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oh one thing I love about Verdant Wind is how it makes a point of showing that pre-timeskip Lorenz comes to all the incorrect conclusions (and I mean ALL of them) about most things not because he's daft but because he's trusting. it's like, dramatic irony, funny but telling.
usually it would be a case of Claude being like "it's this" and Lorenz being like "it is certainly not that" but of course Claude is correct. Claude is better at that kind of thinking. meanwhile if Lorenz had been leader they would have been hoodwinked ten times over.
and that's not a bad thing because in lieu of him being correct about... anything... he begins to reveal himself as having a different strength: primarily, emotional intelligence. they're not showing that he's not-tactically-savvy to humiliate him, it's revealing his true nature.
either he's just being a contrarian about whatever Claude says because he's focused on undermining him, or he's genuinely just not great at scrutiny. in either case he reveals that schemes - his own, and others' - are not his forte. he's too earnest. heart on the sleeve type.
(also ties into being sheltered, privileged, trusting the status quo, having a lot of faith in the system to function as it needs to, naivety, bearing the burden of his family's expectations, his father's overbearing manipulation of his thoughts and actions, tunnel vision, etc)
what I love about this is that they essentially doom Lorenz's initial mission from the get go, but that's okay! great, actually! because that was never HIS mission, nor HIS nature. his own mission is discovered later through the freedom he gets by being a part of the Golden Deer.
Lorenz finding his purpose over the course of VW is a liberation story within a liberation story. every single shortcoming they convey pre-ts is corrected by Lorenz himself when he's given the tools to do so. he comes to his own conclusions, and hey! they're finally correct!
funnily enough? the same humility, introspection, compassion, honesty and dedication it takes for Lorenz to concede that Claude would be a better leader than him is exactly what makes Lorenz a great leader. this is an Alliance after all. a collaborative effort of great leaders.
hey, you know that way that Lorenz is shaped by the shortcomings of existing leadership and that by shedding all the shackles of those structures, he is permitted to flourish rather than die an early useless death in some avoidable battle? immaculate. blessed content. thank you.
anyway! blows a kiss at Lorenz Hellman Gloucester's character arc and lies down
