It’s a bit complicated! Spoilers about the teacher romances and the overall plot below:
The default is Blanchard/Dalca which gets brought up in Chapter 6 (sometimes they’ve hooked up prior to Chapter 6 but he always has a crush on her with varying degrees of seriousness). But at the start of Chapter 4, having particular low stats triggers special scenes. If you have low grades, the initial crush gets set to Griffith/Blanchard, if you have low Virtue it’ll get set to Dalca/Blanchard, and if you have low Popularity it’ll get set to Dalca/Griffith (because in each scene, they happen to collide with each other due to being involved with the task you’re doing).
Either way, you get an inkling of vibes between Blanchard and Dalca in Chapter 6, and can either try to encourage that or push them to do something else (success or failure there switches the path they’re on). Then after your Festival of the Birds experience, you see a pair based on whichever romance is active having their discussion about stuff that’s happened between them behind the scenes.
Then in Chapter 7, you can encourage them to become a triad via the medium of the play being studied (there are a couple of different options in that choice which will push them in that direction).
No matter the romantic configuration, there are a few references to it through Chapter 7 and 8, and in Chapter 10 there are references to it when the remaining teacher talks to Mr Griffith about the one who was fired. Then in Chapter 11, if you go to the mines the teacher there will reference it, and also if you go to Mr Griffith with a returning teacher (whether you went to the mines or were double-agenting for Renaldt).
I have finally started my journey with this series and I’m super exited! Since the game is almost five years old and well-known, I probably won’t contribute anything new to the discussion, but I wanted to pay my compliments to the author anyway.
I had a great time playing Crème de la Crème, it was a blast! I enjoyed the whole setting of the game: finishing school with a bunch of snobby people – definitely my kind of thing. And I absolutely loved my MC, Lucien Benoit – a manipulative gold-digger with a flair for dramatics and gossip. I think we don’t get a lot of opportunities to play such deceitful characters, so that was a pleasant surprise. Roleplaying this MC was very fun, and I especially liked all the options to randomly burst into tears - I guess he didn’t want all these acting skills from Rochat’s Academy to go to waste.
My ultimate goal was, of course, to secure the engagement with Rosario, which Lucien did successfully thanks to my obsession with checking stat changes every five seconds. I loved Rosario, but I’m glad you don’t necessary have to develop real feelings for him to succeed in romance. I’m sure Lucien will fall in love eventually, but for now he just wants to get rich without doing any boring work. I think my other favourite characters were Max and Karson, and I kinda want to create another character to romance the latter, but for now I will instead continue the adventure and move on to the second book.
I definitely experienced some new and interesting things in this game, which I appreciate. And now I’m off to think about my next MC!
I’m delighted that you had a good time and I absolutely love that new people are still finding the game - it’s really wonderful! Congratulations on your MC’s achievement of getting engaged to Rosario - it’s not the easiest thing to do!
What do you need to do to specifically get Annik’s tell all article on her suspicions ablut Lady Renaldt’s activities published. I used to be able to succeed with that one, but now all I can do is fail.
I’m still shocked and delighted that it’s finding new audiences after such a long time, and that people are still falling in love and forming undying rivalries with the characters.
It’s funny: when I first started making Crème de la Crème, I was concerned that CoG audiences might not be up for a low-violence-but-high-stakes dating sim. At the time, even the romance-heavy titles were high-action and almost all of them included fantasy elements. Shoutout to the brilliant Tally Ho and Heart of the House which made me feel more confident about making a historically-flavoured, romance-heavy CoG game, but I still had some worries at the beginning.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I’m so proud to have made this game, and feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to follow what made me happy in making THREE more games in the same world.
Thank you to everyone who’s ever played, made fanworks about, or talked about Crème de la Crème - and if you haven’t played it yet and like the look of it, it’s in the Steam Autumn Sale!
And I hope you enjoy Honor Bound when it comes out next week!
I’ve been a fan for only about half of those five years, but I have loved the Crèmeverse since the moment I first visited. You have given us a great gift in these four games, similar enough for perfect comfort reading yet each distinct in its characters, subplots, and themes. Thank you for creating such a dynamic and delightful world.
Replaying Creme de la Creme after many years for the purpose of the newest game. I remember on my first ever playthrough I somehow made my MC get a more “regular” job. It wasn’t an option on my current one, I think the MC’s grades were too high? I was wondering what the requirements are
Started off intending to play a ruthless social climber, wound up with a pretty nuanced and likeable character (who wound up at the top of the heap anyways). What a game!
With Intrigue and Flair as her mainstays, I think she could’ve been the bad guy in any other story. Even at the end, “I did it all for myself,” she proudly thinks, having exposed a horrible conspiracy (and ensured its victims were well cared for), built up her school’s reputation, uplifted everyone around her, made sure her BFF Max would always have someplace to go, and restored her parents’ place in high society.
I mean, she didget betrothed to a princess, but as soon as a princess was on the table that was bound to happen. I like to imagine she has a future as royal spymaster or something of the kind. If only to cover up her ongoing affair with Max, which Rosario is just pretending not to know about and is secretly supportive of.
Someone asked me about what the Creme de la Creme characters would think about the Royal Affairs suffrage issue, which was a really interesting question to think about! This is what I said:
Answers below
Gonzalez: pro-suffrage - even if they’re not all that politically engaged, their mum is on the pro-suffrage side; would get involved with demonstrations if they were in Westerlin at the time
Hartmann: anti-suffrage, since they’re very traditional
Max: pro-suffrage, though they’d also kind of like the whole parliamentary system to be dismantled and rebuilt into something else, although they don’t have any clear idea about that; would get involved with street demonstrations; it’d also annoy their sister who works with Fabien, which is a good bonus for Max
Freddie: pro-suffrage, and has plenty of emotive and academic arguments for it; they wouldn’t be involved with street demonstrations, though they might help with protests at university
Delacroix: somewhat apathetic, doesn’t have strong feelings one way or another
Blaise: I’m not sure. They approve of justice for themselves and their own family, but I find it hard to imagine how they’d feel about the larger scale. They’re not all that politically aware (though are maybe a bit more so if the PC has the political-scandal parental background). So maybe they’d be undecided, but I’m not totally sure.
Karson: not thinking about it particularly; they’ve had bad experiences with the aristocracy but, like Blaise, I’m not sure how much they’d apply that to the world as a whole
Auguste: now my immediate instinct was anti-suffrage, but I wonder if they’d have more complicated opinions if they were working in politics with Fabien… so, while I’m not sure if they’d be fully on the pro side, it might be nuanced depending on what was going on around them
Rosario: pro-suffrage for sure
Florin: doesn’t care in the slightest, but more on the anti-suffrage side than the pro-suffrage one
I loved Rosario, but I’m glad you don’t necessary have to develop real feelings for him to succeed in romance. I’m sure Lucien will fall in love eventually, but for now he just wants to get rich without doing any boring work. 
I think my other favourite characters were Max and Karson, and I kinda want to create another character to romance the latter, but for now I will instead continue the adventure and move on to the second book.
And now I’m off to think about my next MC!
