The long-running 100+ chapter Fire Emblem: Three Houses fic "The Savior King, the Master Tactician, and the Queen of Liberation" is supposed to be "better than canon", but instead carries a lot of unsettling implications via the portrayal of certain characters and the warping of certain themes.
- The story's overall glorification of Crests and Relics. Canonically, Fodlan's Crest system and nobility are fundamentally broken in ways that hurt Crestless and Crest-bearers alike. But with precious few exceptions, the characters portrayed in the best light have Crests and are given major power boosts, while anyone who hates the Crest system or has complaints about it has that mysteriously scrubbed from their personality or is vilified. Basically? The author, meaning to or not, is proving Edelgard's point and writing over a hundred chapters about why she's wrong and magical power privileges are actually the best thing ever. The fic hammers this point even further into the ground when Byleth, upon knowing the whole truth of the Relics and Crests and everything the Church of Seiros has been covering up through Rhea's whitewashing, goes out of her way to conceal those lies by writing them off as "mistranslations".
- All of the "good" characters are either religious or brought over to the side of Goddess worship with time, and that includes the non-Fodlan natives who have their own religions (Dedue) or are agnostic because they prefer to make their own fate (Claude). The only one who doesn't convert is Petra, who is a nonentity in the whole story. As if that weren't enough, the author eventually started writing a "redemption" story for Edelgard...with said redemption coming in the form of finding and embracing religion. A nasty cocktail of The Complainer is Always Wrong, Easy Evangelism, and Holier Than Thou.
- Despite half the cast being female, there's a lot of sexism running rampant throughout the story:
- The special condition of "magical burnout" was created for when characters with Crests or high levels of magical talent overuse those powers. This would be all well and good, but only female characters suffer from it to varying degrees (save for Flayn during the Battle of Garreg Mach due to her actually being the centuries-old Saint Cethleann). Male magic users and Crest bearers can use their powers as much as they want and be just fine. The only male character who ever suffers from burnout or needs looking after is Dimitri, which is a whole other ball of worms (see below).
- The same goes for when characters get queasy or outright throw up everywhere at the sight of blood and battlefield gore. It's always the female characters, particularly Byleth and Hilda. The only male character to have a moment of this is Dimitri, who again is a whole other story; there were canon guys who had trouble with bloodshed and gore, like Linhardt, but their plight is erased.
- During high-stakes battles and other moments of extreme stress, the men express anger through scowls and growls and shouts. The women, on the other hand, tremble with fear or start lamenting as if it's already over. A prime example is after Edelgard makes her declaration of war.
- The story badly chickifies the female Byleth via ridiculous mood swings and her suddenly becoming weaker and more reckless in battle. During the fic's version of the underground rescue mission, she wonders if she's fallen ill due to the overwhelming sensations she felt during the battle (anger and worry for her students and the abducted Flayn) that led her to take on the dangerous Death Knight and get hurt badly enough she had to be carried back upstairs. This not only implies that emotions equal weakness, but given that it's female Byleth being made less effective by her emotions it's doubly uncomfortable.
- It gets worse during the Cindered Shadows arc. Byleth suffers severe "magical burnout" from Crest overuse to the point where she dies (or almost dies, the story goes back and forth on what actually happened) and has to be brought back to life by the Chalice of Beginnings (which doesn’t exactly work like that in canon), then faints after using Divine Pulse in the battle with beast!Aelfric. She's put on bed rest and forced to sit out the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, which the author says is necessary for "Claude to restore a bit of his confidence in his planning skills after the Divine Pulse reveal." To wit, the author badly kneecapped her female lead just so a male lead could feel more confident.
- In general, this version of Byleth has almost zero self-preservation skills. She's constantly flinging herself into harm's way to protect people who barely need it, overusing her power, doing dangerous stunts to turn the tide of battle when a simple change of tactics would have done, and winds up badly hurt or unconscious for her troubles. Every instance results in Claude, Dimitri, Yuri, or both Claude and Dimitri fussing over her. Basically, she carries the Idiot Ball and is rewarded for her incompetence with endless mollycoddling and attention (especially from men).
- Byleth is also made to be self-conscious and angsty over the "Ashen Demon" reputation (which she isn't in the original game) so some of the female characters can comfort her and tell her she's special and wonderful. The characters in question? Dorothea, Annette, and Mercedes. Byleth is also close with Marianne and Bernadetta, and seems to get along with Hilda. Meanwhile, the brasher and more tomboyish female characters like Leonie, Petra or Ingrid get pushed to the side (Petra may as well not even exist) and the less said about the way Edelgard is portrayed, the better. The message seems to be that a) only traditionally feminine or helpless shy girls are worth any attention and b) a lack of femininity can and should be a source of angst for a woman.
- Making all of this even worse is that the author is a woman.
- The special condition of "magical burnout" was created for when characters with Crests or high levels of magical talent overuse those powers. This would be all well and good, but only female characters suffer from it to varying degrees (save for Flayn during the Battle of Garreg Mach due to her actually being the centuries-old Saint Cethleann). Male magic users and Crest bearers can use their powers as much as they want and be just fine. The only male character who ever suffers from burnout or needs looking after is Dimitri, which is a whole other ball of worms (see below).
- The uglier side of Dimitri's canon PTSD is scrubbed clean via the author having him cured by The Power of Love and Friendship. All it takes to keep him from going on his rampage after the Flame Emperor is unmasked is Bernadetta of all people holding his hand (they don't have supports in the original Three Houses), and overhearing three different Love Confessions to make him choose life rather than wallowing in anger and getting himself killed in battle. Rather than having to fall far from grace and atone for the violence he committed during his lowest point, the author basically says all Dimitri needed was hugs, cuddles, and to be reminded how wonderful love and friendship are. This speaks volumes about what the fic thinks of mental illness that's not somber depression.
- The way Dimitri is written overall makes him look stupid and incompetent. He has almost no agency beyond punching the soldier at the beginning, attacking the Death Knight, and kissing Claude in the lead-up to the trio's Relationship Upgrade. Otherwise he's indecisive and weak-willed with the people around him and the ghosts in his head having to tell him which foot to put in front of the other, and he's constantly needing to be rescued from himself during battle. Most of his chapters are nothing but navel-gazing and conversations with his ghosts, with other people taking his canon achievements or any possible kills away from him. Again, this says a lot about what the fic thinks of mentally ill and/or severely traumatized people.
- Later on in the story, the characters are introduced to Edelgard's sister Justine, who survived the experiments but was rendered mute and crippled. Not only is this new character portrayed as gentle and good compared to her evil tyrant of a sister, but Claude and Dimitri think her magical hovering wheelchair is super cool and fascinating. This not only smacks of "Good Victims Are Docile And Helpless" rhetoric, but cops a condescending attitude towards the disabled, particularly a disabled young woman who watched her siblings die or go crazy in horrific ways.
- The fact that Justine is mute and crippled and considered the good sister is even worse, feeding into the fic's overall idea that "good" women are gentle and ladylike and don't speak up too much unless it's against the "right" things. Edelgard could speak, therefore she ran her big mouth and said mean things about the almighty Church of Seiros. Justine's voice was stolen from her, so even though she's an Imperial daughter she can't say or do anything that would get in the heroes' way.
- The romance arc culminates with Byleth and "her boys" going to the Goddess Tower during the ball to confess their feelings...while Byleth is still Claude's teacher. Even if both his and Dimitri's 18th birthdays have passed by this point, there's a reason Byleth cannot romance any of her students pre-timeskip. When she does try to refute the boys' confessions, it's because she thinks an unfeeling, unladylike mercenary like her doesn't deserve two beautiful men of high standing like them, rather than it being a major breach of ethics.
- Really, the fact that Byleth hasn't been fired for not only getting inappropriately cozy with two students, but for her reckless behavior putting these kids in danger. Every time she risks her life to protect them from something they didn't need protecting from, she gets seriously injured or overtaxes her power and faints, causing them to have to take care of her. (Or in Bernadetta's case, give some of her blood to revive her.)
- Chapter 41 delivers a hefty dose of this via Marianne von Edmund. In canon, she hates herself and is passively suicidal due to bearing the Crest of Maurice, a fallen Elite who became a monster after overtaxing his power. Her character arc and paralogue are focused on encountering and finally slaying the real Maurice, who's lived in the woods as a Demonic Beast for centuries, claiming Blutgang, and dispelling the rumors that his bloodline is literally cursed as many believed for all those centuries. In Savior King? During a battle, Marianne turns into a literal beast after being attacked by a single brawler, then proceeds to gorily kill several enemies. (Including a horse!) Only Claude is able to snap her out of it and turn her back to her human form, and Marianne breaks down in "quiet, resigned despair of someone who had accepted their fate". After the battle, she angstily tells the entire class her story, and how she reveals that the curse of Maurice is indeed true and that her beast transformations are hereditary, including an ancestor who killed herself after her first one and left a letter telling her niece and her niece's children "if they inherited the Major blood, to choose to fall while there was still enough human left in them to die.". Basically, the story is validating Marianne's belief that she's cursed and unworthy of love, that it's genetic, and that anyone with a horrible genetic condition is better off killing themselves!. Even when everyone promises to save Marianne by helping her find a cure, it feels hollow and empty because none of that is going to undo a legacy of "better dead than impure in any way" that's dogged Marianne's entire family bloodline for generations, or the trauma she endured during the battle. And to make it worse, several chapters later Marianne is cured of her angst over all of the above when Ashe confesses his love to her (rather than him specifically helping her out deal with her issues, which would be more coherent and in character).
- Unlike in canon, the ritual in the Holy Tomb goes more as planned, with Sothis and Byleth properly merging and Byleth receiving her power-up (rather than Sothis refusing to take Byleth's for herself and then all but disappearing onwards). Rhea refers to this as her "becoming whole," basically validating her canon treatment of Byleth as little more than a Soul Jar for the Goddess and suggesting that overwriting Byleth's personality is the right thing to do. When canon has Rhea ultimately realizing how wrong she was and genuinely apologizing to Byleth for it, or in the case of Crimson Flower, her obsession with bringing back her mother (aka Sothis' original self, the Goddess) becoming one of the many factors in the increasing mental / emotional unstability that drives her to become the Big Bad of the route.
- For a story that purports itself to be anti-racist via Dimitri's physical defense of Claude "changing history", this story is quite racist:
- Everyone outside the Golden Deer besides Dimitri calls Claude "Riegan" (aka by his Fódlanese surname), and his interaction with Dedue after the Duscur paralogue has Dedue regarding him with suspicion because he's not from Fódlan. Additionally, he's perfectly cordial to the white Byleth -- whom Dedue tells in canon that he will not abide mistreating Dimitri in any way during some early exploration dialogue.
- Petra is barely even mentioned in the story, much less getting any dialogue or scenes, and it reaches a rather nasty conclusion in the War Phase where Edelgard in full Ron the Death Eater mode holds her hostage to force Brigid to comply with the Empire...and Petra is never even on the page. No dialogue, no POV interlude, no appearances during any of the key scenes. The author is going out of her way to make Edelgard look as racist as possible by having her mistreat a POC girl... and gives the victim no actual presence or agency in her own damn arc.
- The first chapter has Dimitri, a white boy, coming to the rescue of the non-white Claude and Cyril when a straw racist harasses them. Instead of telling him he could have handled it himself or simply thank him while keeping it in mind so he'll see what to do later, Claude is eternally grateful to Dimitri to the point of inviting him to eat with the Golden Deer, half of whom cheer for Dimitri on Claude's behalf. Due to Claude's canon status as a foreigner who's experienced racism from both halves of his heritage, this comes off less as Dimitri helping someone he wants to befriend (aka his standing up for Dedue in their B support) and more like Mighty Whitey.
- Dedue's paralogue takes place in the story, but Dedue and Dimitri's roles are overshadowed by Byleth's first magical burnout episode and Claude getting the final kill, then Dedue getting his only speaking role in the story to be an OOC Jerkass towards Claude for no real reason. Later, the Tragedy of Duscur mystery is solved and Duscur's name is cleared off-screen...by Atra. A white girl and a former Agarthan whom the Kingdom has no reason to trust (as much, she helped Glen Fraldarius survive but it could still be seen as her doing this to manipulate him, rather than out of selflessness), yet they take her at her word. After that, Duscur becomes a non-entity, not even showing up to help when the Kingdom and the Alliance bring a ton of reinforcements during the battle of Garreg Mach.
- Atra is an Agarthan refugee who turned her back on her militaristic and abusive culture to join the heroes and convert to Goddess worship. She spends half her time badmouthing her former home and people, culminating in her vow to destroy all of them - not just Thales and the higher-ups, but every single Agarthan, period - in the name of Byleth, aka the Goddess's vessel, with the Knights of Seiros cheering her on. Her whole arc reads like a minority character switching sides to join their oppressors to save their skin and denouncing their entire race/culture/ethnicity to get in good with their so-called saviors, whom they'll gladly aid in destroying those evil Others. Atra doesn't even give a thought to other Agarthans who are suffering under Thales and the higher-ups, she'll gladly see them all die to please the Goddess. There is one Agarthan woman who is spared, but only after she converts to Goddess worship.
- There's also the way she resolves the Tragedy of Duscur in a matter of seconds offscreen, then again onscreen after the battle of Garreg Mach. Again, she's from a culture of badly oppressed people (evil or not) who swoops onto the scene to solve the years-long trauma of a white man. Gee, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?
- While the story features a three-way relationship between two men and a woman up front and begins with one of the men developing a crush on the other, its view of homosexuality as a whole is rather...uncomfortable.
- Early in the story, Claude makes a few jokes about Sylvain possibly being gay because he has no feelings for the girls he sleeps with. He later asks if Dimitri is gay simply because he's never kissed a girl. It's all Played for Laughs.
- There's a moment where Hilda and Dorothea fall onto each other, and the narrative calls it "awkward" due to "Dorothea's open affection for both genders and the occasional looks Hilda sent Marianne's way". Implying that these two attractive women being bisexual (Dorothea) / having bisexual tendencies (Hilda) is silly fanservice, nothing to be taken seriously since they're both just going to end up with men anyway (Dorothea with Sylvain, Hilda with Balthus).
- There are only two f/f couples in the story, one confirmed and the other implied: Catherine/Shamir and the ball scene where Edelgard is dancing with Monica who is really Kronya wearing Monica's face. The former barely get any focus aside from a mention at the ball, while the latter ends with Kronya murdered and Edelgard being given full Ron the Death Eater treatment. Later, after Edelgard has been established as the villain of the piece, it's implied that Edelgard wanted Byleth all for herself.
- For a good chunk of the story, Claude and Dimitri have zero chemistry or indications that they actually like each other romantically, aside from a few contrived moments of jealousy and clumsily-written pining. They're supposed to be mild Closet Keys to each other, but in practice both of them are completely obsessed with Byleth, constantly worrying about her and obsessed with protecting and taking care of her. Before the chapter where Dimitri finally takes some initiative and kisses Claude, one couldn't be blamed for assuming they were two guys in love with the same girl and willing to have a threesome ONLY so they could share her.
- Yuri, a very pretty and openly bisexual man, is shown shamelessly kissing Byleth and later Claude without consent, the latter which serves to make Dimitri angrily jealous and forces him to admit his feelings for Claude to himself (or rather, the nagging ghosts in his head). Granted, these are only cheek-kisses, but this was done solely to motivate jealousy and push the romance arc forward, and it paints a rather unfortunate picture of Yuri compared to the repressed "bisexuals" Dimitri and Claude.
- Every other side ship in the story is male/female (ie, Ashe/Marianne, Dedue/Mercedes, Felix/Bernadetta, Balthus/Hilda, Sylvain/Dorothea, Cyril/Lysithea, Flayn/Ignatz, Caspar/Annette, Ferdinand/Constance, Ingrid/a revived Glen, etc.). This alone would be perfectly fine and nothing to side-eye... if not for all of the above.
- Speaking of the point right above... The ones who don't get shipped at all? Guys who aren't pretty enough (Lorenz, Raphael), tomboyish girls (Hapi, Leonie, Petra), or pretty guys who aren't perfectly nice (Linhardt).
- When Atra reveals her Agarthan heritage to some Alliance and Kingdom lords, she speaks GERMAN. As in, Agartha in this story is the analogue to real-world Germany, which during WWII conducted horrific experiments and attempted a total ethnic cleansing, the very same thing Those Who Slither in the Dark are doing with Edelgard their willing and slavish sycophant. One of the most common anti-Edelgard arguments back in the early days of Three Houses fandom was comparing her to a certain dictator - despite the fact that she herself had been experimented on by those same people.