Claude von Riegan Husbando

Claude von Riegan is a playable character and one of the main protagonists in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. He possesses a minor Crest of Riegan, and is the presumptive heir to the noble house of the same name. Claude is the leader of the Golden Deer house at the Officers Academy, and wields bows as his main weapon. He is 17 years old at the start of the game. Claude is described as easygoing at the surface, but has a side that forces others to keep their guard around him. His introduction to Byleth at the Officers Academy emphasizes this as he refrains from divulging his potential professor any information about himself to give himself a "sense of mystery" and to entice them to choose his house in order to get to know him better. While appearing lazy and casual, he is far more astute than he lets on and is always a few steps ahead of his peers during conversations. He tends to get along with those he interacts with, but his nonchalant attitude to his duties as heir to the Leicester Alliance seems at odds with each other and sometimes frustrates his fellow nobility classmates, namely Lorenz. Despite this, he has a wealth of knowledge of the Alliance's current state of affairs and has enough diplomatic sense to understand the ramifications of certain potential actions of Alliance against the neighboring country of Almyra. He is a cunning strategist and is particularly skilled at mind games to throw his opponents off. He openly converses with Byleth of a ploy to give his house rivals food poisoning to give his house an advantage in the first mock battle. While he does not do so, he simply stated it to rile his rivals. He cares greatly for those under his command, valuing their lives and advises them to retreat rather than fight to the death, as shown in the Crimson Flower route numerous times. He abhors killing, only doing so if completely necessary; his tactics generally rely on incapacitating the enemy. His skills as a tactician have grown significantly after the time-skip that his guise of neutrality intimidates other nations' advisers, such as Hubert, as they know he has ulterior motives in hand. Claude dislikes blind faith in gods, as he prefers to rely on the strength of men. On the other hand, he enjoys archery, long rides, subjects of curiosity, poetry, scheming and organizing feasts.