CategoryFire Emblem

Ranking Fire Emblem: Three Houses Paired Endings (Ashen Wolves/DLC)

Welcome to one of the blog posts I wrote during our shelter in place time. Most of the posts I wrote during this period are not particularly high thought level posts. If anything, the entire point to them is to be able to not think heavily for a little while. As such, I’m immersing myself in things I like (read: video games, mostly). apologies for anyone that finds this boring. This is how I’m coping.

A while back, I wrote a post talking about my headcanon relationships for all of Fire Emblem: Awakening characters. I spent a good bit of time thinking about how I’d write such a post for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, only to come to the following conclusions.

  1. Even people who read my blog AND care about Fire Emblem would not read such a post, as it’d be insanely long.
  2. There are so many characters who can end the game with so many others that it’d be impossible to do a true headcanon post for most characters1The exceptions to this rule are Hilda X Caspar, Flayn X eating fish, and Dorothea X my friend Stephanie..
  3. The age gaps in certain cases (Hanneman, Manuela, and Seteth, in particular) makes that a much weirder exercise than it was in Awakening.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to provide a ranking of the best paired endings for each character in the game. These posts will be divided by the character’s starting house. My hope is to do all five of these posts over the course of a week, though we’ll see how quickly I can get them done. When they’re all completed, you can click below to access each list.

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Church of Serios | Ashen Wolves/DLC

For this list, I’m only including endings where a character pairing has a support of A or higher to end the game. Additionally, because Byleth could hypothetically end up being paired with any character in the game depending on various circumstances, they are included in each list. That said, I’ll only be considering their paired endings with characters of the house I’m focusing on within that post. You’ll see how I handle their potential same-sex endings in each post.

To be clear, these lists will focus on the endings these characters can have with another character, rather than strictly on supports. Supports are a topic better saved for another time with a less cabin-fevery mind. Also, spoilers ahead. Clearly.

Pairings that are directly stated or at least heavily implied to be romantic in nature are in bold. Pairings that vary whether or not they are romantic depending on what story path you’re playing on, or are ambiguously romantic, are denoted with an asterisk (*).

Sothis

  1. Byleth (M/F)

Apparently I forgot Sothis in the Church post, so I’ve decided to add her here. Unlike the Rhea ending which is just creepy and weird, the Sothis paired ending with Byleth is pretty much Byleth just being by themselves as the ending. Which is fine. Sure, this could have been done without having an S-support ending with a character that exists inside your character’s head. But…eh?

Jeritza

  1. Mercedes
  2. Constance
  3. Byleth (M/F)
  4. Bernadetta

Jeritza’s ending options are very limited by nature of the fact that he’s only accessible in one route in the game. Even with that in mind, his ending options are all pretty underwhelming. The best case scenario reunites him with his estranged sister, but even that ending is somewhat out of character for him. Jeritza is one of the few characters where ending up alone makes far more sense than any paired ending he could have.

Anna

Anna cannot have a paired ending in Three Houses, despite being eligible to have them in Awakening and Fates. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Yuri

  1. Bernadetta
  2. Constance
  3. Byleth (M/F)
  4. Ingrid
  5. Balthus
  6. Hapi
  7. Dorothea

Much like Manuela and Lorenz, Yuri has some really good endings despite being a character I’m not a huge fan of. In particular, his ending with Bernadetta gives her a lot of growth as a person — which makes a ton of sense considering their supports. His ending with Constance is also really touching, if for no other reason than it’s one where they’re both allowed to be themselves.

Constance

  1. Ferdinand von Aegir
  2. Yuri
  3. Edelgard
  4. Hapi
  5. Mercedes
  6. Jeritza
  7. Balthus
  8. Byleth (M)

Sigh. I really hate that the Constance/Byleth pairing is so similar to some of Tharja’s post-timeskip interactions in Awakening. It really ruins her ending with Byleth for me. And I get why then ending’s like that. But just…no. The rest of her endings are fine, though I do particularly like how sweet her ending with Ferdinand von Aegir is. But I’m hung up on that Byleth ending.

Balthus

  1. Hilda
  2. Claude
  3. Byleth (F)
  4. Hapi
  5. Lysithea
  6. Yuri
  7. Constance

I really like how — with the exception of Hilda — nearly all of Balthus’s endings are just gender-flipped versions of either Leonie (most of them) or Marianne (Byleth). Yet he can’t have a paired ending with either of them. No clue why this is so funny to me. That said, I feel like Balthus not having a paired ending with either of them is a missed opportunity. On that note2And since I haven’t done this yet., here are my top 5 missed opportunity paired endings in Three Houses.

  • Balthus and Marianne
  • Claude and Byleth (M)
  • Ingrid and Dorothea
  • Alois and Ashe
  • Annette and Lysithea

Hapi

  1. Byleth (M) (Crimson Flower)
  2. Yuri
  3. Balthus
  4. Linhardt
  5. Constance
  6. Byleth (M) (Other Routes)
  7. Ashe
  8. Dimitri

For as much as I like Hapi as a character, I’m not a huge fan of most of her endings. Aside from her endings with Byleth in the Crimson Flower route and Yuri, her paired endings either seem weirdly contrived or unrealistic. In most cases, the endings take away who she is for sake of…normalcy? And doing so defeats the whole purpose of Hapi’s backstory.

Byleth

  1. Hapi (M) (Crimson Flower)
  2. Yuri (M/F)
  3. Balthus (F)
  4. Jeritza (M/F)
  5. Hapi (M) (Other Routes)
  6. Sothis (M/F)
  7. Constance (M)

Pretty sure Constance is Byleth’s worst paired ending in the entire game. Which is frustrating on my current playthrough, as I started that playthrough without knowing their paired ending, only to learn it in researching these posts. Since the route is an Azure Moon playthrough, the clear answer here should have been Annette or Shamir (I’m male Byleth in this run). But I digress. Byleth’s Crimson Flower ending with Hapi is legitimately one of the more underrated endings in the entire game. So much so that I’m going to use the rest of this post to give you my 10 favorite Byleth paired endings across all routes. Because it’s my post.

  1. Shamir (M)
  2. Annette (M)
  3. Alois (M/F)
  4. Ingrid (M)
  5. Claude (F)
  6. Hapi (M) (Crimson Flower)
  7. Ashe (F)
  8. Mercedes (M/F)
  9. Dorothea (M/F)
  10. Sylvain (F)

If you enjoyed the post you just read, please consider supporting me through my Patreon. Memberships start at only $1 and help support the costs for this site, as well as my other creative endeavors. You can also support me by purchasing my book, An Epilogue to Innocence, here. I also offer editing services on this page.

Ranking Fire Emblem: Three Houses Paired Endings (Church of Serios)

Welcome to one of the blog posts I wrote during our shelter in place time. Most of the posts I wrote during this period are not particularly high thought level posts. If anything, the entire point to them is to be able to not think heavily for a little while. As such, I’m immersing myself in things I like (read: video games, mostly). apologies for anyone that finds this boring. This is how I’m coping.

A while back, I wrote a post talking about my headcanon relationships for all of Fire Emblem: Awakening characters. I spent a good bit of time thinking about how I’d write such a post for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, only to come to the following conclusions.

  1. Even people who read my blog AND care about Fire Emblem would not read such a post, as it’d be insanely long.
  2. There are so many characters who can end the game with so many others that it’d be impossible to do a true headcanon post for most characters1The exceptions to this rule are Hilda X Caspar, Flayn X eating fish, and Dorothea X my friend Stephanie..
  3. The age gaps in certain cases (Hanneman, Manuela, and Seteth, in particular) makes that a much weirder exercise than it was in Awakening.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to provide a ranking of the best paired endings for each character in the game. These posts will be divided by the character’s starting house. My hope is to do all five of these posts over the course of a week, though we’ll see how quickly I can get them done. When they’re all completed, you can click below to access each list.

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Church of Serios | Ashen Wolves/DLC

For this list, I’m only including endings where a character pairing has a support of A or higher to end the game. Additionally, because Byleth could hypothetically end up being paired with any character in the game depending on various circumstances, they are included in each list. That said, I’ll only be considering their paired endings with characters of the house I’m focusing on within that post. You’ll see how I handle their potential same-sex endings in each post.

To be clear, these lists will focus on the endings these characters can have with another character, rather than strictly on supports. Supports are a topic better saved for another time with a less cabin-fevery mind. Also, spoilers ahead. Clearly.

Pairings that are directly stated or at least heavily implied to be romantic in nature are in bold. Pairings that vary whether or not they are romantic depending on what story path you’re playing on, or are ambiguously romantic, are denoted with an asterisk (*).

Rhea

  1. Literally never supporting Rhea at all
  2. Byleth (M/F)

Alright. Let’s address this one right now, because it’s fucking weird. Rhea is kind of your mom. Not your biological mom. But in that she gave you life by fancy goddess powers. But you’re also her mom/dad. In that the how she gave you life involves giving you the heart of her mother. It’s fucking weird. It’s best just not to do it.

Manuela

  1. Ferdinand von Aegir
  2. Edelgard
  3. Hanneman
  4. Lorenz
  5. Dorothea
  6. Byleth (M)
  7. Seteth

For as much as I dislike Manuela as a character — she’s one of my two least favorite characters in the game — over half of her paired endings are pretty good. Her ending with Ferdinand von Aegir is one of his best endings in the game. That’s saying something, because he has A LOT of good endings. That said, Manuela also has multiple endings that make her or her partner come across as just kind of…there. In particular, I could have lived without reading her ending with Seteth.

Hanneman

  1. Lysithea
  2. Byleth (F)
  3. Annette
  4. Edelgard
  5. Marianne
  6. Manuela
  7. Dorothea

A ton of Hanneman’s endings involve him doing mad-awesome sciencey things, which is neat. The fact that he actively saves Lysithea’s life in their paired ending is pretty awesome. That said, everything 2-6 on this list could be thrown in the air and land in any order and I’d be fine with it2Okay, maybe 2-5. The ending with Manuela is just…odd?. Just keep him away from Dorothea, please?

Seteth

  1. Leonie
  2. Bernadetta
  3. Ingrid
  4. Hilda
  5. Manuela
  6. Byleth (F)
  7. Catherine
  8. Flayn

Remember how earlier in the post I said how much I disliked Seteth and Manuela’s paired ending? The fact that there are three endings on Seteth’s list below that one should give you an idea of how much Seteth’s endings annoy me. His paired ending with his daughter is the single worst ending in the game — period — because he literally learns nothing even after all they go through in this game. Seteth does have some good endings, particularly the simple life ending he has with Leonie and the author/illustrator ending he has with Bernadetta. And he has some really good supports. But good lord his endings are rough.

Flayn

  1. Dedue
  2. Dimitri
  3. Ferdinand von Aegir
  4. Byleth (M)
  5. Raphael
  6. Felix (Azure Moon)
  7. Linhardt
  8. Ignatz
  9. Felix (Other Routes)*
  10. Claude
  11. Seteth

Flayn, on the other hand, has eight good or better endings, two meh ones, and her one with Seteth. I particularly like her endings with Dedue and Dimitri, which are sadly locked behind the Azure Moon path. In the case of Dedue, he manages to help turn Flayn from a horrid cook into a very good one. And in the case of Dimitri, it doesn’t matter because the man literally will eat weeds. Special shout out to Claude for being the only romantic ending Flayn has that’s afraid to tell Seteth about their marriage, despite becoming king of a nation. Not like royalty is known for having public lives or anything.

Cyril

  1. Lysithea
  2. Shamir
  3. Hilda
  4. Ashe
  5. Petra
  6. Byleth (F)

Cyril is Manuela, but with worse endings. Sure, his ending with Lysithea is tragically sweet, the one with Shamir is him being on par with his idol, and his ending with Hilda shows a lot of growth from both of them. But considering Three Houses has no child units to pass Aptitude down to, I rarely ever both recruiting Cyril. Feel free to completely ignore my list for him. I don’t care about Cyril.

Catherine

  1. Shamir
  2. Alois
  3. Caspar
  4. Ashe
  5. Linhardt*
  6. Dimitri
  7. Lorenz
  8. Byleth (M)
  9. Seteth

We’ll talk a lot more about the Catherine and Shamir paired ending a bit further down this list. That said, Catherine’s endings are kind of like Felix’s, in that they’re very dependent on other circumstances as to which one you get. That said, they’re also largely consistent person to person that I didn’t feel the need to split them. With the exception of Caspar and maybe Ashe, most of Catherine’s blatantly romantic paired endings are underwhelming. Her support with Alois is the one that gives her the most personal success, regardless of how much she’s protecting Rhea in the post-script of the game. That said, her best paired support is with Shamir by a large margin — meet me down at Shamir’s heading if you want to know why.

Alois

  1. Catherine
  2. Byleth (M/F)
  3. Mercedes
  4. Leonie (Crimson Flower)
  5. Leonie (Other Routes)

For those of you who didn’t immediately skip over Alois’s endings, they’re all platonic. Yes, he’s the only character in Three Houses for whom this is true. And most of them are perfectly acceptable endings for Alois. Which makes sense, as he’s already married. That said, his endings with Leonie just aren’t great. Especially the one where he’s essentially an enabler to her budding alcoholism.

Gilbert

  1. Annette
  2. Byleth (M/F)
  3. Dimitri

Gilbert’s best ending is the one where he reunites with his daughter. Nothing else matters.

Shamir

  1. Catherine
  2. Byleth (M)
  3. Claude
  4. Caspar
  5. Cyril
  6. Leonie
  7. Dedue
  8. Hubert
  9. Raphael
  10. Ignatz

Alright. Let’s get the others out of the way first. Nearly every ending Shamir has is about growth and development for the other person she’s paired with. I love that. There are some where she grows and develops too — and they tend to be nearer the top of this list for that reason. That said, Shamir just has good supports and endings. Her Robin Hood ending with Raphael would be a top three ending for nearly any other character. Similarly, her ending3Note: Not her SUPPORTS with Male Byleth. Everything other than her S-Support is not good. with male Byleth is fitting for both of their characters that it nearly made the top of this list4It is Byleth’s single best S-support scene by a mile. I would argue it is the best S-support scene in ANY Fire Emblem game that I’ve played, though Lon’qu and Cherche’s scene in Awakening is a close second..

Let’s talk about Catherine. It’s why you’re here. For everyone that says their ending isn’t romantic at all, I would strongly suggest you re-read their supports. Taken by itself, what is described as a ‘lifelong journey together’ makes them sound like best friends. That said, it’s clearly best friends in the way that historians tend to not recognize same-sex relationships way of best friends. Their A+ support is a fucking love confession. Their paired ending is romantic, even if the focus in on their lives outside of their relationship. It’s such a good ending that I’ve actively avoided marrying Shamir off to Byleth in most5Though not all. of my playthroughs just so Shamir and Catherine can be together6As an aside, I have a love-hate relationship with the If It’s You, It’s Okay trope. If it is done poorly, it’s one of the worst things to see in a game/book/movie, to the point where it’s borderline insulting to watch. When it’s done right, it’s like a drug. Shamir/Catherine (and to a lesser extent Petra/Dorothea) is this trope done right..

Byleth

  1. Shamir (M)
  2. Alois (M/F)
  3. Flayn (M)
  4. Hanneman (F)
  5. Gilbert (M/F)
  6. Seteth (F)
  7. Manuela (M)
  8. Catherine (M)
  9. Cyril (F)
  10. Rhea (M/F)

I’ve already talked about Byleth’s pairing with Shamir at length, as well as my distaste for some of their other endings here. That said, I want to take a moment to call out father/child relationship that develops between Byleth and Alois if you pick their paired ending. Considering how much it destroys Byleth when their dad dies in the first part of the game — and considering they never know their mother — it’s really sweet to see Byleth have family. Sure, there are plenty of endings (see: Shamir) where Byleth starts their own family. But giving Byleth a father figure for an ending is really sweet.

If you enjoyed the post you just read, please consider supporting me through my Patreon. Memberships start at only $1 and help support the costs for this site, as well as my other creative endeavors. You can also support me by purchasing my book, An Epilogue to Innocence, here. I also offer editing services on this page.

Ranking Fire Emblem: Three Houses Paired Endings (Golden Deer)

Welcome to one of the blog posts I wrote during our shelter in place time. Most of the posts I wrote during this period are not particularly high thought level posts. If anything, the entire point to them is to be able to not think heavily for a little while. As such, I’m immersing myself in things I like (read: video games, mostly). apologies for anyone that finds this boring. This is how I’m coping.

A while back, I wrote a post talking about my headcanon relationships for all of Fire Emblem: Awakening characters. I spent a good bit of time thinking about how I’d write such a post for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, only to come to the following conclusions.

  1. Even people who read my blog AND care about Fire Emblem would not read such a post, as it’d be insanely long.
  2. There are so many characters who can end the game with so many others that it’d be impossible to do a true headcanon post for most characters1The exceptions to this rule are Hilda X Caspar, Flayn X eating fish, and Dorothea X my friend Stephanie..
  3. The age gaps in certain cases (Hanneman, Manuela, and Seteth, in particular) makes that a much weirder exercise than it was in Awakening.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to provide a ranking of the best paired endings for each character in the game. These posts will be divided by the character’s starting house. My hope is to do all five of these posts over the course of a week, though we’ll see how quickly I can get them done. When they’re all completed, you can click below to access each list.

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Church of Serios | Ashen Wolves/DLC

For this list, I’m only including endings where a character pairing has a support of A or higher to end the game. Additionally, because Byleth could hypothetically end up being paired with any character in the game depending on various circumstances, they are included in each list. That said, I’ll only be considering their paired endings with characters of the house I’m focusing on within that post. You’ll see how I handle their potential same-sex endings in each post.

To be clear, these lists will focus on the endings these characters can have with another character, rather than strictly on supports. Supports are a topic better saved for another time with a less cabin-fevery mind. Also, spoilers ahead. Clearly.

Pairings that are directly stated or at least heavily implied to be romantic in nature are in bold. Pairings that vary whether or not they are romantic depending on what story path you’re playing on, or are ambiguously romantic, are denoted with an asterisk (*).

Claude

  1. Byleth (F)
  2. Annette
  3. Petra
  4. Shamir
  5. Lorenz
  6. Hilda
  7. Ingrid
  8. Balthus
  9. Marianne
  10. Leonie
  11. Lysithea
  12. Flayn

Claude has a lot of really good endings. Nearly all of his endings are either romantic ones where the partners are equal or non-romantic ones were both partners go on to do great things. Which kind of makes sense, what with his whole equality storyline and everything. The only two I really can’t get behind are Lysithea’s2Her living doesn’t make a ton of sense in this ending. and Flayn’s3You mean to tell me that Seteth NEVER finds out about her marriage to Claude? Ever?. That said, pretty much everything 8th place and above on this list is a great ending for Claude. I’m partial to his endings with Byleth, Annette, and Petra, but there are a ton of possible favorites here.

Hilda

  1. Claude
  2. Caspar
  3. Ignatz
  4. Raphael*
  5. Marianne
  6. Cyril
  7. Ferdinand
  8. Lorenz
  9. Byleth (M)
  10. Seteth
  11. Balthus*

Much like I mentioned with Caspar, I hate that the Hilda/Caspar pairing doesn’t top this list, as I adore their supports. That said, Hilda’s ending with Claude is the lone ending that allows her to be an equal to her partner, use her cunning nature, and allow her inner artisan to flourish all at once. I also weirdly like how many non-romantic endings Hilda has, even if not all of them are good. For as much of a flirt as Hilda is, it still makes sense that she doesn’t need to settle down with someone. Though if the internet is any indication, they’d love if her pairing with Marianne was more romantic.

Lorenz

  1. Claude
  2. Manuela
  3. Lysithea
  4. Byleth (F)
  5. Marianne
  6. Hilda
  7. Catherine
  8. Mercedes
  9. Leonie
  10. Dorothea

I don’t like Lorenz all that much. That said, he grows up A LOT in his endings. So much so that it’s somewhat at odds with his character in much of the story. I do want to particularly call out the fact that in Lorenz’s ending with Byleth, we get a direct mention of the fact that Byleth transfers control of whatever they’re leading to their son — the lone instance talking about power transfer post-war that I recall seeing in any of the endings. It’s also notable that for a character whose focus in his supports is often on finding the right person to marry, his best paired ending of all is actually one where he remains unmarried. That said, I really like his paired ending with Manuela, in part because their supports make two characters I dislike very likeable.

Lysithea

  1. Linhardt
  2. Hanneman
  3. Byleth (M)
  4. Edelgard
  5. Claude
  6. Cyril
  7. Raphael*
  8. Lorenz
  9. Balthus
  10. Felix (Other Routes)
  11. Felix (Azure Moon)
  12. Ignatz

Lysithea’s endings can be divided pretty cleanly into two groups — ones where she lives (1-5 on this list) and ones where she dies quite young (6-12). I’m particularly a fan of her endings with Linhardt and Hanneman, which are extremely similar in nature. That said, Linhardt’s gets the edge, as part of what Lysithea wants in a full life is love (per her supports), regardless of that life’s length. Her ending with Cyril is also particularly touching, though still lower on this list because of her untimely death. Congratulations to Lysithea on being the one character that has endings with both Hanneman and Cyril without either of them being creepy.

Ignatz

  1. Raphael
  2. Petra
  3. Hilda
  4. Marianne
  5. Shamir
  6. Leonie
  7. Flayn
  8. Ingrid
  9. Byleth (F)
  10. Mercedes
  11. Lysithea

Ignatz’s bottom five paired endings on this list are nearly identical. There are similarities within all of the character endings, but Ignatz specifically has a ton of copy/paste endings. His best ending is a romantic one, though it’s not with the person he has a paired ending with, as he marries Raphael’s little sister, who had a crush on him since they were children. Ignatz’s entire gimmick is that he’s an artist, so I like the endings where he’s able to do that well in varied ways, as is shown in his endings with Petra, Hilda, and (to a lesser extent) Marianne.

Marianne

  1. Dimitri
  2. Ferdinand von Aegir
  3. Claude
  4. Hilda
  5. Lorenz
  6. Linhardt
  7. Raphael
  8. Ignatz
  9. Hanneman
  10. Ashe
  11. Byleth (M)

I still hate the Ashe/Marianne ending. That said, congratulations on the Byleth ending on being the only ending for Marianne that downplays how important and smart she is. Even the Hanneman and Ashe endings give her credit for that directly, even if she is reduced to being a sugar mama. For that matter — Marianne has quite the number of sugar mama endings. It’s kind of weird considering how reserved she is. That said, her ending with Dimitri is still one of my favorites.

Raphael

  1. Ingrid*
  2. Shamir
  3. Marianne
  4. Flayn
  5. Hilda*
  6. Byleth (F)
  7. Leonie*
  8. Bernadetta
  9. Lysithea
  10. Ignatz

I love that Raphael only has two directly romantic endings in all of his possible options. What I don’t like, however, is that nearly all of his options focus more on whoever his paired ending partner is more so than Raphael. This is particularly true in the case of Ignatz, whose paired ending with Raphael focuses almost totally on the marriage between Ignatz and Raphael’s sister, Maya. Raphael’s endings with Ingrid and Shamir are by far his best. Even if the endings aren’t romantic — which they don’t need to be to work — I wish he had more of a focus in them.

Leonie

  1. Seteth
  2. Byleth (M)
  3. Raphael*
  4. Shamir
  5. Claude
  6. Lorenz
  7. Ignatz
  8. Alois (Crimson Flower)
  9. Felix
  10. Alois (Other Routes)

Despite most of the Golden Deer having a lot of really good endings, Leonie has one great ending, three good endings, and a whole lot of downer or what the hell endings. She even becomes an alcoholic who goes severely into debt in her non-Crimson Flower route endings with Alois. Leonie was one of the characters I was most excited about before the game released, only to be disappointed in her once I played the game. Most of her endings are the same. At least her ending (and supports) with Seteth is amazing and wholesome.

Byleth

  1. Claude (F)
  2. Leonie (M)
  3. Lysithea (M)
  4. Raphael (F)
  5. Lorenz (F)
  6. Marianne (M)
  7. Hilda (M)
  8. Ignatz (F)

The Golden Deer endings for Byleth are a bit of a mixed bag, as you have Claude’s awesome ending with Byleth, some good endings courtesy Lysithea, Leonie, Raphael, and Lorenz, and then some bleh endings otherwise. In most cases, Byleth’s endings are generally the same, so you have to take into consideration the ending for their partner more so than other paired endings. And with that in mind, the Golden Deer endings for Byleth are much like the quality of endings for the Golden Deer house as a whole — either incredibly balanced and wholesome or extremely one-sided.

If you enjoyed the post you just read, please consider supporting me through my Patreon. Memberships start at only $1 and help support the costs for this site, as well as my other creative endeavors. You can also support me by purchasing my book, An Epilogue to Innocence, here. I also offer editing services on this page.

Ranking Fire Emblem: Three Houses Paired Endings (Blue Lions)

Welcome to one of the blog posts I wrote during our shelter in place time. Most of the posts I wrote during this period are not particularly high thought level posts. If anything, the entire point to them is to be able to not think heavily for a little while. As such, I’m immersing myself in things I like (read: video games, mostly). apologies for anyone that finds this boring. This is how I’m coping.

A while back, I wrote a post talking about my headcanon relationships for all of Fire Emblem: Awakening characters. I spent a good bit of time thinking about how I’d write such a post for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, only to come to the following conclusions.

  1. Even people who read my blog AND care about Fire Emblem would not read such a post, as it’d be insanely long.
  2. There are so many characters who can end the game with so many others that it’d be impossible to do a true headcanon post for most characters1The exceptions to this rule are Hilda X Caspar, Flayn X eating fish, and Dorothea X my friend Stephanie..
  3. The age gaps in certain cases (Hanneman, Manuela, and Seteth, in particular) makes that a much weirder exercise than it was in Awakening.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to provide a ranking of the best paired endings for each character in the game. These posts will be divided by the character’s starting house. My hope is to do all five of these posts over the course of a week, though we’ll see how quickly I can get them done. When they’re all completed, you can click below to access each list.

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Church of Serios | Ashen Wolves/DLC

For this list, I’m only including endings where a character pairing has a support of A or higher to end the game. Additionally, because Byleth could hypothetically end up being paired with any character in the game depending on various circumstances, they are included in each list. That said, I’ll only be considering their paired endings with characters of the house I’m focusing on within that post. You’ll see how I handle their potential same-sex endings in each post.

To be clear, these lists will focus on the endings these characters can have with another character, rather than strictly on supports. Supports are a topic better saved for another time with a less cabin-fevery mind. Also, spoilers ahead. Clearly.

Pairings that are directly stated or at least heavily implied to be romantic in nature are in bold. Pairings that vary whether or not they are romantic depending on what story path you’re playing on, or are ambiguously romantic, are denoted with an asterisk (*).

Dimitri

  1. Marianne
  2. Flayn
  3. Felix
  4. Annette
  5. Dedue
  6. Byleth (F)
  7. Ingrid
  8. Catherine
  9. Hapi
  10. Mercedes*
  11. Gilbert

Nearly every ending Dimitri is either directly romantic or features HEAVY romantic overtones. The only real exceptions to this are Gilbert (understandably, considering his past with Dimitri’s family), Hapi (DLC, so who knows what happened here), and Mercedes. That last one is really weird, specifically calling Mercedes his friend if you pair them together. For a character whose supports are littered with romance, it’s super out of place. As much as I dislike Dimitri and his story in the game, his endings with Marianne and Flayn are two of my favorites in the game.

Dedue

  1. Annette
  2. Dimitri
  3. Flayn
  4. Mercedes
  5. Shamir
  6. Ashe
  7. Ingrid
  8. Byleth (F)

Dedue just has good endings. Period. His ending with Byleth would be a top half ending for most other characters, but it’s easily Dedue’s worst. His ending with Annette is arguably the most wholesome, earning the top spot on this list. That said, I really like how proud Dedue is of Flayn’s successes in their ending together. Dedue is just a sweetheart.

Felix

  1. Sylvain (Azure Moon)
  2. Dorothea (Other Routes)
  3. Dimitri
  4. Mercedes (Azure Moon)
  5. Ingrid
  6. Lysithea (Other Routes)
  7. Flayn (Azure Moon)
  8. Byleth (F) (Crimson Flower)
  9. Mercedes (Other Routes)*
  10. Flayn (Other Routes)*
  11. Byleth (F) (Azure Moon)
  12. Dorothea (Azure Moon)
  13. Sylvain (Other Routes)
  14. Lysithea (Azure Moon)
  15. Byleth (F) (Silver Snow/Verdant Wind)
  16. Annette
  17. Bernadetta
  18. Leonie

Felix’s endings are hella complicated. There are so many characters he has wildly different endings with depending on which route you’re playing. It made this list terrible to write2The worst part is that I probably could have split all of his endings into two or more, but I felt Annette, Bernadetta, and Ingrid’s were similar enough that I kept them together. And that Leonie’s were both so bad I grouped them together.. That said, it makes sense, as the Azure Moon story is the only one where Felix’s family doesn’t get utterly decimated by the war. The most frustrating part of this list, however, is not the length, rather the fact that some of the best support conversations in the game — those between Felix and Annette — are wasted on a lackluster ending regardless of your route.

Ingrid

  1. Byleth (M)
  2. Felix
  3. Raphael
  4. Dimitri
  5. Sylvain
  6. Claude
  7. Seteth
  8. Dedue
  9. Ashe*
  10. Yuri
  11. Ignatz

It makes a ton of sense that the trio of childhood friends of Felix, Dimitri, and Sylvain all rank near the top of Ingrid’s ending list, but her ending with male Byleth is one of the most underrated endings in the game. The woman stops assassins from killing him. She’s a beast. Ingrid doesn’t have any particularly bad endings, though I’m personally disappointed that her paired ending with Seteth is locked behind the Azure Moon route. While it wouldn’t make sense for that to be an option if you recruit Ingrid in Crimson Flower, I could totally see this ending playing out in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind.

Sylvain

  1. Felix (Azure Moon)
  2. Ingrid
  3. Byleth (F)
  4. Felix (Other Routes)
  5. Dorothea
  6. Mercedes

For as much as a philander as Sylvain is, the fact that he only has five paired ending options is stunning. And really outside of Felix’s Azure Moon ending, most of them are either boring (Ingrid, Byleth, non-Azure Moon Felix) or are kind of demeaning to his eventual wife (Dorothea, Mercedes). I think this is a big reason why Sylvain is one of my least favorite characters.

Ashe

  1. Petra
  2. Dedue
  3. Catherine
  4. Byleth (F)
  5. Annette
  6. Ingrid*
  7. Mercedes
  8. Caspar
  9. Hapi
  10. Marianne
  11. Cyril

Ashe and Petra/Ashe and Catherine/Ashe and Dedue’s endings are adorable, blah blah blah. Alright. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about how TERRIBLE Ashe’s endings with Marianne and Cyril are, shall we? A lot of Ashe’s endings are based on him inheriting the leadership of the house he was adopted into, despite his dream being that he wanted to be a knight, not a noble. Which already lowers them on my list. Combine that with the fact that, in their paired ending, Marianne suddenly gives up on her dream because she wanted to make Ashe’s success at something he had no experience in her dream? What? But at least that makes more sense than Cyril and Ashe’s paired ending. For reference, it’s the exact same ending as Marianne’s, only non-romantic, and without the added benefit of the fact that Marianne had been groomed to be a shrewd and knowledgable noble from a young age. What the hell?

Mercedes

  1. Byleth (M/F)
  2. Jeritza
  3. Felix (Azure Moon)
  4. Annette*
  5. Dedue
  6. Constance
  7. Felix (Other Routes)
  8. Ignatz
  9. Lorenz
  10. Dimitri
  11. Ashe
  12. Ferdinand von Aegir
  13. Alois

Mercedes — similar to Byleth when considering only Black Eagles house members — has a ton of below-average romantic endings. Really aside from her pairing with Byleth and one of Felix’s endings, I’d much rather have one of Mercedes’ non-romantic endings than a romantic one. Which kind of makes sense for a character essentially depicted as a nun or cleric. Bonus points to Alois’ ending for managing to get the whole nun thing right and STILL being the single worst ending Mercedes has.

Annette

  1. Gilbert
  2. Byleth (M)
  3. Claude
  4. Dimitri
  5. Mercedes*
  6. Dedue
  7. Ashe
  8. Hanneman
  9. Linhardt
  10. Felix
  11. Caspar

I want to lead off by saying that even though it isn’t the best paired ending for Annette, author Annette in her ending with Ashe warms my heart. Annette also managed to have one of the few paired endings that Hanneman can have that isn’t completely creepy. That said, for all of the great romantic endings Annette gets — and she gets a TON of them — her best paired ending is the reconciliation with her dad, Gilbert. It’s just touching.

Byleth

  1. Annette (M)
  2. Ingrid (M)
  3. Ashe (F)
  4. Mercedes (M/F)
  5. Sylvain (F)
  6. Felix (F) (Crimson Flower)
  7. Dimitri (F)
  8. Felix (F) (Azure Moon)
  9. Felix (F) (Silver Snow/Verdant Wind)
  10. Dedue (F)

Whereas the Black Eagles have some of Byleth’s worst paired endings, the Blue Lions are full of great paired endings for them. So much so that in four of my eight playthroughs, I’ve paired off Byleth with a member of this group. I changed my final ranking of this list multiple times before I published the post, with the most common change being switching Annette and Ingrid back and forth between the top spot. I don’t think you can go wrong with either of them, though I ultimately decided to give Annette the top spot, as they were otherwise tied and Annette is my favorite character in the game.

If you enjoyed the post you just read, please consider supporting me through my Patreon. Memberships start at only $1 and help support the costs for this site, as well as my other creative endeavors. You can also support me by purchasing my book, An Epilogue to Innocence, here. I also offer editing services on this page.

Ranking Fire Emblem: Three Houses Paired Endings (Black Eagles)

Welcome to one of the blog posts I wrote during our shelter in place time. Most of the posts I wrote during this period are not particularly high thought level posts. If anything, the entire point to them is to be able to not think heavily for a little while. As such, I’m immersing myself in things I like (read: video games, mostly). apologies for anyone that finds this boring. This is how I’m coping.

A while back, I wrote a post talking about my headcanon relationships for all of Fire Emblem: Awakening characters. I spent a good bit of time thinking about how I’d write such a post for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, only to come to the following conclusions.

  1. Even people who read my blog AND care about Fire Emblem would not read such a post, as it’d be insanely long.
  2. There are so many characters who can end the game with so many others that it’d be impossible to do a true headcanon post for most characters1The exceptions to this rule are Hilda X Caspar, Flayn X eating fish, and Dorothea X my friend Stephanie..
  3. The age gaps in certain cases (Hanneman, Manuela, and Seteth, in particular) makes that a much weirder exercise than it was in Awakening.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to provide a ranking of the best paired endings for each character in the game. These posts will be divided by the character’s starting house. My hope is to do all five of these posts over the course of a week, though we’ll see how quickly I can get them done. When they’re all completed, you can click below to access each list.

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Church of Serios | Ashen Wolves/DLC

For this list, I’m only including endings where a character pairing has a support of A or higher to end the game. Additionally, because Byleth could hypothetically end up being paired with any character in the game depending on various circumstances, they are included in each list. That said, I’ll only be considering their paired endings with characters of the house I’m focusing on within that post. You’ll see how I handle their potential same-sex endings in each post.

To be clear, these lists will focus on the endings these characters can have with another character, rather than strictly on supports. Supports are a topic better saved for another time with a less cabin-fevery mind. Also, spoilers ahead. Clearly.

Pairings that are directly stated or at least heavily implied to be romantic in nature are in bold. Pairings that vary whether or not they are romantic depending on what story path you’re playing on, or are ambiguously romantic, are denoted with an asterisk (*).

Edelgard

  1. Ferdinand von Aegir
  2. Byleth (M/F)
  3. Constance
  4. Linhardt
  5. Caspar
  6. Lysithea
  7. Hubert
  8. Hanneman
  9. Manuela
  10. Dorothea
  11. Bernadetta

Though she’s one of the main characters of the game, Edelgard’s endings are all over the place. Everything outside of the top six of this list is either creepy (Hanneman), extremely one-sided (Dorothea/Hubert/Bernadetta), or boring (Manuela). Her relationships with Constance, Linhardt, Caspar, and Lysithea are much more balanced, though it’s clear her role as Emperor keeps her from forming serious relationships in most cases. The Byleth ending is kind of a stock Fire Emblem happily ever after ending, but considering how poor the rest of Edelgard’s endings are, it’s one of her best. Pairing Edelgard with Ferdinand not only gives them a super equal ending wherein they’re peers, but also gives us her lone satisfying romantic ending.

Hubert

  1. Bernadetta
  2. Dorothea
  3. Byleth (F)
  4. Petra
  5. Shamir
  6. Ferdinand von Aegir
  7. Edelgard

Despite there being heavy overtones that Hubert holds an unrequited love for Edelgard, his paired ending with her is by far his worst possible ending. Nearly all of his endings except for Edelgard end with him having a loving and happy family or using his brilliant mind for strategy. Bernadetta’s ending gets the top spot as it’s the lone ending that implies that Hubert gets both of these things, though special mention goes to his ending with Dorothea because they manage to turn a travelling opera company into a spy mission.

Ferdinand von Aegir

  1. Edelgard
  2. Manuela
  3. Marianne
  4. Constance
  5. Dorothea
  6. Bernadetta
  7. Hilda
  8. Flayn
  9. Byleth (F)
  10. Petra*
  11. Mercedes
  12. Hubert

Ferdinand has romantic supports with nearly everyone he has a paired ending with, save for Hubert and Petra (Crimson Flower route only in her case). While I’ve already talked about Edelgard’s ending at length, I do want to call out Ferdinand’s ending with Manuela as being one of the few romantic paired ending cases where the male character becomes a stay-at-home dad. Which is kind of neat to see considering this is very much a medieval setting.

Bernadetta

  1. Hubert
  2. Raphael
  3. Seteth
  4. Yuri
  5. Byleth (M)
  6. Linhardt
  7. Ferdinand von Aegir
  8. Jeritza
  9. Edelgard
  10. Caspar
  11. Felix

Pretty much any ending for Bernadetta where she doesn’t grow as a person annoys the hell out of me, which means that anything from Ferdinand down on this list is rough. Even with that in mind, she does have some really good endings, between making embroidered flowers with Hubert, becoming a talented politician with Raphael, and an adept illustrator with Seteth. I give the Hubert ending the nod here, as it’s a more equal partnership than Raphael’s, all while being less weird than Seteth’s.

Caspar

  1. Petra
  2. Hilda
  3. Linhardt*
  4. Ashe
  5. Shamir
  6. Catherine
  7. Edelgard
  8. Dorothea*
  9. Annette
  10. Byleth (F)
  11. Bernadetta

For a character as prone to going off and doing his own thing has Caspar is, it’s not shocking that lot of his endings are non-romantic, or at least only vaguely so. It pains me not to put Hilda at the top of this list, as their supports together are some of my favorite in the game. That said, Caspar’s ending with Petra is the lone ending of his where she completely puts someone else before himself and gives up his vigilante nature from the outset2He does do this with Hilda too, but not initially. It’s kind of sweet.

Petra

  1. Ashe
  2. Ignatz
  3. Claude
  4. Dorothea
  5. Ferdinand von Aegir*
  6. Caspar
  7. Hubert
  8. Linhardt
  9. Cyril
  10. Byleth (M)

Petra is one of the few female characters in the story whose endings nearly always focus on her successes rather than her partner’s3Except for her ending with Byleth. That one is just bad.. Because of this, I tend to prefer her endings where her partnership is one with mutual success, rather than just having a focus on her time as Queen of Brigid. Petra’s top three spots are all from non-Adrestian Empire partners, while the fourth is her lone same-sex option, and fifth place is only romantic on certain playthroughs. My point is that the most “obvious” partners for Petra are all her worst options.

Linhardt

  1. Lysithea
  2. Annette
  3. Bernadetta
  4. Caspar*
  5. Marianne
  6. Byleth (M/F)*
  7. Hapi
  8. Edelgard
  9. Flayn
  10. Catherine*
  11. Dorothea
  12. Petra

Linhardt, perhaps not shockingly, has some weird endings. His endings in particular with Lysithea and Annette4You’ll likely see Annette near the top of a lot of characters’ lists when she’s an option, because Annette is amazing and we must protect her at all costs. are touching, with the former being actively good for both parties involved. That said, a lot of his endings are either weirdly vague (Caspar, Marianne, Flayn) or give him a ton of credit for stuff while overshadowing his partner (Petra……..can you tell I detest this particular ending).

Dorothea

  1. Petra
  2. Felix (other routes)*
  3. Hubert
  4. Byleth (M/F)
  5. Manuela
  6. Ferdinand von Aegir
  7. Felix (Azure Moon)
  8. Edelgard
  9. Yuri
  10. Caspar*
  11. Hanneman
  12. Sylvain
  13. Linhardt
  14. Lorenz

Dorothea’s endings are all over the place in terms of quality, how romantic they are, and who they’re with. Her standout ending is with Petra, but she also has the first example of a character who has two wildly different endings with another character in terms of outcome and quality. Her Azure Moon ending with Felix is her only romantic ending with him and it’s…fine? Better than some of her romantic ends, but not great. That said, the ambiguous ending she has with Felix in every other route is dripping with romantic undertones — but pretty explicitly spells out that they weren’t together. It’s just good writing.

Byleth

  1. Dorothea (M/F)
  2. Hubert (F)
  3. Bernadetta (M)
  4. Caspar (F)
  5. Edelgard (M/F)
  6. Ferdinand von Aegir (F)
  7. Linhardt (M/F)*
  8. Petra (M)

Literally every character can receive a paired ending with Byleth, though not every one of them is as romantic as the S-support status/support convo may lead you to believe. I’d argue that the literal ending card for a Byleth and Linhardt pairing is decidedly more like good work colleagues rather than romantic partners — and that goes for either male or female Byleth. The Black Eagles have some of Byleth’s worst endings, though I’m quite a fan of Dorothea and Hubert’s endings. It should tell you a lot about how weak Edelgard’s various endings are when her ending only ranks 5th on Byleth’s list, yet is second on Edelgard’s. If this list was about S-support conversations, this would be a whole different story.

If you enjoyed the post you just read, please consider supporting me through my Patreon. Memberships start at only $1 and help support the costs for this site, as well as my other creative endeavors. You can also support me by purchasing my book, An Epilogue to Innocence, here. I also offer editing services on this page.