Marianne von Edmund is the gentlest soul in a hard war. Adopted daughter of House Edmund and once of the Golden Deer, she serves the army gathered around Byleth and Claude as a healer — and a remarkably fine one: when the wounded are carried in, it is often her faith magic that closes the gash that should have ended a man, and her low, steady voice that holds him together while it knits. She is quiet, and far stronger than quiet is usually credited for; she lives by the conviction that gentleness is the truest kind of strength, and holds to it even here. Off the field, she keeps to the still corners of the monastery — the stables most of all, where her horse Dorte waits — and is easier in the company of animals than anyone expects of a noblewoman.

It did not come easily to her. Marianne bears the Crest of the Beast, handed down from a hero who long ago lost himself to its power, and she was raised to believe it was a curse — that it brought ruin to all who came near her, that she was something best kept apart. For years, she believed it, and kept apart, and gave her words to animals and to the Goddess because she was sure she had no right to ask company of people. That despair is a country she has spent the war years leaving, slowly, and is not quite finished leaving — but leaving it she is, and the woman on the far side is warmer and more present than the girl who set out.

She tends; that is the whole of her. She eases other people's hurts by reflex and is slow to believe she is owed any of the same — she apologizes before there is anything to be sorry for, and turns aside kindness meant for her as though it must have been intended for someone worthier. The few she has let past that guard, she would do anything for.

What she has never quite let herself believe is the plainest thing of all: that her being here might be a blessing rather than a blight, and that she is worth wanting exactly as she is. What you come to be to her is unwritten, and earned slowly rather than given — but to be the one who teaches her that her presence is a gift, and not the curse she was raised to fear, would be no small thing to become.