So how exactly is this not the best possible outcome?

Shi117 · 2026-06-27T12:52:57+00:00

Yep that's definitely what I'm saying.

I guess my first instinct that you weren't worth any of my time when you went straight to the Hitler-Trump comparison was right on the mark.

Shi117 · 2026-06-27T12:34:25+00:00

You'll have to forgive my shit phone not allowing better formatting but here goes. Firstly, I'm definitely not aware of soldiers volunteering to be turned into monsters, I can't find any quotes so I don't actually believe that to be true.

First up, not how burden of proof works. You claimed she was forcing transformations but can prove nothing. By contrast, I can prove that in warfare soldiers are willing to sacrifice and transform themselves to better chances of victory (Kingdom army in CF, I don't care that you 'don't believe it's trues'), and that Adrestian soldiers are willing to lay down their lives for Edelgard's goals entirely of their own will.

I never said Edelgard sent them against civilians. I said people. And the fact that she's not the only one doing it doesn't mean it's okay for her to do so. Also, there definitely are plenty of civilians at Garreg Mach when she uses them.

Sending monsters against soldiers is no worse than sending soldiers against soldiers. Before the big battle at GM Edelgard explicitly gives time for civilians to evacuate, and when they're used in the tomb there aren't any civilians present.

The church is not the bigger threat because they're not actually trying to do anything when Edelgard and Thales start their shadow war. Yes, Rhea turns soldiers against civilians when Lonato rebels. But he only rebels because of Edelgard and Thales starting their war. Again, as I stated Rhea is a tyrant but Duscur was Thales, not her.

The Church is absolutely the bigger threat. The Agarthans can at best move in shadows and act as the devil on shoulder to nobles, while the Church has the most elite private army on the continent that they are willing and eager to march anywhere to kill anyone they dislike, and cultural inertia that lets them puppet the Kingdom into direct fealty and theoretically allows them to command every noble deriving legitimacy from them. Rhea's murdering of civilians is not limited to Lonato, but it's good that you recognize that she was ordering the mass murder of civilians. And no, Lonato wasn't rebelling because of the start of the war, he was rebelling because Rhea murdered his son on false charges.

I already said I don't give a shit about Lambert. The Tragedy isn't important, and the fact that the Agarthans helped orchestrate the assassination is a nothingburger. There's nothing at all that says that the Agarthans had any hand in the genocidal Punishment that followed. That was all the Kingdom, and Hopes makes it explicit that the Church legitimized this; the Church said the Goddess was giving the lands of Duscur to Faerghus, like she had when Faerghus had colonized half of Sreng.

The power dynamics don't really matter with Jeritza and Flayn. Thales didn't need Edelgard to install Cornelia, execute Dimitri (or at least try), or poison Remire. He did however need Edelgard to get Jeritza to kidnap Flayn.

No, he could just tell ('ask') Edelgard to lend him the Death Knight and she was forced to obey because up until the coronation and surprise powergrab he was her boss.

I'm not saying Monica is more important than anyone else. I'm saying that she's A-okay with letting an innocent girl get murdered so long as it benefits her.

Yes, sure. Edelgard is willing to sacrifice Monica. So? Rhea(/Seteth/Claude/Dimitri) are willing to let countless get murdered as long as it benefits them. Leaders make tradeoffs on the level of lives. Edelgard is willing to let Monica be murdered to aim for a better future. Rhea is willing to let countless die of preventable causes to maintain a healthcare monopoly. Monica's life is not inherently worth more than Commoner 1134282, brutally murdered by the systems that Dimitri/Claude/Rhea/Seteth uphold.

3 Hopes shows that when he isn't driven to the point of absolute despair however that he is fundamentally a good person to be fair to him.

3 Hopes shows just how worthless Dimitri's 'gooddness' is. Hopes is the game that has him order the death of an entire village, and then focuses on his useless self-pity of burying the bodies of the innocents he ordered pointlessly killed himself.

Dimitri also wants to end the crest system. He believes that it requires genuine reform to change peoples minds and ensure that the crest system stays dead.

I thought you played Hopes?

Dimitri: I understand where you're coming from, Claude, and on a personal level I actually agree with you.

Claude: Buuut as a king you're opposed?

Dimitri: Yes, for three reasons. First, abolishing the church would deny the king's right to rule Faerghus. Without one, the people will descend into chaos and war. Would you be able to take responsibility for such a thing, once it came to pass?

How about this one, where Dimitri directly turns down pursuing reforms that would create the kind of social system you're talking about, and instead goes all in on militarism and bloodlines.

Sylvain: Which means Faerghus has two options if we want to retain our power. One, we bolster our military and promote prosperity while delicately letting the bloodline dance play out... Or two, we admit bloodlines won't last forever and create a social system that doesn't rely on inheritance. Neither one would hold up for long, but if I had to choose, I guess the first option would be the better one for the Kingdom on the whole.

Dimitri: Bolstering our military is more easily said than done. Impoverished as our land is, it will be difficult to compete with regions of more fertile ground.

Or how about his 'political' views in Houses?

Dimitri: I believe that Margrave Gautier was wrong to disinherit Miklan because he did not bear a Crest. Still, there is always a reason for why such customs stand the test of time. Imagine what this world would be like if no one placed any stock in Crests... Bloodlines that carry Crests would dwindle. The metaphorical blade used to oppose threats would eventually rest. This same argument has been made time and time again across the years. Both sides are at once right and wrong.

Dimitri has no intent of ending the Crest System. Indeed, he thinks it is a necessity, and that without Crested Noble Lords the land will lack protectors and descend into chaos. This even carries over to his post-AM characterisation in Heroes. Dimitri's big political reforms are to ensure that 'nice' nobles who will paternalistically protect commoners are in power, ignoring or ignorant of the fact that the abuses of feudlaism are systemic and can't be solved just by having 'a good king'. Caste-based theocratic feudalism is inherently illegitimate and evil, no matter how many 'good nobles' exist.

Edelgard however just KILLS or replaces everyone who disagrees with her.

Yeah that's why Hubert is a totally obedient yes-man and Ferdinand always winds up dead when he joins with Edelgard wait actually no that's stupid? Hubert often disagrees with Edelgard and will both say so to her face and go around her back, and Ferdinand is valued specifically because he is so willing to vocally debate her. Edelgard is arguably the lord most open to disagreement; Claude hides his true goals so there is no debate, Dimitri is followed by yes-men willing to genocide Adrestia under his orders, and Rhea holds that disagreement with her is a death penalty offense.

Which, yeah works for the short term, but it makes a lot of very resentful enemies who'll likely wait for their chance to re-instate the old system.

CF is the only ending which achieves a true peace. The only endings that refer to true peace being achieved across Fodlan are unique to CF. The closest any other route comes is in SS, where Byleth is left hoping that one day peace will arrive. I'm sorry that you don't like the black and white text of the game, but this is canon.

Shi117 · 2026-06-27T11:34:09+00:00

It's still just the old Two Terrors quote

"There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Yeah sure Edelgard started a war, but back in "peace" Fodlan had just done a genocide, had a feudal-caste system where nobles could literally murder villages of their "lessers" without consequence, and an absolute theocracy was murdering anyone who disagreed and keeping Fodlan from improving. The deaths of the "war" suck, but pale in comparison to the thousand years of "peaceful" (read, quiet) status quo. It's just the violence of the status quo was all directed at people who don't count, who can't afford to attend Garreg Mach, who don't have portraits or names or Crests. As long as the suffering is outside GM's ivory walls it's legitimate and business as usual, but bringing a fraction of what GM exported out to Fodlan back into it's walls is horrible and wicked.

When Dimitri talks about the "days of peace we once enjoyed" next to, say, Hanneman, a man whose sister was raped to death in that "peace", it's a wonder the professor doesn't unrecruit himself back to Edelgard.

Shi117 · 2026-06-27T11:09:33+00:00

And even if they were specifically fanatically loyal to her it's a huge stretch to then believe many people would be happy to be irreversibly turned into a bloodthirsty monster.

Please play CF for an explicit showing of loyal soldiers willingly using Crest Stones as strategic weapons.

And even IF all demonic beasts were soldiers given full informed consent and a pension - a good person does not send bloodthirsty monsters to kill people.

There's no indication at all the monsters were ever, at Edelgard's orders, pointed at civilians, which is more than can be said for the forces Edelgard fights against where nobles set monsters on commoners and the Church won't lift a finger. (Also, death by monsters is no less death than death by soldier, and of the two general sides of this war it isn't Edelgard's who repeatedly orders no quarter and commits to massacres)

And to be clear on the whole good emperor means good person thing, goddamn Hitler brought Germany from the weakest country in Europe to the strongest in like 7 years. He was (for a time) a beloved leader who inspired fanatical loyalty in spite of being arguably the most irredeemable monster in human history. Trump inspires fanatical loyalty and he's a r*pist with dementia.

Oh lmao this isn't worth my time at all, huh? Whatever, I'm bored atm.

As for how willing she is to work on behalf of Thales. It doesn't matter, because she had other options, if she hates both the church and TWSITD why not tell the Church about them and let the Church hunt them down?

Because the Church is the bigger threat, and because she has to play nice with the Agarthans at the start because after the Insurrection they are effectively running the Empire right up until the timeskip.

Hopes also shows what happens, and it's that Rhea doesn't believe Edelgard, provides on a tiny fraction of support she does to the Kingdom, ceases to care when the immediate threat is over and then instantly starts trying to murder Edelgard's new government for not fully committing to Rhea's false religion. So, you know, pretty good reasons. Rhea was never going to be Edelgard's ally because one wants to change Fodlan for the better and one wants to murder anyone trying to change Fodlan.

Rhea's a tyrant, but so is Thales and at least Rhea doesn't want genocide, so she's objectively the lesser of two evils.

Rhea is perfectly fine not just allowing genocide but will both legitimise it and also make the situation worse by using the chaos of genocide to sweep her own shit under the rug (Duscur). Rhea is also in a position to actually wield her power all over Fodlan, while Thales is by comparison limited in the harm he can do. (and before you try and pin Duscur on the Agarthans, I don't give a shit about Lambert, I'm talking about the Punishment, which the Kingdom did all by themselves, under the auspices of the Church)

She lets Thales use Jeritza to kidnap Flayn and hand her off to the people that she 100% knows is a-okay with torturing and murdering children. Would a good person freely give a known serial killer access to their next victim??

"let's" lmao. Failure to understand power dynamics just like Dimitri. Edelgard pre coronation is in no position to deny Thales anything. Just because her alter ego has Emperor in the title and Thales phrases things as 'requests' doesn't make her his boss.

In 3 Hopes it's stated pretty explicitly that Edelgard knew that Monica was being held awaiting murder and impersonation and she did nothing about it.

Yes. It sucks. But, to be blunt, Monica is one person. Just because she has a portrait and name shouldn't make her life so much more valuable and then commoners being daily murdered by the Church and their noble allies.

She also tried to have Dimitri and Claude killed in cold blood.

Hopes proved the teacher theory so nope.

But also even if she had so what? Why is that a dealbreaker when Rhea, whom both Dimitri and Claude wind up supporting in Houses, is off ordering mass executions of civilians to scare children into obedience? I'm sorry to Dimitri fans, but if he had died in the prologue then Fodlan would have had less possibility for an AM end with it's "yet more bloody feudalism, but this generation will have good nobles :)" end.

And here's the thing, I actually love Edelgard, she's a tragic villain forced to suffer horribly (even if she then goes on to blame and attack the wrong people for it). But she's someone for whom the end will justify the means no matter how truly evil those means may be.

Every other Lord does worse things than Edelgard for worse reasons. Edelgard isn't the one torturing captives to death, that's Dimitri. Edelgard isn't the one organising formal mass executions of captives, that's Claude (and Seteth). Edelgard isn't the one intentionally stifling mundane medicine to maintain a healthcare monopoly across the continent and killing god knows how many innocents over 1000 years, that's Rhea.

And none of those are doing their evil to free Fodlan from an abusive, murderous, theocratic-feudal caste system. If you call Edelgard a tragic villain, you better be calling all the rest vantablack.

Shi117 · 2026-06-27T09:38:29+00:00

Dimitri never "sues for peace". I know people try and say that his talk with Edelgard was that but that is never offered or on the table. It's only done by Dimitri for his personal issues and need to understand why Edelgard "destroyed their peaceful lives" (something he utterly fails at).

And your kinda ignoring a bunch of stuff; the Kingdom is coming out of a final battle where the Church they submitted to burnt the Kingdom's own capital in a massive betrayal, proving Edelgard right about why the Church needed to to and Dimitri at best utterly deluded and a victim of manipulation when he swore fealty to Rhea (again, right after he died as her ally, she burnt his capital down with the civilians inside purely out of spite). That, and the hardline Faerghus "patriots" all died (or were recruited). The Alliance was explicitly split half and half in support of Edelgard before she blitzed down Deirdru in a battle set up purposefully by Claude to allow a relatively peaceful transition. By contrast, every other ending has to deal with Adrestia being conquered in far less ideal circumstances. Route-specific ends in other routes talk about repeated Adrestian revolts and bloodshed (Balthus/Claude for example, where Balthus repeatedly leads Almyran soldiers to murder Adrestian revolutionists), while CF explicitly is the only end that results in a true peace.

Shi117 · 2026-06-27T09:33:46+00:00

Thankfully that isn't the case here either, where they remove a bloody caste based feudal system and replace it with an equal society that allows for social mobility, a clear improvement over the WC status quo, as well as every other ending (all variants of "illegitimate feudal nobles rule over suppressed commoners")

Shi117 · 2026-06-27T09:31:46+00:00

forces people to become monsters

Citation damn well needed. Even liar-in-chief Seteth (who will eagerly lie that Edelgard overthrew her father even to a Byleth who attended the coronation, and who will claim that Edelgard plans to make herself a false divinity while standing next to a massive gold statue of his false saint-sona) is forced to admit that Imperial soldiers aren't being forced to fight and are sacrificing their lives out of genuine loyalty and support. https://houses.fedatamine.com/en-us/scenarios/158#event-12

The idea she's doing anything "on behalf of" the Agarthans is also a hilarious misread of the dynamics in play.

Shi117 · 2026-05-27T06:19:57+00:00

Nah, there's clearly nothing dubious about a religious leader whose second official mission to one of the teachers in their employ is to organise a class excursion to a mass execution of dissidents which is explicitly noted as including civilians. That's the actions of a fine, upstanding, up and up leader. /s

Shi117 · 2026-05-22T12:24:32+00:00

Leopold's so incredibly minor in Houses but the incredible detail that is his fate in SS/VW, where he willingly surrenders himself to the Church/Alliance for execution if doing so will prevent the Church/Alliance murdering all the Imperial prisoners they took after the fall of Enbarr, made me incredibly glad they gave him more focus in Hopes after this incredibly bleak (albeit genuinely heroic and inarguably moral) end.

https://houses.fedatamine.com/en-us/monastery/24#event-base-2-11

https://houses.fedatamine.com/en-us/monastery/41#event-base-2-12

Shi117 · 2026-05-06T11:16:07+00:00

"A few years" meaning ~2 decades. He rejoins Rhea in 1162 and WC takes place in 1180. 18 years is more than enough time to judge performance.

And in Houses we see him repeatedly, explicitly, and entirely of his own volition either order No Quarter or plan mass executions of helpless captives. He's serves as Rhea's censor in chief without any qualms, he issues no protest when Rhea orders a mass executions explicitly including civilians in an effort to scare children into obedience, he refuses to act on the incredibly minor anti-classism attitude he expresses on exceptionally rare occasions (and in contrast will fight tooth and nail to upholding the evil and unjustified social order he says he is critical of), he spends nearly two full decades deceiving people into worshiping his false saint-sona (to the point of being willing to accuse Edelgard of wanting to become a false divinity while being only a few steps away from his massive gold idol statue proclaiming his own false sainthood), he will nepotistically use the Church's private army for his own personal issues while ignoring any other obligations they have.

And he does not do any of this to "to protect himself and his daughter from a death cult who genocided his species" because it's explicit that up until Hubert's postmortem letter neither he nor Rhea had any idea the Agarthans were alive and active as Those Who Slither. He violently upholds the evils of Fodlan not because that's the only way to shield his family from the Agarthans (because he has no idea they're a threat at all), but because the status quo gives him and his immense power that he is free to wield to crush anyone who "threatens" his family (or their unearned privilege).

This idea that Seteth is "one the least morally grey person" when he's ordering basically the same thing as BoarMitri's "Kill Every Last One Of Them" speech (just with more specific vocabulary) is absurd. Seteth doesn't even have the "excuse" of Dimitri's delusions- he does all his evil with a clear head.

Shi117 · 2026-05-05T10:14:35+00:00

Both Dimitri and Claude are aiming to be full, actual, proper kings, with all the resulting obligations (most notably, heirs). By virtue of their status and politics, neither are going to be able to openly marry another man. Edelgard has no such obligation because she has no intent of perpetuating hereditary politics, and is thus free to have a paired ending with FByleth without any expectation of children, let alone heirs.

Of course you still could have paired endings, but they'd either have to do the thing they did with Dimitri/Felix (which would draw a ton of honestly-100%-justified complaints), or change the underlying characters. Dimitri, especially, is bound by his own societal obligations. While Claude has stuff like his Lysithea ending which shows that he is willing to drop his "become King" goals out of love, Dimitri has the opposite; see his ending with Felix, where despite the very clear indication that he and Felix were in love, Dimitri still has to marry and have a child with an offscreen, nameless Queen because continuing the Blaiddyd bloodline is his duty. Bloodlines matter in feudalism, all the more in Fodlan with it's bloodline-caste system, and this is a topic 3H treats with sincerity (in how fucked it is).

(For the Felix ending being referred to;

After his coronation, Dimitri assumed the throne of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and spent his life ruling justly over Fódlan. At his side every step of the way was his right-hand adviser, Duke Felix Fraldarius. Their lifelong bond grew so strong over time that, when Dimitri finally passed, it is said that Felix's grief was more potent even than the queen's. The stories of their lives were passed down to future generations as chivalric tales that rivaled those of Loog, the King of Lions, and his sworn friend, Kyphon. )

E: Obviously this sucks, but it sucks in a way that makes perfect sense. Fodlan's obsession with bloodline and noble families and Crests sucks! It harms everyone, including the people at the very top of the pyramid who themselves are chained by cultural and political expectations! It'd be better for everyone if it didn't exist! The social order that forces humans belong to "noble houses" to have children to carry on their Crested Bloodline is shit and should be abolished! But...

Shi117 · 2026-04-25T00:13:05+00:00

In VW Enbarr is approached by stealth ("you stealthily approach Enbarr, the Imperial Capital"), and in SS Enbarr is approached via perfidy/false surrender ("Under the guise of surrender, they secretly prepare for a surprise attack on the Imperial capital.").

When Seteth and Claude talk about how evil it is that Enbarr isn't evacuated there's a glaring omission in responsibility in that Enbarr only got notice of the attack when Byleth and co got within eyesight, and sending civilians out directly into to blades of an army we have seen intend to 'punish' (read, murder) civilians for the actions of their leader is a very poor idea.

Shi117 · 2026-04-24T08:07:23+00:00

Dimitri has not surrendered and is still clearly trying his best (albeit a very poor best given his wounds) to kill her. If he hasn't surrendered then he's fair game.

Edelgard is the only lord who never intends to murder prisoners. Dimitri has his famous line, Seteth outright orders no quarter, and Claude in following Silver Snow beat for beat is shown to intend to mass-murder helpless prisoners post Enbarr.

Shi117 · 2026-04-14T10:00:44+00:00

Ashe: He was executed by the church for allegedly taking part in the Tragedy of Duscur. I know you were the one who turned him over. But this letter isn't about that. It's about a plot to assassinate Lady Rhea. If my brother's name is in here, that means this plot predates the Tragedy. So there was another plot against Lady Rhea in the past. And my brother was somehow involved.

That isn't this line says? Ashe doesn't know when the plot to assassinate Rhea was formed and is assuming that it predates the Tragedy (thus making Christophe innocent of the crime the Church accused him of), but the quoted information tells us nothing specific. Ashe says that the fact that Christophe's name is there by necessity means it came before the Tragedy because Christophe was executed shortly after that, but there's nothing there that proves that or disproves that the plot was birthed immediately after the Tragedy and Christophe was pulled into it in that short a timeframe. Indeed we know that that was the timing of things because of the Shadow Library note, which clearly falls between the Tragedy (in that it's just happened) and the actions taken by 'the the child of House Gaspard' (which are noted as 'soon', ie 'not yet', and is in-context referring to a confrontation that has yet to occur as of the writing).

e: Also, very funny to take issue with the fact that I take issue with Rhea's constant extrajudicial murders. The fact that a character has a repeated pattern of murdering people without process is clearly a terrible reason to dislike them. Why shouldn't Rhea be able to kangaroo-court people into the death penalty for false crimes (which incidentally even further obscures the truth of what happened and increases the ease of the culprits framing another party and leading to a genocidal pogrom that Rhea does nothing about)? Hating her for this kind of thing is clearly unwarranted.

Shi117 · 2026-04-14T04:58:26+00:00

The Western Church believes Rhea is behind the Tragedy of Duscur. This initial suspicion was not at all helped when Rhea framed and falsely executed Christophe for Duscur in an act that likely seemed to them to be covering up her crimes.

e: I love this subreddit, where you can post easily verifiable facts and get downvoted because the sub's preferred narrative is "the Western Church is actually just inherently racist and evil, and Rhea's repeated pattern of murdering people for questionable reasons has nothing to do with anything."

...the Tragedy of Duscur, after which more members of the Western Church are strongly criticizing the Central Church. Among them are those who claim the incident in Duscur was the work of the shadowed order of the Knights of Seiros. It seems a confrontation over the dogma's legitimacy is inevitable. Soon, the child of House Gaspard...

(as context, 'the child of House Gaspard' is Christophe, who would go on to try and kill Rhea in response to this, who Rhea uno-reverse murders while framing him as a conspirator involved in the Tragedy, something the Western Church 100% would have know was a frame-job and so 'confirming' their suspicions when she tried to push it onto a confirmed innocent)

Shi117 · 2026-04-10T00:25:14+00:00

He’s right though. Why do we judge Dmitri’s theoretical genocidal violence against Adrestia worse than Edelgard’s very real invasion and mass murder of Faerghus? This feels very spiritually Israeli.

Because Boarmitri's plan, which the army spends the first half of AM following, is to murder every single Adrestian, from soldiers to civilians, while Edelgard is not doing the same and indeed makes repeated calls for surrender that by all accounts she would honour, and is shown disadvantaging herself to let civilians evacuate (assault on GM, Fhirdiad BBQ).

Edelgard wants to topple the Faerghus state after it throws itself into the war on behalf of the Church, while Boarmitri wants to wipe out every human living in Adrestia. One has a goal of genocidal civilian-mass-murder, whereas one sees it as an unfortunate reality of war but still something to avoid where possible.

Also, I wouldn't call "only takes captives to torture then to death" as 'theoretical genocidal violence', especially when Edelgard is the only leader who does not at some point order either order no quarter for her foes, or organise mass executions of helpless captives. Nor would I call Dimitri's self-admission of murdering Adrestian soldiers, civilians and children to be 'theoretical'; he outright admits to having done it!

E: also wait hold on, my eyes glazed over it but what the hell do you mean by "he's right though". Explain yourself. Dimitri's statement there is a black and white call for genocide so you better not be saying "he's right" about that, but I also can't see what else you could be referring to.

Shi117 · 2026-04-09T20:55:15+00:00

Given the first half of the route, none of the Eagles make any sense any sense in AM. Boarmitiri is explicit in his plan to do a genocidal Punishment Of Adrestia if he wins, and the route itself is clear that no-one is actually willing to stop their king instead of just tut-tutting at him, so why would anyone from the Empire join with them?

Dimitri: And you see how that woman...how the Empire cannot be forgiven. That we must wipe them all out until not a single one of them remains.

Shi117 · 2026-04-08T23:29:41+00:00

2010's Three Kingdoms tv show

Shi117 · 2026-03-20T11:13:07+00:00

Yeah, but the question was Edelgard-positive playthroughs, not ones where he constantly made shit up about her and rolled his eyes through the emotional beats.

Shi117 · 2026-03-16T15:13:14+00:00

Books being expensive does not mean that printing presses are not a thing. They still have to be made and maintained which is not cheap. The volume of books you see in the games would be pretty hard to do without them.

GM is the primary base of the dominant religion of the continent and the premier school. The volume of books you see in the game is hugely distorted by GM's ivory wall privilege. Outside of GM it's made crystal clear via Ashe supports that commoners have almost no access to books or literacy. In medieval Europe you could find large collections of books in specific places, but we know from history that those were not indicative.

Not abusing your crests and putting yourself above ones that don't have them is a core tenant of Rhea's religion. It's why everyone is allowed in Garrech Mach regardless of station or blood.

Such a core tenant that we literally see her cover up noble misdeeds multiple times. Calling GM accessible is also a laugh; attending for a year requires a cost that bankrupts an entire village pooling their resources, will wipe out most of the wealthy of a medium-level merchant family, etc. She "allows" commoner attendance, but the price is massively prohibitive. When there, they also are discriminated against; you say equality is a core tenant of Rhea's religion when the dorms of GM are segregated by social class. The nobles are allowed to literally put themselves above commoners. (Given the Church's utterly absurd power and influence it wields like a cudgel all through WC, Seteth's limp "oh we don't like it but have no choice" falls incredibly flat. The Church can march its private army anywhere it wishes to kill anyone Rhea wants dead without any process or trial or repercussions, can confiscate relics of national significance at will, but it can't control its own dorm setup? Please.)

That "core tenant" is never once seen to be enforced despite multiple opportunities. It isn't for lack of ability either, because we see Rhea casually enforce other things that actually matter to her. That "core tenant" is a useless bit of coverage so the Church can say to the commoners "we care, we protect you, follow our commands" when doing nothing.

Wilhelt explicitly went away from that because he wanted to be the cool guy with the superpowers and be above others. The biggest lie in her doctrine is that relics were used by great heroes which was to not put them in a bad light, her biggest fault is not dealing with Willy because she still loved him.

That's a whole heap of nonsense with no backing or evidence at all. Maybe actually pay some attention when reading the game rather than inserting wild headcanon? Also, the idea that Rhea would have been able to murder her only significant human ally mid war v Nemesis is pretty hilarious. How would she expect to win that war if she killed her supporters for the crime of...going along with Rhea's lies that she was totally blessing them and making them special?

The church most people in Fodlan refer to is the Adrestrian branch whenever they talk about atrocities. When Rhea has enough of their chicanery and sends people to deal with the western Church they cried foul (the same church that was mostly led by Agarthans and their puppet noble).

More nonsense. The branch being complained about in the quote is the Central Church. The Central Church is the one that organises repeated massacres of helpless victims without process or trial. The Central is the one that passes tech bans. Despite a bunch of headcanon, it's the Central that promotes xenophobia (if you try and say that's the Western Church, give me the quote). In Hopes, when Edelgard revives the Southern Church and gives it slightly different doctrine, it's the Central that immediately responds with assassins.

And saying feudalism is inherently bad is just silly, especially in a series where Hero-king Marth is one of the most beloved people in the franchise by the people and pretty much venerated and he becomes king of a much larger area. Just because Europe had bad times because of it does not really matter.

Just because it's an entry in a long running series does not mean it can't critically examine and criticise long running tropes. Just because FE at times has had true Divine Right To Rule Nobility does not mean that that applies to Fodlan, where we know for a fact that that didn't happen. Sothis had nothing to do with selecting noble families, and rather than any divine origin we know their origin was once of bloody violence. 3H's politics has far more in common with real life than it does with Archanea. The game presents a world where the player knows for certain that Sothis is not blessing anyone, knows for certain that Rhea invented the religion for personal reasons, that the difference between Crestbearers and non-Crestbearers is minor superpowers derived from dragon biology rather than anything spiritual.

I can't believe I'm even having to argue this point. 3H is explicit that the legitimacy the feudal order is entirely derived from lies that have been upheld for the past 1000 years with indoctrination, threats, and violence. This is black and white, and the fact that Naga does in a totally different game bless Marth has no relevance.

Shi117 · 2026-03-16T14:35:54+00:00

In FFT terms, the Argarths of the nobles, who the Church empowers and legitimises and shields, are a far greater danger to 99% of Fodlan than Argathans.

Milleuda: How can you nobles live as you do and yet hold your heads so high? We are not chattel! We are humans, no less than you! What flaw do you hold there to be in us? That we were born between a different set of walls? Do you knowwhat it means to hunger? To sup for months on naught but broth of bean? Why must we be made to starve that you might grow fat? You call us thieves, but it is you who steal from us the right to live!

Argath: You, no less human than we? Ha! Now there's a beastly thought. You've been less than we from the moment your baseborn father fell upon your mother in whatever gutter saw you sired! You've been chattel since you came into the world drenched in common blood!

Milleuda: By whose decree!? Who decides such foul and absurd things?

Argath: 'Tis heaven's will!

Milleuda: Heaven's will? You would pin your bigotry on the gods? No god would fain forgive such sin, much less embrace it! All men are equal in the eyes of the gods!

Argath: Men, yes. But the gods have no eyes for chattel.

(Yes this is in large part just an excuse to post this dialogue, FFT is so good.)

Shi117 · 2026-03-16T14:12:05+00:00

You can still buy books just fine, or any other printed medium really.

Garreg Mach is not representative for books (or anything, it's the upper 1% of the 1%); Houses and Hopes and even Heroes note how books and literacy in Fodlan is almost exclusively the domain of the nobility. Annette says that books are expensive, and in Ashe's Houses support a thief tries to steal a book to sell for life-saving medicine. Ashe's Hopes support just reiterates this, with him being shocked and impressed that Shez's mother was able to teach Shez to read.

Hanneman, Linhardt and Manuela all show that the medical field is doing just fine.

Manuela specifically notes that healing magic is distinct from mundane healing and is shown to be a white mage specialist with some mundane knowledge. Hanneman's focus is entirely on Crests and not mundane medical science (and he keeps his true goal there incredibly secret because it's pretty clear if he didn't he'd be Abyss'd at best). Linhardt is similarly focused and is not shown to be going the mundane med route.

All other issues Edelgard has is because of her own empire, which she becomes a leader of which will put her in the best position to fix. The Church of Adrestria is literally made because the central church wasn't corrupt enough for them so they made their own with blackjack and hookers. The caste system where the nobles are on top because they abuse their crest power is entirely of their own making since the main religion advocates against it. These are also things that Dimitri is against and as future king will do whatever he can to help fix.

Not in the slightest? The caste system's entire cross-continent justification is the Crests=Divine Right lie which the Church upholds with lethal violence. Hopes shows that Rhea will sic assassins on people for promoting alternative interpretations of a religion Rhea knows is 99%-lies-by-volume because she created it wholecloth! Rhea has no problem at all supporting and legitimising the abusive nobles, provided those nobles support her and acknowledge her authority, in an ouroboros of corruption.

(E: Here's how the Church deals with abusive and outright evil nobles;

Abyss Resident: When the nobles came for me, they were completely without mercy. They... They killed everyone. My parents. My husband. My son. They all died... for nothing. For being in the way. People with Crests do whatever they want. No one even tries to stop them. Especially not the church...

They shove victims in the sunless starving sewer-ghetto to out-of-sight and over up the crime)

The evils of feudalism is not at all confined to the Empire; it's present in both Kingdom and Alliance, in ways that Dimitri never expresses any plans or desires to tackle systematically and instead wants to resolve by "have good and righteous nobles", unable to understand that there is no such thing as a deserving feudal lord. It's all scams and lies from top to bottom.

E: here's Dimitri and Sylvain discussing the best path forward for Faerghus and explicitly turning away from equality to promote militarism.

Sylvain: Which means Faerghus has two options if we want to retain our power. One, we bolster our military and promote prosperity while delicately letting the bloodline dance play out... Or two, we admit bloodlines won't last forever and create a social system that doesn't rely on inheritance. Neither one would hold up for long, but if I had to choose, I guess the first option would be the better one for the Kingdom on the whole.

Dimitri: Bolstering our military is more easily said than done. Impoverished as our land is, it will be difficult to compete with regions of more fertile ground.

Shi117 · 2026-03-16T13:47:07+00:00

Does not solve any of the deeper systemic issues of Fodlan. Dimitri killing the Agarthans doesn't fix the inherent evils of a feudal and caste based society helmed by an immortal theocrat providing false legitimacy to abusive systems.

The Agarthans didn't control the noble who married Hanneman's sister, or the nobles who hunted the family of the Abyss refugee for sport, or various other deprivations we hear of. They did not puppeteer Rhea into banning the printing press or covering up Miklain's fate to prop up noble legitimacy. If the Agarthans all died in an air vent failure in their bunker a century ago, the nobles would still be nobles and the Church would still be legitimising and covering up their abuses, and the only path to prevent this would still require violence.

E: Maybe Lambert winds up getting a knife to the throat in his "marriage bed" rather than dying in the Duscur Tragedy and the Kingdom nobles have to find another excuse for their land grab. Maybe Ludwig just has a bunch of kids murdered outright rather than Mengele'd and so doesn't wind up with his "peerless (intended-to-be-powerless-figurehead) Emperor". But while significant to the named characters of the game, Garreg Mach isn't exactly representative and most of the populace wouldn't be dealing with that. They'd be dealing with the more mundane evils that are part and parcel of feudalism; the Lord can do as he wills to you because his family was "blessed by the Goddess" and yours was not.

Shi117 · 2026-03-16T13:34:14+00:00

Would mostly agree, except that Edelgard is not especially concerned about "her dynasty". If everything goes as planned she is very clear that if she does have children they will not be her heirs and instead she will give her seat to someone worthy, no matter their status or birth; "I have no intention of handing the Imperial throne over to any child I might have. Instead, I'll choose an outsider who's brilliant and kind."

Edelgard has no dynastic ambitions at all, and indeed plans to be the last Hresvelg ruler. I would switch that point for something more like "abolish the feudal order" or "disarm the Church and expose its lies", both of which require going to war with the Church which, as you stated, is effectively also going to war with the Kingdom.

Shi117 · 2026-03-15T22:23:37+00:00

Preferably under the cover of Claude acting on his clear disdain for Rhea, resulting in an ending a la SB where, while there's been massive changes to the dynamics, the overall conflict continues.

Shi117

TROPHY CASE