emblemvania answered:

Oh anon, have a seat, I could make a a research paper on Xander’s character and how it was not translated well at all. (Long post ahead)

Xander, like all of the Nohr siblings, was deeply traumatized by the events during his life, having multiple half siblings and stepmothers murdered and assassinated in a power struggle, the responsibilities of being the crown prince (i.e. doing things that would be morally not that great, but would ultimately benefit his kingdom, and stuff like that), losing his first retainers, etc.

All of this makes Xander in to what he is in the current time: the big scary Crown Prince that almost everyone finds intimidating, who’s willing to make the hard choices if it means a better end for his country and its people, but on the inside is a scarred individual who was basically forced to grow up at an early age because of all the shit that was happening to and around him.

His support with Camilla shows that they had different reactions to their very similar trauma and destructive upbringing, Camilla focuses on giving love to the people who seem to have none, or who are deeply hurt individuals, and this especially extends to her family. Xander focuses on being the decision maker, who puts his emotions in check for the sake of others, the guide.

Except, during that same support you find out Xander knows just as much, if not more, than Camilla about the personal and familial details about their siblings. The “big scary Crown Prince” is somewhat of a front he adopted in order to properly do his duty.

At his core though, Xander is constantly doing an inner tug of war with himself between being what he and others would consider a good person and being a model Crown Prince. It’s touched on in his Nyx support that fighting wears him down and mentally exhausts him, because he really has no desire to kill; but since he’s the Crown Prince, he has to. I believe in the Japanese support, it’s heavily implied he’s suicidal because of this.

And that actually leads to the main driving force of his character, as well as his death of “Suicide-by-Cop” in Birthright, his ultimate demise; to the bitter end, this internal struggle has impacted his way of thinking, his choices, his personality, his very being. This, of course, affects his younger siblings, and especially the main character, Corrin.

What the localization did to ruin that is by making Xander more (what I and many others like to say) Disney Prince-like. Xander in the English version likes to fight for justice and stands up for what he believes in, he’s a paragon good boy that dispels evil, he even stands up to evil villain Garon.

Except 1) that’s not how Xander was originally written at all and 2) the localization didn’t even change him enough for it to work. What does the latter mean? Most of the good boy paragon Disney Prince is present in his support conversations, while the story more or less handles him the same that the original Japanese script does. This means you have two contrasting portrayals of a character who’s complexity and nuance was founded on an internal struggle between appealing to his feelings and appealing to is duty. This makes Xander in the English version seem like a complete mess, who doesn’t know who he wants to be at any given moment.

You have a Xander that does his duty, a Xander that’s a kind older brother, a Xander that’s introspective about every decision he makes, a Xander that fights for justice no matter what, a Xander that’s scared shitless of his father, a Xander that would drop kick Garon if he looked at him weird. English Xander in Fates has more alts than he does in Heroes.

This really didn’t happen in the Japanese script, like you have Xander with his struggle of humanity vs duty, but even that is all encompassed in what you can process as one person. Like, his Corrin support has him say “I am now able to stand up to father whenever I disagree with him”, but most of his actions in the story don’t support this, he hardly ever directly stands up to Garon, he does things behind his back like the rest of his siblings. Why this discrepancy? Because this line isn’t in the Japanese version. Not even a case of it being translated badly, it just flat out isn’t there. Because it’s just not true, Xander finds his dad scary as hell. And this is one of many examples of how Xander’s personality was altered.

These changes are why the theory “Xander Is Two Different Characters” is so popular and prevalent, because the localization went so hard on altering his supports while doing hardly anything with the story. The theory is wrong, Xander is one character, but due to a shoddy translation and adding stuff that wasn’t there in the first place, his writing doesn’t come off as tragic or nuanced, it comes off as a hot mess.

(Low key the English version also made him more of a dick than what he was in the JP one ironically enough, just compare these. ENG: https://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Fates_Supports/Xander_Elise

JP: https://pastebin.com/H99pkJd1 )

The reason I’m invested in story telling/analysis, proper localization, and fandom drama is because of Fates, and because of how dirty the English version did my favorite character. So yeah, Xander was screwed up by localization big time.

(I have another post in my drafts about Xander and his connection to the story of Fates, as well as other things, I might post that sometime later)