Fire Emblem: Three Houses devs reveal that Claude’s real name is “Khalid”

In the most recent issue of Nintendo Dream, the Japanese magazine published a massive Fire Emblem: Three Houses developer interview. Directors Genki Yokota (Nintendo) and Toshiyuki Kusakihara (Intelligent Systems) weighed in on various topics concerning the Switch game.

At one point of the discussion, it’s revealed that Claude is “a false name.” The Golden Deer leader should actually be known as “Khalid”, according to Kusakihara.

Here’s our translation of the excerpt:

Kusakihara: You guessed it: it’s a false name. Claude’s real name is “Khalid”. I wanted to include it somewhere in the game but there wasn’t really a good opportunity, so here we are (laughs). We actually had a scene about halfway in where Nader calls him by the name “Khalid”, but we couldn’t find a good place for it to fit so we ended up cutting it.

Yokota: Yeah, you know I wondered why we decided on giving him the name “Claude”.*

*Note: There’s a character by the same in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War.

Kusakihara: That was also pointed out by Masahiro Higuchi (producer on FE3H), but the name was originally intended to be an alias, so I didn’t worry about the overlap in names. I always wanted to reveal his identity during the game, but… Oh, well. There’s other characters throughout the series whose names overlap with each other, so I’m not bothered by it. Anyway, his real name is “Khalid”!

Yokota: Both names sound so cool. I feel like Claude is the character whose appearance changed the least after the 5 year time-skip. His new beard makes him look a little more adventurous. I remember when I first saw his time-skip design I thought it made him look even shadier than before (laughs). But he’s a really good guy.

We’re planning on a full translation of the interview, but it’s rather lengthy and may take some time. Stay tuned for additional information.