scry

NOTE: As the character I'm playing is an extra character from the Cindered Shadows DLC as opposed to part of the main story, he does not have a huge role to play in the war phase beyond his supports, a paralogue battle, and being part of Dimitri's army. The majority of his time is spent running the underground town of Abyss, which will be detailed further in the personality section! Regarding in-game choices, for the purposes of this application Byleth was female, and only the Ashen Wolves (Yuri, Hapi, Balthus and Constance) from the DLC were recruited into the Blue Lions House.

CW: mentions of murder, self-loathing attitudes towards sex work

"I may have the best of intentions, but I’m still a criminal. If the world I’m fighting for has guys like me in it, it’s not a better one. When can I start over with a clean slate?"

"By any means necessary" is without doubt the first phrase that springs to mind when thinking about Yuri Leclerc. He’s a man with a mercenary outlook, always calculating and planning to tip the scales in his favour however he can, and when he has the greater good in mind? Yuri considers it his duty to shelve any ideas he has about shame or pride if it means he’ll be able to help those in need. He is a flighty, mysterious individual who lures with softness and strikes with steel, but whose heart is arguably one of the biggest among the former students of Garreg Mach Academy. As we progress through the story we come to see that, for all his cavalier attitude towards his behaviour, he’s a person who is incredibly concerned with what his actions mean for his future, belying an emotional complexity that he goes to great lengths to keep hidden from his peers.

Cliché as it may seem, Yuri never intended for the life he leads now to end up the way that it has done. He was born to a poor single mother in one of the villages of Faerghus, the kind of place where people scratch a living to get by, yet was nevertheless raised to always do his best to help others wherever he can. When he was a young boy, she invited a sick old man (simply referred to as “the elder”) into their home and nursed him back to health, for which he repaid her by teaching Yuri to read and write. A short time later Yuri became incredibly sick with what would soon reveal itself to be a plague, but the old man performed some kind of ritual – one that involved Yuri swallowing a red liquid – to bring him back from death’s door and fully heal him. The elder died not long after, but both his sacrifice and his ritual would leave Yuri changed forever. Not only did it bestow upon him a deep sense of duty and compassion towards helping those in need, but he later speculates that the ritual that saved him may have been what caused him to manifest the Major Crest of Aubin.

Yuri’s determination to follow through on his personal vow to protect people is a defining feature of his personality, and is ultimately what guided him onto the path that would lead him to seeing the very best and very worst of society. As a child it was difficult to achieve much of anything without money, notoriety, or many years behind him, and so he ended up joining a street gang that gave him a thorough education in thievery. Those nobles that looked down on them lived lives of comfort and excess; why not use the art of trickery to take back some of those resources and even out the playing field? Yuri has never, ever felt particularly guilty for the circles he’s run around the people he deems to be “stuffy nobles”, and regularly demonstrates that he has little patience or sympathy for their plight. Survival was always his goal – not just his own, but that of the people he cares about the most – which is usually what ends up getting him into the worst kind of trouble.

A good early example of this is the incident that happened while he was training in the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach. Yuri was sent out with the knights to get rid of some bandits only to find that they were members of his former gang – the very street kids he’d sworn to protect – and made the split second decision to kill the knights and let his friends go free instead of follow through with the mission. When the Church found out what happened on his return he was very nearly executed for his crime – and had Rhea not machinated Aelfric’s interference to have Yuri removed to Abyss, would have undoubtedly been killed.

During the events of Cindered Shadows we see that Yuri’s methods have matured significantly since then, and that he’s learned to use more than violence to protecting the people he cares for. At the very end of the story we learn that Yuri has in fact been deceiving the Ashen Wolves – who he does view as true friends – so that he could double-cross Aelfric all along, but that in doing so he caught everyone up in his masterfully woven plans. This demonstrates the lengths that Yuri is willing to go to when it comes to doing the right thing. Lying to Constance, Hapi and Balthus was, in his opinion, an entirely necessary deceit; he simply had to ensure that the game was rigged in his favour at all time to ensure the outcome that he wanted.

Of course, there are plenty of methods of getting your own way besides resorting straight to violence. Coming into his late teens in the proximity of well-to-do circles opened up new opportunities for Yuri, particularly once he learned how to use his looks and charms to his benefit. He references having been fought over by nobles, paid for the pleasure of his company, and often talks about the ‘boots he had to lick’ to amass his underground fortune, which suggests non-sexual escorting at the least and sex work at the most. He is excellent at playing roles when seeking means to an end: while he isn’t exactly a chameleon, he certainly knows how to adjust his façade depending on the type of person he’s dealing with, and finds it easy to mask his disgust or disdain beneath a sparkling smile and a flutter of his lashes.

He has also come to understand that it’s knowledge above all else is the key to ensuring one’s own success. Yuri is an observant young man with a voracious appetite for learning: he enjoys games of strategy and risk, books on arithmetic and ways of analysing data, and even has a discussion with Hapi in which he explains that “not knowing things” makes him quite uncomfortable. Yuri insists on being as in control of his situations and surroundings as much as he possibly can, which manifests in his daily life within his need to understand as much as he can about the world. This extends just as far into the realm of gossip and information. One of the benefits in being a charming companion to nobles is that he’s learned how to soften them up just enough to make it easy to extract their secrets, which is an absolutely invaluable skill for someone styling himself as an underground mob boss. Knowing the extent to which he can exploit a complicated administrative system, a tenuous alliance, the natural environment around him, someone’s secret shame – all of it is necessary, in Yuri’s eyes, for the betterment of his people.

His dedication to his cause is not to say he’s without a more playful side. When he isn’t playing a part, Yuri comes across as a laid-back individual with a crass mouth who loves to tease and wind up his friends. He’s blunt, opinionated, occasionally arrogant, and enjoys nothing more than pulling reactions from other people, especially individuals (such as Constance) who give him a lot to work with. It’s for this reason that he’s become known as the “Savage Mockingbird” among other gangs; the playful attitude he brings to his friends is something he uses when he’s conducting business as well – violent or otherwise – and while this isn’t necessarily something he leans into? He’d rather be feared for his viciousness than considered an easy target for Abyss’ rivals.

As such, Yuri has an interesting “code” when it comes to his softer side, and has been known to go to lengths to disguise it from prying eyes. It takes him an incredibly long time to trust, but once it’s been earned it’s clear that he is a generous, attentive, and loving companion. He says himself that he enjoys nothing more than spending an evening with good friends and good food, and is clearly a social animal who likes kicking back and having a good time. He also takes great pleasure in providing others with things they love: take Ingrid, for example, who he discovered tucking into some meat at an off-the-grid tavern. After a little observation and easy questioning Yuri went on to surprise her with a home-cooked meal back at Garreg Mach, simply because he enjoys being able to be a source of pleasure for his friends.

On the other hand, it also seems as though Yuri is uncomfortable with his kindness being observed by others when he didn’t plan on having an audience. When Dorothea confronts him after discovering him singing lullabies to sick children, for example, Yuri immediately tries to divert the conversation back to her, even throwing in a little flirtatious charm in the hopes of shutting down any further comment. This suggests that he does have a little shyness in him, for all his behaviour would suggest otherwise, and that he doesn’t much like it when others discover things about him that he isn’t yet ready to share.

This is likely the reason that, for the most part, when discussing his future he only really speaks anonymously (i.e. a note in the counsellor’s box) or to his most trusted friends. For all Yuri is fully committed to his cause, and believes there to be no other way to achieve his goal of helping as many people as he can, it’s evident that he harbours doubts as to what it means for him personally to live the life that he does. His greatest shame in life is the fact that he killed innocent knights of the Church on that fateful mission during his Academy days, and he is still seeking the Goddess' forgiveness for their murder. He also considers himself to be “filthy” and unlovable because of his lifestyle – the stealing, killing, selling himself to nobles, letting them use him for their dirtiest work – and seems to long for a day when his work will be done and he’ll be able to start over with a clean slate.

In sum, Yuri is a complicated young man who harbours deep regrets for which he one day hopes to atone. Until then, however, he is committed to keeping his friends and family safe no matter what the cost may be to himself, and he’ll do it all with a cheeky wink, a playful smile, and a wicked flash of his blade.