Replying to some comments
So, for something more lighthearted, that one is for @naruko-hyuga I received two comments I wanted to answer but I didn't feel like making due with the tumblr comment section
Honestly, I think this would have been pretty interesting for a potential Rhea-centric route. Especially if the goal is to have Rhea fight against all the three Lords. The western church already weaponized accusations of being behind the Tragedy of Duscur against Rhea, which the game just never did something about despite the potential. The western church should be what TWSITD hide behind in a Rhea centric route, the ultimate attack where they steal the only thing that Rhea had left for the last thousand years. So I could see a scenario with a Rhea on the run and TWSITD possibly trying to play all sides in the war against each other, where a church infiltrated by them weaponizes Dimitri against Rhea. And it would be like generally neat to see a route where Rhea is put against descendants of the 12 Elites and recollects the heroes relics to put them t o rest in the Holy Tomb. So it would probably be nice, a route where Rhea collects all the 12 relics to bury them with the rest of the remains of her family. Hell, something cool could come out gameplaywise, what if instead you receive the sacred weapons of the Nabateans who were used for the relics?
Honestly, I thought about AG some time ago and the route is a mess. The first half is actually good. Despite his flaws we see Dimitri acting as a king, get more insight into his thoughts and there is even kind of a neat plot, where it feels like Dimitri is putting his own personal values and ideals behind the expectations of others. The beginning is after all Dimitri being defined by how others perceive him. It starts with his uncle whose dehumanization and paranoia against Dimitri becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where in the end Dimitri has to actually kill him, which I always thought should have haunted him more.
But then there is also Dimitri agreeing with Edelgards ideals but putting them behind out of fear how the people of Faerghus would react to radical reforms and then he is dragged into a war by his royal obligation to the church and his advisors reactionary rhetoric. And I liked how the first half dealt greatly with Dimitri uncovering the truth about the Tragedy of Duscur and TWSITD, to the point it finally leads him into the direction of Edelgard as the last missing piece. Just that the plot then just ends.
The second half of AG is bad. The Edelgard mind control with this very gross infantilization of her is fucked up and of course some of the reactionary or fascistic elements of the AG fandom enjoy it. But it also stops making sense. AG is the route where the hidden chapter just flat out breaks the story, where the ending feels truly like a bad end and Dimitri having become his worst self, turning away from a confused and helpless El, and the plot just loses any semblance of consistency. It flat out doesn't make sense that everyone is just following around with Thales taking the control over Adrestia and Aegir being reinstated when Thales already has been revealed to all of Adrestia and Aegirs collaboration with him with it.
The route feels like running into the issue that the plot lead more into Edelgard and Dimitri teaming up against Thales but they somehow didn't want it and instead just stopped it right in its tracks and replaced the Adrestian Empire with aflat agarthan empire in all but name. My suspicion is that AG was written around appeasing the church fans, as they didn't get a route this time around.
I don't think I would have made Rhea a villain in AG, or at least I'm not sure about it, but I think I would have made Dimitri and Edelgard at least team up. It probably could be done after Edelgards forced transformation. You don't need mind control, just write that seeing the emperor transformed and maybe afterwards missing allowed Aegirs coup which happens in SB to succeed and take over Enbarr, under the control of Thales and Aegir. Dimitri finds Edelgard and they form an alliance to stop Thales. At the same time you have Dimitri managing Edelgard and Rheas conflict and maybe a larger character arc of him learning to become a King who stands for his own convictions.
Though honestly, I also would have enjoyed a fourth church route with Rhea, yet again. There is potential, with Shez being inhabited by an ancient agarthan, where we could delve deeper into the true story of the agarthans and nabateans.
To point out how little we know about that: We don't even know how exactly the dragon genocide looked like and what the involvement of the 11 elites was in it. The game implies that it was just Nemesis walking into Zanado and massacring all with the Elites being fully innocent and receiving the crests and relics after the fact. The developer interview meanwhile implies that Dragons acted as rulers over the land and the genocide started with a massacre in Zanado before continuing a larger dragon hunt, where they used the relics they carved for themselves in Zanado to hunt larger and more powerful nabateans for more powerful relics. Which makes more sense. Not only in terms of it not being just one massacre but an ongoing genocide but also by opening the possibility that the powerful dragons lived outside of Zanado and Nemesis was successful by hitting their civilian center by surprise.