Shocking news, Fire Emblem fans – everyone’s favorite meme lord and leader of the Golden Deer House, Claude von Riegan, has been lying to us all. Then again, this isn’t too surprising considering his reputation, but the subject of the lie is particularly shocking.

This past week, in the most recent issue of the Nintendo Dream magazine, the nature of Claude’s real name was confirmed in an interview with the Fire Emblem: Three Houses‘ writers. When asked about the abovementioned mysterious comment regarding the name “Claude”, the writers said the following (translation provided by yks160519 on Tumblr):

As many of you have guessed, Claude is a false name. His real name is Khalid. We wanted to reveal this at some point but we never got the chance to…and here we are. In the game we had originally planned a scene for Nader to call his real name but it never really worked out so the plan was scrapped.

While this may initially be surprising, this actually makes a ton of sense given Claude’s secret identity as the Prince of Almyra. He likely changed his name to avoid suspicion when he moved to Fódlan; and, as he explains himself in his quote from Cindered Shadows:

“Claude’s a common name in Fodlan. It’s just too dashing for new moms to pass up. It’s even a popular choice for fake names. Just a good, solid, all-purpose moniker, you know?”

Besides, this is the Golden Deer’s resident schemer we’re talking about here, so going by a fake name is something we wouldn’t put past him.

What do you think about this surprising bit of trivia? Let us know in the comments!