what is dw for if not something to say fandom shit you'd get (and were) canceled for lol

brushing up on Lost Cause shit because i've been hearing way too much of it lately and need to get rebuttals on the fly and... yeah.   but it reminded me of something morbidly funny fandom wise, that being: 

i always felt Micaiah's rah-rah Daein rhetoric in RD felt wayyyyyy.... too much like said Lost Cause bits.  (Quite frankly i hated her because she was felt overhyped along with ike, thank you very much -  but that was definitely the other half of it, along with fandom* absolutely even refusing to look at their precious fav from that angle.)

put in good faith and not just a character/fandom grudge to be put aside: i think what squicks me is just how close her lines / mentality / character arc / deliberate context in the first two-thirds of RD are an uncomfortably close echo to it, and that it was never quite acknowledged where it came from given all the character appreciation? for the broadest most generic context -

• micaiah in Pt3 of RD: figurehead of a country known for pride in military tradition, institutionalized violent racisim against another race that they deem as sub-human, and a country that decisively lost the previous war and sought to survive/reclaim its honor.
• lost cause: ideology of a group of states known for pride in military tradition, institutionalized violent racism against another race that they deem as sub-human, and a collective that decisively lost the previous war and sought to survive/reclaim its honor.

regardless of quibbling on a few points, clearly i'm not reaching here?  some cited bits in particular so I'm not talking out of my ass - first, the critical conversations (3-5 and 3-6 A Reason To Fight):
 

Pelleas: Micaiah, Daein's Maiden of Dawn. Your king requires your service once
    more. Mobilize the Daein Royal Army immediately.
Micaiah: Another war? Against who?
Pelleas: We are answering the request from the Begnion Empire to wipe out the
    barbaric Laguz Alliance. Your targets are... Gallia's sub-humans!
--
Sothe: Are you sure about this, Micaiah? This makes absolutely no sense.
Micaiah: The Daein Royal Army will answer Begnion's request and attack the
    Laguz Alliance at the Ribahn River. Those are our orders from King Pelleas.
    As his subjects, we will obey him.
Sothe: Without even asking why? Daein is finally on its own. Why are we even
    speaking to Begnion, let alone fighting for them?!
Micaiah: I don't know. I do know that King Pelleas wants what's best for
    Daein...just like us. He must know something we don't. I trust him. He's
    changed since the coronation, though. He doesn't smile or laugh anymore.
    Maybe it's because Izuka and the Black Knight vanished.
Sothe: Who cares about Pelleas smiling or laughing? We have no quarrels with
    the Laguz Alliance! Why are we targeting them?
Micaiah: Well, with a few exceptions, the soldiers are excited about hunting
    down the laguz... They've been promised a large bounty for each one they
    kill. It's certainly raised morale.
Sothe: Listen to yourself! Laguz hunting?! That's just great. We've gone from
    being freedom fighters to bigots in the blink of an eye. I can't believe
    you'd go along with such a murderous plan. How do you feel about this,
    Micaiah? Tell me the truth.
Micaiah: ...I don't want to fight.
Sothe: Then why ar--
Micaiah: What choice do I have?! I'm the general of this army. It doesn't
    matter how I feel. Besides, I can't let the king or the soldiers down. My
    duty ultimately lies with them... I'm sorry.
Sothe: Following Pelleas's orders is the same as approving of them.

another line i thought was amusing given, the uh, loaded-ness of the word: 

Ike: The Daein army is working with Begnion? That's unexpected, to say the
    least...
Tibarn: Why would Daein join the war? I thought all their resources would be
    tied up in reconstruction.

this optional battle convo is a bit almost too on the head of the nail, but boy did the game and translators sure put it in there to make a point or what: 

Lethe: We will not surrender. This alliance stands for something more important
    than our lives!
Sothe: What are you talking about? Death is final, Lethe. Nothing matters if
    you're dead.
Lethe: Silence! We'll never be the slaves of beorc ever again!

some bits from wikipedia to paint a picture of Lost Cause:

The Lost Cause, is an American pseudo-historical, negationist ideology that holds that the cause of the Confederacy during the American Civil War was a just and heroic one. The ideology endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, viewing the war as a struggle primarily to save the Southern way of life, or to defend "states' rights" such as the right to secede from the Union, in the face of overwhelming "Northern aggression." At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or denies outright the central role of slavery in the buildup to and outbreak of the war.

The Lost Cause narratives typically portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and its leadership as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, who were defeated by the Union armies through numerical and industrial force that overwhelmed the South's superior military skill and courage. Proponents of the Lost Cause movement also condemned the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, claiming that it had been a deliberate attempt by Northern politicians and speculators to keep the South down. [...] The defeat of the Confederacy devastated many Southerners — economically, emotionally, and psychologically. Before the war, many white Southerners proudly felt that their rich military tradition would enable them to prevail in the forthcoming conflict.

(Daein being the bigoted military powerhouse 3 years ago in PoR under Ashnard, cough cough.).  on another tangent, some more very low-hanging parallels on the religion side of things: 

Charles Wilson argues that many white Southerners, most of whom were conservative and pious evangelical Protestants, sought answers to Confederate defeat in religion. They felt that defeat in the war was God's punishment for their sins, and turned increasingly to religion as their solace.

compare and contrast with: 
 

Soren: This Maiden of Dawn is supposed to be the savior of Daein, whose
    miraculous powers freed their people from tyranny. In other words, her
    followers are fanatics who see her as a goddess. She will make a formidable
    enemy.

let's bring Tauroneo's archetype and the Four Riders in (both sets), too. Hell, Shiharam probably fits this model in PoR.

Allgood identifies a Southern aristocratic chivalric ideal, typically called "the Southern Cavalier ideal", in the Lost Cause. [...] Writers stressed how they embodied courage in the face of heavy odds, as well as horsemanship, manhood, and martial spirit

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

this isn't even me making an active thesis and meta essay connecting the two, just ... i can't not see her and post!Ashnard Daein as anything other than a deliberate in-game nod to that era. fandom grudge aside, i do appreciate the fact that she was even written to be this morally grey/black, full stop. she's interesting, at the very least, and i truly can't think of another very feminine "protagonist" lady character in FE that was allowed to go full off the chain in desperate guerilla warfare tactics, and be the Robert E. Lee archetype to a very intense degree.

yes, (pelleas) was under the blood pact, yes she'd probably react differently if she wasn't blackmailed similarly and to a lesser degree as say, Naesala was - but i always felt like a) on a character level she could've at least not deliberately used the laguz as a convenient target of a lot of Daein's latent wounded pride if she was really serious about sticking to her principles / didn't have some issues to work through lol, and

tl;dr - b) more meta-textually, that the game writers made a very deliberate attempt at consistently poking at this era, and it'd be a miss to turn a blind eye on that.

__

(*the same lovely group of folks that canceled yours truly after i described their uwu baby Soren a racist in a comment five years ago be....cause...... he is ... in canon. this isn't even being hyperbolic, that's literally his secondary character arc.)  (lololol i will absolutely still hold that grudge to my grave.)