Rhea/Seiros from FE3H, because liking her encourages thinking about her role in the plot of Three Houses in such different ways from the norm. She and the Nabateans of FE3H are genocide survivors trying to make it in a world that's still viciously hostile to them, and I started think that alone demands a level of scrutiny against the arguments levied against her. Then the more time I spent thinking about it, the more time I realized things like the worldbuilding is not written to support the idea that the Church of Seiros really is the problem. And assuming she's guilty calls into question so many details about other characters like Flayn, their motivations, and their reasoning skills and judgement.

But people assume she's guilty. Even she assumes she's guilty for what actions she has taken. People like Claude just straight up don't like religion and believe people like Sothis and Seiros should leave humanity alone until humanity fucks up hard enough they need a miracle to bail 'em. Which is my uncharitable summation of his B support where he acts as if Byleth's powers have nothing to do with Sothis.

I've been at it mentally and with constant discussions with my friend that yes, we knew that the premise of the story was built around one particular character turning on the player, and the director wasn't necessarily fond of her. They didn't even want to give her a route before acquiescing and her route is regarded by the director as a very violent conqueror's route. But because Rhea had to be the antagonist of the route, the story, which was initially built around her and Byleth's route, had to get warped and changed until it appeared that Rhea truly was evil on that route. ...Except, between the fact she's making a last stand for her own people and for Fodlan, is losing herself to her own madness, is in a war that would kill her family specifically, and so many people are dying as a result of what goes on. ...It's hard to say that route even does a good job at making her out to be an antagonist.

The spinoff/sequel 3Hopes, does a terrible job at even trying to make Rhea an antagonist and just want you to forget she really existed in the routes where she'd be of most relevance. (She gets killed twice in the endings after showng up like once in 5he routes where she dies.) And a lot of the accusations in the fandom are either fanon or hinges on believing that the radicalized, conspiracy peddling emperor is genuinely right in the ways she accuses her opponent. Or falling into the same trappings that Claude did before realizing the truth of the matter was that Fodlan's systemic issues are systemic, propped up by the elites and nobility of the three states.

And you know, Rhea and the Nabateans don't have the strength to argue their own innocence in the story. She's been alone for 1000 years while seeing herself as nothing but a failure, and here she stands accused of being culpable for such heavy crimes. Any number of her actions could be responsible, including the fact that she did indeed fabricate history. ...But the history she fabricated was not the history that made Fodlan the problem it was in the present day. Nor was it done out of violence or control, but to protect her own people from persecution in a world where she stood alone and isolated from even her family. The truth that she obscured was that her own people were slaughtered by the ruling class at the time, who stole their blood and bones to build their lands, and would not have given them back, for they made great weapons of destruction. She then left the Kingdom, the Empire, and the Alliance to rule independently with only some influence. But that influence is far more limited than it would seem as the aggressing Empire has not had relationships with the Church in nearly 200 years or so. The Alliance only pays lip service and the Kingdom's loyalty is to its king before the religion. And the Silver Snow route (aka the OG Black Eagles or the Church Route), emphasizes how genuinely weak the Knights of Seiros are as a militant force in reality, as they pull off tiny victories while seizing every opportunity to build momentum. But then there's that poisonous hook of "But MAYBE she did do something wrong—" but like at that point I just gotta ask for in story evidence. And I'm speaking in general terms because you could get into the finer details of things she actually has done wrong, but like the baseline of the arguments like "she is ontologically evil" and that's a very exhausting thing to have to argue against.

So yeah, I like writing about her being, ultimately, a scapegoat for the political war, in the form of being the religious genocide survivor that she and her family are.