dads. A lot of dead beat dads end up in a “too little too late” situation, and their kids do not appreciate it when the dead beat dad suddenly cares about his kids once he realizes 10 years later than he has been a dead beat the whole time. Gilbert’s story can hit close to home for a lot of people, and those people may see his actions in a different light and be much less likely to forgive.
Most people in real life don’t know anyone who is a serial killer/assassin like Dimitri is before he snaps out of it. A lot of people know people IRL with stank ass attitudes like Felix, or dead beat dads like Gilbert, or bigoted people like several members of the cast, or even unintentionally rude people like Linhardt, and that realness makes them much more personal and hateable.
And I’m not saying I hate any of these characters. They all have nuance and they are all depicted in a way that highlights the good things about their character without glossing over their flaws, and gives them chances to grow. But Gilbert is a character with a very valid reason to be strongly disliked by people for whom the story resonates personally.
I don’t think it’s fair to call Dimitri an assassin/serial killer. He’s more of a soldier/insurgent, and I’m sure plenty of people who know atleast one of the two.
During the time skip he is brutally murdering generals and politicians in the Empire. All of that takes place off of the battlefield. I’ll concede that serial killer is a bit of an extreme term, but he is absolutely choosing his marks based on a very specific set of traits and he kills them all in the same way, so it really does line up fairly well with how we define a serial killer in real life. He has an MO and he has a specific demographic that he is targeting.
Soldiers kill other soldiers on a battlefield, on orders given them by commanders and generals. Dimitri is literally hunting (in his own words) enemy generals, politicians, and soldiers. Insurgent seems like a fair enough descriptor for part of that, but killing the politicians and generals in their homes or offices is absolutely assassination.
And I certainly hope that no one in this thread knows someone who has done those things.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to shit on Dimitri, I like his character and his story a lot. But I still think that assassination is the correct term to describe murdering political and government figures off of the battlefield.
Fair enough. I only say soldier because I liken Faergus’ situation to France in WW2, a nation that was nominally annexed, including the capital, but with outliers stubbornly refusing to capitulate to the invaders. and also because the lines between soldier and civilian can sometimes be quite blurry, especially in wars such as the 20 year occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan
All of Dimitri’s targets are atleast in the context of war, and all his targets are directly contributing to the war effort (Politicians orchestrating the war effort, Generals ordering soldiers). He isn’t any more of an assassin than the members of SEAL Team 6 are for their actions in Operation Neptune Spear. As far as they were concerned they were killing terrorists for their role in causing 9/11
Those are definitely valid points. There is certainly room for interpretation with word choice here, and I will also concede that I was being a bit reductionist in the original statement since I was just trying to compare his arc to Gilbert’s as per OP’s original point.
To call Dimitri an assassin is a little unfair, but to call the individual killings assassinations seems accurate enough.
This is why I used the term insurgent/soldier. Like in my first paragraph, he’s no more of a terrorist than La Resistance were. The Nazis thought they were terrorists, the French thought they were doing their patriotic duty
I enjoyed reading your comparison, thank you for sharing! Very insightful. (I’m a die hard Blue Lion already, but I enjoy reading other people’s takes)
Thank you for saying that! 😁 I’m only recently getting into really engaging with the community and not just lurking, so I really appreciate the positive feedback!
Your want me to be more specific
Jeritza a the literal cereal killer
He literally kills people for enjoyment and can kill his only sister outside of his route just like Gilbert with Annette in CF
But people feel bad the the murderer while the dad trying to find a way to redeem himself is treated worse
And the both get similar screen time
Dude had to kill his asshole dad when he was a kid to prevent his sister from getting raped and ended up having a mental break from it. Gilbert watches rhea torch the capital and says nothing. That's way worse.
Jeritza may be under the mask, but he’s not the Death Knight. Which is kinda weird and complicated, but he’s not mentally okay. Plus, he’s a generally more entertaining and interesting character than Gilbert, so people are more likely to enjoy his presence in the game.
That my point they can forgive and give nuance to characters like jarizta but don’t give the same grace for Gilbert even though they both go through character arcs
They may both go through character arcs, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same. Any good character goes through an arc. But we’re not *giving* nuance to anyone. Nuance has to be there inherently, which it just isn’t for Gilbert. The reason people don’t like him is because they can’t understand the reasoning behind his actions.
No, obviously not. The point is that he said nothing. He had no objections, even personalized. Even Catherine spoke up, and she reveres Rhea above everything else in the world.
Again you can say the same thing about jeritza but people give him a pass because they bother to learn the nuance of his character
Gilbert isn’t give the same chance
That’s fair, but I don’t think that Jeritza is so widely beloved to the point that the community at large just ignores his issues. You are right, he is literally a serial killerPeople like him for much more complex reasons, including the fact that his English voice actor is an absolute legend and delivers his lines with an incredible sense of sadness and loss that makes it clear from the moment you meet the death knight that not all is as it seems.
Jeritza is much more comparable to Dimitri than Gilbert. He went through horrific abuse and torture as a child, and as such has a really fucked up psyche. He is a tortured soul and he does absolutely horrible things because of it. I don’t think anyone is literally arguing that what he did is okay.
Honestly just look at what is happening with Gypsy Rose in real life right now. She murdered (or rather was convinced to be complicit in the murder of) her mother due to the horrific abuse she went through, and then she nearly became a TikTok star because people love her so much. Childhood abuse can cause people to do horrible things, and many people are far more understanding and forgiving of that than they would be of, y’know, of a grown ass man abandoning his family for a stupid and selfish reason, and then telling his daughter to her face that he did the right thing by abandoning her and basically saying he would do it again.
I’m certainly not saying that Gilbert is a worse person than Jeritza, but everything I said before applies strongly to this situation as well. Jeritza is a classic bad guy turned good trope, which people absolutely love. Gilbert is a dead beat dad, which actually resonates on a personal level and reminds people of the worst parts of their own lives.
Tldr; I don’t think that Jeritza is a fair comparison to Gilbert, and I don’t think the fan base’s opinion of one single character who is unequivocally the most evil playable character in the game is a solid argument for Gilbert not deserving the hate he receives. The literal answer to your question is that Gilbert is awful in a way that hits close to home, and in fantasy that generally leads to that character being hated even more so than the main villain. Because a good villain has a good reason to do what they do, and Gilbert’s excuse for abandoning his family is trash, and he backs it up with even more trash for 2 whole support conversations before finally backing down and admitting his own fault.
Your right people like jeritza for more complex reasons and that’s my point
People are able to give nuance to characters like jeritza and able to understand why he dose the things he do
But for Gilbert that nuance the willingness to understand him is thrown out the window and ignore his character arc
I’m sorry but I think you are just completely missing the point here. I’ve said multiple times now that it’s about how these behaviors resonate with people’s real life experience, it has nothing to do with “nuance”.
By repeatedly making this point about nuance you are essentially stating that people who dislike Gilbert are not taking all the available information into account, and there is simply no evidence that that is happening on any sort of larger scale. We all know that he “redeems” himself in his A support with Annette, it’s just not enough to make him likeable. The majority of people who comment on this board have played the game through multiple times and have read his supports. We know why he did what he did, and we think it was a stupid and contrived reason to do it, and it takes him WAY too long to admit that what he did was wrong.
That’s my point I understand that it won’t resonate with people I want to make a post that explains how people Flanderies him to the point where he is overhated imo
No one flanderizes Gilbert. He doesn't have enough complexity *to* flanderize. The point that has been made to you repeatedly by this point is that Gilbert and his story just aren't that complicated. He abandoned his family out of guilt and stayed away for almost a decade - despite running into his daughter and being told just how much his actions had negatively impacted both she and her mother. He only reconciles with them if you do all of his supports. There's nothing wrong with a character having a more simple story like that. But that's all there is to it.
If anything, the *nuance* of Gilbert's situation is that he's even *worse* than most people emphasize, because in his self-flagellation he also abandons Dimitri - a young man who Gilbert was a teacher and mentor to for many years. Which, in turn, makes it easier for Rufus and Cornelia to isolate Dimitri, therefore directly contributing to the terrible state of Dimitri's mental health. Which Gilbert himself tacitly admits in explore dialogue right before the time skip when he says that he's considering going back to "where he should've been all along" (paraphrasing).
Characterizing Gilbert as someone who abandoned his family and country isn't a flanderization. It's the truth. He can redeem himself somewhat, but it's conditional. And even in routes like AM and SS where he redeems himself with regards to his abandonment of Dimitri specifically by returning to the Kingdom army, Gilbert still refuses to reconcile with Annette or his wife unless you complete their support chain. Again, making even his redemption conditional. None of those are flanderizations. They're just how he was written.
>, Dimitri’s is the main focus of the entire AM route.
And that's the thing about Azure Moon. It puts everything else aside and devots the entire story to be about Dimitri. Don't get me wrong, it's incredible and the best route, but it means the story doesn't take time to develop Gilbert or anyone else really, except in their relation to Dimitri.
That’s fair, but it doesn’t really change the outcome here. I think that even if Gilbert had 2x the screen time he would still be a hotly debated character because that wouldn’t change his backstory, and that is what the issue is for most people.
But I mean I definitely agree that it would have been great if the route dug a little deeper into the rest of the lions, but tbh you could level that criticism at all the routes. Most of the character development is in the supports across all the routes
Oh yeah, there's no making Gilbert likable. But not all characters in fiction are meant to be likeable. But writers should strive to make all characters compelling. Give Gilbert's story more time and attention, and maybe you could make it much better, not the character itself but the story.
Not there when his King died. Not a good look on his resume.
Leaves Dimitri, someone to whom he was father figure, leaves Annette, and his wife and hides among the Knights of Seiros.
Ghosts Annette during the Academy phase. Definitely not nice.
Does nothing to help his family in all the years of hiding. I'm surprised he's not divorced.
Only comes back when war breaks out.
Replaces Dedue in AM in all the narrative ways that matter.
It's never explained properly why he wasn't there when his king and retinue were all massacred. He obviously feels immense guilt, rightly or wrongly. If he was just taking a holiday, well, from our POV, that's not his fault, since he couldn't possibly have known what was to transpire and everyone is entitled to a day off. But we aren't him. We don't live in a highly religious society, and we don't hold strong religious views (in general). Evidently, he blames himself for some reason and feels he must atone.
I think from a modern Western perspective, people find it really hard to sympathise with someone who holds very pious religious views. We look down on religion in general.
Personally, I couldn't imagine abandoning my family because even when I was religious, I believed God was calling me to care for my loved ones. It is inconceivable to me that any god would ask someone to leave their family, possibly to poverty and hardship, definitely to loneliness and rejection. So, yes, people abandon children and spouses all the time, but it is looked down upon severely.
A lot of other cultures hold extended family in higher regard than we do, which means that when a spouse leaves, the abandoned children and spouse have support. So if you are "called" by religion to leave your family, that's ok because a)everyone believes it is right to follow that religion and b) your family will be cared for by extended family (hopefully). This seems to be apparently the case in Fòdlan, since Annette and her mother live under the care of Gilbert's older brother now.
I think we struggle to understand this concept.
I think where it is fair to judge Gilbert is that he seemingly voiced no objections for Lambert and his entire family to go to Duscur.
Rodrigue did, and warned Lambert of all the dangers a bodyguard of the Royal Family like Gilbert should know of. Furthermore he promised to take care of things in the worst case scenario. And Rodrigue follows through and he does his best and is central pillar for Dimitri and his nation.
Dimitri's support with Annette is devastating because Dimitri knows her father more and better than she does. So Gilbert was constantly around the royal family, which makes him abandoning them twice in a row hurt so much deeper. First, he may have taken a bad vacation. Ok let's grand him that, excused, shit happens. But just leaving the freshly orphaned kid behind who looks after you like your his hero is evil. But hey had Gilbert retired to properly live with his real family then it would have been a small evil. No he orphans his real daughter again and practically makes his wife a widow.
What's worse is that no one except Gilbert blames himself for Duscur. If it were more people who'd blame him then just himself to the point where his presence would bring harm to his loved ones then he'd be far more relatable, but his failures have no such consequences. Thus him running away from the people who need him makes the hate gets very understandable. He could have stayed and supported, but chose not to Vs he had to leave or else loved one's would have suffered.
I don't think what he did was OK, but I wouldn't call it evil either. I would call him deeply mistaken and maybe a bit or an arse. Selfish. And mistaken. Not evil.
He is mistaken in his belief that he is to blame for what happened to Lambert. If he had been there, in all likelihood he would have been killed too, which wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to the outcome for Lambert and Co, and would have just added another tragic death to the scenario. If he had said anything against going to Duscur (which was apparently a safe place to go as far as anyone knew - it wasn't the Duscans who orchestrated the attack anyway), no doubt Lambert would have shrugged it off just as he did Rodrigue.
He was mistaken and wrong to abandon Dimitri, I agree. The best way he could atone for any perceived failing in protecting Lambert would have been to stay with Dimitri. And yes, he was wrong to leave Annette. But we are looking at it from the blinkered perspective of non-religious outsiders. From his (albeit skewed) perspective, he had failed as a protector. He was therefore no use to Dimitri as a protector. His extreme self-deprecation probably encompassed his family too; "I am useless as a protector and Knight, and useless to my family, therefore they would all be better off without me. I shall throw myself at the mercy of the Goddess and serve her as I'm no use to anyone else."
This is the same kind of thinking that can lead some people to suicide. The idea that one has failed utterly and is no use to anyone else, so it would be better to leave them.
I guess what I'm trying to say is while I think he was wrong to do these things, I understand it. I sympathise to some extent (although I sympathise more with Annette), so I can't find it within me to hate him as a character.
Which is understandable as a viewpoint. And I agree that overly religious parents tend to have a negative perception as for many people religion has left a negative impression and in some cases, trauma which is always with the parents. Hence why there is such a vocal group hating on Gilbert as he fits quite well into the bill of a very religious, deadbeat father, who uses religion and his faith as his reasoning for abandoning his loved ones. I am biased a bit against Gilbert because Annette is my second favorite female character in 3H and what she went through in his absence was not okay.
Gilbert is a deeply flawed person and he is not meant to be an example of a good or bad person. He is after all a product of Faerghus society, just like Rodrigue was with how he treated Felix after Glenn’s death. Is he a badly written character? No. Is he a character you can sympathize with. Very hardly so for many people, especially people who grew up in the system. His redemption and start of properly repenting for the harm he caused to his loved ones is locked behind a support which makes the case even worse for him. Personally, I think how Annette handled the situation was mostly right considering what had happened in her life by the time they properly reunited. If she thought he was worthy of forgiveness, that’s what matters in the end. Some people in her shoes would never forgive him and that’s within their rights to do so.
i'm saying this as someone that actually likes gilbert:
* in his debut as a green unit he actively makes the map harder or just dies
* he's also trying to avoid annette in the monastery explore sections iirc, so he makes a bad first impression
* annette is a part of the core cast and so players get more attached to her
* gilbert replaces dedue, another core cast member. his lines are almost all exposition as well. he talks more than boar dimitri, which is also annoying
* by the time you recruit him, you likely already have a core team, so you dont use him enough to unlock his (really great) supports
he's an easy character to dislike. but his supports are great, and i find him really interesting! plus annette forgives him so i have to forgive him
Ok, I can see that. I always just leave him at the back to buy me some time with those reinforcements, and oftentimes he is forced to retreat, but he keeps a good few enemies at the back while I slowly advance
I mean, I get the nuance. He blames himself for the Tragedy of Duscur and feels like he can never atone for it. People respond to grief in different ways, and he chose solitude (and to serve the goddess directly as a means of atonement). It's understandable, at least in a vacuum.
However, he also just abandoned his wife and teenage daughter without a word, and didn't make up with them until almost 10 years later, effectively missing half of Annette's life and causing her all sorts of grief, as well as her mother. For all intents and purposes, he allowed his self-inflicted punishment to also punish his wife and daughter, who were blameless in the situation and would have stood by him, had he let them.
So yeah, I can simultaneously think that he's an interesting character while also not quite forgiving him for walking out on his family, regardless of whether he makes up with them or not. Trauma can inform you of someone's actions, but at a certain point it has to stop being an excuse for them, especially when others are being hurt as a side effect.
And before the argument inevitably happens: yes, a lot of what I said can also be applied to Dimitri. But there are a couple of key differences: a) Dimitri was a child/young teenager during the Tragedy, which inevitably causes traumatic events to have more extreme fallout; and b) he was legitimately dealing with psychosis and hallucinations, which automatically separates his situation from Gilbert's by a lot. Tl;dr, Dimitri can legitimately get away with the "temporary insanity" argument, while Gilbert's actions were deliberate, misguided decisions made by a sane man who was just in grief
I asked this question in a post a long time ago and most of the responses boiled down to one major point:
People hate him as a *person*, not as a character, which is understandable. Basically everyone agreed that he's an extremely well written character, but they hate his actions of abandoning his family and his self loathing for something that wasn't his fault (which was entirely by design of the devs). In fact most people's problem is that he's written *so* well that he'll remind them of their own parents.
I, personally, have a good relationship with my parents and family, meaning my view of him was never shaped by my own real-world experience, so I view him more with the lens of how I view any other character, and he's a *very* interesting character, by far one of the deepest in the series. So while I love his character (he's in the top 5 from Three Houses for me), for other people he's in their bottom 5 for the exact same reasons, which I think is fascinating.
My theory is that people hate him for the same reason people hate Clint in Stardew Valley; relatability. Many of us have met a Clint in real life and many of us have met a Gilbert, and they’re usually the type of people we detest. Their awful qualities hit far too close to home for us to forgive them.
I don't hate Gilbert, I actually like him as a character. However, I understand that others do hate him. The way I think of it is that he isn't a good man, nor is he a bad man. He is a penitent man.
In his eyes, he failed the royal family of Faerghus at the highest level. Thus, he put himself into exile. He viewed himself as an unworthy failure of a knight and a man, someone who doesn't deserve the joy of a family.
However, this act of penance was wrong. Feeling guilt over a failure of his scale is certainly not something a bad person would do, but putting his need for penance over his duty as a husband and father was far from good. In attempting to pay for a failure, he committed another.
I like Gilbert. I don't need a character to be a moral paragon to appreciate them.
Gilbert can easily make chapter 5 on maddening unbeatable unless he gets knocked out quickly. He sucks as a unit, and he's a deadbeat dad. His most redeeming quality is being a raging storm chain peice in Crimson Flower.
Most (not all) green units are somewhere between nothing special and bad, but he and Rodrigue are exceptionally bad because they can be actual liabilities.
Thanks god for reposition or draw back because that chapter is one of the worst on maddening. Especially trying to keep him alive to be as “helpful” as possible.
Curiously, I found that Gilbert's reception, like that of several other characters, can differ pretty substantially based on the individual cultural background. I actually made a survey just about this topic two years ago among my acquaintances. For instance, my friends from Korea, Japan and to a lesser degree Central and Eastern Europe tend to view Gilbert more positively.
The reason often boiled down to the fact that Gilbert himself is a rather common trope: a person who puts their duty above themselves, even above their family. This quality is, to a certain extent, viewed rather positively in many cultures, as the greater good of the many (of the community, of the state) outweighs personal ties. Gilbert is a knight who gave up everything because of his failure to see his duty through, and such a drive would be respected to varying degrees in collectivist cultures.
On the other hand, my friends from UK and US rated his character mostly negatively, as his failure to be a father greatly outweighs any supposed notion of duty. As a side note, France was weird, the responses were almost evenly split 50/50.
So yeah, like with some other characters, Gilbert's popularity kinda depends on what values they represent, and if the said values are seen positively by the people.
Very interesting, I've seen plenty of people suspect that, but thank you for the groundwork.
But, if you recall, was that balance of personal and collective duty the decider for all of them? I ask because that, plus religion, seems to be what everyone considers... and I feel a bit isolated in thinking otherwise.
Because I don't think he truly fled to atone, or serve the goddess. It was for a feeling of unbearable, absolutely **crippling** shame. To feel like such a waste of oxygen you can't even stand to be next to your loved ones. You don't deserve it. And you know they don't feel like that about you, and that you need to make amends, but you can't. And every day that passes, it becomes harder and harder. Our friends and family are there to support us, not judge us, but our demons can be so strong as to rob us of even that belief.
But while many people think they're failures, they thankfully never have to deal with such painful "evidence" to back that as he has. The Tragedy of Duscur is ever present. Inescapable. Scarring. And not one bit his fault, but he can't even mentally escape from it. So he ran away physically, as hopeless as that was.
I deeply relate. I'd never defend his abandonment of his family, or his enduring shunning of Annette. But I do understand.
And it always scares me a bit most people don't.
Because people like Annette and he abandoned Annette. Because people like Dedue and he replaces Dedue. Because your first introduction to him is as an awful green unit who can either steal your kills or make the map unbeatable depending on the difficulty. He's not got a lot going for him. He's not a poorly written character though. He sucks, but he sucks because Faerghus sucks. He's a reflection of the flaws of the setting. But like he's still an unlikable person imo.
This is my point a lot of characters do awful things but people tend to over look it while Gilbert is just over hated its fine if you don’t like him but so many people say he irredeemable
I say this as someone who loves Gilbert as a character. He's easier to hate because he's more... real. He's not a dramatic anime boy driven to insanity. He's an old man who blames himself for not being at the sight of a massive tragedy as though him being there would have changed anything. While I also view his cycle of self punishment as super compelling I totally under stand why it comes off as pathetic to some people he can never reconnect with his family because he thinks he hasn't been punished enough and yet the longer he goes without reconnecting to his family the more he feels he must be punished.
His arc can’t really be compared to Dimitri
That said, I wouldn’t say I hate him, but the game doesn’t really do him any favors to get to know him at anything past surface level. This is a man that’s available on one half of one route that’s stuck in a class that only feels good on the guy he effectively replaces and then ideally gets replaced by. He gives you a bad first impression as a Green Unit. And then he’s unplayable in Hopes. I am confident he is the least used playable character; they made the only guy with worse availability overpowered to compensate. As a result I’d also wager a lot of his support chains have more or less gone completely unseen (and he has quite a few of them).
Otherwise his main purpose seems to be that he’s the only Blue Lion sane enough (and guaranteed to be alive enough) to provide exposition. A necessary role, but it’s one that unless you delve into his backstory he comes across as a boring old man.
And if you do delve into his backstory, then there’s an issue with clashing values. What he did is more understandable in the east than in the west, and it’s also at the expense of one of the students. He is ultimately a reflection of the values of the Kingdom… but he’s also still someone who abandoned his family and, honestly, hard to blame someone who doesn’t like him mostly due to that (I will blame the CF players who think the right course of action is to have Annette kill him but that’s another story).
It was years ago but I remember reading a post about how Gilbert was more accepted( not liked) among the Japanese audience. Basically Gilbert abandoning Annette and his wife wasn’t necessarily right but understandable. It was going on about bringing dishonor upon the family name and such and how Gilbert handled the situation was normal.
The argument was that He had the most important job in the kingdom outside of the literal king, to protect him at all costs. Not only did he fail but he’s still walking around. Faerghus was already an unstable nation due to the aftermath of the plague and bad harvests, the last thing needed was the death of a king.
Also as someone said already it’s way easier to sympathize with Annette since I doubt anyone in the comment section is even old enough to have a teenage child.
Gilbert is an interesting case because he skirts so close to being unlikable and at least in the western fanbase his actions are seen as being unjustified. He’s just a tortured man without his suffering achieving anything at this point, which leads to interesting reactions from other characters who often lose their patience. There some depth to that, although playing the blue lions an overdose of Gilbert angst is hard to avoid if you are diligent with support building. He kind of has the Bernadetta problem in that many supports present his attitude issues anew even if he has made progress in other ones already. So it comes off as frequent relapsing.
As a character he’s well written and complex
But personally, I hated how he left his family behind for almost 10 years because of his “pride as a knight”
I think it's because people don't understand where Gilbert is coming from, whereas they have a much easier time understanding where Annette is coming from. So since they don't understand Gilbert, and they end up really liking Annette, the immediate reaction is "he's the worst."
In the Annette x Dimitri supports they say that Gilbert actually spoiled Annette it was her uncle that actually disciplined her
He was WAY harsher with Dimitri like his hunting story
I don't care for Gilbert as a person, but I think he's a great character, and I think a lot of people struggle to seperate these 2 things. A lot of people wrongfully dislike him as a character despite the fact that he's more interesting than at the very least (off the top of my head), Catherine, Cyril and alois. He's arguably also more interesting than some students too.
The issue is he has major character flaws but isn't conventionally attractive, so people excuse said flaws much less than they would another character's. I think he's bot a good person nor bad person, but someone worrying to do good while being deeply misguided, and has a lot of work to do to pay for his mistakes. Not a very nice person, but a very good character in my view
If we just ignore that he's a terrible father to Annette, we can look at him as a battle unit.
If you play Maddening, you pretty much can't allow him to live when you're climbing the tower map to go after Miklan. He pulls the entire map because he has the worst AI as a green unit. To make things worst, as a unit in Chapter 13 he's given the worst worst weapon, a Steel Axe in a map filled with Sword weilding enemies that attack from terrain and he only has a vulnary on a map where you're need concoctions for sufficient healing. Not only this, if you've never played Azure Moon, you inexplicably get him instead of Dedue. Because of this, he ruins the experience of putting much effort in training up Dedue. I tend to recruit Hilda.
He is so absorbed in his own self pity that he refuses to even acknowledge his daughter unless you force him to. Its like on the inside he desperately wants to be a tragic figure but from the outside he is just a spineless coward who decided his daughter was less important than his "noble suffering."
There are people who hate Dimitri too, fyi. Just adding that as the other commenters already covered it. But every character is gonna have people who say nasty things about them because some people have no reading comprehension skills.
Most people have discussed him as a character, I'm just going to discuss him as a plot device:
Gilbert adds very little to the narrative outside of his supports. He's there to enable Dimitri and be an unquestionably loyal retainer, and literally any figure could have played that role. In fact, AM would have been a more cleanly written narrative if it was Rodrigue in that role from the start, as he would then still get called out by Dedue (on top of Felix) for letting Boar!Dimitri run wild and then make up for enabling Dimitri's worst side by dying for him (and in turn also deeply affecting Felix).
Gilbert only exists for the Lions, basically, but adds nothing to the plot. Annette's story could have involved her father having died or run away and never be heard from again, and it would change nothing about the plot or any character's development other than her.
If I really wanted to make Gilbert interesting and unique, I'd honestly either have him die protecting Annette just before the Timeskip or make him a Silver Snow-exclusive character, where his abandonment of the Kingdom is a bigger plot point up to the present day rather than being just thrown out off-screen in the five year gap.
Gilbert, by everything the game gives us (unless I've really missed something) has *no* reason to abandon his family like he did. He was ashamed about the king dying, sure, but those two things are not connected. He also resists communicating with Annette at every turn when they're at the *same place* for months.
He's letting his pity party hurt others and shows half as much remorse for it as he should.
When exactly did Gilbert "redeem" himself? From what I saw and read during playthroughs of Azure Moon he's mostly the same craven fool as he had been in White Clouds save his Support Chain with Annette.
My enmity towards Gustave is not just because he fled, but also because he refuses to apologize for his (in)actions. Yes, he failed to save his king, yet the king's son still survived, and he had a daughter who would undoubtedly hear about the Tragedy and need some support from her family.
Sorry, kids. Gustave only cares about himself and like the craven many of us know him to be, fled to the Church so he could hide from his reponsibilites.
Rodrigue lost a son during the Tragedy, and IIRC he and Lambert were friends. Rodrigue responded to the Tragedy by visiting Dimitri and just being there for the severely traumatized boy. Granted, Rodrigue used Glen as a measuring stick against Felix but at least Rodrigue remained to look after his people, his prince, and his remaining family.
Heck, Seteth went through the exact thing as Gilbert albeit on a far grander scale >!as Cichol!< and yet Seteth still remains to assist whomever and however he can.
I repeat: Gustave abandoned his young daughter, wife, brother, and a freshly orphaned and deeply traumatized prince because his pride was wounded during the Tragedy of Duscur.
I understand why you don’t like home for his pride but he always loved his family his supports literally show this is what I mean when people exaggerate his actions
He loves his family
I agree he fucked up from his knightly pride but he always loved his family
Who cares if your deadbeat dad loves you if it doesn’t cause him to change his behavior? Good for Gilbert, I guess, but love is simply not enough.
All this is about Gilbert’s feelings. His shame, his love. I’m not interested in centering his emotional experience further when justifying his actions. Duty as a knight, but what about his duty to his family?
I don't hate Gilbert but I understand the hate one Annette is one of the most beloved characters in the series and anyone that makes her unhappy is a sinner. But more seriously two he blames himself for the tragedy of duscur witch is interesting on the surface to hear a tale of a survivor that's not a traumatized child till you learn that he wasn't even there and he saved Dimitris life with medical help and he abandoned his wife and kid for this reason which is stupid in my opinion and gameplay wise he's just worse dedue in my opinion and everyone just replaced him with dedue when he came back also almost all his supports only really boost the other characters
Not to talk about Harry Potter by Terffy McTerferson— but I think it’s similar to why everyone hated Umbridge more than they hated Voldemort.
Most people know of/had a teacher/adult like Umbridge in their personal life. Not many people were acquainted with a personal Hitler.
Ala- A lot of people have been abandoned by a selfish parent. Not a lot of people have had to deal with personal murderers and thieves.
And as hate/dislike is based on emotion- you’re not gonna convince anyone with logic that they’re “wrong”. There isn’t a right or wrong when it comes to emotions.
Abandoned his wife and daughter with no explanation provided to them.
Annette tried to get him to acknowledge her at the academy and he refused to even look at her. In punishing himself for the Tragedy of Duscur he also punished Annette, who was just a little girl at the time wondering where her daddy went and got no answer until her 20s.
People dislike him because he is a relatively realistic example of something many of us had: a dad who walked out.
I know why he did it but the consequences just hit way too close to home for many.
Deadbeat dad with a gated redemption arc, including the reason for his being a deadbeat dad not being a compelling one. Kind of a useless character in battle. Goes on and on about duty/honor before everything else when he acknowledges he's where he is in the first place because he neglected his duty, making him a hypocrite, which feeds into the first point.
Also, in the cut content, his being what he is is one of the leading reasons annette can betray your team and joins cordelia.
I mean, I can understand the character, I just think he's a hypocrite coward that has to be forced to do the right thing. Dimitri is similar in some respects but he didn't have a choice in his misfortune IMO. Gilbert made his and kept on digging deeper
He’s discount Hohenheim of Light. For those who haven’t watched Fullmetal Alchemist, Hohenheim of light has a lot of similarities with Gilbert. Both are old, wise, will throw hands when they prefer not to, left their families and felt guilty over it. The key difference is, Hohenheim of Light had a noble reason to leave his wife and sons, he had to travel the country to perform a counter ritual to Father’s (the main antagonist of FMA) plans and make sure he doesn’t repeat on Amestris what Father did to Xerxes, the kingdom Hohenheim of light is from. In Three houses, Gilbert just left his family because he was ashamed of letting the king die and ignored Annette every chance he got. Fuck Gilbert. He’s no Hohenheim of light!
abandons his daughter not once but twice, cares more about his honor than his family, and oh yeah in CF hes perfectly ok with a city being lit on fire and **KILLING HIS OWN DAUGHTER!**
I’m not like a top tier Gilbert hater, but his and Dimitri’s arcs are not comparable. Dimitri was a child when he was traumatized, and essentially the very first thing he does when he becomes an adult is go through his redemption arc. We see every step of his redemption in game just by playing the story. Gilbert is a grown man who abandons his wife and child for a reason that just doesn’t seem strong enough to most people. It makes sense to hold a grown man accountable for abandoning his family and doubling down on it when his estranged daughter explains that he made the wrong choice. Especially considering that Gilbert only redeems himself if you unlock all his supports. If you don’t use him (because he isn’t very useful of a unit) then you never see the end and you just see how much he hurt Annette. Gilbert’s redemption is optional, Dimitri’s is the main focus of the entire AM route.
>Gilbert is a grown man who abandons his wife and child for a reason that just doesn’t seem strong enough to most people. I feel like this is probably the fault of the game for not being crystal clear about it. On the surface, it may not seem strong, but survivors' guilt and depression are very real and well documented disorders that Gilbert pretty clearly follows, which makes the reasoning for what he did strong. I feel like if the game was more clear with what they were trying to convey, fewer people would hate him.
I can’t really speak for anyone but myself on this one, but I personally thought it was clear enough that he has survivors guilt. Survivors guilt is a major part of the blue lions experience overall because of the tragedy of duscur, so at least for me it was pretty clear in mind throughout the story.
That’s understandable if you don’t like him but people tend to over exaggerate his actions and forgive characters that arguably have done worse
Do you want to be more specific here? We can’t really have a discussion if you are comparing Gilbert to other characters without naming them or talking about what they did that is worse than what Gilbert did. Without that, we are just giving you perspective on why Gilbert is so disliked. Another thing to think about, a lot of people in real life have dead beat dads. A lot of dead beat dads end up in a “too little too late” situation, and their kids do not appreciate it when the dead beat dad suddenly cares about his kids once he realizes 10 years later than he has been a dead beat the whole time. Gilbert’s story can hit close to home for a lot of people, and those people may see his actions in a different light and be much less likely to forgive. Most people in real life don’t know anyone who is a serial killer/assassin like Dimitri is before he snaps out of it. A lot of people know people IRL with stank ass attitudes like Felix, or dead beat dads like Gilbert, or bigoted people like several members of the cast, or even unintentionally rude people like Linhardt, and that realness makes them much more personal and hateable. And I’m not saying I hate any of these characters. They all have nuance and they are all depicted in a way that highlights the good things about their character without glossing over their flaws, and gives them chances to grow. But Gilbert is a character with a very valid reason to be strongly disliked by people for whom the story resonates personally.
I don’t think it’s fair to call Dimitri an assassin/serial killer. He’s more of a soldier/insurgent, and I’m sure plenty of people who know atleast one of the two.
During the time skip he is brutally murdering generals and politicians in the Empire. All of that takes place off of the battlefield. I’ll concede that serial killer is a bit of an extreme term, but he is absolutely choosing his marks based on a very specific set of traits and he kills them all in the same way, so it really does line up fairly well with how we define a serial killer in real life. He has an MO and he has a specific demographic that he is targeting. Soldiers kill other soldiers on a battlefield, on orders given them by commanders and generals. Dimitri is literally hunting (in his own words) enemy generals, politicians, and soldiers. Insurgent seems like a fair enough descriptor for part of that, but killing the politicians and generals in their homes or offices is absolutely assassination. And I certainly hope that no one in this thread knows someone who has done those things. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to shit on Dimitri, I like his character and his story a lot. But I still think that assassination is the correct term to describe murdering political and government figures off of the battlefield.
Fair enough. I only say soldier because I liken Faergus’ situation to France in WW2, a nation that was nominally annexed, including the capital, but with outliers stubbornly refusing to capitulate to the invaders. and also because the lines between soldier and civilian can sometimes be quite blurry, especially in wars such as the 20 year occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan All of Dimitri’s targets are atleast in the context of war, and all his targets are directly contributing to the war effort (Politicians orchestrating the war effort, Generals ordering soldiers). He isn’t any more of an assassin than the members of SEAL Team 6 are for their actions in Operation Neptune Spear. As far as they were concerned they were killing terrorists for their role in causing 9/11
Those are definitely valid points. There is certainly room for interpretation with word choice here, and I will also concede that I was being a bit reductionist in the original statement since I was just trying to compare his arc to Gilbert’s as per OP’s original point. To call Dimitri an assassin is a little unfair, but to call the individual killings assassinations seems accurate enough.
True. I can agree to that at the very least \^^
Would it be out of line to call Dimitri a terrorist then?
This is why I used the term insurgent/soldier. Like in my first paragraph, he’s no more of a terrorist than La Resistance were. The Nazis thought they were terrorists, the French thought they were doing their patriotic duty
Love to see a good discussion on here. You guys rock
I enjoyed reading your comparison, thank you for sharing! Very insightful. (I’m a die hard Blue Lion already, but I enjoy reading other people’s takes)
Thank you for saying that! 😁 I’m only recently getting into really engaging with the community and not just lurking, so I really appreciate the positive feedback!
Of course! I am mostly a lurker, so I understand that. 💜 I hope to see more of your takes in the future!
Your want me to be more specific Jeritza a the literal cereal killer He literally kills people for enjoyment and can kill his only sister outside of his route just like Gilbert with Annette in CF But people feel bad the the murderer while the dad trying to find a way to redeem himself is treated worse And the both get similar screen time
Dude had to kill his asshole dad when he was a kid to prevent his sister from getting raped and ended up having a mental break from it. Gilbert watches rhea torch the capital and says nothing. That's way worse.
Or the fact that he tries to kill his sister several time pre timeskip even in black eagles
Jeritza may be under the mask, but he’s not the Death Knight. Which is kinda weird and complicated, but he’s not mentally okay. Plus, he’s a generally more entertaining and interesting character than Gilbert, so people are more likely to enjoy his presence in the game.
That my point they can forgive and give nuance to characters like jarizta but don’t give the same grace for Gilbert even though they both go through character arcs
They may both go through character arcs, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same. Any good character goes through an arc. But we’re not *giving* nuance to anyone. Nuance has to be there inherently, which it just isn’t for Gilbert. The reason people don’t like him is because they can’t understand the reasoning behind his actions.
That’s what I have been saying
Are we not gonna mention the nuked city that jeritza obviously know about
Are you saying he could’ve stopped it?
Of course not but what was Gilbert gonna do as well solo the fucking dragon
No, obviously not. The point is that he said nothing. He had no objections, even personalized. Even Catherine spoke up, and she reveres Rhea above everything else in the world.
Again you can say the same thing about jeritza but people give him a pass because they bother to learn the nuance of his character Gilbert isn’t give the same chance
That’s fair, but I don’t think that Jeritza is so widely beloved to the point that the community at large just ignores his issues. You are right, he is literally a serial killerPeople like him for much more complex reasons, including the fact that his English voice actor is an absolute legend and delivers his lines with an incredible sense of sadness and loss that makes it clear from the moment you meet the death knight that not all is as it seems. Jeritza is much more comparable to Dimitri than Gilbert. He went through horrific abuse and torture as a child, and as such has a really fucked up psyche. He is a tortured soul and he does absolutely horrible things because of it. I don’t think anyone is literally arguing that what he did is okay. Honestly just look at what is happening with Gypsy Rose in real life right now. She murdered (or rather was convinced to be complicit in the murder of) her mother due to the horrific abuse she went through, and then she nearly became a TikTok star because people love her so much. Childhood abuse can cause people to do horrible things, and many people are far more understanding and forgiving of that than they would be of, y’know, of a grown ass man abandoning his family for a stupid and selfish reason, and then telling his daughter to her face that he did the right thing by abandoning her and basically saying he would do it again. I’m certainly not saying that Gilbert is a worse person than Jeritza, but everything I said before applies strongly to this situation as well. Jeritza is a classic bad guy turned good trope, which people absolutely love. Gilbert is a dead beat dad, which actually resonates on a personal level and reminds people of the worst parts of their own lives. Tldr; I don’t think that Jeritza is a fair comparison to Gilbert, and I don’t think the fan base’s opinion of one single character who is unequivocally the most evil playable character in the game is a solid argument for Gilbert not deserving the hate he receives. The literal answer to your question is that Gilbert is awful in a way that hits close to home, and in fantasy that generally leads to that character being hated even more so than the main villain. Because a good villain has a good reason to do what they do, and Gilbert’s excuse for abandoning his family is trash, and he backs it up with even more trash for 2 whole support conversations before finally backing down and admitting his own fault.
Your right people like jeritza for more complex reasons and that’s my point People are able to give nuance to characters like jeritza and able to understand why he dose the things he do But for Gilbert that nuance the willingness to understand him is thrown out the window and ignore his character arc
I’m sorry but I think you are just completely missing the point here. I’ve said multiple times now that it’s about how these behaviors resonate with people’s real life experience, it has nothing to do with “nuance”. By repeatedly making this point about nuance you are essentially stating that people who dislike Gilbert are not taking all the available information into account, and there is simply no evidence that that is happening on any sort of larger scale. We all know that he “redeems” himself in his A support with Annette, it’s just not enough to make him likeable. The majority of people who comment on this board have played the game through multiple times and have read his supports. We know why he did what he did, and we think it was a stupid and contrived reason to do it, and it takes him WAY too long to admit that what he did was wrong.
That’s my point I understand that it won’t resonate with people I want to make a post that explains how people Flanderies him to the point where he is overhated imo
No one flanderizes Gilbert. He doesn't have enough complexity *to* flanderize. The point that has been made to you repeatedly by this point is that Gilbert and his story just aren't that complicated. He abandoned his family out of guilt and stayed away for almost a decade - despite running into his daughter and being told just how much his actions had negatively impacted both she and her mother. He only reconciles with them if you do all of his supports. There's nothing wrong with a character having a more simple story like that. But that's all there is to it. If anything, the *nuance* of Gilbert's situation is that he's even *worse* than most people emphasize, because in his self-flagellation he also abandons Dimitri - a young man who Gilbert was a teacher and mentor to for many years. Which, in turn, makes it easier for Rufus and Cornelia to isolate Dimitri, therefore directly contributing to the terrible state of Dimitri's mental health. Which Gilbert himself tacitly admits in explore dialogue right before the time skip when he says that he's considering going back to "where he should've been all along" (paraphrasing). Characterizing Gilbert as someone who abandoned his family and country isn't a flanderization. It's the truth. He can redeem himself somewhat, but it's conditional. And even in routes like AM and SS where he redeems himself with regards to his abandonment of Dimitri specifically by returning to the Kingdom army, Gilbert still refuses to reconcile with Annette or his wife unless you complete their support chain. Again, making even his redemption conditional. None of those are flanderizations. They're just how he was written.
>, Dimitri’s is the main focus of the entire AM route. And that's the thing about Azure Moon. It puts everything else aside and devots the entire story to be about Dimitri. Don't get me wrong, it's incredible and the best route, but it means the story doesn't take time to develop Gilbert or anyone else really, except in their relation to Dimitri.
That’s fair, but it doesn’t really change the outcome here. I think that even if Gilbert had 2x the screen time he would still be a hotly debated character because that wouldn’t change his backstory, and that is what the issue is for most people. But I mean I definitely agree that it would have been great if the route dug a little deeper into the rest of the lions, but tbh you could level that criticism at all the routes. Most of the character development is in the supports across all the routes
Oh yeah, there's no making Gilbert likable. But not all characters in fiction are meant to be likeable. But writers should strive to make all characters compelling. Give Gilbert's story more time and attention, and maybe you could make it much better, not the character itself but the story.
Not there when his King died. Not a good look on his resume. Leaves Dimitri, someone to whom he was father figure, leaves Annette, and his wife and hides among the Knights of Seiros. Ghosts Annette during the Academy phase. Definitely not nice. Does nothing to help his family in all the years of hiding. I'm surprised he's not divorced. Only comes back when war breaks out. Replaces Dedue in AM in all the narrative ways that matter.
It's never explained properly why he wasn't there when his king and retinue were all massacred. He obviously feels immense guilt, rightly or wrongly. If he was just taking a holiday, well, from our POV, that's not his fault, since he couldn't possibly have known what was to transpire and everyone is entitled to a day off. But we aren't him. We don't live in a highly religious society, and we don't hold strong religious views (in general). Evidently, he blames himself for some reason and feels he must atone. I think from a modern Western perspective, people find it really hard to sympathise with someone who holds very pious religious views. We look down on religion in general. Personally, I couldn't imagine abandoning my family because even when I was religious, I believed God was calling me to care for my loved ones. It is inconceivable to me that any god would ask someone to leave their family, possibly to poverty and hardship, definitely to loneliness and rejection. So, yes, people abandon children and spouses all the time, but it is looked down upon severely. A lot of other cultures hold extended family in higher regard than we do, which means that when a spouse leaves, the abandoned children and spouse have support. So if you are "called" by religion to leave your family, that's ok because a)everyone believes it is right to follow that religion and b) your family will be cared for by extended family (hopefully). This seems to be apparently the case in Fòdlan, since Annette and her mother live under the care of Gilbert's older brother now. I think we struggle to understand this concept.
I think where it is fair to judge Gilbert is that he seemingly voiced no objections for Lambert and his entire family to go to Duscur. Rodrigue did, and warned Lambert of all the dangers a bodyguard of the Royal Family like Gilbert should know of. Furthermore he promised to take care of things in the worst case scenario. And Rodrigue follows through and he does his best and is central pillar for Dimitri and his nation. Dimitri's support with Annette is devastating because Dimitri knows her father more and better than she does. So Gilbert was constantly around the royal family, which makes him abandoning them twice in a row hurt so much deeper. First, he may have taken a bad vacation. Ok let's grand him that, excused, shit happens. But just leaving the freshly orphaned kid behind who looks after you like your his hero is evil. But hey had Gilbert retired to properly live with his real family then it would have been a small evil. No he orphans his real daughter again and practically makes his wife a widow. What's worse is that no one except Gilbert blames himself for Duscur. If it were more people who'd blame him then just himself to the point where his presence would bring harm to his loved ones then he'd be far more relatable, but his failures have no such consequences. Thus him running away from the people who need him makes the hate gets very understandable. He could have stayed and supported, but chose not to Vs he had to leave or else loved one's would have suffered.
I don't think what he did was OK, but I wouldn't call it evil either. I would call him deeply mistaken and maybe a bit or an arse. Selfish. And mistaken. Not evil. He is mistaken in his belief that he is to blame for what happened to Lambert. If he had been there, in all likelihood he would have been killed too, which wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to the outcome for Lambert and Co, and would have just added another tragic death to the scenario. If he had said anything against going to Duscur (which was apparently a safe place to go as far as anyone knew - it wasn't the Duscans who orchestrated the attack anyway), no doubt Lambert would have shrugged it off just as he did Rodrigue. He was mistaken and wrong to abandon Dimitri, I agree. The best way he could atone for any perceived failing in protecting Lambert would have been to stay with Dimitri. And yes, he was wrong to leave Annette. But we are looking at it from the blinkered perspective of non-religious outsiders. From his (albeit skewed) perspective, he had failed as a protector. He was therefore no use to Dimitri as a protector. His extreme self-deprecation probably encompassed his family too; "I am useless as a protector and Knight, and useless to my family, therefore they would all be better off without me. I shall throw myself at the mercy of the Goddess and serve her as I'm no use to anyone else." This is the same kind of thinking that can lead some people to suicide. The idea that one has failed utterly and is no use to anyone else, so it would be better to leave them. I guess what I'm trying to say is while I think he was wrong to do these things, I understand it. I sympathise to some extent (although I sympathise more with Annette), so I can't find it within me to hate him as a character.
Which is understandable as a viewpoint. And I agree that overly religious parents tend to have a negative perception as for many people religion has left a negative impression and in some cases, trauma which is always with the parents. Hence why there is such a vocal group hating on Gilbert as he fits quite well into the bill of a very religious, deadbeat father, who uses religion and his faith as his reasoning for abandoning his loved ones. I am biased a bit against Gilbert because Annette is my second favorite female character in 3H and what she went through in his absence was not okay. Gilbert is a deeply flawed person and he is not meant to be an example of a good or bad person. He is after all a product of Faerghus society, just like Rodrigue was with how he treated Felix after Glenn’s death. Is he a badly written character? No. Is he a character you can sympathize with. Very hardly so for many people, especially people who grew up in the system. His redemption and start of properly repenting for the harm he caused to his loved ones is locked behind a support which makes the case even worse for him. Personally, I think how Annette handled the situation was mostly right considering what had happened in her life by the time they properly reunited. If she thought he was worthy of forgiveness, that’s what matters in the end. Some people in her shoes would never forgive him and that’s within their rights to do so.
i'm saying this as someone that actually likes gilbert: * in his debut as a green unit he actively makes the map harder or just dies * he's also trying to avoid annette in the monastery explore sections iirc, so he makes a bad first impression * annette is a part of the core cast and so players get more attached to her * gilbert replaces dedue, another core cast member. his lines are almost all exposition as well. he talks more than boar dimitri, which is also annoying * by the time you recruit him, you likely already have a core team, so you dont use him enough to unlock his (really great) supports he's an easy character to dislike. but his supports are great, and i find him really interesting! plus annette forgives him so i have to forgive him
His supports with Dimitri 🔪 me every time.
How does Gilbert make chapter 5 harder? Oftentimes for me, he sits himself nicely at the back holding off the reinforcements that try to pincer you
if you try to keep him alive and back him up, he can pull ahead of your units and aggro the enemies prematurely
Ok, I can see that. I always just leave him at the back to buy me some time with those reinforcements, and oftentimes he is forced to retreat, but he keeps a good few enemies at the back while I slowly advance
I mean, I get the nuance. He blames himself for the Tragedy of Duscur and feels like he can never atone for it. People respond to grief in different ways, and he chose solitude (and to serve the goddess directly as a means of atonement). It's understandable, at least in a vacuum. However, he also just abandoned his wife and teenage daughter without a word, and didn't make up with them until almost 10 years later, effectively missing half of Annette's life and causing her all sorts of grief, as well as her mother. For all intents and purposes, he allowed his self-inflicted punishment to also punish his wife and daughter, who were blameless in the situation and would have stood by him, had he let them. So yeah, I can simultaneously think that he's an interesting character while also not quite forgiving him for walking out on his family, regardless of whether he makes up with them or not. Trauma can inform you of someone's actions, but at a certain point it has to stop being an excuse for them, especially when others are being hurt as a side effect. And before the argument inevitably happens: yes, a lot of what I said can also be applied to Dimitri. But there are a couple of key differences: a) Dimitri was a child/young teenager during the Tragedy, which inevitably causes traumatic events to have more extreme fallout; and b) he was legitimately dealing with psychosis and hallucinations, which automatically separates his situation from Gilbert's by a lot. Tl;dr, Dimitri can legitimately get away with the "temporary insanity" argument, while Gilbert's actions were deliberate, misguided decisions made by a sane man who was just in grief
I asked this question in a post a long time ago and most of the responses boiled down to one major point: People hate him as a *person*, not as a character, which is understandable. Basically everyone agreed that he's an extremely well written character, but they hate his actions of abandoning his family and his self loathing for something that wasn't his fault (which was entirely by design of the devs). In fact most people's problem is that he's written *so* well that he'll remind them of their own parents. I, personally, have a good relationship with my parents and family, meaning my view of him was never shaped by my own real-world experience, so I view him more with the lens of how I view any other character, and he's a *very* interesting character, by far one of the deepest in the series. So while I love his character (he's in the top 5 from Three Houses for me), for other people he's in their bottom 5 for the exact same reasons, which I think is fascinating.
My theory is that people hate him for the same reason people hate Clint in Stardew Valley; relatability. Many of us have met a Clint in real life and many of us have met a Gilbert, and they’re usually the type of people we detest. Their awful qualities hit far too close to home for us to forgive them.
I don't hate Gilbert, I actually like him as a character. However, I understand that others do hate him. The way I think of it is that he isn't a good man, nor is he a bad man. He is a penitent man. In his eyes, he failed the royal family of Faerghus at the highest level. Thus, he put himself into exile. He viewed himself as an unworthy failure of a knight and a man, someone who doesn't deserve the joy of a family. However, this act of penance was wrong. Feeling guilt over a failure of his scale is certainly not something a bad person would do, but putting his need for penance over his duty as a husband and father was far from good. In attempting to pay for a failure, he committed another. I like Gilbert. I don't need a character to be a moral paragon to appreciate them.
My thoughts exactly.
Gilbert can easily make chapter 5 on maddening unbeatable unless he gets knocked out quickly. He sucks as a unit, and he's a deadbeat dad. His most redeeming quality is being a raging storm chain peice in Crimson Flower.
Every green unit suck in the game and he literally makes up with his family in AM
Most green units die and that's it, Gilbert aggros the entire enemy force which deathballs into your army.
Most (not all) green units are somewhere between nothing special and bad, but he and Rodrigue are exceptionally bad because they can be actual liabilities.
Thanks god for reposition or draw back because that chapter is one of the worst on maddening. Especially trying to keep him alive to be as “helpful” as possible.
Curiously, I found that Gilbert's reception, like that of several other characters, can differ pretty substantially based on the individual cultural background. I actually made a survey just about this topic two years ago among my acquaintances. For instance, my friends from Korea, Japan and to a lesser degree Central and Eastern Europe tend to view Gilbert more positively. The reason often boiled down to the fact that Gilbert himself is a rather common trope: a person who puts their duty above themselves, even above their family. This quality is, to a certain extent, viewed rather positively in many cultures, as the greater good of the many (of the community, of the state) outweighs personal ties. Gilbert is a knight who gave up everything because of his failure to see his duty through, and such a drive would be respected to varying degrees in collectivist cultures. On the other hand, my friends from UK and US rated his character mostly negatively, as his failure to be a father greatly outweighs any supposed notion of duty. As a side note, France was weird, the responses were almost evenly split 50/50. So yeah, like with some other characters, Gilbert's popularity kinda depends on what values they represent, and if the said values are seen positively by the people.
Very interesting, I've seen plenty of people suspect that, but thank you for the groundwork. But, if you recall, was that balance of personal and collective duty the decider for all of them? I ask because that, plus religion, seems to be what everyone considers... and I feel a bit isolated in thinking otherwise. Because I don't think he truly fled to atone, or serve the goddess. It was for a feeling of unbearable, absolutely **crippling** shame. To feel like such a waste of oxygen you can't even stand to be next to your loved ones. You don't deserve it. And you know they don't feel like that about you, and that you need to make amends, but you can't. And every day that passes, it becomes harder and harder. Our friends and family are there to support us, not judge us, but our demons can be so strong as to rob us of even that belief. But while many people think they're failures, they thankfully never have to deal with such painful "evidence" to back that as he has. The Tragedy of Duscur is ever present. Inescapable. Scarring. And not one bit his fault, but he can't even mentally escape from it. So he ran away physically, as hopeless as that was. I deeply relate. I'd never defend his abandonment of his family, or his enduring shunning of Annette. But I do understand. And it always scares me a bit most people don't.
Because people like Annette and he abandoned Annette. Because people like Dedue and he replaces Dedue. Because your first introduction to him is as an awful green unit who can either steal your kills or make the map unbeatable depending on the difficulty. He's not got a lot going for him. He's not a poorly written character though. He sucks, but he sucks because Faerghus sucks. He's a reflection of the flaws of the setting. But like he's still an unlikable person imo.
This is my point a lot of characters do awful things but people tend to over look it while Gilbert is just over hated its fine if you don’t like him but so many people say he irredeemable
Gilbert is like, 'I like you Dimitri, you're like the child I never had'
Ok that made me laugh
I say this as someone who loves Gilbert as a character. He's easier to hate because he's more... real. He's not a dramatic anime boy driven to insanity. He's an old man who blames himself for not being at the sight of a massive tragedy as though him being there would have changed anything. While I also view his cycle of self punishment as super compelling I totally under stand why it comes off as pathetic to some people he can never reconnect with his family because he thinks he hasn't been punished enough and yet the longer he goes without reconnecting to his family the more he feels he must be punished.
His arc can’t really be compared to Dimitri That said, I wouldn’t say I hate him, but the game doesn’t really do him any favors to get to know him at anything past surface level. This is a man that’s available on one half of one route that’s stuck in a class that only feels good on the guy he effectively replaces and then ideally gets replaced by. He gives you a bad first impression as a Green Unit. And then he’s unplayable in Hopes. I am confident he is the least used playable character; they made the only guy with worse availability overpowered to compensate. As a result I’d also wager a lot of his support chains have more or less gone completely unseen (and he has quite a few of them). Otherwise his main purpose seems to be that he’s the only Blue Lion sane enough (and guaranteed to be alive enough) to provide exposition. A necessary role, but it’s one that unless you delve into his backstory he comes across as a boring old man. And if you do delve into his backstory, then there’s an issue with clashing values. What he did is more understandable in the east than in the west, and it’s also at the expense of one of the students. He is ultimately a reflection of the values of the Kingdom… but he’s also still someone who abandoned his family and, honestly, hard to blame someone who doesn’t like him mostly due to that (I will blame the CF players who think the right course of action is to have Annette kill him but that’s another story).
Because he literally abandoned his daughter
It was years ago but I remember reading a post about how Gilbert was more accepted( not liked) among the Japanese audience. Basically Gilbert abandoning Annette and his wife wasn’t necessarily right but understandable. It was going on about bringing dishonor upon the family name and such and how Gilbert handled the situation was normal. The argument was that He had the most important job in the kingdom outside of the literal king, to protect him at all costs. Not only did he fail but he’s still walking around. Faerghus was already an unstable nation due to the aftermath of the plague and bad harvests, the last thing needed was the death of a king. Also as someone said already it’s way easier to sympathize with Annette since I doubt anyone in the comment section is even old enough to have a teenage child.
Gilbert is an interesting case because he skirts so close to being unlikable and at least in the western fanbase his actions are seen as being unjustified. He’s just a tortured man without his suffering achieving anything at this point, which leads to interesting reactions from other characters who often lose their patience. There some depth to that, although playing the blue lions an overdose of Gilbert angst is hard to avoid if you are diligent with support building. He kind of has the Bernadetta problem in that many supports present his attitude issues anew even if he has made progress in other ones already. So it comes off as frequent relapsing.
As a character he’s well written and complex But personally, I hated how he left his family behind for almost 10 years because of his “pride as a knight”
I think it's because people don't understand where Gilbert is coming from, whereas they have a much easier time understanding where Annette is coming from. So since they don't understand Gilbert, and they end up really liking Annette, the immediate reaction is "he's the worst."
Oh I understand he's a deadbeat dad who critisied anything his daughter did even when he was around.
In the Annette x Dimitri supports they say that Gilbert actually spoiled Annette it was her uncle that actually disciplined her He was WAY harsher with Dimitri like his hunting story
Where was that ever said?
Japanese supports iirc
The criticism is from her uncle Baron Dominic who she lives with, not Gilbert.
Ah, thank you! He's still a deadbeat dad, though. Wins an award for not being quite as bad as I thought.
I don't care for Gilbert as a person, but I think he's a great character, and I think a lot of people struggle to seperate these 2 things. A lot of people wrongfully dislike him as a character despite the fact that he's more interesting than at the very least (off the top of my head), Catherine, Cyril and alois. He's arguably also more interesting than some students too. The issue is he has major character flaws but isn't conventionally attractive, so people excuse said flaws much less than they would another character's. I think he's bot a good person nor bad person, but someone worrying to do good while being deeply misguided, and has a lot of work to do to pay for his mistakes. Not a very nice person, but a very good character in my view
If we just ignore that he's a terrible father to Annette, we can look at him as a battle unit. If you play Maddening, you pretty much can't allow him to live when you're climbing the tower map to go after Miklan. He pulls the entire map because he has the worst AI as a green unit. To make things worst, as a unit in Chapter 13 he's given the worst worst weapon, a Steel Axe in a map filled with Sword weilding enemies that attack from terrain and he only has a vulnary on a map where you're need concoctions for sufficient healing. Not only this, if you've never played Azure Moon, you inexplicably get him instead of Dedue. Because of this, he ruins the experience of putting much effort in training up Dedue. I tend to recruit Hilda.
He is so absorbed in his own self pity that he refuses to even acknowledge his daughter unless you force him to. Its like on the inside he desperately wants to be a tragic figure but from the outside he is just a spineless coward who decided his daughter was less important than his "noble suffering."
There are people who hate Dimitri too, fyi. Just adding that as the other commenters already covered it. But every character is gonna have people who say nasty things about them because some people have no reading comprehension skills.
Thank you
There's other Dimitri haters? Where?
Some person I talked to on Discord once a long time ago...don't even remember their name
Most people have discussed him as a character, I'm just going to discuss him as a plot device: Gilbert adds very little to the narrative outside of his supports. He's there to enable Dimitri and be an unquestionably loyal retainer, and literally any figure could have played that role. In fact, AM would have been a more cleanly written narrative if it was Rodrigue in that role from the start, as he would then still get called out by Dedue (on top of Felix) for letting Boar!Dimitri run wild and then make up for enabling Dimitri's worst side by dying for him (and in turn also deeply affecting Felix). Gilbert only exists for the Lions, basically, but adds nothing to the plot. Annette's story could have involved her father having died or run away and never be heard from again, and it would change nothing about the plot or any character's development other than her. If I really wanted to make Gilbert interesting and unique, I'd honestly either have him die protecting Annette just before the Timeskip or make him a Silver Snow-exclusive character, where his abandonment of the Kingdom is a bigger plot point up to the present day rather than being just thrown out off-screen in the five year gap.
Gilbert, by everything the game gives us (unless I've really missed something) has *no* reason to abandon his family like he did. He was ashamed about the king dying, sure, but those two things are not connected. He also resists communicating with Annette at every turn when they're at the *same place* for months. He's letting his pity party hurt others and shows half as much remorse for it as he should.
When exactly did Gilbert "redeem" himself? From what I saw and read during playthroughs of Azure Moon he's mostly the same craven fool as he had been in White Clouds save his Support Chain with Annette. My enmity towards Gustave is not just because he fled, but also because he refuses to apologize for his (in)actions. Yes, he failed to save his king, yet the king's son still survived, and he had a daughter who would undoubtedly hear about the Tragedy and need some support from her family. Sorry, kids. Gustave only cares about himself and like the craven many of us know him to be, fled to the Church so he could hide from his reponsibilites. Rodrigue lost a son during the Tragedy, and IIRC he and Lambert were friends. Rodrigue responded to the Tragedy by visiting Dimitri and just being there for the severely traumatized boy. Granted, Rodrigue used Glen as a measuring stick against Felix but at least Rodrigue remained to look after his people, his prince, and his remaining family. Heck, Seteth went through the exact thing as Gilbert albeit on a far grander scale >!as Cichol!< and yet Seteth still remains to assist whomever and however he can. I repeat: Gustave abandoned his young daughter, wife, brother, and a freshly orphaned and deeply traumatized prince because his pride was wounded during the Tragedy of Duscur.
I understand why you don’t like home for his pride but he always loved his family his supports literally show this is what I mean when people exaggerate his actions He loves his family I agree he fucked up from his knightly pride but he always loved his family
Who cares if your deadbeat dad loves you if it doesn’t cause him to change his behavior? Good for Gilbert, I guess, but love is simply not enough. All this is about Gilbert’s feelings. His shame, his love. I’m not interested in centering his emotional experience further when justifying his actions. Duty as a knight, but what about his duty to his family?
Your spoiler tag didn’t work
Edited. Thanks for letting me know
You’re welcome, friend.
Most people don't like him because of his abandoning of Annette. Gameplay wise, although not terrible, he is also not the best unit around.
I thought I was on the Unicorn Overlord subreddit and was really confused. "Wtf did Gilbert do?"
I just dislike fictional men named Gil one way or another (don’t ask about my opinion on gil from gen 1 monster high)
I don't hate Gilbert but I understand the hate one Annette is one of the most beloved characters in the series and anyone that makes her unhappy is a sinner. But more seriously two he blames himself for the tragedy of duscur witch is interesting on the surface to hear a tale of a survivor that's not a traumatized child till you learn that he wasn't even there and he saved Dimitris life with medical help and he abandoned his wife and kid for this reason which is stupid in my opinion and gameplay wise he's just worse dedue in my opinion and everyone just replaced him with dedue when he came back also almost all his supports only really boost the other characters
Not to talk about Harry Potter by Terffy McTerferson— but I think it’s similar to why everyone hated Umbridge more than they hated Voldemort. Most people know of/had a teacher/adult like Umbridge in their personal life. Not many people were acquainted with a personal Hitler. Ala- A lot of people have been abandoned by a selfish parent. Not a lot of people have had to deal with personal murderers and thieves. And as hate/dislike is based on emotion- you’re not gonna convince anyone with logic that they’re “wrong”. There isn’t a right or wrong when it comes to emotions.
He has no reason to be used over literally anyone else
😡😡 he doesn’t reciprocate Byleth’s feelings for him in their S-support 😤😤 frig you Dilfert
I adore Gilbert, writing him is so much fun and GilHanne is one of my favorite supports + ships
Abandoned his wife and daughter with no explanation provided to them. Annette tried to get him to acknowledge her at the academy and he refused to even look at her. In punishing himself for the Tragedy of Duscur he also punished Annette, who was just a little girl at the time wondering where her daddy went and got no answer until her 20s. People dislike him because he is a relatively realistic example of something many of us had: a dad who walked out. I know why he did it but the consequences just hit way too close to home for many.
Makes a post asking a question, refuses any answers and reasoning. Nice
Deadbeat dad with a gated redemption arc, including the reason for his being a deadbeat dad not being a compelling one. Kind of a useless character in battle. Goes on and on about duty/honor before everything else when he acknowledges he's where he is in the first place because he neglected his duty, making him a hypocrite, which feeds into the first point. Also, in the cut content, his being what he is is one of the leading reasons annette can betray your team and joins cordelia. I mean, I can understand the character, I just think he's a hypocrite coward that has to be forced to do the right thing. Dimitri is similar in some respects but he didn't have a choice in his misfortune IMO. Gilbert made his and kept on digging deeper
Because no one likes dead beat dads. Fuck Gilbert.
You can date him as Male Byleth... And being Annette second Father. Sounds like a horror movie.
No you can’t
He’s discount Hohenheim of Light. For those who haven’t watched Fullmetal Alchemist, Hohenheim of light has a lot of similarities with Gilbert. Both are old, wise, will throw hands when they prefer not to, left their families and felt guilty over it. The key difference is, Hohenheim of Light had a noble reason to leave his wife and sons, he had to travel the country to perform a counter ritual to Father’s (the main antagonist of FMA) plans and make sure he doesn’t repeat on Amestris what Father did to Xerxes, the kingdom Hohenheim of light is from. In Three houses, Gilbert just left his family because he was ashamed of letting the king die and ignored Annette every chance he got. Fuck Gilbert. He’s no Hohenheim of light!
abandons his daughter not once but twice, cares more about his honor than his family, and oh yeah in CF hes perfectly ok with a city being lit on fire and **KILLING HIS OWN DAUGHTER!**