I've had this Dimitri skin ready since Three Hopes' release, but as you can imagine, I have been busy playing the game. If you've been playing it too, I hope you've enjoyed it so far. Feel free to talk about it in the comments. Personally, I've finished Azure Gleam and am now playing Scarlet Blaze. There is a lot of New Game+ content to find, and I like the atmosphere of mystery surrounding some of the mechanics—did you know that each character has a secret ability they gain from mastering a certain class line? It's connected to their Budding Talent from Three Houses, and it doesn't appear on the preview for the master class in question. Look it up if you're interested, it's especially fun on NG+. I just wish I'd found out before starting my second playthrough...

On another note, I have a whole round of summer skins of the Fódlan lords from Heroes ready to post. I have said in the past that I prefer to put seasonal alts (such as my Summer Byleth, for example) in the description of the original skin, but on this occasion I am feeling like posting them separately, because I made them all completely from scratch and I wouldn't necessarily know which skins to attach them to. Please let me know what you think, but as I say, I am currently planning to post them separately, since I think they are sufficiently unique. New academy versions of the characters might follow, using the updated face and hair designs I've now made.

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Dimitri in Three Hopes is a really interesting portrayal, and I think in a way he retroactively lends depth to the Dimitri of Three Houses by showing us what happens when he ascends the throne without the complications of Rufus and Cornelia.

Critics will be jumping to call his character arc generic and shallow, but Three Hopes Dimitri proves that Dimitri's mental struggles were not created the moment he saw the Flame Emperor unmasked, nor magically dispelled when he was crowned in Azure Moon. Despite not being pushed into crisis like the original timeline, Three Hopes Dimitri continues to exhibit the self-destructive traits which make him so tragic and human, recklessly putting himself in harm's way because he does not value his own life, placing the burdens of the dead on his own shoulders, admitting to being haunted by intrusive thoughts under the guise of the vengeful dead, and eventually learning to accept his worth as both a person and a king.

As the curtains seem to close on Fódlan's expanded story, Dimitri claims his place in the halls of Fire Emblem's greatest lords and heroes, but especially sits among the most human and compelling characters in the series, as one of its strongest portrayals of mental health struggles. I know that critics will deride Dimitri's savage boar persona for its theatrical nature and the way it plays into conventions of the mentally ill in fiction as madmen and crazed murderers, but while Dimitri's self-destructive post-timeskip state draws on literary examples like Shakespeare's Richard III with his boar symbolism in his self-hatred-fuelled pursuit, it is precisely the contrast between this dehumanised portrayal and the sympathetic true nature of Dimitri's intrusive thoughts and fears of disappointing the dead which make his character arc ever the more human. While Byleth pulls Dimitri out of his internalised need to please the voices in his head, Three Houses never makes any claims of "curing" him of the conditions affecting him.

Above all else, Dimitri must learn to accept himself for who he is, and realise that while he can never be the person he was before Duscur and before Cornelia's torment, he can still be a good person who is worthy of love and acceptance. it is this key angle to the game's characterisation of Dimitri's mental illness which makes him so memorable and likeable to so many, in spite of all the time he spent lost and seeking the warmth of familiar hands.