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oatmealaddiction:

One of the things I like a lot more about Trisha in Fullmetal Alchemist as opposed to Brotherhood, are some subtle hints about some of her personality flaws. Like, you get the feeling she may have been pushing some unhealthy things on to Edward and Alphonse.

It’s very, very, subtle, as for the most part she’s just a perfect wonderful mother, but let’s take a look at what we know and what is said explicitly in the series about her.

We know that Trisha loved Hoenheim very deeply, but unlike in Brotherhood, it is never explicitly stated how much she knew about his true identity. From the looks of it, not very much. Hoenheim leaves her as a way of hiding his decomposing body, suggesting she hadn’t known about it before. Hoenheim also never made any promise to return to her someday, so from that we can assume when he left her it was probably a traumatic parting she didn’t completely understand.

Rather than resenting him for it though, or hating him even, it looks as though she just continued to love and long for him to return to her to the point it might have made her physically ill. Perhaps even, dying of a broken heart? (ugh.)

But yeah, I do find that to be the implication when you take into account her dynamic with Edward and Alphonse. Everyone else in the Eastern Region Ed and Al encounter despises Alchemy and Alchemists. Even kind old Pinako is wary of it, especially considering the death of her son and his wife. Hell when Ed and Al try to transmute her a doll, Winry breaks down into tears in fright. But Trisha is immediately delighted.

She lets them use all of the books in Hoenheim’s study and for the most part encouraged them to use Alchemy as much as possible. This is a stark contradiction to Izumi, Ed and Al’s other mother figure, who refuses to even fix a little boy’s toy train with alchemy because it would be unnecessary.

Not to mention the realization later on that Alchemy is essentially an evil practice that uses the energy of those who have died in the other world, so Trisha’s encouragement of it cannot be a good thing.

Then there’s the competitive nature of Ed and Al’s relationship that Al brings up several times in the narration of episode 3, Mother. “We competed with each other for her attention getting deeper into the science that made you feel like magic.” The reason the two become so engrossed in Alchemy is specifically because she encouraged it and obviously would give them special attention when they did a transmutation for her. As for the competitiveness, I do think it is implied very much in certain scenes that Edward and Trisha’s relationship is very different than Alphonse and Trisha’s relationship. I’m not saying Trisha played favorites or that she neglected Alphonse, but considering Edward’s more apparent obsession with both her and alchemy, as well as the fact that as the older child he was probably privy to more responsibility as well as the benefit of being the first born, not to mention his clear resemblance to Hoenheim both in appearance and personality, is it too farfetched to assume she may have been a bit more affectionate with him, letting him get away with more than Alphonse did. It would explain why Alphonse out of the two often times seems the more understanding and responsible one. Maybe even why he holds Edward in such high esteem, because it was obvious Trisha did too.

And then of course there’s the clincher, Trisha’s last words. In the manga and in brotherhood, they’re left unknown, but in the original anime, there’s a pretty dark twist to them. At first she’s laying out all the things her kids need to know, telling them where their money is, asking them to take care of each other and stay by each other’s side. But then she makes a very sad request of Edward, by asking him to transmute her a wreath of flowers the way her husband always used to, presumably to put on her casket. Now of course its implied she’s not entirely in her right mind when she requests this, and this is more of a subconscious want, but it says a lot about her and how she’s raised her children.

Alphonse says it all, she loves their alchemy because it reminds her of Hoenheim, the man who broke her heart and left her. So really she was almost substituting the hole he’d left in her life with her children, encouraging him to grow to be like him. Then her last request, is really just longing for Hoenheim again, and it seems pretty inconsiderate to Edward and Alphonse, considering how much Edward despises Hoenheim, (even at that age) and of course by ignoring Alphonse entirely in the request and making it specific to Edward. It’s just one sentence but it says so much.

And again, that’s not to say Trisha was a bad mother, like I said she’s still the perfect mother archetype. She’s just like every other character in the series, acting on a selfish impulse, maybe even subconsciously, without much consideration for the rest of the world at large. After all, how different would everything have turned out if Trisha had just encouraged Ed and Al to garden, or had scolded them for scaring Winry that first time? Like of course the first things these kids would do in the wake of losing their mother was try and use alchemy to fix everything. That was all she’d ever encouraged them to do. 

Either way, it just adds a small level of tragedy and depth to her character that I found was absent from Brotherhood, where she was perfectly understanding and perfectly perfect the whole time. It helps me feel a bit better about her being fridged because she had more impact on Ed and Al’s story outside of dying.