Once upon a time, I taught some very special kids in Japan. // Art, writing, games, mobage, VNs, music, translations, etc. And liveblogging, beware. ao3 / pixiv / twitter
Hi, I'm Kai. Feel free to add me, ask me questions, chat me up etc. I'm now offering commissions as well.
Asks are on, but any questions about FGO will be ignored. I got tired of how the community was treating me, sorry.
Continuing with the good fight, here’s route 3 of 5. It…………uh. So Ghislain’s supposed to be the tsundere with way too much soldierly pride, with some other related issues thrown in. He thaws really severely, but this route…loyalty end was good, though you can’t really screw up a bad ending, honestly. The love ending…those of you who have played it will know why all I can do is just sit here and laugh my head off at the absurd harlequin romance mess it became.
I really don’t want to spend much time on this and I’ve blocked out most of his route, so…here we go. Basically, Ghislain’s country, Chrysantheme, had the most severe grâce deficiency issue in the first place, so Violette has to keep continuing the ceremony despite all the risks. And the biggest one – which appears during some route’s bad ends most clearly – is that due to the lack of grâce, the Chrysantheme knights always go insane. Murderous, happy-go-massacre kill-kill-kill insane. One of them did so in the past, slaughtering a great number of hanabito. Being no exception, Ghislain also begins to lose sanity at various points, along with being in constant levels of pain (since knights can feel the state of their country physically). Also note that crimson sword that he has in the promo art – will come in handy later.
But yeah, he starts showing signs of crazy the moment the interlude goes into his route.
Meanwhile, yeah, Ghislain was the “come on, impress me” one who had the closest to the "women are weak and soft, stay in the kitchen" mindset of all the knights. I thought we’d get some backstory or some development for that, but the game just says that well that’s what the society in Chrysantheme is like, forgive him, he’s working past it…and then the issue just utterly disappears. So…I guess it was settled? Maybe? Who knows. The whole route is basically a break the haughty, though.
Oh and Ghislain plays beautiful, tempestuous piano music to help him focus (when he was a soldier, too) and deal with his emotions. Really pretty CG there.
Ultimately he always ends up going insane anyway, and asks Tsumabeni (his guardian) to chain him up in a cell in the basement so that he doesn’t harm anyone. Violette, of course, isn’t happy with this, and gets Louis’s and Uranami’s help in breaking into his cell to meet him.
There are scenes where Ghislain’s just howling and crying about how unfair it all is – he worked so hard to fight for his country, both as a soldier and a knight, but this was the fate that he’d be condemned to no matter what. Kondou Takashi’s voice work was so incredibly good that it really, really hurt. Ow. My heartstrings.
The game then conveniently allows for max tragedy to occur. (I say conveniently because this game is really inclined to just “make things happen” via meh writing or plot handwaves in order to get some sort of emotional result. Stop it with the lazy writing VN writerssssssss.) Madam Enge (Violette’s confidante and one of the older hanabito) breaks Ghislain out of his cell, releases him from his bonds (he’s too weak to do anything about it), and when he protests that he doesn’t want this – she pushes him over the edge anyway. (Can’t remember if she kills herself with the sword here or later - she definitely dies during this route, though. Both for her own reasons and to give Ghislain more
grâce.)
Basically it’s revealed that Madam Enge was married to the Chrysantheme knight who went insane, killed a bunch of people, and then was finally put down by Tsumabeni and the other guardians (and that’s how Tsumabeni lost his eye and his arm). She never did move past it, and decides to spare this knight the same fate by…making him kill. Because hanabito are just beings made of grâce, and if he kills them with that sword (which her late husband used in his massacre), then he can obtain their grâce. (And while she sees herself in these two, she’s not exactly totally benevolent and simply thinking about them, here – I’m pretty sure there’s one bad end or something where she ends up killing Violette. I think. Again, too lazy to check.)
It goes just about as badly as you’d expect, with Ghislain killing a huge number of hanabito before he’s finally shaken out of the bloodlust by Violette and overpowered by Tsumabeni. This is sort of painted kind of tragically (the deaths, I mean), except that again this game really doesn’t care about anyone who doesn’t have a sprite image…you know, given how often the people of the world die off while everyone’s all, “meh, well.” Hubert’s angry, at any rate?
On the loyalty end, Violette decides to give up herself to Milene in order to get the grâce that Ghislain needs to survive – rather, decides that there don’t seem to be any other options. She ends up being allowed a final day or two to spend with Ghislain where she “orders” him to have a tea party with her (since she knows he won’t say no to an order - he’s all, “really, you’re going to use orders on something as stupid as - “ but always stops since, well, you know), and the two of them share some bittersweet moments of happiness. It’s all but obvious what they feel for the other…but hey it’s the loyalty route, so no one spits anything out. Ghislain really won’t go along with her plans, but as she learned from him before, he won’t disobey an order, and so she orders him to go on.
In the end, though, Milene is not Violette, and Ghislain goes, takes up that crimson blade, and “commits to revolution.” The end is a bit ambiguous and I for the life of me can’t remember it atm (…I think the “revolution” word did get dropped, at least), but he does tell Violette to wait for him, because he will join her soon. End. So I think it’s alluded to that he’s going to do something else aside from only killing himself, but I’m not opening up the game again, sorry.
Rather than the loyalty end, the bad ends and all of the “kill me before I kill her” scenes were just way more agonizing and heart-rending. Along with the scenes where Ghislain’s just howling and crying about how unfair it all is – he worked so hard to fight for his country, both as a soldier and a knight, but this was the fate that he’d be condemned to no matter what. Kondou Takashi’s voice work was so incredibly good that it really, really hurt. Ow. My heartstrings.
//
Love end was…haha, ha. I can’t remember what happens in the love/loyalty decision ravir but you know, depth of feelings and all that,
Violette confesses to him and kisses him in the cell, and then the same massacre happens - there’s no stopping it.
Ghislain saying, “You’re the one who will get hurt! Why can’t you understand!?” (you know, if he’s let out of his cell, haha. oh, Ghislain.)
No escaping the massacre like I said. And judging from the order my screencaps are in my folder, I guess Enge only died on the love route? …It’s been a while and I’ve forgotten most of the (forgettable) game, forgive me.
But then the game tops this by having Violette and Ghislain descend into harlequin romance esque dialogue. I say this because I lost count of how many times they dropped the “aishiteru” word – two’s already an eyebrow raiser, and three’s two more than you should need. And it was just………..hey I was rooting for them and they had great chemistry, but then…these mindless spoutings of love that had nothing to do with either of their personalities or original speaking styles? That just felt like an empty format of expressing love rather than actual love? Really? Was how I felt. I am possibly the only one who felt this way, so…you know.
Anyway, the two of them in their mad mutual “we’ll sacrifice whomever we need” love realize that despite the sheer number he killed, the grâce that Ghislain harvested just isn’t enough to offset the extreme dearth of grâce that Chrysantheme falls victim to. So…they need a bigger source of grâce. Where’s the best source of grâce to them? The hanabito. Which hanabito has the most grâce? The oldest ones. Who’s the oldest hanabito? Hubert. Whom are they willing to sacrifice so that they can live together in love? Fucking anyone and everyone.
Ergo, happy murder time ensues! Yeah, I’m not kidding, and this was total shit. Even if she sees him as the person who raised her rather than a love interest this time around, this was one of the worst “well…we don’t really care. really.” handwaves in the game by far. And hey, I’m all for characters doing extreme things and then being wracked with guilt about it…but this was just sort of stupid. The guy fucking raised you and is a love interest in another route, and you’re telling me oh whatever about it!? Anyway.
I also don’t remember this part at all (oops?), but I guess ultimately Violette had to stab Ghislain through the sakura tree that gives grâce in order to transfer it to Chrysantheme and I don’t know, who cares, all we have is the art let’s move on etc.
So in the epilogue Chrysantheme’s grâce is stable (for now), but they both feel so guilty about it that they throw themselves into their work with dogged zeal. It takes the other knights to be all yeah okay we get that you feel guilty, but don’t forget why you did it in the first place, to allow the two of them to be able to be more of a couple again. End.
Bonus: when the other knights are trying to convince Ghislain and Violette to embrace happiness just a bit more, Leon’s all well y’know I’d totally be with Violette, but if she says she’d rather be with you no maaaaaaaaaaater what, then I’ll hold back - obviously not being serious about anything, but oh Leon, you overgrown puppydog. (You and Orpheus are too good for this game grumble.)
//
…So yeah, I think you sort of got my feelings about this route in the summary, but just in case you didn’t: Murder is cool, kids! And romantic. The end. But honestly it was just…well, that too, but the prose and the dialogue as well that just had me laughing the entire time. Because laughing was the only way to get through the end of this route. Pity, because Ghislain’s break the haughty thawing was going so well at that.
…Next is Orpheus’s route, which – I’m biased towards him, the precious child, but I’m also especially furious at the idiot ball the game passed him in order to get a plot moving. So, you know.
