Fire Emblem: Three Houses Producers Reveals Claude’s Real Name and the Prototype Route

The latest issue of Nintendo Dream is out, and it features a lengthy interview with Fire Emblem: Three Houses Producers Toshiyuki Kusakihara and Genki Yokota on behind-the-scenes details about the game’s story. It goes over details that weren’t touched upon in the game, such as Claude’s name and which route was the first one conceptualized. [Thanks, @hellopigmi on Twitter and SigurdVII on Reddit!]

Editor’s Note: Fire Emblem: Three Houses spoilers will follow.

Here are the highlights:

• Claude’s real name is Khalid (カリード, kaliid), with Claude being a fake name. This was meant to be revealed in the story, but they couldn’t find a chance to slot it in. There was supposed to be a scene where Nader calls Claude “Khalid,” but they couldn’t settle on the details, and so it ended up being cut.

• Originally, there was some resistance to giving Claude his name, because there was already an existing character in Fire Emblem: Geneology of the Holy War with that name. Then again, it’s a fake name anyways and there are also other characters who have overlapping names anyways (eg. Kamui in Fire Emblem Echoes and Kamui/Corrin in Fire Emblem Fates), so they felt it was fine.
• Kusakihara said that Claude “probably has actual siblings in Almyra.” Or rather, he’d have half-siblings with a different mother, who would then pick on him, which forms the basis of his life philosophy. The main theme of Claude’s route is about how to fight against those unwilling to accept those different from them, and it stems from his upbringing.
• When creating Claude, Kusakihara stated that the team took inspiration from Yang Wen-li from The Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Rajendra from The Heroic Legend of Arsland, and Claude is something of a mix of both of them. He values ‘survival’ as a victory, and this is why he pleads for his life in one of the routes and survives in all the others. Kusakihara believes that his values are very different from Fodlanders’ values, which is shown in his dialogue if Hilda is killed in the Crimson Flower route.
• The Silver Snow route (or “Church” route) was the prototype conceptual route planned out, and the Koei Tecmo Scenario Team then branched out from that to develop the other routes’ stories and Class Leaders’ development. As such, the Black Eagles route was meant to be the hardest route, as you’d lose access to Edelgard. However, the development team really wanted a route where you could go with Edelgard. Even then, it was originally meant to be much harder (around “three times” harder) to fulfill the requirements to do so.
• Edelgard underwent her experiments after Lysithea. Originally, she was meant to have a larger, rival-like position in the story, to the point where she could interfere with Byleth’s ability to manipulate time with Divine Pulse. However, this was scrapped.
• The Sothis we meet inside the story is in an incomplete state, which is why she differs from how Rhea remembers Sothis. Sothis’ real look is the adult design seen only in painting form.
• The reason why Rhea changed history so that the Ten Elites and Nemesis were known as heroes was because, from the perspective of the humans, they really were heroes. It was changed in order to keep the peace. That said, Rhea meddled with how history was told in order to quell the flames of war, and not to rule over humanity.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is available on Nintendo Switch. Check out another interview about some of the DLC additions here.