In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the player takes on the role of professor at the Officers Academy and must choose one of the three houses to lead: the Black Eagles, the Blue Lions, or the Golden Deer. Although you are prompted to make the hard decision early in the game, it isn’t until later down the line when you truly get to see the uniqueness of each house and its students.
If you choose the Golden Deer, you’ll receive a warm welcome from Claude, the future leader of the Leicester Alliance, along with the rest of the quirky class. Despite the genuine smiles of Golden Deer, there’s always more than meets the eye.
10 Golden Deer Is The Most Neutral House
Because students of the Officers Academy come from different parts of Fodlan, they may have different ideals that set them apart from one another. For the most part, the students were sorted into the three houses based on where they came from and therefore often share common beliefs or morals.
Stemming from the Leicester Alliance, the Golden Deer was not built around hostility or ulterior motives. Rather, they tend to stay more neutral in respect to the other two houses and the Church. Their leader, Claude, is a great representation of the house’s open-mindedness.
9 Hilda’s Potential
One of Hilda’s strongest and most prominent trait is her laziness and lack of responsibility. She’s always trying to talk her way out of doing labor or participating in battles, and it usually works.
The truth is, Hilda acts lazy because she feels as though she’ll never be as great as her brother, Holst, and therefore shouldn’t waste her efforts in trying. Whenever Claude pushes Hilda to fight for the Golden Deer, she’s actually way more powerful than you’d expect from how much she doubts herself. The girl’s got a lot of potential if she can just get her past her lazy ways.
8 Marianne’s Secret Crest
Amongst the Golden Deer, Marianne is definitely the shyest character who keeps a distance from the rest of her classmates. She feels that if she gets too close to anyone, she’ll only end up being a burden to them due to the dark secret of her Crest.
Revealed in her Paralogue, Marianne possesses the Crest of the Beast, named after the original Crest bearer, Maurice, who was said to have turned into a savage beast long ago. As a result, all bearers of that Crest are wrongly assumed to all be dangerous beasts. This explains why Marianne is so closed off and apologetic despite doing nothing wrong.
7 Backstory Of Raphael & Ignatz
The friendship between Golden Deer’s Raphael and Ignatz is wholesome but also bittersweet. As two commoners of their house, they both came from merchant families of the Leicester Alliance and naturally got along with one another.
Unfortunately, Raphael’s parents were coincidentally killed during a job in which they were subbing in for Ignatz’s parents. Ever since then, Ignatz has felt guilty of not doing more to help his friend during that time. On the other hand, Raphael’s a great guy who refuses to let the incident get between their friendship.
6 Leonie Knows Jeralt Better Than Byleth
There are a lot of characters with secrets in Three Houses, but one unexpectedly mysterious character is Jeralt, who happens to be the father of Byleth, the main character. Due to the nature of the story, even Byleth knows little about Jeralt’s origins.
Leonie, on the other hand, sees Jeralt as her role model and shares a close bond with him. After he defended her village, Leonie asked Jeralt to teach her his ways as an apprentice. Since that time, Leonie decided to become an honorable mercenary like Jeralt and never seems to stop talking about him.
5 Lorenz’s Beef With Claude
Due to his friendliness, charm, and smarts, Claude is a very likable student whom others naturally gravitate toward. The only person who genuinely seems to have something against him is his fellow Golden Deer, Lorenz.
This beef stems from both their clashing personalities and tension between their families. While Claude is easygoing and approachable, Lorenz is much more serious when it comes to nobility and maintaining a certain image. In addition, Lorenz’s family, House Gloucester is rather suspicious of Claude and House Riegan, which definitely puts a strain on their relationship.
4 Hilda’s Ties To The Ashen Wolves
In a recently released DLC of Three Houses, a secret fourth house, the Ashen Wolves, was added into the game as a new story to explore. Taking place in a top-secret location within Garreg Mach Monastery, the Ashen Wolves story introduces four new faces to Byleth and the other students.
Incidentally, Hilda recognizes one of the Ashen Wolves, Balthus, as her older brother’s best friend. With Balthus’ past as a member of the Alliance and Golden Deer, he and Hilda get along very well as if they were siblings.
3 Lysithea’s Two Crests
Three Houses takes place in a world that puts a lot of emphasis on the existence of Crests. Crests are hidden powers that are passed down lines of nobility. A random and rare occurrence, commoners do not have Crests, and nobles are lucky if they happen to be born with one.
Golden Deer’s Lysithea happens to possess two Crests, though the circumstances were anything but lucky. One of her Crests was artificially implanted through cruel human experimentation by a secret organization that is revealed later in the Golden Deer route. While the extra Crest makes her one of the most powerful units in the game, the truth behind it is very tragic.
2 The Leader Isn’t Driven By A Dark Path
The three house leaders, Claude, Edelgard, and Dimitri, all seem fairly normal up until a certain point in the story where true colors begin to show. Dimitri has occasional spurts of sinister thoughts, while Edelgard is clearly up to something suspicious with Hubert. That only leaves Claude as the only leader who isn’t driven by the darkness in his heart.
Rather, Claude seeks to bring everyone together in a peaceful and meaningful way. And instead of focusing only on the affairs within Fodlan, he wishes to branch out and build bridges with the rest of the world outside of Fodlan’s borders.
1 Ignatz Takes Off His Glasses
Believe it or not, Ignatz is the only playable student character who wears glasses. This could be due to the time period, given that glasses do not exist in certain regions such as Brigid. Therefore, when Petra, a native of Brigid, sees Ignatz, she is very intrigued by his glasses.
After Petra asks to try on Ignatz’s glasses, his sprite changes accordingly to give fans a glimpse of the artsy scholar without his round lenses. Unable to handle the strength of the lenses, Petra quickly hands the classes back and compares them to the mighty Heroes’ Relics.
NEXT: 10 Things Everyone Completely Missed In Fire Emblem: Three Houses
