WARNING: long and serious post about an old and tired debate over a videogame story
I like Edelgard to a degree but her whole plan makes absolutely no sense. She wants to overthrow the crest-based feudal system but allies with the nobility and a group of genocidal shapeshifters to attack the church and conquer the continent. Her entire power base is exactly the people she needs to eliminate in order to change things, so it makes zero sense how she could accomplish her goals. The game itself can’t even show or explain it, it just states in the epilogue to Crimson Flower that somehow everything worked out how Edelgard wanted. There is no material basis for Edelgard accomplishing those goals, besides the conquest of the continent.
It’s kind of funny because I feel like if Edelgard showed Rhea proof about the slithers they could actually work together quite well. Rhea would want to get rid of them too, and I don’t think she has much of an attachment to a feudal system based on the descendants of nobles who committed genocide against her people and consumed their blood to gain more power. Rhea and the church are certainly influential, but in the way that the pope was in medieval Europe, they have no direct control over anything outside the monastery and the church.
Edelgard’s rhetoric about “them” controlling the continent is just the Fódlan version of antisemitism
I mean she did make a point of hedging lower nobility against upper nobility for the benefit of the average person at some point but yea it's bideo baem
Ya know if they made her a more direct copy of a Napoleon figure I think her story would make a lot more sense. Like she’s either from the lower nobility or a well off commoner going to garreg Mach for officer training. She has the same ideas/goals and is able to convince the others in her house of her ideas. Perhaps the imperial heir is also there but is a real asshole further solidifying the black eagles allegiance to Edelgard and opposition to the imperial system. Then she leads some sort of French Revolution type thing in the empire, executing the emperor and establishing a sort of democratic system with Edelgard as leader. Then tensions and contradictions within that system lead to the democratic system collapsing into a dictatorship under Edelgard and she after she solidifies power in the empire launches an invasion of the rest of fodlan to spread her ideas. Would make more sense to me at least. I think Edelgard works well as the villain (and as a character in terms of her personality and supports) but the plot/scenario writing in the Black eagles route seems poorly thought out
mentions in the end slides that she actually does step down from being emperor of fodlan and makes it a democracy and goes full cottage core with whoever she romanced
I always thought that was a pretty dumb conclusion. She consolidated a ton of power into the emperor position, changing traditional structures of power, and then just resigned. Surely someone else would take the reins of the Empire, reforms or not. She kind of just handed to them.
Anime is typically utterly politically incoherent, and that applies to anime games as well. I wonder sometimes if there's something that gets lost in translation.
Yeah true, I don’t exactly expect a videogame story to get politics right, so the whole discussion is pretty silly overall. It’s really more certain Edelgard fans online that I find annoying so I wrote this rant lol. The translation question is interesting though. I don’t know how it goes for Three Houses, but I know the English translations for some of the Dark Souls games can mix things up in spots so that could be true here. Translation is hard
a proof about the slithers they could actually work together quite well. Rhea would want to get rid of them too, and I don’t think she has much of an attachment to a feudal system based on the descendants of nobles who committed genocide against her
I think a non-significant portion of the FE base actually thinks Rhea likes the Crest system. That it wasn't just a stopgap way to explain away all the genocide powers, that didn't end with the humans finishing the job.
Also the completely non-material way that fans look at the Crest system. They go from the Church saying that those with Crests are blessed, and think that's why society gives so much importance to them, instead of that Crests actually make you physically superior to those without them. Shitty nobles were going to be shitty about Crests, with or without the Church. It's like they didn't grasp that humans committed genocide because they felt the powers and relics were so valuable.
Yeah I think a lot of discussion over three houses comes down to people playing one route and then more or less believing that side is correct, which probably is true of me to some extent too (played Golden Deer first so Edelgard is the villain)
But ya I think most people also just have a completely non material analysis of the history in it too. The whole thing about crests being holy or whatever is just stuff made up by the church so Rhea could have some influence over the continent to prevent wars and further genocide of her people. The crest nobles don’t exist or rule because of Rhea, that system would still exist without the church, just minus the specific religious ideology of the goddess Sothis, and in its place would probably be something even worse, or at least the same with the addition of the increased likelihood that humans completing the dragon genocide
this isn't entirely wrong, but it's downplaying rhea and the church a little. they aren't as all encompassing as edelgard acts, but they do have a lot of power.
That is fair, I wouldn’t say the church is a “good” organization really, but Edelgard’s endless insistence on wiping them out doesn’t seem like it would actually help anything (for the common people) and reads more like redditor atheism to me haha
i personally feel like giving the goddesses stamp of approval on the crest system makes rhea at least a little culpable for the whole thing, and they're intertwined enough that you probably couldn't dismantle the crest system without at least significantly weakening the church. and though crests would still lead to eugenics happening without the religious spin on things, there's no way the churches conaistent support of it and the invocation of the goddess didn't grant it legitimacy it wouldn't have otherwise had.
but i do get what you're saying about the focus on the church reading as a little sus when they're dragon people and that's a big part of her complaint. on the other hand she seems pretty fair to them outside that.
I guess it’s fair to blame Rhea to an extent but I can’t see how things would have been better if she didn’t create the church. We already have an example of what a religion in fodlan could look like without her influence (see the western church: they advocate for more extreme separation of class, race and culture, and oppose the mingling that Garreg Mach Monastery allows) And I don’t see how eliminating the church would change anything for the better. Either that or whatever religion the slither people follow becomes more common, and while I don’t know what that is considering their actions it would almost certainly be worse.
It would be cool if Rhea was like a medieval Lenin who used her religious influence to lead a continent wide class war against the nobles, but while that appeals to my politics it doesn’t make much sense in the world of fodlan. There simply is no sort of class consciousness among the non-noble classes to make that happen, and it seems quite unlikely that someone would just come up with those ideas on her own within the context of a feudal society.
the western church isn't a religion without rhea's influence, she's been influencing them for 1000 years. they're a splinter group that's just more extreme than the main church. the way i see crests as they exist at the start of the game is that they're like the monarchy with the divine right of kings. it isn't that the systems wouldn't exist in a similar form without the church, but to act like the church isn't supporting them and giving them legitimacy is absurd. and also in this analogy the pope is actually jesus who's been running the church for 1000 years and who could have maybe tried to make things better at some point in that timespan.
edit: i mean i get why rhea did what she did, but it's still shitty and i think that makes edelgard focusing on her understandable
and also in this analogy the pope is actually jesus who’s been running the church for 1000 years and who could have maybe tried to make things better at some point in that timespan.
While I agree in a sort of moral sense that Rhea ‘ought’ to have done more to improve the condition of society, that concept would make no sense to someone born in her time period.
The idea of human ‘progress’ is an entirely modern conception, ancient peoples would never have and did not think that way, so I think judging her in that way is kind of pointless, even if it is true in a way.
She did make things better in the only way that would make sense to someone in that society: promote a general peace and harmony in society, and work to prevent the types of destructive wars she had experienced.
Given Rhea’s life experience her conception of history is probably a lot more like the ancient Greeks: she is living in a sort of fallen society that is inferior to the great heroic days of old. Not an exact fit, but probably closer to how she understands the course of history.
sure, but i still feel totally comfortable judging her for it. if "that plan would not at all make sense to someone who was actually in her position" isn't a valid excuse for edelgard not thinking through every possibility for improving the world as a teenager with a shortened lifespan it's even less valid for an immortal dragon who's been maintaining the awful status quo for 1000 years
edit: i'm on my phone rn, and i accidentally deleted my response to the other response, so I'll just sum it up here. the game developers put less thought into this stuff than we did. they didn't care about how exactly edelgard took out the nobility, just that she did. i'm of the opinion that setting up all these problems in fodlan and letting us solve them (even if they don't make total sense given our modern understandings of politics) is more narratively satisfying than not doing that, so i prefer edelgard's route.
I just found it too nonsensical to me to be enjoyable. I’d rather they just ignore that shit and focus more on the characters themselves (which I think were well done overall in three houses) than do a political/social story that is poorly thought out. I can’t get much satisfaction from it because it feels so unrealistic and not like a natural consequence of how the world and story are set up. I mean you have to have some suspension of disbelief for this stuff, but for me the idea that a medieval imperial princess would think the way Edelgard does at all is already stretching it. So I enjoyed the other routes more.
that doesn't bug me for 2 reasons. 1) i don't think it's a stretch for someone to get locked in a torture dungeon for a while and come out with a view of the world kind of askew from the societal standards. 2) fire emblem is the kind of medieval fantasy where the characters mostly have modern sensibilities.
not that you're wrong to have that be a barrier for your enjoyment or anything, i think this is the kind of thing where we just need to agree to disagree.
The western church is in direct opposition to the central church and their ideas are much more based on power of the crests themselves, which exist regardless of anything Rhea and the central church do. And yes some religion and ideology to back the crest power structure would exist regardless of anything Rhea does, that is my entire point! Any realistic alternative would be orders of magnitude worse than what exists at the start of the game, even if the central church isn’t really “good” itself.
I guess removing the church isn’t necessarily a bad thing but to act like the church is the reason why Fodlan is ruled by crest bearing nobles is to have a completely immaterial understanding of the world.
Edit 1: Attacking the church seems much more likely to alienate the pious common folk then to lead to them supporting Edelgard’s “revolution” I mean there’s a reason why there was no sort of anti-religious anti-feudal movement in medieval Europe, it simply makes no sense
Edit 2: To be fair I probably do judge Edelgard more harshly since she has an explicitly political goal and actions. Judging Rhea in that way seems kind of pointless since she doesn’t really have any goals outside of not getting genocided and bringing mommy back lol As characters I like both Edelgard and Rhea a lot. I just find there’s a lot of Edelgard fans online who basically take what the slithers say about Rhea/the church/the Nabataeans at face value. And I feel like Crimson Flower is pretty half baked, mostly as a result of how Three houses was developed
edelgard is definitely leading a bourgeois revolution, and the church might not have been the best place to start. but i don't think the crest system can be dealt with without changing people's mind about the whole handed down by the goddess thing, and rhea wasn't about to do anything there. so turning people against the church makes sense from that perspective.
Any realistic alternative would be orders of magnitude worse than what exists at the start of the game, even if the central church isn’t really “good” itself
i just don't know that that's true. even if she couldn't have done anything at the start, you're telling me that over 1000 years she couldn't figure out how to use the church to maybe improve things somehow? again, i get why rhea didn't, she was scared and had a good thing going. and she had reason to be scared. but without that knowledge, looking at it from an in universe perspective and knowing all the other stuff i just mentioned, i'd be pretty pissed as well.
basically i think that, though not the worst offender in fodlan, the church was the easiest first target, and one that makes sense. it's the most central authority in fodlan, and it's led by someone who has all the stuff i just covered going on. those who slither are secretive enough that they probably aren't a good start to your revolution, since if you don't get all of them they'll just bomb you from orbit and you won't get all of them without a long prep time. and it's not hard to rationalize the nobility as relying on the church for their authority. it's not the whole story, but if you're an angry 15 year old starting to plan this all out i think it makes a lot of sense to start with rhea and the church.
I don’t know, maybe that’s true. I guess I just think that there is no universe where anything she could do would fundamentally change the structure of society so targeting the church just seems kind of pointless to me, and the result is just really the completing the genocide of Nabataeans. She’d be better off trying to make her empire more like the alliance and encourage the growth of a bourgeois class that could actually change things. Though that plan would not at all make sense to someone who was actually in her position so :vivian-shrug:
doesn't she only kill rhea in crimson flower? she has her captured for 5 years, but when she's the villain rhea lives. and you can let flayn and seteth live as well. she's not particularly genoocidal, at least in practice.
Though that plan would not at all make sense to someone who was actually in her position so :vivian-shrug:
yeah, that's my main point. i mostly just think she's a good character who has more sympathetic politics than i'm used to, and her plan doesn't seem too dumb or unbelievable given her circumstances. but it's far from a perfect plan, and she's certainly not perfect herself. i don't know how much of of that is just crimson flower being kind of half-assed as a route, and how much of it is intended as her not having the full context of things and having started this plan as a teenager. i'm pretty sure it's at least a little of both.
I can understand why she might think that way, but I still fail to see how in reality that it would change much of anything. You get rid of the church and some other ideology develops to justify the class power of the nobility. Considering the existence of crests being passed down by bloodline it’s hard for me to believe that any replacement ideology is going to lead to a more just society. I guess I just don’t see removing the church as a step towards anything unless the plan is just to throw society into chaos and hope that the end result is better.
She still has absolutely no plan of she is disempowering the nobility
if she just stopped at the church you'd be right, but she doesn't. her plan for the nobility seems like she's just incarcerating some of them and seizing their stuff (which is what she's doing in game) and she'll take on the remnants after the church. is it the most fleshed out plan? no, but it seems to work.
It works because it’s sloppily written to get a happily ever after ending. It’s completely illogical that she just removes the nobility with no consequence. If that was her plan all along then the war with the church was entirely pointless and does nothing to make her reforms work
It’s not like the church was the thing preventing her from expropriating the nobility. It’s the nobility that is stopping her from doing that! Except in crimson flower I guess the nobles just give up their power for no other reason then because waifu empress says so
Personally I think the letting Flayn and Seteth live is just something the devs did so you don’t have to feel like the bad guy. It felt totally incongruous to me in the story but I suppose others disagree
And the reason she doesn’t kill Rhea in the other routes is because she fails.
Maybe if they had more time they could make it make sense but as is crimson flower seems pretty nonsensical
she has rhea as a prisoner for 5 years. it seems pretty clear her goal isn't just to kill the nabateans.
True I don’t think that genocide is her goal or motive. But she still parrots racist conspiracy rhetoric about how “they” control society. And eternal prison or execution I think makes little difference, but yes I agree that killing the Nabataeans isn’t her motivation.
Fire Emblem stories went downhill after Kaga left. His games may have some obnoxious features (like clerics missing lmao) but the man could craft a narrative and that's why Genealogy of the Holy War is still very good story-wise.
Yeah I haven’t played those ones yet but I really want to. Or I hope they get remade and don’t butcher the story
i don't really think it's worth playing the nes ones. but 4 is one of the best in the series
That is fair, Edelgard is in a tough position, and she doesn’t necessarily have any reason to trust Rhea or the church.
Rhea is certainly willing to use violence to accomplish her goals, but I don’t think it is really correct to say she backs the crest system. She is just making use of the existing reality in order to not get her people killed again. I don’t think she would oppose a different social order as long as her people are safe and she can still try to bring back her mommy
The execution of heretics isn’t great, but if you look into what the Western church believes it’s like some insane racist shit. Their differences in belief and doctrine are mostly not stated, except that they advocate for more extreme separation of class, race and culture, and oppose the mingling that Garreg Mach Monastery allows. So I can’t say I have any sympathy for them. And they are also trying to assassinate Rhea and take down the central church so it’s not hard to understand why she would execute them.
I’m fact if Rhea didn’t create the church with her relatively benign beliefs I think the religion in Fodlan would probably have ended up a lot more like the western church heretics: insane racist crest worshippers who believe holy blood is all that matters, and everyone else must be kept in their place or exterminated
Sure most of the powerful nobles are “controlled” but that’s because Edelgard isn’t doing anything to threaten their position. Only the true religious believers would really care about destroying the church. But once that is done how is she supposed to end the nobility when they are the entire basis for her power? She has no class basis for changing society so I just don’t understand how it’s supposed to work even hypothetically. I guess the answer is probably just “it’s a videogame story lol”
:wojak-nooo: "Stop fighting us Edelgard!"
:sicko-fem: "Stop fighting back."
Lol
This is a simple point but also probably the source of the issue really. The church route was the first one written because they wanted to have a story where your main ‘lord’ betrays you, so Edelgard was designed as the villain. And she is compelling as a villain since she has the right combo of a sympathetic motivation and backstory, willingness to do anything to accomplish her goals, and a poorly thought out implementation that only makes everything worse and leads to countless deaths to achieve a goal that couldn’t possibly happen in the way she was attempting. Later on when they go to write the plot/scenario for Crimson Flower they are already restricted by how they wrote the other routes so you end up with a bit of a mess trying to make it all fit with her being the hero. With more time maybe they could have come up with something better
I just finished Claude’s route in Three Hopes and the plot in that was so poorly conceived it makes Edelgard’s route in Three Houses look like a masterpiece. Just astonishingly poor writing and lack of logic in the plot. Hoping the other routes are better but my expectations now are so low they’re right next to fucking dinosaur bones. Gameplay is fun tho :shrug-outta-hecks:
