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[monstierider]

Posting a bunch of my fire emblem head canons in hopes that this post overtakes the Edelgard post I made two years ago

Grima was not made evil like Forneus's notes would tell, Grima was instead made more akin to a curious, pure hearted child, and began taking on and reflecting back at Forneus his own twisted thoughts after Forneus gave it his blood in hopes that Forneus would comfort it and help it remove those thoughts. Forneus instead used that as a way to make Grima into a scape goat for his wickedness.

Alm and Celica are accidentally responsible for solidifying Grimas hatred of humanity because of them attacking it without warning and not even bothering to try and communicate.

Grimas more innocent childhood self still exists as a sort of angel on Grimas shoulder, though only the Halloween Grimas in Askr notice its voice.

Manaketes, like real life lizards, enjoy sunbathing on a warm rock. This also includes half dragons like Corrin but they're more embarrassed about it.

Whether or not a Fell dragon is evil can be figured out by just asking if they like sweet foods. They don't? Then no, they do? Then yes.

Shareena has incredible game. It will never see proper use, because Shareena does not believe in sex, only friendship.

Reginn and Kiran dated for a bit, before deciding they were better off as friends and breaking it off. They still joke about it.

Dagr and Baldr pass Alfonse around like a blunt.

Smash bros is canon and did happen to some of the FEH versions of those fire emblem characters. This has led to Kiran unironically hearing from Marths mouth "I would like to see sir Sonic once again, if only to test his claim of experience with a blade."

Kiran and Heoir have a father/mother daughter relationship. Gullveig is unsure how to tell them that's actually the case.

Gullveig doms Kiran so that for once she isn't the one getting royally fucked.

Kiran is well aware that Peony and Shareena switched lives at some point in their youth. They don't bring it up out of fear of what Triandra will do to them if they mention it.

Kiran once told an enemy combatant that if they didn't leave the battlefield they'd shove Breidalbak where the sun doesn't shine and fire.

Kiran is immensely sad at Rune having turned out to be an enemy. Alfonse is shockingly unbothered by it and it worries them.

If you throw a stick in front of them, Kurt will chase it.

Arval keeps a score of how many times and how long it took for Shez to just absolutely eat shit.

[monstierider]

Looking through my blog is just telling me I never should have mentioned Edelgard.

Last Post I made about her was two years ago and it's still the only one that's circulating, I don't even like her but she's the subject of my two most popular posts. As such, to distance from her, I will now explicitly talk about my blorbos on this blog.

[monstierider]

My opinion on Maruki, spoilers, obviously

So, finally got my hands on a copy of persona five royal like a month ago, finished it yesterday, because I work five days a week and have two days to play it. Amazing game, amazing characters.

But after going through the third semester...HOW DOES ANYONE THINK MARUKI IS A GENUINELY GOOD PERSON??? Like, I get the whole "he just wants to help people escape their pain" thing, but like...he himself admits before the third semester that it's not exactly the right way to go about things. There's also the way he goes about trying to prove his reality is better by...effectively retraumatising Sumire, someone he already screwed over mentally by making her think she was her dead sister Kasumi. Like, of course she's gonna react terribly to being shown the exact moment of her sisters death again, YOU STOPPED HER FROM ACTUALLY MOURNING IT AND HEALING FROM IT. There's also how unnerving everyone looks in his reality. Ignoring the main cast, I mean the general public, the people you walk past who fade out to keep the screen from getting cluttered, as you get closer to the deadline for Marukis palace they all end up with these horrific smiles I can only compare to the Puppets smile from fnaf, smiles that look like a threat display rather then any form of happiness. There's also the fact he dangles Akechis life in front of Joker and Akechi to try and get them to accept his reality by implying that destroying it will kill Akechi, GOOD PEOPLE DON'T THREATEN ANOTHER PERSONS LIFE TO WIN AN ARGUMENT, and if you fail to secure a path to the treasure he sticks Joker in a permanent coma for all of eternity to "spare him the pain of making a decision".

Maruki fans, please, I am dying to know how you all think he's a good person rather then just one with good intentions, because those two things are VERY different.

[monstierider]

Just finished up my pokemon emerald seaglass playthrough today and this was my team for most of the game, thank the wishing well

We have

Blaze the Blaziken

Gecko the Sceptile

Mucky the Swampert

Blake the Sylveon

Midnight the Weavile

And Bullet the Scizor

Also, I wanna add that I managed to beat Wallace while taking no damaged, which floored me.

[monstierider]

Just played through pokemon too many types and had a blast.

This was my final team, Partner the Lucario, Halberd the Haxorus, Chimera the TYPE:NULL, Setter the Whimsicott, Babs the Gardevoir and Fae the Delphox. It was a chaotic, ridiculous and hilarious experience.

[monstierider]

Whilst the Grima idea is interesting, I'm not sure it'd work given Anri is stated to have fought alone!

Fair point, though it can't be exactly said that Anri did truly fight alone, we know little to nothing about them aside from them being Marths ancestor, having apparently been a commoner and having used Falchion to kill Medeus. Other then that, we're completely blind on all the finer details of his life and everything we do know is what little records remain of his life. So while it is heavily hinted that he fought alone it can't be truly said he did without further evidence.

[monstierider]

Unpopular pokemon opinion

I think the future paradox pokemon are better design wise then the past ones. Now, put away your pitchforks everyone and let me explain myself. I, one, do not take the statements made by thr occulture magazine into account, because that was written by people who looked at Keith's original trip to area zero and discovery of paradox pokemon and thought it was a joke to make money off of. Instead, I look at the designs themselves and the implications behind them. Sure, Fluttermane is a neat design, but realistically it doesn't have much behind it, it's just a bigger, meaner Misdreavus. Sure Roaring Moon is a fun reference to Mega Salamence and the feathers are fun but that's really it, it's not exactly all that unique and it doesn't imply much different between modern Salamence and itself. But the future Paradoxes do imply something through one very small detail almost everyone seems to ignore. These AREN'T the pokemon they're paradoxes of. They're recreations, mechanical approximations of them. So why is it that when Turo pulled for future versions of those pokemon the robotic copies came through. Simply put, the most likely answer is that the pokemon went extinct at some point and that the Future paradoxes were the best attempt humanity had to keep them alive. Even the differences between the designs say something. Iron Bundle and Iron Thorns look almost identical to their bases, implying that even though those pokemon had to be recreated they only went extinct very recently before the creation of the paradoxes. But Iron Valiant and Iron Treads look pretty off from their originals. Sure, they're recognisable but they're really off, implying that they were extinct for a long time, long enough for there to be no reliable enough depictions of the pokemon to exist anymore that Valiant and Treads could have be made to look closer to their bases.

I just think a lot of people fail to recognise that and just go "robots bad and lazy, primal pokemon cool and original" because the past Paradox designs look more active when they're stationary.

[monstierider]

The ramblings of a Gullveig fan, from unserious to serious

The period of time where people thought Gullveig was gonna be Seoirs and Kirans child was hilarious for me cause I kind of figured Gullveig and Seoir were the same once I realised that Seoir is light and Gullveig is time and once you hit the speed of light time gets weird.

Gullveig and Seoirs summer alt is actually really nice, not for "hot waifu" reasons, but because it's one of the only two pieces of official Gullveig art where she's smiling.

Kvasir, Seoir and Gullveig are actually a great way to show character progression because they show the progress of someone who grew up being shaped by a very strict ideal from their parents, the sad, quiet child who just does as they're told, the bubbly, energetic teen who has some deep seated issues and is horrible in social situations and the broken and saddened adult who feels like there's no longer any reason to keep going.

The fact that the only time we see Gullveig smile in the main story is just before her death at Kiran and Seoirs hands absolutely shattered me because it just shows you how deeply broken she'd become by that point that the only way she could smile was when someone was about to kill her.

Gullveigs relationship with Heoir is actually kind of funny and depressing when you realise that, Heoir is actually Seoir and Kirans child, making Gullveig her mother, Heoir and Seoir were raised as siblings, meaning Gullveig would likely view her as a sister and Heoir was born immediately after Kirans death at Gullveigs hands and likely using Kirans soul to create, meaning Heoir is partially Kiran.

[monstierider]

I actually really like Humanoid pokemon

I already know what a lot of people are going to think, but no, I don't like them for those reasons. I like them because they can be really fun to see what the pokemon team does with them. Will they go with a comforting humanoid form, Gardevoir, will they go with a somewhat disquieting one, Froslass, will they go with something that's only vaguely humanoid, Garganacl. There's so many options and I love each of them. Even if I dislike the pokemon, for example I DESPISE Kingambit, I can appreciate the concept, though I wish they gave Bisharp a better evolution rather then one that relies on a dead team and sucker punch to do anything.

I know I'll be seen as weird since most people hate the humanoid pokemon, but I don't care, I love my uncanny valley triggering creatures.

[monstierider]

A rant on why I hate Kingambit despite my love of Bisharp

So, to start this off, I want to preface that my favorite pokemon is Bisharp, I'm weird, I know, sue me, and that I've always loved trying to make Bisharp work. The main issue with Bisharp is its typing and it's stat spread. Dark Steel seems great at first, at sometimes it is, but that four times weakness to fighting is a nightmare to deal with, and every time I wished Bisharp would get an evolution I always wanted something that would let me work around it better, not defensively, but offensively. I always thought a good evolution for Bisharp would be something fast, that hits really hard and has some means to avoid priority attacks but at the cost of much lower defenses. So imagine my joy when I learned that Bisharp was getting an evolution in Scarlet and Violet. I was hyped, I was ready to see Game freak give us a fast, hard hitting dark steel type that'd give the Bisharp line some relevancy that didn't require some major gimmick to happen. So I waited for the evolution to be shown and then....

I see Kingambit, this slow, slower then its pre-evolution, pokemon that ends up trying to be better then Bisharp.....through letting its team die and spamming sucker punch....years of waiting for some cool, imposing, commandereeing pokemon that'd showcase the full potential of the Bisharp line, and instead we get a pokemon that is stated to be lazy, letting its subordinates handle all the work for it, and to be a terrible strategist that just overwhelms with numbers until it either wins or all it's subordinates die.....and my hopes were crushed, literally, the only positive I can think of is that it let's Bisharp run eviolite but that's really not much of a consolation for me.

[monstierider]

Give me your fire emblem head canons, from any fire emblem game, I'll start

Kvasir is actually really good with directions, it's just that as she gets older and becomes more and more of a girlfailure her sense of direction gets worse. By the time she becomes Seoir her sense of direction has become so bad that even becoming a goddess of time later down the line, Gullveig, cannot fix it.

[monstierider]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like Crimson flower did a terrible job of making Edelgard....not a villain

Like, I feel like IS sort of couldn't find a good way to justify siding with Edelgard to the player beyond liking her as a character and the only way the could sort of doing it was by reducing Rhea to near Duma levels of insane, but even then while I won't condone her actions I can understand why she lost it, from her perspective she just saw someone she allowed into her home, break into the burial site of her dead siblings with the intention of desecrating them and robbing their graves and then watched what is, from her sad, broken perspective, her own mother choose to side with the person trying to take all she has left of her family away from her, I too would lose it under those circumstances. And then there's Edelgard not even being very smart, like, does she really believe her troops would hear "the church has nukes" and not either, question why they only dropped the one on the one location and why only now or just....lose all morale??? And then there's the battle at the Tailtean plains and the good old conversation between Dimitri and Edelgard, "must you continue to conquer?continue to kill?!" "Must you continue to re-conquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" Like.....it's like even she realises she has no moral high ground over him and is just trying some desperate redirection to not be the villain she knows she is. And also the entire "king of delusion" scene where Dimitri, in his final moments, swears to avenge everyone who died for her, who she killed, to avenge all his fallen friends and family who died because of her and her ambitions and she basically just calls him a nut job.

Like??? Did IS just....give up on trying to make Edelgard look good and just hope that off her fucking rocker Rhea and Edelgards tragic backstory would cover that up???

[diaphin93]

Hi, I hope its okay when I reply with my own perspectives? As we already were able to keep things somewhat civilized?

First off I would say, its very obvious looking at the state of discourse that you're not the only one (but you at least don't make entire posts trying to frame Edelgard as some sexual seductress, lol. That person exists!), but I think its also more of a you issue. Not in that you do something wrong, but that Edelgard and her route are simply not for you, because as is clear with the large popularilty Edelgard enjoys, thats not the experience all people have with Crimson Flower. In the end, its a game about different perspectives and values and chosing your side when those ultimately come to a clash. It would be boring if this doesn't spark discourse and fundamentally different perspectives of what is right and whats wrong. For all of its flaws, the fact that 3 Houses sparks this amount of Discourse even years after its release is a testament to what it does right.

For example my perspective in all of this, when I played the game on Crimson Flower Route first, was that I came to broadly agree with Edelgards point of view during Part 1. She shares alot of her perspectives during it and as I saw early on, how the entire social structure of Fodlan is heavily inspired by the three estates of the realm feudal structure of medieval europe, I was naturally inclined to by sympathetic towards her viewpoints, as I will usually prefer to side against feudalism in a narrative that allows and encourages me to do so. I got bad vibes from Rhea from the start and tended to believe Jeralt, who as the father of my character I was prone to believe, in not trusting her, especially since very early on, we see more of the oppressive and tyranical nature of the church and the evils of the crest system. In my personal first playthrough, I came to suspect that the Flame Emperor is more nuanced than it appears at first, while Rhea became more and more creepy after Sothis awakening, so when it came to the holy tomb, I did a leap of faith and trusted in Edelgard, as I agreed that the church must be destroyed.

For me, the reactions towards Rheas turn in Crimson Flower feel very similar to the outrage people expressed in the recent Elden Ring DLC, when a certain character as was expected didn't turn out to be as noble as they would have assumed, because by that point they were set in their headcanons of him being a benevolent and purely good figure. Rhea in Crimson Flower is consistent. She is consistent with the bloodthirsty side of hers we saw during the games first cutscene and her cruel and vengeful attitude whenever somebody challenges her during White Clouds. Silver Snow is textually not a validation of Rhea as we saw her in part 1, what it does is offering a potential redemption for her under the condition that Byleth forms an especially strong bond with her. She herself admits her wrongdoings and expresses guilt in the following S-Support. What Crimson Flower shows is that at this stage of the story, Rheas love and adoration for Byleth is conditional, as not long before she literally tried to mind erase them to revive Sothis in full, and that Rhea is prone to immediately devalueing and dehumanizing them if they disobey her. After all, at this point Byleth hasn't even taken arms against Rhea, they are just standing against outright killing their student. I would also say that for me personally, Rheas entire demeanor during part 1 comes off heavily like grooming and love bombing, which is why I personally tend to dislike her.

When it comes to Arianrhod, I personally tond like this part of the story. For me it is one of the flaws in it, as it is left without any lasting consequences, and feels very much like the writers just forcefully inserting it into it to remind us of TWSITD still being there and inform Crimson Flower players of the Javelines of light. What I will say is, that it is not the only such forced inclusion just for the sake of it. I can see the rationale of Edelgard though. Edelgard took a gamble with killing Cornelia in Arianrhod and was punished by it for Thales and reacting to it prematurely would them losing momentum and the Kingdom successfully launching a counter offensive, as well as further interventions by TWSITD if she openly revolts against them now, so she has to lure Thales for the moment into a false sense of security, that she falls back in line again. I don't like it, but I will also say that if thats the dealbreaker, then the route probably wasn't for one to begin with.

When it comes to Dimitri and Edelgard, the whole 'must you continue to kill' exchange is quite a mistranslation compared to the original text, where Edelgards point is to ask him if he will be satisfied, once he takes back, tramples back. This changes the entire context of the exchange honestly:

Though I will also say, I don't have personal issues with this exchange myself, as, what most people leave out, its followed by Edelgard also expressing her determination that she will not stop and do everything necessary to creat a new future for Fodlan. Initially I also took the line as Edelgard being sassy which I'm like...okay with? I'm a feminist, I like it when the queer female lead doesn't owes your typical male protagonist turned villain respect and in crimson Flower, Dimitri himself dragged his Kingdom into war by siding with the church and for the sake of Dimitris delusional desire for vengeance. Which is, again, delusional. Dimitri rants and blames Edelgard for things she had no control over and which she didn't do. He is completely obsessive over her and she has the right to be apalled by him. Again, as a feminist, I like that. She doesn't owe a guy who obsessed over her and wants to brutally murder her any respect, he himself is the one who chose to throw away any semblance of dignity he had.

I would also say that other people will feel as you do towards Rhea and Dimitri. With Rhea I already laid it out why I don't get why people love her so much and consider her heroic and good. With Dimitri, I was initially kinda excited to play Blue Lions after CF. Dimitri was, ultimately, a cool villain in my opinion, I liked his Post Timeskip Design more than his Pre-Timeskip one and I wanted to see where his route leads into and whats his perspective is. I ended up not liking it. Like, I played it before I went into all this discourse with high hopes and I just ended up not liking it or him. He seems very flat to me, with people conflating a character focussed story and a character going through a a redemption arc with deep storytelling, when for me it just seemed comical how he jumps in personality, especially when he just immediately snaps from somebody who sadistically glees like he's some dark isekai self-insert about torturing a man and then immediately jumps into being the enlightened and redeemed savior king. I didn't like how afterwards there were zero consequences for his actions. The parley also didn't sold me, it seemed for me like him engaging in ad hominems and framing him as morally superior because he got people who carry him, it had some very unfortunate implications of how abusers irl might act. Ultimately, I also found his whole position rather pessimistic and miserable, that humans can't rise above themselves when they are given the opportunity and that they should be kept reliant because its safe. Thats how he came off to me. Many of his scenes also come off to me like trauma dumping and him being somewhat self-centered, only relating to others by making them fit into his personal perspective.

If thats not your experience, I will not argue that. If you love him and consider him a great and touching character, all the more power to you. Same with Rhea. This wasn't meant to convince you of my perspective, but to lay it out to show you, how I experiences the game and its characters in a fundamentally different way than you did. I personally would love it more, if I totally stoked by Azure Moon, I would love it if I had ended up loving and cherishing every single route equally, I paid money for and invested time into that game after all. But thats not the case and for me personally, Edelgard just resonated the most and I feel similarily to Rhea and Dimitri as you do towards Edelgard.

[monstierider]

Ya know what, fair enough. I can understand each of these points and I do respect them. The Fodlan games were designed pretty much to start debate and discourse, for better or for worse, and ultimately that's what it has done here. I will admit that I.....really don't like Rhea, like, at all, but I just, can't accept Edelgard either, not only because of my own personal views aligning more with Dimitri, someone who wants to take the safer, more stable method towards change, very likely due to how Faerghus will almost certainly react HORRIBLY to rapid change, "old stubborn country" and all that, but also due to, please correct me if I'm wrong here, I would love to be wrong on this, Edelgard knowing that the heroes relics are made of the bones and hearts of the nabateans and believing that to be perfectly fine because "it gives more power to humanity, not something that isn't human", please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong here, because after so many fire emblem games where we are consistently shown the human side of dragons, through characters like Tiki and Mryh, and even in three houses and hopes with Seteth and Flayn, the idea of a character knowing about people genociding a widely peaceful, purely reactionary, race and making their bodies into monster hunter weapons and thinking that's okay because they aren't human just....really screws with me, even if the rest of their ideals are noble, that sort of line of thinking just....leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

[diaphin93]

Thanks that you can respect that and I'm glad that I didn't came off too pushy. I personally can respect your stance as well and I ultimately think that the game is made for each person to have their own perspective on what is the right route. I myself often went hard into argueing for CF being the best in the past, but that also was more of a reaction to just so many people spreading their HC's of how CF's ending will lead to collapse as fact. The devs deliberately didn't include a revalation-esque route after all, because they didn't want to have a true route

But on Edelgard and her attitudes towards Dragons, that a community spread misconception to frame her as some kind of racist and fascist, predominantly by the kinds of people who, in a game where people of color exist and are opressed, make pale-skinned dragon gods their chosen racial allegory. I could be wrong but please correct me, but to my knowledge Edelgard never learns that the Heroes Relics are made out of Dragons. I'm not even sure if Silver Snow Byleth does learn that, it could be actually just Claude. What she knows is that the heroes relics are manmade and the history the church propagates, that Nemesis became corrupted and evil later on, was a lie propagated by the church. Though Edelgards also doesn't seem to care much about Heroes Relics outside of their immediate use and the fact, that the church is controlling them.

Edelgard and Hubert hold negative views on the Nabatheans as inhuman, but that is predominantly out of their limited perspective, where they only know them as immortals who hide among humans to control them and falsify history. Though they also don't seem to see them as a race and more as a divine family of self-appointed gods, which is the role the Nabatheans did play in the past. I think here its kinda messy because outside of the few nabateans alive, there aren't really any other intelligent non-human races and humans don't know anything about Nabateans outside of their myths about the children of the goddess. And ultimately, what they hold against the Nabatheans is their deception and their misrule over humanity. And Rhea does express very supremacist attitudes against humans and considers themselves to be unfit to govern themselves without her guidance, despite herself being as flawed as humans and misusing her power the same they do, with Seteth being an active accomplice.

Ultimately, she doesn't even want to kill the Nabateans, she just wants their control over humanity to end. She expresses herself very harshely with terms like obliterate and striking her down, which I think are supposed to be taken as her exaggerating when talking about her ideals, but otherwise she does express a preference to sparing Rhea. She does give Rhea a chance to surrender before Fhirdiad and even before that shows a genuine interest in capturing instead of killing her.

So she prefers stripping Rhea of power and keep her away from politics and is neutral towards turning the church into an imperial institution, which is to say, a state institution, while actively disliking the idea of killing her if she surrenders. This is consistent with the fact that she does keep Rhea as a prisoner over the 5 years, where Seteth does confirm after finding her that she is left unharmed

Hopes confirms this notion, as during Edelgards support with Claude, she treats capturing instead of killing Rhea as the natural course of action and even questions Claude, if it isn't enough to subdue her enemy and remove her from power. Which is consistent with Edelgard usually giving her enemies a chance to surrender after the battle, as seen in her conquest of the Alliance, which is highly unusual compared to other Lords where routing missions and giving their enemies no quarter is the usual outcome. In VW and SS, Count Bergliez has to sacrifice himself for his soldiers to be spared. And here is how Seteth reacts to the notion of not killing Edelgard.

So yeah. Edelgard does not want to kill the Nabateans, she just views them negatively due to her limited knowledge of them and perceiving them through Rheas actions at the expense of humanity. 3H in general goes a different way of humanizing the Dragons, by emphasizing their human flaws. It subverts the notion, that immortal divine beings are better, wiser or more intelligent than humans.

Personally, I kinda dislike the fact that Flayn doesn't stick along or at least is re-recruitable in Crimson Flower, really. Its one of the flaws of the game I see, especially since I've heard that there are datamines that hint at Crimson Flower Flayn being a consideration at one point. I care less so about Seteth because I like him less, but I also see more of a case where the game may benefit from him not being recruitable, but in Flayns case I feel like it strips Crimson Flower, but also Flayn, of possibilities. I would have liked Edelgard and Hubert to react of the notion of a child of the goddess siding with their ideals, but also how Flayn could develope if she was faced with Rheas deceptions.

More importantly though, I think that Flayn being permanently lost in Crimson Flower kind of devalues her relationship with Byleth and the Black Eagles class. It makes it conditional. We have many students who are pushed into a similar position, where they are are willing to fight against their families, former friends and country for the sake of Byleth and their bonds to the class they joined. In Crimson Flower, Anette and Felix will fight their own fathers. Hell, Caspar basically just stands by and watches as Dimitri tortures his uncle. So generally, I think it was just an all around bad move to make her lost for CF. Especially since I think that one of the interesting aspects of CF for some characters is them emancipating themselves of the control their parents have over their lives. With Seteth being a well meaning and loving but also overbearing father, I think the story possibility of Flayn chosing another side than him and taking a more independent role for herself would have been something worthwile.

[monstierider]

Honestly, I always viewed Flayn and Seteth being unable to be recruited in crimson flower as them being unwilling to strike down one of the only other Nabateans still alive, especially considering the only other living Nabateans I'm aware of are the windcaller, who is a full on recluse who hates humanity, and...I can't remember his name, but the turtle who just lives at the bottom of a river and only comes up to mess with humans. Rhea's really all they have left, even if they don't agree with her, Flayn less so, but Seteth actually shows a great amount of disdain for Rheas methods, it's just that she's too stubborn and set in her ways to listen to him, he only goes along with it because, well, he's trying to look out for Flayn' safety and views Rheas methods as the only way to make sure she's safe, even if he doesn't like them.

To be honest though, I've always viewed the Fodlan games not as "country versus country", but "Edelgard versus Rhea" because....well, it all starts due to their clashing ambitions, ambitions that can't coexist not because their too different, but because they're so similar. Edelgard wants a world for humanity, but is unwilling to truly learn more about those her world would cast out or to share the burden with others, whereas Rhea wants a world for all people, but has grown far too controlling out of fear of another Those who slither in the dark or Nemesis showing up and is so dead set in her idea that only Sothis can truly guide Fodlan she's sacrificed her own morals and sanity for it, because in truth she's desperate to have someone to tell her she did the right thing even when a cursory glance shows that she didn't, despite the good things she did accomplish.

[diaphin93]

I get that view, though I think it is quite a missed opportunity. I feel like with Seteth its fine that he's los for Crimson Flower, though like I said, I think with Flayn it kind of is a missed opportunity for both sides to get more input of the others perspective and for Flayn to have a route that is more about her emancipation from Seteth. With which I don't want to say that he's a bad or abusive father, quite the opposite, but he is quite clearly an overbearing father who shelters Flayn from the world. Though that could be just me. I generally feel like the games kind of refuse to force Flayn and Seteth into a position, where they have to question their own role in the system and towards humans much.

I would also agree with the notion that at its core its really Edelgard vs Rhea, but I think it also plays into the weakness of 3 Houses, that it doesn't really do much to make the ambitions and goals of Dimitri and Claude stand out very much. But I will disagree with your notion on what both want and think your personal bias talks again, because Edelgard very much cares about those who are left out by the current system. She is the one who feels empathy towards Miklan, who expresses care about those who are left out or wronged by the system and cares about creating a place for everyone in her new world, as seen for example in her Linhardt support.

Rhea is the one who refuses to truly learn about humanity and to put trust in others. She does regularily express alienation from others and her incapability of connecting with those around her. The issue with Rhea is, that she does not respect humans and looks down to them, having a very supremacist and paternalistic outlook on them as being reliant on her rule.

The issue is, that Rhea had a thousand years to solve the issues in Fodlan. She has the means to do it, she has the power. She just doesn't wants to, because she prefers the control and illusio nof peace she created for herself. She does uphold the crest system and hides away those who are harmed and cast out by it into the Abyss, which is basically just an underground ghetto.

Like, ultimately she just does nothing to make things better for anyone? When the tragedy of Duscur happened, she didn't do anything despite showing with her scapegoating and executing Christophe for it. When Loog started a TWSITD backed up Revolt against the Empire, something the church at least suspected looking at the Abyss library, she ended up rewarding him by splitting up the Empire and creating the church as her loyal vassal. She did nothing in turn to support Leicester when they revolted against the Empire, nor when they were annexed by the Kingdom. We know that she actively suppresses technological advancements, especially those that could hurt the authority of the church or threaten the nobility system. Hopes has even very strong indications that Rhea withheld aggracultural knowledge from the Kingdom until the point it has to harbor her and she suddenly drops it, something Shez can be suspicious of and that I will go further into. Rhea had every opportunity and all the means in the world to creat a better world, she just does not want to do that. She wants to revive Sothis against her wills, so that she can rule over humanity and fix things.

Thats the big issue of Rhea. She does inheritly not view humans as her equals, but she also fails to be better than them. This is actually even further hammered home by her similarities to Thales, who represents humanities worst and most evil aspects, to the point where hopes frames them as equals and foils, the two main villains of 3 Hopes. And I think thats what makes her interesting.

[monstierider]

I will admit, I was unaware of those Abyss dialogues, thank you for bringing them up. In regards to Loogs rebellion I always saw Rhea legitimising it as a way to avoid another Nemesis situation, especially since, if I remember correct, Nemesis and his ten elites were from Northern Fodlan and most of their relics were left there, so I always saw her vassalising Faerghus as more a desperation play. And in regards to her mistrust of humanity, I mean, she's in the wrong for it, but I understand why she has it, the genocide of your entire species isn't going to be something that'll be easy to forgive, no matter how old you get. Also, regarding my point about Edelgard "not caring about those her ambitions leave behind" I was more so referring to the people her actions will just make bitter, since, no matter how hard she tries, the annexation of a country and destruction of its culture, since we know Edelgard is actively seeking an imperial take over, even if for genuinely well meaning reasons, will breed resentment no matter what. That resentment can be mitigated, but it can't be avoided entirely. Life getting better for the common folk will only do so much to make up for the war she started and the complete and utter destruction of people's lives as they knew it.

Actually, regarding Thales, I hope you don't mind me going on a short tangent, but after hopes came out and showed us Epimenides I actually began to view the Agarthans a little differently, not as in, I began seeing them as if they were good people, but rather I saw them as being reflections of the one who holds their reigns. Epimenides after all is pretty much the exact opposite of Thales within Agartha, Thales doesn't give a damn about his subordinates and will happily leave them to die just to save his own skin, Epimenides actively risks his own life to save Nemesis, who he doesn't even like. Thales wouldn't even hesitate to rob someone of their free will, which is not a good thing for Edelgard if Azure gleam is anything to go off of, but Epimenides actively shows remorse for taking Arvals and Shez's bodies and wills from them, and even the game even states that his....core, whatever that means, is to be inherited, not implanted, like it probably is for the other Agarthans, but instead passed down, showing he likely despises such things, hell, he even states in the Arval/Epimenides paralouge in hopes "I know Thales has his methods, but they don't sit right with me". I also find it really interesting that Epimenides, going off his paralouge, is much more of an upfront fighter then an in the shadows schemer, to the point of having fought the imperial army, Seteth/Cichol, Flayn/Cethleann and Rhea/Seiros to a stand still almost entirely on his own, meanwhile Thales....gets smacked around by literally everyone at least once. We also have the fact that Epimenides doesn't seem to hate non-Agarthans like....literally every other named Agarthan, but by his own admission, pities them.

What was the point of this tangent again?.....oh, right, Epimenides was basically the moral backbone of Agartha and once he died it took after Thales instead.

Please feel free to ignore that, that's just me ranting and is entirely unrelated to the main point of this debate.

[diaphin93]

No problem, you actually do catch me on a special interest of mine, which I love to headcanon alot about.

When it comes to Edelgard, I think it boils down to my position which I mentioned when it comes to her vs Dimitri, that every approach will end uo leaving somebody out and cause suffering. Though I have to admit, that my biggest problem is actually how the whole conquest works in Azure Moon. Not necessarily when it comes to Adrestia, as this is basically similar to the reverse and we should assume that people would be very unhappy with him coming in and re-introducing the status quo and the rule of the Central Church to the nation, but Leicester, how it just ends up falling in line and submit to Faerghus rule, when their history is how Faerghus backstabbed and annexed them when they tried their own revolt against the Kingdom and had to fight a war against Faerghus to win their independence, as well as the Kingdoms meddling with House Daphnel. When it comes to Rhea, the rationale behind it is there, but it is still ag reat betrayal of the Empire, which helped her to begin with and basically yet another example of Rhea making bad compromises and choices that end up biting her, and all of Fodlan, in the ass. When it comes to her trauma, it is understandable, but it is also her putting all of humanity on a collective burden for the crimes of very few people.

But the Thales and TWSITD topic is much more interesting, lol. And I agree with you. I really like Epimenides because he is the one nuanced agarthan we ever get. He is outright heroic, he just happens to be on the opposing side, which I think is always interesting and I like how he is singlemindedly dedicated to save his people. It puts the agarthans in a very different light, the implications where already there, but its different when somebody who seems somewhat noble puts them forward. I also generally like him as this counterpart to Rhea and Sothis, despite his godlike power being adamant of being a mere human and taking pride in his humanity. I just generally love this kind of character, who reject the megalomania of calling themselves gods and taking pride in their archievements as humans. I also like how apologetic he is about sacrificing Solon. It creats a sense of human connection, that he is not viewed as this mad evil villain by his own people.

So this really generally leads me to some of my frustrations with the games, like how Hopes itself feels very unfinished and abandoned. Like Hopes introduces very interesting implications, combined with the Shadow Library document for example the idea, that the original Sothis might not have been fully good and much more cruel and ruthless than we would have assumed, as seen in her more vengeful and ruthless demeanor in Hopes. Some hate it, but I kinda like the idea of the Goddess Sothis not being as good as Rhea makes her out to be. It adds relationship to the way Byleth shaped Sothis through their shared experiences and more nuance to the background of the world. Though I also kinda feel like Epimenides and Arval were somewhat of a largely aborted story for Hopes? Its basically handled inside a bonus chapter that has no lasting consequences to the ending of the game and we never gain more clarity on Shez Background and origins, which are implied to be agarthan. We know that Hopes ends more open ended so to not devalue Byleths involvement in Houses, but I can't stop but feel like they also held really back on the entire concept of Byleth & Sothis being villains in Hopes, which was what the game originally advertised itself as, which could have had Epimenides take a bigger role in the story and show us the agarthans in a different light. Then there is also how the game feels pretty much aborted to move towards Engage, when it just feels like it was created with at least some story DLC in mind.

But generally the agarthans and them being one-dimensionally evil inside the games is my big criticism. The world building, informations from interviews and ingame documents feel like the entire concept was imagined to be more nuanced, but then they ended up being really flat. And with the way they are presented as and handled, there are some messy implications due to the choice of making them not some ancient evil cult, but actually a human race of people and seemingly also the original inhabitants of Fodlan. Like to they have civilians? Do they have children? Its super messy and I feel like the game would have done better by giving us at least an agarthan recruit. You know, basically a Tharja, who gives us more insights and depth to the agarthans as a people and offers a route of redemption and survival for them through their ending, instead of us just wiping them out or be stuck in an eternal gridlock with them. Though I guess its a good place for headcanons, rpgs and fanfic though, where I love to expand on the agarthans more for myself, giving them more depth and purpose. I think offers the potential of an interesting circle of hatred narrative, being more critical of Sothis just wiping them out with a flood and effectively commiting a biblical genocide on them, which forced them into the dark and turned them vengeful and evil, in turn enacting their own cruel and unjust collective punishment on all Nabateans for the sins of their mother. Though I personally just like the idea of a narrative, where there are nuanced agarthans and that offers a story about how agarthans and nabateans have to learn to share the world with each other and with the current humans inhabiting it as equals, instead of one side trying to wipe the other out for eternity, with humans being their puppets in all of it.

If you are familiar with FF14, I also feel like the Ascians are basically the Agarthans, but done right. The Ascians in this game are themselves a race of sinister and scheming bodysnatchers who try to spread chaos to revive their dark god, but then we learn more about how they were advanced ancient humans, who survived the end of the world and try to rebuild the world as they knew it. They are still villains, but there is empathy for them, the suffering and loss they faced. Like there is one who clearly views himself as the hero who will save the world, who at one point is enraged over us, the player character, having murdered his brothers. They are never justified, but we get to understand their position.

[monstierider]

Yeah, it really does feel like hopes was just....left unfinished. What we have is good for the main lords, let's us see them under different circumstances, for better or worse, but for Shez, Arval and Epimenides it's just....disappointingly clear they had more in mind that never got made or at the very least never got released. Like, they clearly had more planned, the unused characters in the files, the voicelines in the gallery for npc only characters, and just Shez's story in general all makes it feel so...unsatisfying. Honestly, the only thing I can think of that might have caused them to have clearly planned the dlc out so much and then just dropped it would have to be the passing of Ferdinands voice actor, may his soul rest in peace, but it doesn't make the fact that we get all these fun details dangled in front of us, just to drop us into that cliff Byleth fell into during the attack on the monastery.

Like, who is Shez's mother? What is Agarthan society like? Are they all similar to Kronya, Solon, Cornelian and Thales, or is the average Agarthan more similar to Epimenides? How did Arval end up with Shez? Did they wind up together on accident? Is Shez some kind of homonculus clone body Epimenides had planned for his return? If so, how did they end up not only getting out of Shambala as, very likely, a baby and getting raised in Fodlan?

So many questions, and the only way we might ever get any answers is through.....fire emblem heroes, and even then, that'll probably only be the case if Shez ever wins CYL.

It sucks so much, because before hopes I didn't care about the Agarthans too much, they were just an evil cult for the sake of having an evil cult. But Epimenides single handedly got me wanting to know more about them.

[diaphin93]

I'm not really sure if Billy Kametz tragic death plays into their decission of not doing any more 3 Hopes content. I'm not discounting the possibility, but on the other hand they did recast Ferdinand when they released a new alt for him in Heroes. I personally assume it might have been in preparation to Engages release, that they wanted to wrap up Fodlan quickly and move on to the next game, especially since I wouldn't be surprised if they had banked on the game attracting a much higher audience. Its less obvious but the game just has some elements that feel rushed or incomplete, as you said, unused characters, voicelines, Shez, but also other elements. For example the lack of any story diviation if you fail to recruit Byleth outside of Scarlet Blaze, which is fairly weird. With AG, the story just full on stops making sense if you recruit Byleth. Though AG in general feels super rushed, the first half is actually good but then it just feels like they just stopped trying and just scrambled together the second half, it doesn't make any sense at all.

When it comes to Shez mother, I kinda assume she might have been an agarthan who came to save them from Shambhala and whatever experiments had them end up with Arval, but it is really never answered. Its quite a shame, as the game just was brimming with potential and there was lots of potential for fun DLC. I would have loved Nemesis and the Agarthans as unlockable units just for record keeper, as this would have been fun gameplay wise and opened the door for some fun non-canon interactions, see Edelgard and Rhea being deployed together.

It also feels like a bad call in retrospect, lol. Considering how there seem to be more people left who would love to play a Hopes DLC and talk about it then any genuine discourse about Engage, which is mostly just people whining about how people don't like Engage.

[monstierider]

Honestly, as someone who does love Engage, the lack of any dlc content for hopes still infuriates me a little to this day. I would honestly have taken anything, like, even if they couldn't give us a whole new route, I would have loved a few new paralouges you can play to unlock some new units and the wrap up some loose ends. Also, yeah, my favorite route in Hopes is Azure gleam, I just love the way all the lions bounce off each other and it feels like the only route where Shez really belongs if you ask me, since they seem much less focused on revenge against Byleth, and more focused on what's best for the people they've grown close to, whereas with the other routes they just kinda feel like they're either, there for a paycheck, or there because Hubert would kill them if they weren't, but even I have to admit the second half was kind of rushed, though I do like it actually giving Dimitri proper closure for the tragedy of Dusur by letting him actually fully defeat those who slither in the dark.

Also, I just realised something of a possibility I hadn't considered before, being that those who slither in the dark being Agarthans, doesn't mean that the Agarthans are those who slither in the dark, but just means that TWSITD is something of an extremist group within Agarthan society. I have no evidence to back this up, aside from the existence of Epimenides showing that not all Agarthans are like Thales and his cronies, but I do rather like the idea so I'm just gonna add that to the list of things to think on.

[diaphin93]

Honestly, Azure Gleam is super yikes for me, just because of how Edelgard is treated in this route. Thats just vile, also half the route felt like parody for me personally, but you do you. I never really felt like Shez had much of a Dynamic with the Blue Lions to begin with though. Could also be due to me not really liking half the house much? I think the only lions I genuinly love are Mercedes and Sylvain, while I like Ingrid mostly just for the queer headcanons. Though I also feel like my issue with AG is also, how the other routes at least treat Dimitri with respect and dignity, while Dimitris only win condition is the total destruction of Edelgards character. Its also just wasted potential. Honestly, I personally would have made Claude more of a Villain in AG and force Dimitri and Edelgard to work together due to him and TWSITD pushing both sides. I think having those two working together is more what many fans would have wanted to see, while Claude is the only Lord who never got to properly shine as a villain. Edelgard as a villain was done often enough, Dimitri has a strong role as a villain in CF and an antagonist in SB and GW, not to forget being basically a villain half of AM. We should have gotten at least one fallen Claude route.

I feel like Shez has a much stronger dynamic with Edelgard than she ever shares with Dimitri, where they feel somewhat generic and replaceable, but my favorite house for Shez personally is GD, where they just feel like completing the Deers in a way Byleth never could. Though seriously, I feel like people give Golden Wildfire alot of shit undeserved, which feels like a situation where many people didn't really like Claude to begin with, they liked a boiled down Silver Snow Headcanon of Claude. Like I love Scarlet Blaze because its basically a perfect route that gives the Eagles everything they could have asked for, but Golden Wildfire just left the strongest impression for me. Its the Claude I hoped for when I first started 3 Houses and considered joining the Deer before the Eagles, the morally grey scheming Master Tactician. I just genuinly feel like people who want Claude to be this nice golden boy are the most boring people imaginable. I want him to be the rogueish Lord who smiles at you and lures you into believing he's a friendly little fella, just to shoot first. Its just fun and the cast gets to shine alot during the Route. And honestly, it feels the closest to a golden route we will ever get. Dimitri and Edelgard both survive without their nations being fully conquered and there is a chance, that the three Lords might make peace.

When it comes to TWSITD and the Agarthans, I personally go for my headcanon of Those who Slither in the Dark being the military government of the Agarthans and basically keeping the everyday people opressed to wage their endless shadow war. I did alot of world building for TWSITD in the RPG I'm playing in and I like to also frame them somewhat more sith-like, their overlords being mostly kept in check by fear through Thales, while being a general collection of opportunists, cut-throats and some real fanatics. I think its the most interesting way to make them more nuanced without making them not evil.

[monstierider]

I honestly always saw Edelgards fate as essentially what happens to her if she ever slips off the tight rope her ambitions have set her one, it's a fate worse then death for her as it completely robs her of her will, yet at the same time is realistically the only way Edelgard would be allowed to live should she lose the war, because at that point it isn't even really her, it's a child trapped in her body. It's certainly not a happy fate, but I always viewed it as more of a showing of the true risk she takes going through with her path, in honestly somewhat a similar way to the Hedgemon husk. In one case, if her path is cut short she risks becoming a puppet, in the other case, she risks losing her humanity. Both are meant to show the true danger her path takes her down, as both are fates worse then death that only happen if either her body or her will falter.

In regards to Claude, I did sort of feel he was out of character, but not because he was scheming and conniving, I honestly loved that, but because he just seemed to.....accept everything he was told about the church by Edelgard during that little peace talk. Claude was designed to be a truth seeker in houses yet he never really does that, at all in hopes, and it just made him feel a bit....dumb I guess is the best way I can put it. It's like they couldn't figure out a way for him to be both a schemer and a truth seeker at the same time and just decided to give us one or the other. Also, in regards to the idea of Claude playing the role of villain....I don't think it makes any sense for him, he's shown in every route making the decisions most likely to keep Leicester alive, no matter what, because its the smallest country with the weakest army, his schemes can only carry them so far, if he tried to take on the kingdom and the empire at the same time he'd be crushed.

With Shez, I always viewed Shez in Golden deer as only being there because of Claude, but they don't really seem to happy about it. Hell, first scene we see of them post time skip is Shez threatening to leave because they aren't being payed enough. Their bond never really felt all to strong to me. With Crimson Wildfire I just feel like the relationship between Shez, Edelgard and Hubert were really one sided. Sure, Shez liked them, but a point that gets hammered home over and over again in that route is that Edelgard and Hubert never seem to really trust them, not until after the final battle and you only ever hear a true apology for it from Hubert if you give him your merc whistle, Edelgard just sort if gives a half apology and leaves it. Even after telling Shez they trust them earlier in the story, if you recruit Byleth, during the chapter where Epimenides possess Shez to attack Byleth, they make it seem like they were expecting Shez to betray them the entire time, so it never really felt like an actual relationship to me. With Azure Gleam though, it feels like the only one where Shez both doesn't care about the money he's getting and where he's genuinely trusted. At no point does Shez warn about leaving if they're not payed more, which speaks volumes considering they're a mercenary, a sword for hire, but the blue lions show genuine trust in him the entire way, even Felix shows a genuine degree of trust in them and we all know how Felix can be, even during the Epimenides chapters, the blue lions don't react with any sort of anger or expectation towards the possessed Shez, just confusion and some sense that something must be forcing Shez to attack an ally, because they all trust them enough to know Shez would never willingly betray them, at least that's how I see it.

[diaphin93]

I don't want to imply things, but are you sure that this isn't some subconscious bias speaking out of you? Because I personally find the thought troubling, that for example Dimitri who does violent and vile crimes for the sake of his personal thirst for revenge gets to return from it unscathed and with any lasting consequences, or Rhea who had all of Fodlan forced under a false history and caused undescirable suffering has this privilege too but its Edelgard who is penalized by either death or essentially lobotomy for her transgressions, especially with her backstory as somebody who was stripped of her bodily autonomy as a child. Like its bad and just super misogynist.

Also I think this is yet again your bias speaking, sorry. Like, Claude was always established to be against the church himself and in 3 Houses, he effectively used Byleths connection to it to destroy it within itself. In Hopes he does not have this luxury, but he also gets to show his skills as a tactician better because we see that with the right set up, he is capable of taking on the Empire or the Kingdom. And why are you assuming that what Edelgard is telling Claude about the church is not backed by elements and documents? Don't forget that at this point, Edelgard was able to take Garreg Mach Monestary already and therefore has access to the churches dirty secrets. Not to forget that Claude has its own gripes with the Church, which he lays out in his support with Dimitri, which are never questioned by Dimitri, for example Rhea prohibiting official relations with outside regions. In general the Game kind of confirms outright that the Church is not good and that even Dimitri hates them, but has to play a facade to uphold good relations with them, he agrees with all of Edelgards and Claudes ideas on a personal level and opposes them due to what he perceives as his duty as king. Like I mentioned, the game hints at Rhea deliberately starving the Kingdom until the has to rely on them providing for her army. Like I think there are alot of misinterpretations and misinformation floating along in the community because, lets be real, there are alot of people really obsessed with church apologism here on tumblr, the FE3H community seems to have the weirdest form of conservative elements in it.

And yeah, but SB has Shez teaching Edelgard high five, which is really much more of a dynamic than she ever developes with any of the Lions. And honestly, for me the whole Blue Lions dynamic with Shez kinda felt emblematic with the house, as it was kind of a nuffingburger. And I kinda feel like Hubert and Edelgard being the most suspicious to Shez is realistic, they are the most experienced in identifying their abilities as Agarthan, but when Shez turned, it was basically just Hubert seeing his paranoia confirmed, but even him not wanting to resolve the situation violently? Dimitri is the one who is prepared to kill Shez immediately, because they already confessed their fears to him and its what he promised them to do in this case. I think the Golden Deer had unambigiously the best scene there, they constantly call Shez their friend and while Lorenz is the onle suspicious, Hilda and Claude immediately suspect an imposter. And in general I think the relationship in Golden Deer comes off the most like Shez just being a part of them and having a real effect on the story and their Lord, fascilitating Claudes character development. With AM I never really got this feeling, like Shez being part of the Blue Lions has alot less of an effect on the story than Edelgard being mindcontrolled. When it comes to the Blue Lions, yeah they are friendly, but it never feels that deep or something that developed and has an unique dynamic. And I never really got the impression Shez has much of a reason to fight for Dimitri and the Lions, though this could be due to Dimitri being somewhat of the least inspiring leader. In contrast to Edelgard and Claude, he kinda feels like you have Che Guevara on one side, Nelson Mandela on the other and you vote for Angela Merkel.

Though I also just never felt like the Lions are that particularily close or have a strong dynamic to each other. Most barely feel like they matter overall, especially the women who feel super sidelined. Funnily enough, they are the least close house in 3H, having the lowest number of A-Supports with each other.

[monstierider]

It could very well be personal bias that is dictating my views here, but I do feel a bit more lenient towards Edelgards fate in Azure gleam, not cause I think it's a good or fair one, but because it's one that makes sense for what I think they were going for in Azure gleam, which was to depict the overall story of the empire in that route as a tragedy, and the removal of will for probably the most willful and determined of the three Lords is a brilliant way to show that, even if it was executed poorly. That kind of fate is already a fate worse then death, and for Edelgard specifically it's a complete and utterly mockery, a purposeful one to show just how heartless TWISTD actually are.

In regards to Dimitri, I honestly find him the most inspiring of the three leaders, a man who's country is the worst off on almost all fronts, defending off attackers from almost every angle, even within his own kingdom, but still working his hardest to protect his people, ensure his friends survival and to remain kind, but that's purely my personal view of it and you are perfectly entitled to your own opinion on the matter, though I would love to hear your reasons why you find the other leaders more inspiring.

Regarding Claude, correct me if I'm wrong, but during Golden wildfires peace talk scene, I don't think Edelgard actually offers any real evidence against the church to Claude except her word, nor does Claude ask for any. Even accounting for his dislike of the church, the fact he doesn't actually try and get more concrete evidence out of Edelgard feels....off, especially considering that her first move in the war was to attack Leicester just so she could reach the church faster by taking the great bridge. The whole situation just doesn't come off quite right to me.

Also, I honestly found Dimitris willingness to kill Shez if necessary to be a pretty good sign of just how close the two actually are. It's not as if he decided to do it just because "maybe they might be to dangerous", he only even entertained the idea because Shez asked him to do so if they ever lost control of themselves. That was Dimitri putting aside his own desires for the sake of his friend, and he would have only done so if he truly felt it to be a necessity. That decision would tear him apart to make but he's still willing to do so to make sure that Shez doesn't live with the pain of having killed a friend or ally against his own will.

[diaphin93]

I get your point, but for me it feels like trying to contextualize somethign that is obviously just badly written and offensive as good actually, like there is even an consensus among most Dimitri Fans that Azure Gleam is bad. It feels like the writers basically had no ideas how to resolve the story and make Dimitri win, so they basically just mindwipe Edelgard and give Dimitri some cartoonishly evil enemy to fight against for the finale. In a way it also feels somewhat as the least lazy, uninspired and "I don't even wanna write this"-vibes course correction to the prime criticism of AM, which is that Dimitri never really learns and does something about TWSITD, so in this version, Thales basically turns the Adrestian Empire fully into the Agarthan Empire. There are also generally moments where I ask myself if AG is satire, as it does not present its side favorably. It also doesn't make sense how Thales and Aegir take over the Empire that easily, when at this point everyone is already aware of Those who slither in the dark and Aegirs crimes, so there is the issue of the route only working based on everyone acting incredibly out of character. Its a shame because the first half was actually really good.

And on Dimitri, I just feel like his very centrist attitude just doesn't inspire me to follow him, as he generally doesn't really act out of his own convictions and believes. We learn after all that Dimitri does agree with Edelgards and Claudes believes and goals, he basically just acts as a contrarian out of fear of rapid change and to placate the church, which Hopes really hammers home on being corrupt. Like damn, Rhea is literally implied to wilfully starve the Kingdom when she knows aggracultural techniques that could help it, which she only shares when its about having her people fed. I think there is a general issue in AG, where the Rest of the game clearly contextualizes Rhea as a villain, but Dimitri to the end keeps on being subservient to her, which makes AG come off a bit like a villainous route. In SB, Rhea outright proposes throwing her followers into the meatgrinder by calling for a crusade into Garreg Mach, which Dimitri has to sugarcoat Rhea and Seteth against enacting, which shows how fanatical those two really are. Sorry to go on a tangent here, but yeah, I really dislike how Dimitri really never truly comes to stand up against Rhea.

On why I find the other leaders more inspiring, for me its simply them being more charismatic but also holding stronger convictions. With Edelgard, I think its also just her being the better house leader. In Houses she tried to put her distance towards others due to knowing what she has to do and her fear that nobody would follow her, but she is still trying to help and care for everyone. I think she has a very revolutionary air to her, being willing to fight and also lay down her life for what she believes is right. I also think its also very inspiring that when she suffered so much trauma and torture, she never falls into the trappings of vengeance and instead turns her suffering into conviction, to never allow anyone else to suffer as she did, not only in the specific way of undergoing crest experimentations, but to stop every all suffering because of crests. And there is a strong humanist element to her, her just believing in the capabilities of the common people. And there is her deep seated appreciation for others. Like, in their support Edelgard expresses nothing but appreciation for the way Shez changed her, similarily to Byleth. I think there is just something much more inspiring about somebody who cares deeply about others but is also willing to shoulder the costs necessary to push forward into the future.

And when it comes to Claude, I also think that he is somebody with much more honest and heartfelt convictions than Dimitri. Like, he is obviously the most charismatic leader out there, thats his entire shtick, but I think for me it creats excitement to see the big dreamer beneath the pragmatic schemer. He has this Tyrion Lannister vibes, framing himself as a scoundrel while having very heartfelt dreams. And in Hopes, you could just feel this side of him much more, where he could take the actual central role and had a route written just for him. I also generally enjoy his political finesse and tactical mind. He proofs that he isn't just the third wheel who is crushed underneath the mass of Edelgard and Dimitri, but shows how Leicester genuinly has the potential to win this, all by themselves. I also generally love how he is able to use setbacks to his advantage and come out of it as a winner, which is a very inspiring quality. And finally, there is him being open towards pushback and taking it deeply to heart, changing his entire outlook on everything. The final battle in GW is entirely build on his development after sacrificing Randolph and seeing how much this has shaken Shez trust in him, so now he stands true to his allies. I also really, really love how as a leader, he is capable of lighten the mood whenever things seem dark, again a quality I think in its own way. Edelgard is somebody I feel like could inspire me to preservere through hardship, Claude meanwhile is somebody who could make me believe that things aren't that bad and make me go through it with a chuckle.

And during both Peace Talk scenes, there isn't really much discussion about the Church, in Golden Wildfire there is reference to a letter she send Claude though. So we don't know what exactly she wrote him and what evidence was attached to hit, though we know that Claude does take it with a grain of salt and just considers it more potential reasons for why the Central Church needs to be abolished. Thats what she says on the topic in the scene after:

Like what he actually mentions as his opposition towards the Central Church and his prime reasoning to want to destroy it are not some secret knowledge, but just how the system operates. This isn't claude being manipulated and tricked by Edelgard, this is him as an outsider coming to the same conclusions about the Central Church as her.

And I get your point on Dimitri and why you like his reaction, though you argument was how you think that Shez is closer to the Blue Lions than all the other houses and I'm plain, Golden Wildfire shows the deepest relationship in my opinion. Lorenz naturally plays the role of the skeptic and contrarian, but Hilda and Claude never for a second believe that Shez could turn on them and are convinced its Those who Slither in the Works doing. Shez seriously feels like being made for the Deer, their design alone is super Golden Deer, being super colorful and chaotic.

[monstierider]

Thank you for sharing your views on these matters and well I can't quite say I agree, but I do respect them. Once more, I'd like to leave this debate off on a friendly note, and thank you for debating this with me in such a polite and friendly manner, just as it was last time, this was fun, thank you.

[monstierider]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like Crimson flower did a terrible job of making Edelgard....not a villain

Like, I feel like IS sort of couldn't find a good way to justify siding with Edelgard to the player beyond liking her as a character and the only way the could sort of doing it was by reducing Rhea to near Duma levels of insane, but even then while I won't condone her actions I can understand why she lost it, from her perspective she just saw someone she allowed into her home, break into the burial site of her dead siblings with the intention of desecrating them and robbing their graves and then watched what is, from her sad, broken perspective, her own mother choose to side with the person trying to take all she has left of her family away from her, I too would lose it under those circumstances. And then there's Edelgard not even being very smart, like, does she really believe her troops would hear "the church has nukes" and not either, question why they only dropped the one on the one location and why only now or just....lose all morale??? And then there's the battle at the Tailtean plains and the good old conversation between Dimitri and Edelgard, "must you continue to conquer?continue to kill?!" "Must you continue to re-conquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" Like.....it's like even she realises she has no moral high ground over him and is just trying some desperate redirection to not be the villain she knows she is. And also the entire "king of delusion" scene where Dimitri, in his final moments, swears to avenge everyone who died for her, who she killed, to avenge all his fallen friends and family who died because of her and her ambitions and she basically just calls him a nut job.

Like??? Did IS just....give up on trying to make Edelgard look good and just hope that off her fucking rocker Rhea and Edelgards tragic backstory would cover that up???

[diaphin93]

Hi, I hope its okay when I reply with my own perspectives? As we already were able to keep things somewhat civilized?

First off I would say, its very obvious looking at the state of discourse that you're not the only one (but you at least don't make entire posts trying to frame Edelgard as some sexual seductress, lol. That person exists!), but I think its also more of a you issue. Not in that you do something wrong, but that Edelgard and her route are simply not for you, because as is clear with the large popularilty Edelgard enjoys, thats not the experience all people have with Crimson Flower. In the end, its a game about different perspectives and values and chosing your side when those ultimately come to a clash. It would be boring if this doesn't spark discourse and fundamentally different perspectives of what is right and whats wrong. For all of its flaws, the fact that 3 Houses sparks this amount of Discourse even years after its release is a testament to what it does right.

For example my perspective in all of this, when I played the game on Crimson Flower Route first, was that I came to broadly agree with Edelgards point of view during Part 1. She shares alot of her perspectives during it and as I saw early on, how the entire social structure of Fodlan is heavily inspired by the three estates of the realm feudal structure of medieval europe, I was naturally inclined to by sympathetic towards her viewpoints, as I will usually prefer to side against feudalism in a narrative that allows and encourages me to do so. I got bad vibes from Rhea from the start and tended to believe Jeralt, who as the father of my character I was prone to believe, in not trusting her, especially since very early on, we see more of the oppressive and tyranical nature of the church and the evils of the crest system. In my personal first playthrough, I came to suspect that the Flame Emperor is more nuanced than it appears at first, while Rhea became more and more creepy after Sothis awakening, so when it came to the holy tomb, I did a leap of faith and trusted in Edelgard, as I agreed that the church must be destroyed.

For me, the reactions towards Rheas turn in Crimson Flower feel very similar to the outrage people expressed in the recent Elden Ring DLC, when a certain character as was expected didn't turn out to be as noble as they would have assumed, because by that point they were set in their headcanons of him being a benevolent and purely good figure. Rhea in Crimson Flower is consistent. She is consistent with the bloodthirsty side of hers we saw during the games first cutscene and her cruel and vengeful attitude whenever somebody challenges her during White Clouds. Silver Snow is textually not a validation of Rhea as we saw her in part 1, what it does is offering a potential redemption for her under the condition that Byleth forms an especially strong bond with her. She herself admits her wrongdoings and expresses guilt in the following S-Support. What Crimson Flower shows is that at this stage of the story, Rheas love and adoration for Byleth is conditional, as not long before she literally tried to mind erase them to revive Sothis in full, and that Rhea is prone to immediately devalueing and dehumanizing them if they disobey her. After all, at this point Byleth hasn't even taken arms against Rhea, they are just standing against outright killing their student. I would also say that for me personally, Rheas entire demeanor during part 1 comes off heavily like grooming and love bombing, which is why I personally tend to dislike her.

When it comes to Arianrhod, I personally tond like this part of the story. For me it is one of the flaws in it, as it is left without any lasting consequences, and feels very much like the writers just forcefully inserting it into it to remind us of TWSITD still being there and inform Crimson Flower players of the Javelines of light. What I will say is, that it is not the only such forced inclusion just for the sake of it. I can see the rationale of Edelgard though. Edelgard took a gamble with killing Cornelia in Arianrhod and was punished by it for Thales and reacting to it prematurely would them losing momentum and the Kingdom successfully launching a counter offensive, as well as further interventions by TWSITD if she openly revolts against them now, so she has to lure Thales for the moment into a false sense of security, that she falls back in line again. I don't like it, but I will also say that if thats the dealbreaker, then the route probably wasn't for one to begin with.

When it comes to Dimitri and Edelgard, the whole 'must you continue to kill' exchange is quite a mistranslation compared to the original text, where Edelgards point is to ask him if he will be satisfied, once he takes back, tramples back. This changes the entire context of the exchange honestly:

Though I will also say, I don't have personal issues with this exchange myself, as, what most people leave out, its followed by Edelgard also expressing her determination that she will not stop and do everything necessary to creat a new future for Fodlan. Initially I also took the line as Edelgard being sassy which I'm like...okay with? I'm a feminist, I like it when the queer female lead doesn't owes your typical male protagonist turned villain respect and in crimson Flower, Dimitri himself dragged his Kingdom into war by siding with the church and for the sake of Dimitris delusional desire for vengeance. Which is, again, delusional. Dimitri rants and blames Edelgard for things she had no control over and which she didn't do. He is completely obsessive over her and she has the right to be apalled by him. Again, as a feminist, I like that. She doesn't owe a guy who obsessed over her and wants to brutally murder her any respect, he himself is the one who chose to throw away any semblance of dignity he had.

I would also say that other people will feel as you do towards Rhea and Dimitri. With Rhea I already laid it out why I don't get why people love her so much and consider her heroic and good. With Dimitri, I was initially kinda excited to play Blue Lions after CF. Dimitri was, ultimately, a cool villain in my opinion, I liked his Post Timeskip Design more than his Pre-Timeskip one and I wanted to see where his route leads into and whats his perspective is. I ended up not liking it. Like, I played it before I went into all this discourse with high hopes and I just ended up not liking it or him. He seems very flat to me, with people conflating a character focussed story and a character going through a a redemption arc with deep storytelling, when for me it just seemed comical how he jumps in personality, especially when he just immediately snaps from somebody who sadistically glees like he's some dark isekai self-insert about torturing a man and then immediately jumps into being the enlightened and redeemed savior king. I didn't like how afterwards there were zero consequences for his actions. The parley also didn't sold me, it seemed for me like him engaging in ad hominems and framing him as morally superior because he got people who carry him, it had some very unfortunate implications of how abusers irl might act. Ultimately, I also found his whole position rather pessimistic and miserable, that humans can't rise above themselves when they are given the opportunity and that they should be kept reliant because its safe. Thats how he came off to me. Many of his scenes also come off to me like trauma dumping and him being somewhat self-centered, only relating to others by making them fit into his personal perspective.

If thats not your experience, I will not argue that. If you love him and consider him a great and touching character, all the more power to you. Same with Rhea. This wasn't meant to convince you of my perspective, but to lay it out to show you, how I experiences the game and its characters in a fundamentally different way than you did. I personally would love it more, if I totally stoked by Azure Moon, I would love it if I had ended up loving and cherishing every single route equally, I paid money for and invested time into that game after all. But thats not the case and for me personally, Edelgard just resonated the most and I feel similarily to Rhea and Dimitri as you do towards Edelgard.

[monstierider]

Ya know what, fair enough. I can understand each of these points and I do respect them. The Fodlan games were designed pretty much to start debate and discourse, for better or for worse, and ultimately that's what it has done here. I will admit that I.....really don't like Rhea, like, at all, but I just, can't accept Edelgard either, not only because of my own personal views aligning more with Dimitri, someone who wants to take the safer, more stable method towards change, very likely due to how Faerghus will almost certainly react HORRIBLY to rapid change, "old stubborn country" and all that, but also due to, please correct me if I'm wrong here, I would love to be wrong on this, Edelgard knowing that the heroes relics are made of the bones and hearts of the nabateans and believing that to be perfectly fine because "it gives more power to humanity, not something that isn't human", please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong here, because after so many fire emblem games where we are consistently shown the human side of dragons, through characters like Tiki and Mryh, and even in three houses and hopes with Seteth and Flayn, the idea of a character knowing about people genociding a widely peaceful, purely reactionary, race and making their bodies into monster hunter weapons and thinking that's okay because they aren't human just....really screws with me, even if the rest of their ideals are noble, that sort of line of thinking just....leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

[diaphin93]

Thanks that you can respect that and I'm glad that I didn't came off too pushy. I personally can respect your stance as well and I ultimately think that the game is made for each person to have their own perspective on what is the right route. I myself often went hard into argueing for CF being the best in the past, but that also was more of a reaction to just so many people spreading their HC's of how CF's ending will lead to collapse as fact. The devs deliberately didn't include a revalation-esque route after all, because they didn't want to have a true route

But on Edelgard and her attitudes towards Dragons, that a community spread misconception to frame her as some kind of racist and fascist, predominantly by the kinds of people who, in a game where people of color exist and are opressed, make pale-skinned dragon gods their chosen racial allegory. I could be wrong but please correct me, but to my knowledge Edelgard never learns that the Heroes Relics are made out of Dragons. I'm not even sure if Silver Snow Byleth does learn that, it could be actually just Claude. What she knows is that the heroes relics are manmade and the history the church propagates, that Nemesis became corrupted and evil later on, was a lie propagated by the church. Though Edelgards also doesn't seem to care much about Heroes Relics outside of their immediate use and the fact, that the church is controlling them.

Edelgard and Hubert hold negative views on the Nabatheans as inhuman, but that is predominantly out of their limited perspective, where they only know them as immortals who hide among humans to control them and falsify history. Though they also don't seem to see them as a race and more as a divine family of self-appointed gods, which is the role the Nabatheans did play in the past. I think here its kinda messy because outside of the few nabateans alive, there aren't really any other intelligent non-human races and humans don't know anything about Nabateans outside of their myths about the children of the goddess. And ultimately, what they hold against the Nabatheans is their deception and their misrule over humanity. And Rhea does express very supremacist attitudes against humans and considers themselves to be unfit to govern themselves without her guidance, despite herself being as flawed as humans and misusing her power the same they do, with Seteth being an active accomplice.

Ultimately, she doesn't even want to kill the Nabateans, she just wants their control over humanity to end. She expresses herself very harshely with terms like obliterate and striking her down, which I think are supposed to be taken as her exaggerating when talking about her ideals, but otherwise she does express a preference to sparing Rhea. She does give Rhea a chance to surrender before Fhirdiad and even before that shows a genuine interest in capturing instead of killing her.

So she prefers stripping Rhea of power and keep her away from politics and is neutral towards turning the church into an imperial institution, which is to say, a state institution, while actively disliking the idea of killing her if she surrenders. This is consistent with the fact that she does keep Rhea as a prisoner over the 5 years, where Seteth does confirm after finding her that she is left unharmed

Hopes confirms this notion, as during Edelgards support with Claude, she treats capturing instead of killing Rhea as the natural course of action and even questions Claude, if it isn't enough to subdue her enemy and remove her from power. Which is consistent with Edelgard usually giving her enemies a chance to surrender after the battle, as seen in her conquest of the Alliance, which is highly unusual compared to other Lords where routing missions and giving their enemies no quarter is the usual outcome. In VW and SS, Count Bergliez has to sacrifice himself for his soldiers to be spared. And here is how Seteth reacts to the notion of not killing Edelgard.

So yeah. Edelgard does not want to kill the Nabateans, she just views them negatively due to her limited knowledge of them and perceiving them through Rheas actions at the expense of humanity. 3H in general goes a different way of humanizing the Dragons, by emphasizing their human flaws. It subverts the notion, that immortal divine beings are better, wiser or more intelligent than humans.

Personally, I kinda dislike the fact that Flayn doesn't stick along or at least is re-recruitable in Crimson Flower, really. Its one of the flaws of the game I see, especially since I've heard that there are datamines that hint at Crimson Flower Flayn being a consideration at one point. I care less so about Seteth because I like him less, but I also see more of a case where the game may benefit from him not being recruitable, but in Flayns case I feel like it strips Crimson Flower, but also Flayn, of possibilities. I would have liked Edelgard and Hubert to react of the notion of a child of the goddess siding with their ideals, but also how Flayn could develope if she was faced with Rheas deceptions.

More importantly though, I think that Flayn being permanently lost in Crimson Flower kind of devalues her relationship with Byleth and the Black Eagles class. It makes it conditional. We have many students who are pushed into a similar position, where they are are willing to fight against their families, former friends and country for the sake of Byleth and their bonds to the class they joined. In Crimson Flower, Anette and Felix will fight their own fathers. Hell, Caspar basically just stands by and watches as Dimitri tortures his uncle. So generally, I think it was just an all around bad move to make her lost for CF. Especially since I think that one of the interesting aspects of CF for some characters is them emancipating themselves of the control their parents have over their lives. With Seteth being a well meaning and loving but also overbearing father, I think the story possibility of Flayn chosing another side than him and taking a more independent role for herself would have been something worthwile.

[monstierider]

Honestly, I always viewed Flayn and Seteth being unable to be recruited in crimson flower as them being unwilling to strike down one of the only other Nabateans still alive, especially considering the only other living Nabateans I'm aware of are the windcaller, who is a full on recluse who hates humanity, and...I can't remember his name, but the turtle who just lives at the bottom of a river and only comes up to mess with humans. Rhea's really all they have left, even if they don't agree with her, Flayn less so, but Seteth actually shows a great amount of disdain for Rheas methods, it's just that she's too stubborn and set in her ways to listen to him, he only goes along with it because, well, he's trying to look out for Flayn' safety and views Rheas methods as the only way to make sure she's safe, even if he doesn't like them.

To be honest though, I've always viewed the Fodlan games not as "country versus country", but "Edelgard versus Rhea" because....well, it all starts due to their clashing ambitions, ambitions that can't coexist not because their too different, but because they're so similar. Edelgard wants a world for humanity, but is unwilling to truly learn more about those her world would cast out or to share the burden with others, whereas Rhea wants a world for all people, but has grown far too controlling out of fear of another Those who slither in the dark or Nemesis showing up and is so dead set in her idea that only Sothis can truly guide Fodlan she's sacrificed her own morals and sanity for it, because in truth she's desperate to have someone to tell her she did the right thing even when a cursory glance shows that she didn't, despite the good things she did accomplish.

[diaphin93]

I get that view, though I think it is quite a missed opportunity. I feel like with Seteth its fine that he's los for Crimson Flower, though like I said, I think with Flayn it kind of is a missed opportunity for both sides to get more input of the others perspective and for Flayn to have a route that is more about her emancipation from Seteth. With which I don't want to say that he's a bad or abusive father, quite the opposite, but he is quite clearly an overbearing father who shelters Flayn from the world. Though that could be just me. I generally feel like the games kind of refuse to force Flayn and Seteth into a position, where they have to question their own role in the system and towards humans much.

I would also agree with the notion that at its core its really Edelgard vs Rhea, but I think it also plays into the weakness of 3 Houses, that it doesn't really do much to make the ambitions and goals of Dimitri and Claude stand out very much. But I will disagree with your notion on what both want and think your personal bias talks again, because Edelgard very much cares about those who are left out by the current system. She is the one who feels empathy towards Miklan, who expresses care about those who are left out or wronged by the system and cares about creating a place for everyone in her new world, as seen for example in her Linhardt support.

Rhea is the one who refuses to truly learn about humanity and to put trust in others. She does regularily express alienation from others and her incapability of connecting with those around her. The issue with Rhea is, that she does not respect humans and looks down to them, having a very supremacist and paternalistic outlook on them as being reliant on her rule.

The issue is, that Rhea had a thousand years to solve the issues in Fodlan. She has the means to do it, she has the power. She just doesn't wants to, because she prefers the control and illusio nof peace she created for herself. She does uphold the crest system and hides away those who are harmed and cast out by it into the Abyss, which is basically just an underground ghetto.

Like, ultimately she just does nothing to make things better for anyone? When the tragedy of Duscur happened, she didn't do anything despite showing with her scapegoating and executing Christophe for it. When Loog started a TWSITD backed up Revolt against the Empire, something the church at least suspected looking at the Abyss library, she ended up rewarding him by splitting up the Empire and creating the church as her loyal vassal. She did nothing in turn to support Leicester when they revolted against the Empire, nor when they were annexed by the Kingdom. We know that she actively suppresses technological advancements, especially those that could hurt the authority of the church or threaten the nobility system. Hopes has even very strong indications that Rhea withheld aggracultural knowledge from the Kingdom until the point it has to harbor her and she suddenly drops it, something Shez can be suspicious of and that I will go further into. Rhea had every opportunity and all the means in the world to creat a better world, she just does not want to do that. She wants to revive Sothis against her wills, so that she can rule over humanity and fix things.

Thats the big issue of Rhea. She does inheritly not view humans as her equals, but she also fails to be better than them. This is actually even further hammered home by her similarities to Thales, who represents humanities worst and most evil aspects, to the point where hopes frames them as equals and foils, the two main villains of 3 Hopes. And I think thats what makes her interesting.

[monstierider]

I will admit, I was unaware of those Abyss dialogues, thank you for bringing them up. In regards to Loogs rebellion I always saw Rhea legitimising it as a way to avoid another Nemesis situation, especially since, if I remember correct, Nemesis and his ten elites were from Northern Fodlan and most of their relics were left there, so I always saw her vassalising Faerghus as more a desperation play. And in regards to her mistrust of humanity, I mean, she's in the wrong for it, but I understand why she has it, the genocide of your entire species isn't going to be something that'll be easy to forgive, no matter how old you get. Also, regarding my point about Edelgard "not caring about those her ambitions leave behind" I was more so referring to the people her actions will just make bitter, since, no matter how hard she tries, the annexation of a country and destruction of its culture, since we know Edelgard is actively seeking an imperial take over, even if for genuinely well meaning reasons, will breed resentment no matter what. That resentment can be mitigated, but it can't be avoided entirely. Life getting better for the common folk will only do so much to make up for the war she started and the complete and utter destruction of people's lives as they knew it.

Actually, regarding Thales, I hope you don't mind me going on a short tangent, but after hopes came out and showed us Epimenides I actually began to view the Agarthans a little differently, not as in, I began seeing them as if they were good people, but rather I saw them as being reflections of the one who holds their reigns. Epimenides after all is pretty much the exact opposite of Thales within Agartha, Thales doesn't give a damn about his subordinates and will happily leave them to die just to save his own skin, Epimenides actively risks his own life to save Nemesis, who he doesn't even like. Thales wouldn't even hesitate to rob someone of their free will, which is not a good thing for Edelgard if Azure gleam is anything to go off of, but Epimenides actively shows remorse for taking Arvals and Shez's bodies and wills from them, and even the game even states that his....core, whatever that means, is to be inherited, not implanted, like it probably is for the other Agarthans, but instead passed down, showing he likely despises such things, hell, he even states in the Arval/Epimenides paralouge in hopes "I know Thales has his methods, but they don't sit right with me". I also find it really interesting that Epimenides, going off his paralouge, is much more of an upfront fighter then an in the shadows schemer, to the point of having fought the imperial army, Seteth/Cichol, Flayn/Cethleann and Rhea/Seiros to a stand still almost entirely on his own, meanwhile Thales....gets smacked around by literally everyone at least once. We also have the fact that Epimenides doesn't seem to hate non-Agarthans like....literally every other named Agarthan, but by his own admission, pities them.

What was the point of this tangent again?.....oh, right, Epimenides was basically the moral backbone of Agartha and once he died it took after Thales instead.

Please feel free to ignore that, that's just me ranting and is entirely unrelated to the main point of this debate.

[diaphin93]

No problem, you actually do catch me on a special interest of mine, which I love to headcanon alot about.

When it comes to Edelgard, I think it boils down to my position which I mentioned when it comes to her vs Dimitri, that every approach will end uo leaving somebody out and cause suffering. Though I have to admit, that my biggest problem is actually how the whole conquest works in Azure Moon. Not necessarily when it comes to Adrestia, as this is basically similar to the reverse and we should assume that people would be very unhappy with him coming in and re-introducing the status quo and the rule of the Central Church to the nation, but Leicester, how it just ends up falling in line and submit to Faerghus rule, when their history is how Faerghus backstabbed and annexed them when they tried their own revolt against the Kingdom and had to fight a war against Faerghus to win their independence, as well as the Kingdoms meddling with House Daphnel. When it comes to Rhea, the rationale behind it is there, but it is still ag reat betrayal of the Empire, which helped her to begin with and basically yet another example of Rhea making bad compromises and choices that end up biting her, and all of Fodlan, in the ass. When it comes to her trauma, it is understandable, but it is also her putting all of humanity on a collective burden for the crimes of very few people.

But the Thales and TWSITD topic is much more interesting, lol. And I agree with you. I really like Epimenides because he is the one nuanced agarthan we ever get. He is outright heroic, he just happens to be on the opposing side, which I think is always interesting and I like how he is singlemindedly dedicated to save his people. It puts the agarthans in a very different light, the implications where already there, but its different when somebody who seems somewhat noble puts them forward. I also generally like him as this counterpart to Rhea and Sothis, despite his godlike power being adamant of being a mere human and taking pride in his humanity. I just generally love this kind of character, who reject the megalomania of calling themselves gods and taking pride in their archievements as humans. I also like how apologetic he is about sacrificing Solon. It creats a sense of human connection, that he is not viewed as this mad evil villain by his own people.

So this really generally leads me to some of my frustrations with the games, like how Hopes itself feels very unfinished and abandoned. Like Hopes introduces very interesting implications, combined with the Shadow Library document for example the idea, that the original Sothis might not have been fully good and much more cruel and ruthless than we would have assumed, as seen in her more vengeful and ruthless demeanor in Hopes. Some hate it, but I kinda like the idea of the Goddess Sothis not being as good as Rhea makes her out to be. It adds relationship to the way Byleth shaped Sothis through their shared experiences and more nuance to the background of the world. Though I also kinda feel like Epimenides and Arval were somewhat of a largely aborted story for Hopes? Its basically handled inside a bonus chapter that has no lasting consequences to the ending of the game and we never gain more clarity on Shez Background and origins, which are implied to be agarthan. We know that Hopes ends more open ended so to not devalue Byleths involvement in Houses, but I can't stop but feel like they also held really back on the entire concept of Byleth & Sothis being villains in Hopes, which was what the game originally advertised itself as, which could have had Epimenides take a bigger role in the story and show us the agarthans in a different light. Then there is also how the game feels pretty much aborted to move towards Engage, when it just feels like it was created with at least some story DLC in mind.

But generally the agarthans and them being one-dimensionally evil inside the games is my big criticism. The world building, informations from interviews and ingame documents feel like the entire concept was imagined to be more nuanced, but then they ended up being really flat. And with the way they are presented as and handled, there are some messy implications due to the choice of making them not some ancient evil cult, but actually a human race of people and seemingly also the original inhabitants of Fodlan. Like to they have civilians? Do they have children? Its super messy and I feel like the game would have done better by giving us at least an agarthan recruit. You know, basically a Tharja, who gives us more insights and depth to the agarthans as a people and offers a route of redemption and survival for them through their ending, instead of us just wiping them out or be stuck in an eternal gridlock with them. Though I guess its a good place for headcanons, rpgs and fanfic though, where I love to expand on the agarthans more for myself, giving them more depth and purpose. I think offers the potential of an interesting circle of hatred narrative, being more critical of Sothis just wiping them out with a flood and effectively commiting a biblical genocide on them, which forced them into the dark and turned them vengeful and evil, in turn enacting their own cruel and unjust collective punishment on all Nabateans for the sins of their mother. Though I personally just like the idea of a narrative, where there are nuanced agarthans and that offers a story about how agarthans and nabateans have to learn to share the world with each other and with the current humans inhabiting it as equals, instead of one side trying to wipe the other out for eternity, with humans being their puppets in all of it.

If you are familiar with FF14, I also feel like the Ascians are basically the Agarthans, but done right. The Ascians in this game are themselves a race of sinister and scheming bodysnatchers who try to spread chaos to revive their dark god, but then we learn more about how they were advanced ancient humans, who survived the end of the world and try to rebuild the world as they knew it. They are still villains, but there is empathy for them, the suffering and loss they faced. Like there is one who clearly views himself as the hero who will save the world, who at one point is enraged over us, the player character, having murdered his brothers. They are never justified, but we get to understand their position.

[monstierider]

Yeah, it really does feel like hopes was just....left unfinished. What we have is good for the main lords, let's us see them under different circumstances, for better or worse, but for Shez, Arval and Epimenides it's just....disappointingly clear they had more in mind that never got made or at the very least never got released. Like, they clearly had more planned, the unused characters in the files, the voicelines in the gallery for npc only characters, and just Shez's story in general all makes it feel so...unsatisfying. Honestly, the only thing I can think of that might have caused them to have clearly planned the dlc out so much and then just dropped it would have to be the passing of Ferdinands voice actor, may his soul rest in peace, but it doesn't make the fact that we get all these fun details dangled in front of us, just to drop us into that cliff Byleth fell into during the attack on the monastery.

Like, who is Shez's mother? What is Agarthan society like? Are they all similar to Kronya, Solon, Cornelian and Thales, or is the average Agarthan more similar to Epimenides? How did Arval end up with Shez? Did they wind up together on accident? Is Shez some kind of homonculus clone body Epimenides had planned for his return? If so, how did they end up not only getting out of Shambala as, very likely, a baby and getting raised in Fodlan?

So many questions, and the only way we might ever get any answers is through.....fire emblem heroes, and even then, that'll probably only be the case if Shez ever wins CYL.

It sucks so much, because before hopes I didn't care about the Agarthans too much, they were just an evil cult for the sake of having an evil cult. But Epimenides single handedly got me wanting to know more about them.

[diaphin93]

I'm not really sure if Billy Kametz tragic death plays into their decission of not doing any more 3 Hopes content. I'm not discounting the possibility, but on the other hand they did recast Ferdinand when they released a new alt for him in Heroes. I personally assume it might have been in preparation to Engages release, that they wanted to wrap up Fodlan quickly and move on to the next game, especially since I wouldn't be surprised if they had banked on the game attracting a much higher audience. Its less obvious but the game just has some elements that feel rushed or incomplete, as you said, unused characters, voicelines, Shez, but also other elements. For example the lack of any story diviation if you fail to recruit Byleth outside of Scarlet Blaze, which is fairly weird. With AG, the story just full on stops making sense if you recruit Byleth. Though AG in general feels super rushed, the first half is actually good but then it just feels like they just stopped trying and just scrambled together the second half, it doesn't make any sense at all.

When it comes to Shez mother, I kinda assume she might have been an agarthan who came to save them from Shambhala and whatever experiments had them end up with Arval, but it is really never answered. Its quite a shame, as the game just was brimming with potential and there was lots of potential for fun DLC. I would have loved Nemesis and the Agarthans as unlockable units just for record keeper, as this would have been fun gameplay wise and opened the door for some fun non-canon interactions, see Edelgard and Rhea being deployed together.

It also feels like a bad call in retrospect, lol. Considering how there seem to be more people left who would love to play a Hopes DLC and talk about it then any genuine discourse about Engage, which is mostly just people whining about how people don't like Engage.

[monstierider]

Honestly, as someone who does love Engage, the lack of any dlc content for hopes still infuriates me a little to this day. I would honestly have taken anything, like, even if they couldn't give us a whole new route, I would have loved a few new paralouges you can play to unlock some new units and the wrap up some loose ends. Also, yeah, my favorite route in Hopes is Azure gleam, I just love the way all the lions bounce off each other and it feels like the only route where Shez really belongs if you ask me, since they seem much less focused on revenge against Byleth, and more focused on what's best for the people they've grown close to, whereas with the other routes they just kinda feel like they're either, there for a paycheck, or there because Hubert would kill them if they weren't, but even I have to admit the second half was kind of rushed, though I do like it actually giving Dimitri proper closure for the tragedy of Dusur by letting him actually fully defeat those who slither in the dark.

Also, I just realised something of a possibility I hadn't considered before, being that those who slither in the dark being Agarthans, doesn't mean that the Agarthans are those who slither in the dark, but just means that TWSITD is something of an extremist group within Agarthan society. I have no evidence to back this up, aside from the existence of Epimenides showing that not all Agarthans are like Thales and his cronies, but I do rather like the idea so I'm just gonna add that to the list of things to think on.

[diaphin93]

Honestly, Azure Gleam is super yikes for me, just because of how Edelgard is treated in this route. Thats just vile, also half the route felt like parody for me personally, but you do you. I never really felt like Shez had much of a Dynamic with the Blue Lions to begin with though. Could also be due to me not really liking half the house much? I think the only lions I genuinly love are Mercedes and Sylvain, while I like Ingrid mostly just for the queer headcanons. Though I also feel like my issue with AG is also, how the other routes at least treat Dimitri with respect and dignity, while Dimitris only win condition is the total destruction of Edelgards character. Its also just wasted potential. Honestly, I personally would have made Claude more of a Villain in AG and force Dimitri and Edelgard to work together due to him and TWSITD pushing both sides. I think having those two working together is more what many fans would have wanted to see, while Claude is the only Lord who never got to properly shine as a villain. Edelgard as a villain was done often enough, Dimitri has a strong role as a villain in CF and an antagonist in SB and GW, not to forget being basically a villain half of AM. We should have gotten at least one fallen Claude route.

I feel like Shez has a much stronger dynamic with Edelgard than she ever shares with Dimitri, where they feel somewhat generic and replaceable, but my favorite house for Shez personally is GD, where they just feel like completing the Deers in a way Byleth never could. Though seriously, I feel like people give Golden Wildfire alot of shit undeserved, which feels like a situation where many people didn't really like Claude to begin with, they liked a boiled down Silver Snow Headcanon of Claude. Like I love Scarlet Blaze because its basically a perfect route that gives the Eagles everything they could have asked for, but Golden Wildfire just left the strongest impression for me. Its the Claude I hoped for when I first started 3 Houses and considered joining the Deer before the Eagles, the morally grey scheming Master Tactician. I just genuinly feel like people who want Claude to be this nice golden boy are the most boring people imaginable. I want him to be the rogueish Lord who smiles at you and lures you into believing he's a friendly little fella, just to shoot first. Its just fun and the cast gets to shine alot during the Route. And honestly, it feels the closest to a golden route we will ever get. Dimitri and Edelgard both survive without their nations being fully conquered and there is a chance, that the three Lords might make peace.

When it comes to TWSITD and the Agarthans, I personally go for my headcanon of Those who Slither in the Dark being the military government of the Agarthans and basically keeping the everyday people opressed to wage their endless shadow war. I did alot of world building for TWSITD in the RPG I'm playing in and I like to also frame them somewhat more sith-like, their overlords being mostly kept in check by fear through Thales, while being a general collection of opportunists, cut-throats and some real fanatics. I think its the most interesting way to make them more nuanced without making them not evil.

[monstierider]

I honestly always saw Edelgards fate as essentially what happens to her if she ever slips off the tight rope her ambitions have set her one, it's a fate worse then death for her as it completely robs her of her will, yet at the same time is realistically the only way Edelgard would be allowed to live should she lose the war, because at that point it isn't even really her, it's a child trapped in her body. It's certainly not a happy fate, but I always viewed it as more of a showing of the true risk she takes going through with her path, in honestly somewhat a similar way to the Hedgemon husk. In one case, if her path is cut short she risks becoming a puppet, in the other case, she risks losing her humanity. Both are meant to show the true danger her path takes her down, as both are fates worse then death that only happen if either her body or her will falter.

In regards to Claude, I did sort of feel he was out of character, but not because he was scheming and conniving, I honestly loved that, but because he just seemed to.....accept everything he was told about the church by Edelgard during that little peace talk. Claude was designed to be a truth seeker in houses yet he never really does that, at all in hopes, and it just made him feel a bit....dumb I guess is the best way I can put it. It's like they couldn't figure out a way for him to be both a schemer and a truth seeker at the same time and just decided to give us one or the other. Also, in regards to the idea of Claude playing the role of villain....I don't think it makes any sense for him, he's shown in every route making the decisions most likely to keep Leicester alive, no matter what, because its the smallest country with the weakest army, his schemes can only carry them so far, if he tried to take on the kingdom and the empire at the same time he'd be crushed.

With Shez, I always viewed Shez in Golden deer as only being there because of Claude, but they don't really seem to happy about it. Hell, first scene we see of them post time skip is Shez threatening to leave because they aren't being payed enough. Their bond never really felt all to strong to me. With Crimson Wildfire I just feel like the relationship between Shez, Edelgard and Hubert were really one sided. Sure, Shez liked them, but a point that gets hammered home over and over again in that route is that Edelgard and Hubert never seem to really trust them, not until after the final battle and you only ever hear a true apology for it from Hubert if you give him your merc whistle, Edelgard just sort if gives a half apology and leaves it. Even after telling Shez they trust them earlier in the story, if you recruit Byleth, during the chapter where Epimenides possess Shez to attack Byleth, they make it seem like they were expecting Shez to betray them the entire time, so it never really felt like an actual relationship to me. With Azure Gleam though, it feels like the only one where Shez both doesn't care about the money he's getting and where he's genuinely trusted. At no point does Shez warn about leaving if they're not payed more, which speaks volumes considering they're a mercenary, a sword for hire, but the blue lions show genuine trust in him the entire way, even Felix shows a genuine degree of trust in them and we all know how Felix can be, even during the Epimenides chapters, the blue lions don't react with any sort of anger or expectation towards the possessed Shez, just confusion and some sense that something must be forcing Shez to attack an ally, because they all trust them enough to know Shez would never willingly betray them, at least that's how I see it.

[diaphin93]

I don't want to imply things, but are you sure that this isn't some subconscious bias speaking out of you? Because I personally find the thought troubling, that for example Dimitri who does violent and vile crimes for the sake of his personal thirst for revenge gets to return from it unscathed and with any lasting consequences, or Rhea who had all of Fodlan forced under a false history and caused undescirable suffering has this privilege too but its Edelgard who is penalized by either death or essentially lobotomy for her transgressions, especially with her backstory as somebody who was stripped of her bodily autonomy as a child. Like its bad and just super misogynist.

Also I think this is yet again your bias speaking, sorry. Like, Claude was always established to be against the church himself and in 3 Houses, he effectively used Byleths connection to it to destroy it within itself. In Hopes he does not have this luxury, but he also gets to show his skills as a tactician better because we see that with the right set up, he is capable of taking on the Empire or the Kingdom. And why are you assuming that what Edelgard is telling Claude about the church is not backed by elements and documents? Don't forget that at this point, Edelgard was able to take Garreg Mach Monestary already and therefore has access to the churches dirty secrets. Not to forget that Claude has its own gripes with the Church, which he lays out in his support with Dimitri, which are never questioned by Dimitri, for example Rhea prohibiting official relations with outside regions. In general the Game kind of confirms outright that the Church is not good and that even Dimitri hates them, but has to play a facade to uphold good relations with them, he agrees with all of Edelgards and Claudes ideas on a personal level and opposes them due to what he perceives as his duty as king. Like I mentioned, the game hints at Rhea deliberately starving the Kingdom until the has to rely on them providing for her army. Like I think there are alot of misinterpretations and misinformation floating along in the community because, lets be real, there are alot of people really obsessed with church apologism here on tumblr, the FE3H community seems to have the weirdest form of conservative elements in it.

And yeah, but SB has Shez teaching Edelgard high five, which is really much more of a dynamic than she ever developes with any of the Lions. And honestly, for me the whole Blue Lions dynamic with Shez kinda felt emblematic with the house, as it was kind of a nuffingburger. And I kinda feel like Hubert and Edelgard being the most suspicious to Shez is realistic, they are the most experienced in identifying their abilities as Agarthan, but when Shez turned, it was basically just Hubert seeing his paranoia confirmed, but even him not wanting to resolve the situation violently? Dimitri is the one who is prepared to kill Shez immediately, because they already confessed their fears to him and its what he promised them to do in this case. I think the Golden Deer had unambigiously the best scene there, they constantly call Shez their friend and while Lorenz is the onle suspicious, Hilda and Claude immediately suspect an imposter. And in general I think the relationship in Golden Deer comes off the most like Shez just being a part of them and having a real effect on the story and their Lord, fascilitating Claudes character development. With AM I never really got this feeling, like Shez being part of the Blue Lions has alot less of an effect on the story than Edelgard being mindcontrolled. When it comes to the Blue Lions, yeah they are friendly, but it never feels that deep or something that developed and has an unique dynamic. And I never really got the impression Shez has much of a reason to fight for Dimitri and the Lions, though this could be due to Dimitri being somewhat of the least inspiring leader. In contrast to Edelgard and Claude, he kinda feels like you have Che Guevara on one side, Nelson Mandela on the other and you vote for Angela Merkel.

Though I also just never felt like the Lions are that particularily close or have a strong dynamic to each other. Most barely feel like they matter overall, especially the women who feel super sidelined. Funnily enough, they are the least close house in 3H, having the lowest number of A-Supports with each other.

[monstierider]

It could very well be personal bias that is dictating my views here, but I do feel a bit more lenient towards Edelgards fate in Azure gleam, not cause I think it's a good or fair one, but because it's one that makes sense for what I think they were going for in Azure gleam, which was to depict the overall story of the empire in that route as a tragedy, and the removal of will for probably the most willful and determined of the three Lords is a brilliant way to show that, even if it was executed poorly. That kind of fate is already a fate worse then death, and for Edelgard specifically it's a complete and utterly mockery, a purposeful one to show just how heartless TWISTD actually are.

In regards to Dimitri, I honestly find him the most inspiring of the three leaders, a man who's country is the worst off on almost all fronts, defending off attackers from almost every angle, even within his own kingdom, but still working his hardest to protect his people, ensure his friends survival and to remain kind, but that's purely my personal view of it and you are perfectly entitled to your own opinion on the matter, though I would love to hear your reasons why you find the other leaders more inspiring.

Regarding Claude, correct me if I'm wrong, but during Golden wildfires peace talk scene, I don't think Edelgard actually offers any real evidence against the church to Claude except her word, nor does Claude ask for any. Even accounting for his dislike of the church, the fact he doesn't actually try and get more concrete evidence out of Edelgard feels....off, especially considering that her first move in the war was to attack Leicester just so she could reach the church faster by taking the great bridge. The whole situation just doesn't come off quite right to me.

Also, I honestly found Dimitris willingness to kill Shez if necessary to be a pretty good sign of just how close the two actually are. It's not as if he decided to do it just because "maybe they might be to dangerous", he only even entertained the idea because Shez asked him to do so if they ever lost control of themselves. That was Dimitri putting aside his own desires for the sake of his friend, and he would have only done so if he truly felt it to be a necessity. That decision would tear him apart to make but he's still willing to do so to make sure that Shez doesn't live with the pain of having killed a friend or ally against his own will.

[monstierider]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like Crimson flower did a terrible job of making Edelgard....not a villain

Like, I feel like IS sort of couldn't find a good way to justify siding with Edelgard to the player beyond liking her as a character and the only way the could sort of doing it was by reducing Rhea to near Duma levels of insane, but even then while I won't condone her actions I can understand why she lost it, from her perspective she just saw someone she allowed into her home, break into the burial site of her dead siblings with the intention of desecrating them and robbing their graves and then watched what is, from her sad, broken perspective, her own mother choose to side with the person trying to take all she has left of her family away from her, I too would lose it under those circumstances. And then there's Edelgard not even being very smart, like, does she really believe her troops would hear "the church has nukes" and not either, question why they only dropped the one on the one location and why only now or just....lose all morale??? And then there's the battle at the Tailtean plains and the good old conversation between Dimitri and Edelgard, "must you continue to conquer?continue to kill?!" "Must you continue to re-conquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" Like.....it's like even she realises she has no moral high ground over him and is just trying some desperate redirection to not be the villain she knows she is. And also the entire "king of delusion" scene where Dimitri, in his final moments, swears to avenge everyone who died for her, who she killed, to avenge all his fallen friends and family who died because of her and her ambitions and she basically just calls him a nut job.

Like??? Did IS just....give up on trying to make Edelgard look good and just hope that off her fucking rocker Rhea and Edelgards tragic backstory would cover that up???

[diaphin93]

Hi, I hope its okay when I reply with my own perspectives? As we already were able to keep things somewhat civilized?

First off I would say, its very obvious looking at the state of discourse that you're not the only one (but you at least don't make entire posts trying to frame Edelgard as some sexual seductress, lol. That person exists!), but I think its also more of a you issue. Not in that you do something wrong, but that Edelgard and her route are simply not for you, because as is clear with the large popularilty Edelgard enjoys, thats not the experience all people have with Crimson Flower. In the end, its a game about different perspectives and values and chosing your side when those ultimately come to a clash. It would be boring if this doesn't spark discourse and fundamentally different perspectives of what is right and whats wrong. For all of its flaws, the fact that 3 Houses sparks this amount of Discourse even years after its release is a testament to what it does right.

For example my perspective in all of this, when I played the game on Crimson Flower Route first, was that I came to broadly agree with Edelgards point of view during Part 1. She shares alot of her perspectives during it and as I saw early on, how the entire social structure of Fodlan is heavily inspired by the three estates of the realm feudal structure of medieval europe, I was naturally inclined to by sympathetic towards her viewpoints, as I will usually prefer to side against feudalism in a narrative that allows and encourages me to do so. I got bad vibes from Rhea from the start and tended to believe Jeralt, who as the father of my character I was prone to believe, in not trusting her, especially since very early on, we see more of the oppressive and tyranical nature of the church and the evils of the crest system. In my personal first playthrough, I came to suspect that the Flame Emperor is more nuanced than it appears at first, while Rhea became more and more creepy after Sothis awakening, so when it came to the holy tomb, I did a leap of faith and trusted in Edelgard, as I agreed that the church must be destroyed.

For me, the reactions towards Rheas turn in Crimson Flower feel very similar to the outrage people expressed in the recent Elden Ring DLC, when a certain character as was expected didn't turn out to be as noble as they would have assumed, because by that point they were set in their headcanons of him being a benevolent and purely good figure. Rhea in Crimson Flower is consistent. She is consistent with the bloodthirsty side of hers we saw during the games first cutscene and her cruel and vengeful attitude whenever somebody challenges her during White Clouds. Silver Snow is textually not a validation of Rhea as we saw her in part 1, what it does is offering a potential redemption for her under the condition that Byleth forms an especially strong bond with her. She herself admits her wrongdoings and expresses guilt in the following S-Support. What Crimson Flower shows is that at this stage of the story, Rheas love and adoration for Byleth is conditional, as not long before she literally tried to mind erase them to revive Sothis in full, and that Rhea is prone to immediately devalueing and dehumanizing them if they disobey her. After all, at this point Byleth hasn't even taken arms against Rhea, they are just standing against outright killing their student. I would also say that for me personally, Rheas entire demeanor during part 1 comes off heavily like grooming and love bombing, which is why I personally tend to dislike her.

When it comes to Arianrhod, I personally tond like this part of the story. For me it is one of the flaws in it, as it is left without any lasting consequences, and feels very much like the writers just forcefully inserting it into it to remind us of TWSITD still being there and inform Crimson Flower players of the Javelines of light. What I will say is, that it is not the only such forced inclusion just for the sake of it. I can see the rationale of Edelgard though. Edelgard took a gamble with killing Cornelia in Arianrhod and was punished by it for Thales and reacting to it prematurely would them losing momentum and the Kingdom successfully launching a counter offensive, as well as further interventions by TWSITD if she openly revolts against them now, so she has to lure Thales for the moment into a false sense of security, that she falls back in line again. I don't like it, but I will also say that if thats the dealbreaker, then the route probably wasn't for one to begin with.

When it comes to Dimitri and Edelgard, the whole 'must you continue to kill' exchange is quite a mistranslation compared to the original text, where Edelgards point is to ask him if he will be satisfied, once he takes back, tramples back. This changes the entire context of the exchange honestly:

Though I will also say, I don't have personal issues with this exchange myself, as, what most people leave out, its followed by Edelgard also expressing her determination that she will not stop and do everything necessary to creat a new future for Fodlan. Initially I also took the line as Edelgard being sassy which I'm like...okay with? I'm a feminist, I like it when the queer female lead doesn't owes your typical male protagonist turned villain respect and in crimson Flower, Dimitri himself dragged his Kingdom into war by siding with the church and for the sake of Dimitris delusional desire for vengeance. Which is, again, delusional. Dimitri rants and blames Edelgard for things she had no control over and which she didn't do. He is completely obsessive over her and she has the right to be apalled by him. Again, as a feminist, I like that. She doesn't owe a guy who obsessed over her and wants to brutally murder her any respect, he himself is the one who chose to throw away any semblance of dignity he had.

I would also say that other people will feel as you do towards Rhea and Dimitri. With Rhea I already laid it out why I don't get why people love her so much and consider her heroic and good. With Dimitri, I was initially kinda excited to play Blue Lions after CF. Dimitri was, ultimately, a cool villain in my opinion, I liked his Post Timeskip Design more than his Pre-Timeskip one and I wanted to see where his route leads into and whats his perspective is. I ended up not liking it. Like, I played it before I went into all this discourse with high hopes and I just ended up not liking it or him. He seems very flat to me, with people conflating a character focussed story and a character going through a a redemption arc with deep storytelling, when for me it just seemed comical how he jumps in personality, especially when he just immediately snaps from somebody who sadistically glees like he's some dark isekai self-insert about torturing a man and then immediately jumps into being the enlightened and redeemed savior king. I didn't like how afterwards there were zero consequences for his actions. The parley also didn't sold me, it seemed for me like him engaging in ad hominems and framing him as morally superior because he got people who carry him, it had some very unfortunate implications of how abusers irl might act. Ultimately, I also found his whole position rather pessimistic and miserable, that humans can't rise above themselves when they are given the opportunity and that they should be kept reliant because its safe. Thats how he came off to me. Many of his scenes also come off to me like trauma dumping and him being somewhat self-centered, only relating to others by making them fit into his personal perspective.

If thats not your experience, I will not argue that. If you love him and consider him a great and touching character, all the more power to you. Same with Rhea. This wasn't meant to convince you of my perspective, but to lay it out to show you, how I experiences the game and its characters in a fundamentally different way than you did. I personally would love it more, if I totally stoked by Azure Moon, I would love it if I had ended up loving and cherishing every single route equally, I paid money for and invested time into that game after all. But thats not the case and for me personally, Edelgard just resonated the most and I feel similarily to Rhea and Dimitri as you do towards Edelgard.

[monstierider]

Ya know what, fair enough. I can understand each of these points and I do respect them. The Fodlan games were designed pretty much to start debate and discourse, for better or for worse, and ultimately that's what it has done here. I will admit that I.....really don't like Rhea, like, at all, but I just, can't accept Edelgard either, not only because of my own personal views aligning more with Dimitri, someone who wants to take the safer, more stable method towards change, very likely due to how Faerghus will almost certainly react HORRIBLY to rapid change, "old stubborn country" and all that, but also due to, please correct me if I'm wrong here, I would love to be wrong on this, Edelgard knowing that the heroes relics are made of the bones and hearts of the nabateans and believing that to be perfectly fine because "it gives more power to humanity, not something that isn't human", please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong here, because after so many fire emblem games where we are consistently shown the human side of dragons, through characters like Tiki and Mryh, and even in three houses and hopes with Seteth and Flayn, the idea of a character knowing about people genociding a widely peaceful, purely reactionary, race and making their bodies into monster hunter weapons and thinking that's okay because they aren't human just....really screws with me, even if the rest of their ideals are noble, that sort of line of thinking just....leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

[diaphin93]

Thanks that you can respect that and I'm glad that I didn't came off too pushy. I personally can respect your stance as well and I ultimately think that the game is made for each person to have their own perspective on what is the right route. I myself often went hard into argueing for CF being the best in the past, but that also was more of a reaction to just so many people spreading their HC's of how CF's ending will lead to collapse as fact. The devs deliberately didn't include a revalation-esque route after all, because they didn't want to have a true route

But on Edelgard and her attitudes towards Dragons, that a community spread misconception to frame her as some kind of racist and fascist, predominantly by the kinds of people who, in a game where people of color exist and are opressed, make pale-skinned dragon gods their chosen racial allegory. I could be wrong but please correct me, but to my knowledge Edelgard never learns that the Heroes Relics are made out of Dragons. I'm not even sure if Silver Snow Byleth does learn that, it could be actually just Claude. What she knows is that the heroes relics are manmade and the history the church propagates, that Nemesis became corrupted and evil later on, was a lie propagated by the church. Though Edelgards also doesn't seem to care much about Heroes Relics outside of their immediate use and the fact, that the church is controlling them.

Edelgard and Hubert hold negative views on the Nabatheans as inhuman, but that is predominantly out of their limited perspective, where they only know them as immortals who hide among humans to control them and falsify history. Though they also don't seem to see them as a race and more as a divine family of self-appointed gods, which is the role the Nabatheans did play in the past. I think here its kinda messy because outside of the few nabateans alive, there aren't really any other intelligent non-human races and humans don't know anything about Nabateans outside of their myths about the children of the goddess. And ultimately, what they hold against the Nabatheans is their deception and their misrule over humanity. And Rhea does express very supremacist attitudes against humans and considers themselves to be unfit to govern themselves without her guidance, despite herself being as flawed as humans and misusing her power the same they do, with Seteth being an active accomplice.

Ultimately, she doesn't even want to kill the Nabateans, she just wants their control over humanity to end. She expresses herself very harshely with terms like obliterate and striking her down, which I think are supposed to be taken as her exaggerating when talking about her ideals, but otherwise she does express a preference to sparing Rhea. She does give Rhea a chance to surrender before Fhirdiad and even before that shows a genuine interest in capturing instead of killing her.

So she prefers stripping Rhea of power and keep her away from politics and is neutral towards turning the church into an imperial institution, which is to say, a state institution, while actively disliking the idea of killing her if she surrenders. This is consistent with the fact that she does keep Rhea as a prisoner over the 5 years, where Seteth does confirm after finding her that she is left unharmed

Hopes confirms this notion, as during Edelgards support with Claude, she treats capturing instead of killing Rhea as the natural course of action and even questions Claude, if it isn't enough to subdue her enemy and remove her from power. Which is consistent with Edelgard usually giving her enemies a chance to surrender after the battle, as seen in her conquest of the Alliance, which is highly unusual compared to other Lords where routing missions and giving their enemies no quarter is the usual outcome. In VW and SS, Count Bergliez has to sacrifice himself for his soldiers to be spared. And here is how Seteth reacts to the notion of not killing Edelgard.

So yeah. Edelgard does not want to kill the Nabateans, she just views them negatively due to her limited knowledge of them and perceiving them through Rheas actions at the expense of humanity. 3H in general goes a different way of humanizing the Dragons, by emphasizing their human flaws. It subverts the notion, that immortal divine beings are better, wiser or more intelligent than humans.

Personally, I kinda dislike the fact that Flayn doesn't stick along or at least is re-recruitable in Crimson Flower, really. Its one of the flaws of the game I see, especially since I've heard that there are datamines that hint at Crimson Flower Flayn being a consideration at one point. I care less so about Seteth because I like him less, but I also see more of a case where the game may benefit from him not being recruitable, but in Flayns case I feel like it strips Crimson Flower, but also Flayn, of possibilities. I would have liked Edelgard and Hubert to react of the notion of a child of the goddess siding with their ideals, but also how Flayn could develope if she was faced with Rheas deceptions.

More importantly though, I think that Flayn being permanently lost in Crimson Flower kind of devalues her relationship with Byleth and the Black Eagles class. It makes it conditional. We have many students who are pushed into a similar position, where they are are willing to fight against their families, former friends and country for the sake of Byleth and their bonds to the class they joined. In Crimson Flower, Anette and Felix will fight their own fathers. Hell, Caspar basically just stands by and watches as Dimitri tortures his uncle. So generally, I think it was just an all around bad move to make her lost for CF. Especially since I think that one of the interesting aspects of CF for some characters is them emancipating themselves of the control their parents have over their lives. With Seteth being a well meaning and loving but also overbearing father, I think the story possibility of Flayn chosing another side than him and taking a more independent role for herself would have been something worthwile.

[monstierider]

Honestly, I always viewed Flayn and Seteth being unable to be recruited in crimson flower as them being unwilling to strike down one of the only other Nabateans still alive, especially considering the only other living Nabateans I'm aware of are the windcaller, who is a full on recluse who hates humanity, and...I can't remember his name, but the turtle who just lives at the bottom of a river and only comes up to mess with humans. Rhea's really all they have left, even if they don't agree with her, Flayn less so, but Seteth actually shows a great amount of disdain for Rheas methods, it's just that she's too stubborn and set in her ways to listen to him, he only goes along with it because, well, he's trying to look out for Flayn' safety and views Rheas methods as the only way to make sure she's safe, even if he doesn't like them.

To be honest though, I've always viewed the Fodlan games not as "country versus country", but "Edelgard versus Rhea" because....well, it all starts due to their clashing ambitions, ambitions that can't coexist not because their too different, but because they're so similar. Edelgard wants a world for humanity, but is unwilling to truly learn more about those her world would cast out or to share the burden with others, whereas Rhea wants a world for all people, but has grown far too controlling out of fear of another Those who slither in the dark or Nemesis showing up and is so dead set in her idea that only Sothis can truly guide Fodlan she's sacrificed her own morals and sanity for it, because in truth she's desperate to have someone to tell her she did the right thing even when a cursory glance shows that she didn't, despite the good things she did accomplish.

[diaphin93]

I get that view, though I think it is quite a missed opportunity. I feel like with Seteth its fine that he's los for Crimson Flower, though like I said, I think with Flayn it kind of is a missed opportunity for both sides to get more input of the others perspective and for Flayn to have a route that is more about her emancipation from Seteth. With which I don't want to say that he's a bad or abusive father, quite the opposite, but he is quite clearly an overbearing father who shelters Flayn from the world. Though that could be just me. I generally feel like the games kind of refuse to force Flayn and Seteth into a position, where they have to question their own role in the system and towards humans much.

I would also agree with the notion that at its core its really Edelgard vs Rhea, but I think it also plays into the weakness of 3 Houses, that it doesn't really do much to make the ambitions and goals of Dimitri and Claude stand out very much. But I will disagree with your notion on what both want and think your personal bias talks again, because Edelgard very much cares about those who are left out by the current system. She is the one who feels empathy towards Miklan, who expresses care about those who are left out or wronged by the system and cares about creating a place for everyone in her new world, as seen for example in her Linhardt support.

Rhea is the one who refuses to truly learn about humanity and to put trust in others. She does regularily express alienation from others and her incapability of connecting with those around her. The issue with Rhea is, that she does not respect humans and looks down to them, having a very supremacist and paternalistic outlook on them as being reliant on her rule.

The issue is, that Rhea had a thousand years to solve the issues in Fodlan. She has the means to do it, she has the power. She just doesn't wants to, because she prefers the control and illusio nof peace she created for herself. She does uphold the crest system and hides away those who are harmed and cast out by it into the Abyss, which is basically just an underground ghetto.

Like, ultimately she just does nothing to make things better for anyone? When the tragedy of Duscur happened, she didn't do anything despite showing with her scapegoating and executing Christophe for it. When Loog started a TWSITD backed up Revolt against the Empire, something the church at least suspected looking at the Abyss library, she ended up rewarding him by splitting up the Empire and creating the church as her loyal vassal. She did nothing in turn to support Leicester when they revolted against the Empire, nor when they were annexed by the Kingdom. We know that she actively suppresses technological advancements, especially those that could hurt the authority of the church or threaten the nobility system. Hopes has even very strong indications that Rhea withheld aggracultural knowledge from the Kingdom until the point it has to harbor her and she suddenly drops it, something Shez can be suspicious of and that I will go further into. Rhea had every opportunity and all the means in the world to creat a better world, she just does not want to do that. She wants to revive Sothis against her wills, so that she can rule over humanity and fix things.

Thats the big issue of Rhea. She does inheritly not view humans as her equals, but she also fails to be better than them. This is actually even further hammered home by her similarities to Thales, who represents humanities worst and most evil aspects, to the point where hopes frames them as equals and foils, the two main villains of 3 Hopes. And I think thats what makes her interesting.

[monstierider]

I will admit, I was unaware of those Abyss dialogues, thank you for bringing them up. In regards to Loogs rebellion I always saw Rhea legitimising it as a way to avoid another Nemesis situation, especially since, if I remember correct, Nemesis and his ten elites were from Northern Fodlan and most of their relics were left there, so I always saw her vassalising Faerghus as more a desperation play. And in regards to her mistrust of humanity, I mean, she's in the wrong for it, but I understand why she has it, the genocide of your entire species isn't going to be something that'll be easy to forgive, no matter how old you get. Also, regarding my point about Edelgard "not caring about those her ambitions leave behind" I was more so referring to the people her actions will just make bitter, since, no matter how hard she tries, the annexation of a country and destruction of its culture, since we know Edelgard is actively seeking an imperial take over, even if for genuinely well meaning reasons, will breed resentment no matter what. That resentment can be mitigated, but it can't be avoided entirely. Life getting better for the common folk will only do so much to make up for the war she started and the complete and utter destruction of people's lives as they knew it.

Actually, regarding Thales, I hope you don't mind me going on a short tangent, but after hopes came out and showed us Epimenides I actually began to view the Agarthans a little differently, not as in, I began seeing them as if they were good people, but rather I saw them as being reflections of the one who holds their reigns. Epimenides after all is pretty much the exact opposite of Thales within Agartha, Thales doesn't give a damn about his subordinates and will happily leave them to die just to save his own skin, Epimenides actively risks his own life to save Nemesis, who he doesn't even like. Thales wouldn't even hesitate to rob someone of their free will, which is not a good thing for Edelgard if Azure gleam is anything to go off of, but Epimenides actively shows remorse for taking Arvals and Shez's bodies and wills from them, and even the game even states that his....core, whatever that means, is to be inherited, not implanted, like it probably is for the other Agarthans, but instead passed down, showing he likely despises such things, hell, he even states in the Arval/Epimenides paralouge in hopes "I know Thales has his methods, but they don't sit right with me". I also find it really interesting that Epimenides, going off his paralouge, is much more of an upfront fighter then an in the shadows schemer, to the point of having fought the imperial army, Seteth/Cichol, Flayn/Cethleann and Rhea/Seiros to a stand still almost entirely on his own, meanwhile Thales....gets smacked around by literally everyone at least once. We also have the fact that Epimenides doesn't seem to hate non-Agarthans like....literally every other named Agarthan, but by his own admission, pities them.

What was the point of this tangent again?.....oh, right, Epimenides was basically the moral backbone of Agartha and once he died it took after Thales instead.

Please feel free to ignore that, that's just me ranting and is entirely unrelated to the main point of this debate.

[diaphin93]

No problem, you actually do catch me on a special interest of mine, which I love to headcanon alot about.

When it comes to Edelgard, I think it boils down to my position which I mentioned when it comes to her vs Dimitri, that every approach will end uo leaving somebody out and cause suffering. Though I have to admit, that my biggest problem is actually how the whole conquest works in Azure Moon. Not necessarily when it comes to Adrestia, as this is basically similar to the reverse and we should assume that people would be very unhappy with him coming in and re-introducing the status quo and the rule of the Central Church to the nation, but Leicester, how it just ends up falling in line and submit to Faerghus rule, when their history is how Faerghus backstabbed and annexed them when they tried their own revolt against the Kingdom and had to fight a war against Faerghus to win their independence, as well as the Kingdoms meddling with House Daphnel. When it comes to Rhea, the rationale behind it is there, but it is still ag reat betrayal of the Empire, which helped her to begin with and basically yet another example of Rhea making bad compromises and choices that end up biting her, and all of Fodlan, in the ass. When it comes to her trauma, it is understandable, but it is also her putting all of humanity on a collective burden for the crimes of very few people.

But the Thales and TWSITD topic is much more interesting, lol. And I agree with you. I really like Epimenides because he is the one nuanced agarthan we ever get. He is outright heroic, he just happens to be on the opposing side, which I think is always interesting and I like how he is singlemindedly dedicated to save his people. It puts the agarthans in a very different light, the implications where already there, but its different when somebody who seems somewhat noble puts them forward. I also generally like him as this counterpart to Rhea and Sothis, despite his godlike power being adamant of being a mere human and taking pride in his humanity. I just generally love this kind of character, who reject the megalomania of calling themselves gods and taking pride in their archievements as humans. I also like how apologetic he is about sacrificing Solon. It creats a sense of human connection, that he is not viewed as this mad evil villain by his own people.

So this really generally leads me to some of my frustrations with the games, like how Hopes itself feels very unfinished and abandoned. Like Hopes introduces very interesting implications, combined with the Shadow Library document for example the idea, that the original Sothis might not have been fully good and much more cruel and ruthless than we would have assumed, as seen in her more vengeful and ruthless demeanor in Hopes. Some hate it, but I kinda like the idea of the Goddess Sothis not being as good as Rhea makes her out to be. It adds relationship to the way Byleth shaped Sothis through their shared experiences and more nuance to the background of the world. Though I also kinda feel like Epimenides and Arval were somewhat of a largely aborted story for Hopes? Its basically handled inside a bonus chapter that has no lasting consequences to the ending of the game and we never gain more clarity on Shez Background and origins, which are implied to be agarthan. We know that Hopes ends more open ended so to not devalue Byleths involvement in Houses, but I can't stop but feel like they also held really back on the entire concept of Byleth & Sothis being villains in Hopes, which was what the game originally advertised itself as, which could have had Epimenides take a bigger role in the story and show us the agarthans in a different light. Then there is also how the game feels pretty much aborted to move towards Engage, when it just feels like it was created with at least some story DLC in mind.

But generally the agarthans and them being one-dimensionally evil inside the games is my big criticism. The world building, informations from interviews and ingame documents feel like the entire concept was imagined to be more nuanced, but then they ended up being really flat. And with the way they are presented as and handled, there are some messy implications due to the choice of making them not some ancient evil cult, but actually a human race of people and seemingly also the original inhabitants of Fodlan. Like to they have civilians? Do they have children? Its super messy and I feel like the game would have done better by giving us at least an agarthan recruit. You know, basically a Tharja, who gives us more insights and depth to the agarthans as a people and offers a route of redemption and survival for them through their ending, instead of us just wiping them out or be stuck in an eternal gridlock with them. Though I guess its a good place for headcanons, rpgs and fanfic though, where I love to expand on the agarthans more for myself, giving them more depth and purpose. I think offers the potential of an interesting circle of hatred narrative, being more critical of Sothis just wiping them out with a flood and effectively commiting a biblical genocide on them, which forced them into the dark and turned them vengeful and evil, in turn enacting their own cruel and unjust collective punishment on all Nabateans for the sins of their mother. Though I personally just like the idea of a narrative, where there are nuanced agarthans and that offers a story about how agarthans and nabateans have to learn to share the world with each other and with the current humans inhabiting it as equals, instead of one side trying to wipe the other out for eternity, with humans being their puppets in all of it.

If you are familiar with FF14, I also feel like the Ascians are basically the Agarthans, but done right. The Ascians in this game are themselves a race of sinister and scheming bodysnatchers who try to spread chaos to revive their dark god, but then we learn more about how they were advanced ancient humans, who survived the end of the world and try to rebuild the world as they knew it. They are still villains, but there is empathy for them, the suffering and loss they faced. Like there is one who clearly views himself as the hero who will save the world, who at one point is enraged over us, the player character, having murdered his brothers. They are never justified, but we get to understand their position.

[monstierider]

Yeah, it really does feel like hopes was just....left unfinished. What we have is good for the main lords, let's us see them under different circumstances, for better or worse, but for Shez, Arval and Epimenides it's just....disappointingly clear they had more in mind that never got made or at the very least never got released. Like, they clearly had more planned, the unused characters in the files, the voicelines in the gallery for npc only characters, and just Shez's story in general all makes it feel so...unsatisfying. Honestly, the only thing I can think of that might have caused them to have clearly planned the dlc out so much and then just dropped it would have to be the passing of Ferdinands voice actor, may his soul rest in peace, but it doesn't make the fact that we get all these fun details dangled in front of us, just to drop us into that cliff Byleth fell into during the attack on the monastery.

Like, who is Shez's mother? What is Agarthan society like? Are they all similar to Kronya, Solon, Cornelian and Thales, or is the average Agarthan more similar to Epimenides? How did Arval end up with Shez? Did they wind up together on accident? Is Shez some kind of homonculus clone body Epimenides had planned for his return? If so, how did they end up not only getting out of Shambala as, very likely, a baby and getting raised in Fodlan?

So many questions, and the only way we might ever get any answers is through.....fire emblem heroes, and even then, that'll probably only be the case if Shez ever wins CYL.

It sucks so much, because before hopes I didn't care about the Agarthans too much, they were just an evil cult for the sake of having an evil cult. But Epimenides single handedly got me wanting to know more about them.

[diaphin93]

I'm not really sure if Billy Kametz tragic death plays into their decission of not doing any more 3 Hopes content. I'm not discounting the possibility, but on the other hand they did recast Ferdinand when they released a new alt for him in Heroes. I personally assume it might have been in preparation to Engages release, that they wanted to wrap up Fodlan quickly and move on to the next game, especially since I wouldn't be surprised if they had banked on the game attracting a much higher audience. Its less obvious but the game just has some elements that feel rushed or incomplete, as you said, unused characters, voicelines, Shez, but also other elements. For example the lack of any story diviation if you fail to recruit Byleth outside of Scarlet Blaze, which is fairly weird. With AG, the story just full on stops making sense if you recruit Byleth. Though AG in general feels super rushed, the first half is actually good but then it just feels like they just stopped trying and just scrambled together the second half, it doesn't make any sense at all.

When it comes to Shez mother, I kinda assume she might have been an agarthan who came to save them from Shambhala and whatever experiments had them end up with Arval, but it is really never answered. Its quite a shame, as the game just was brimming with potential and there was lots of potential for fun DLC. I would have loved Nemesis and the Agarthans as unlockable units just for record keeper, as this would have been fun gameplay wise and opened the door for some fun non-canon interactions, see Edelgard and Rhea being deployed together.

It also feels like a bad call in retrospect, lol. Considering how there seem to be more people left who would love to play a Hopes DLC and talk about it then any genuine discourse about Engage, which is mostly just people whining about how people don't like Engage.

[monstierider]

Honestly, as someone who does love Engage, the lack of any dlc content for hopes still infuriates me a little to this day. I would honestly have taken anything, like, even if they couldn't give us a whole new route, I would have loved a few new paralouges you can play to unlock some new units and the wrap up some loose ends. Also, yeah, my favorite route in Hopes is Azure gleam, I just love the way all the lions bounce off each other and it feels like the only route where Shez really belongs if you ask me, since they seem much less focused on revenge against Byleth, and more focused on what's best for the people they've grown close to, whereas with the other routes they just kinda feel like they're either, there for a paycheck, or there because Hubert would kill them if they weren't, but even I have to admit the second half was kind of rushed, though I do like it actually giving Dimitri proper closure for the tragedy of Dusur by letting him actually fully defeat those who slither in the dark.

Also, I just realised something of a possibility I hadn't considered before, being that those who slither in the dark being Agarthans, doesn't mean that the Agarthans are those who slither in the dark, but just means that TWSITD is something of an extremist group within Agarthan society. I have no evidence to back this up, aside from the existence of Epimenides showing that not all Agarthans are like Thales and his cronies, but I do rather like the idea so I'm just gonna add that to the list of things to think on.

[diaphin93]

Honestly, Azure Gleam is super yikes for me, just because of how Edelgard is treated in this route. Thats just vile, also half the route felt like parody for me personally, but you do you. I never really felt like Shez had much of a Dynamic with the Blue Lions to begin with though. Could also be due to me not really liking half the house much? I think the only lions I genuinly love are Mercedes and Sylvain, while I like Ingrid mostly just for the queer headcanons. Though I also feel like my issue with AG is also, how the other routes at least treat Dimitri with respect and dignity, while Dimitris only win condition is the total destruction of Edelgards character. Its also just wasted potential. Honestly, I personally would have made Claude more of a Villain in AG and force Dimitri and Edelgard to work together due to him and TWSITD pushing both sides. I think having those two working together is more what many fans would have wanted to see, while Claude is the only Lord who never got to properly shine as a villain. Edelgard as a villain was done often enough, Dimitri has a strong role as a villain in CF and an antagonist in SB and GW, not to forget being basically a villain half of AM. We should have gotten at least one fallen Claude route.

I feel like Shez has a much stronger dynamic with Edelgard than she ever shares with Dimitri, where they feel somewhat generic and replaceable, but my favorite house for Shez personally is GD, where they just feel like completing the Deers in a way Byleth never could. Though seriously, I feel like people give Golden Wildfire alot of shit undeserved, which feels like a situation where many people didn't really like Claude to begin with, they liked a boiled down Silver Snow Headcanon of Claude. Like I love Scarlet Blaze because its basically a perfect route that gives the Eagles everything they could have asked for, but Golden Wildfire just left the strongest impression for me. Its the Claude I hoped for when I first started 3 Houses and considered joining the Deer before the Eagles, the morally grey scheming Master Tactician. I just genuinly feel like people who want Claude to be this nice golden boy are the most boring people imaginable. I want him to be the rogueish Lord who smiles at you and lures you into believing he's a friendly little fella, just to shoot first. Its just fun and the cast gets to shine alot during the Route. And honestly, it feels the closest to a golden route we will ever get. Dimitri and Edelgard both survive without their nations being fully conquered and there is a chance, that the three Lords might make peace.

When it comes to TWSITD and the Agarthans, I personally go for my headcanon of Those who Slither in the Dark being the military government of the Agarthans and basically keeping the everyday people opressed to wage their endless shadow war. I did alot of world building for TWSITD in the RPG I'm playing in and I like to also frame them somewhat more sith-like, their overlords being mostly kept in check by fear through Thales, while being a general collection of opportunists, cut-throats and some real fanatics. I think its the most interesting way to make them more nuanced without making them not evil.

[monstierider]

I honestly always saw Edelgards fate as essentially what happens to her if she ever slips off the tight rope her ambitions have set her one, it's a fate worse then death for her as it completely robs her of her will, yet at the same time is realistically the only way Edelgard would be allowed to live should she lose the war, because at that point it isn't even really her, it's a child trapped in her body. It's certainly not a happy fate, but I always viewed it as more of a showing of the true risk she takes going through with her path, in honestly somewhat a similar way to the Hedgemon husk. In one case, if her path is cut short she risks becoming a puppet, in the other case, she risks losing her humanity. Both are meant to show the true danger her path takes her down, as both are fates worse then death that only happen if either her body or her will falter.

In regards to Claude, I did sort of feel he was out of character, but not because he was scheming and conniving, I honestly loved that, but because he just seemed to.....accept everything he was told about the church by Edelgard during that little peace talk. Claude was designed to be a truth seeker in houses yet he never really does that, at all in hopes, and it just made him feel a bit....dumb I guess is the best way I can put it. It's like they couldn't figure out a way for him to be both a schemer and a truth seeker at the same time and just decided to give us one or the other. Also, in regards to the idea of Claude playing the role of villain....I don't think it makes any sense for him, he's shown in every route making the decisions most likely to keep Leicester alive, no matter what, because its the smallest country with the weakest army, his schemes can only carry them so far, if he tried to take on the kingdom and the empire at the same time he'd be crushed.

With Shez, I always viewed Shez in Golden deer as only being there because of Claude, but they don't really seem to happy about it. Hell, first scene we see of them post time skip is Shez threatening to leave because they aren't being payed enough. Their bond never really felt all to strong to me. With Crimson Wildfire I just feel like the relationship between Shez, Edelgard and Hubert were really one sided. Sure, Shez liked them, but a point that gets hammered home over and over again in that route is that Edelgard and Hubert never seem to really trust them, not until after the final battle and you only ever hear a true apology for it from Hubert if you give him your merc whistle, Edelgard just sort if gives a half apology and leaves it. Even after telling Shez they trust them earlier in the story, if you recruit Byleth, during the chapter where Epimenides possess Shez to attack Byleth, they make it seem like they were expecting Shez to betray them the entire time, so it never really felt like an actual relationship to me. With Azure Gleam though, it feels like the only one where Shez both doesn't care about the money he's getting and where he's genuinely trusted. At no point does Shez warn about leaving if they're not payed more, which speaks volumes considering they're a mercenary, a sword for hire, but the blue lions show genuine trust in him the entire way, even Felix shows a genuine degree of trust in them and we all know how Felix can be, even during the Epimenides chapters, the blue lions don't react with any sort of anger or expectation towards the possessed Shez, just confusion and some sense that something must be forcing Shez to attack an ally, because they all trust them enough to know Shez would never willingly betray them, at least that's how I see it.

[monstierider]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like Crimson flower did a terrible job of making Edelgard....not a villain

Like, I feel like IS sort of couldn't find a good way to justify siding with Edelgard to the player beyond liking her as a character and the only way the could sort of doing it was by reducing Rhea to near Duma levels of insane, but even then while I won't condone her actions I can understand why she lost it, from her perspective she just saw someone she allowed into her home, break into the burial site of her dead siblings with the intention of desecrating them and robbing their graves and then watched what is, from her sad, broken perspective, her own mother choose to side with the person trying to take all she has left of her family away from her, I too would lose it under those circumstances. And then there's Edelgard not even being very smart, like, does she really believe her troops would hear "the church has nukes" and not either, question why they only dropped the one on the one location and why only now or just....lose all morale??? And then there's the battle at the Tailtean plains and the good old conversation between Dimitri and Edelgard, "must you continue to conquer?continue to kill?!" "Must you continue to re-conquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" Like.....it's like even she realises she has no moral high ground over him and is just trying some desperate redirection to not be the villain she knows she is. And also the entire "king of delusion" scene where Dimitri, in his final moments, swears to avenge everyone who died for her, who she killed, to avenge all his fallen friends and family who died because of her and her ambitions and she basically just calls him a nut job.

Like??? Did IS just....give up on trying to make Edelgard look good and just hope that off her fucking rocker Rhea and Edelgards tragic backstory would cover that up???

[diaphin93]

Hi, I hope its okay when I reply with my own perspectives? As we already were able to keep things somewhat civilized?

First off I would say, its very obvious looking at the state of discourse that you're not the only one (but you at least don't make entire posts trying to frame Edelgard as some sexual seductress, lol. That person exists!), but I think its also more of a you issue. Not in that you do something wrong, but that Edelgard and her route are simply not for you, because as is clear with the large popularilty Edelgard enjoys, thats not the experience all people have with Crimson Flower. In the end, its a game about different perspectives and values and chosing your side when those ultimately come to a clash. It would be boring if this doesn't spark discourse and fundamentally different perspectives of what is right and whats wrong. For all of its flaws, the fact that 3 Houses sparks this amount of Discourse even years after its release is a testament to what it does right.

For example my perspective in all of this, when I played the game on Crimson Flower Route first, was that I came to broadly agree with Edelgards point of view during Part 1. She shares alot of her perspectives during it and as I saw early on, how the entire social structure of Fodlan is heavily inspired by the three estates of the realm feudal structure of medieval europe, I was naturally inclined to by sympathetic towards her viewpoints, as I will usually prefer to side against feudalism in a narrative that allows and encourages me to do so. I got bad vibes from Rhea from the start and tended to believe Jeralt, who as the father of my character I was prone to believe, in not trusting her, especially since very early on, we see more of the oppressive and tyranical nature of the church and the evils of the crest system. In my personal first playthrough, I came to suspect that the Flame Emperor is more nuanced than it appears at first, while Rhea became more and more creepy after Sothis awakening, so when it came to the holy tomb, I did a leap of faith and trusted in Edelgard, as I agreed that the church must be destroyed.

For me, the reactions towards Rheas turn in Crimson Flower feel very similar to the outrage people expressed in the recent Elden Ring DLC, when a certain character as was expected didn't turn out to be as noble as they would have assumed, because by that point they were set in their headcanons of him being a benevolent and purely good figure. Rhea in Crimson Flower is consistent. She is consistent with the bloodthirsty side of hers we saw during the games first cutscene and her cruel and vengeful attitude whenever somebody challenges her during White Clouds. Silver Snow is textually not a validation of Rhea as we saw her in part 1, what it does is offering a potential redemption for her under the condition that Byleth forms an especially strong bond with her. She herself admits her wrongdoings and expresses guilt in the following S-Support. What Crimson Flower shows is that at this stage of the story, Rheas love and adoration for Byleth is conditional, as not long before she literally tried to mind erase them to revive Sothis in full, and that Rhea is prone to immediately devalueing and dehumanizing them if they disobey her. After all, at this point Byleth hasn't even taken arms against Rhea, they are just standing against outright killing their student. I would also say that for me personally, Rheas entire demeanor during part 1 comes off heavily like grooming and love bombing, which is why I personally tend to dislike her.

When it comes to Arianrhod, I personally tond like this part of the story. For me it is one of the flaws in it, as it is left without any lasting consequences, and feels very much like the writers just forcefully inserting it into it to remind us of TWSITD still being there and inform Crimson Flower players of the Javelines of light. What I will say is, that it is not the only such forced inclusion just for the sake of it. I can see the rationale of Edelgard though. Edelgard took a gamble with killing Cornelia in Arianrhod and was punished by it for Thales and reacting to it prematurely would them losing momentum and the Kingdom successfully launching a counter offensive, as well as further interventions by TWSITD if she openly revolts against them now, so she has to lure Thales for the moment into a false sense of security, that she falls back in line again. I don't like it, but I will also say that if thats the dealbreaker, then the route probably wasn't for one to begin with.

When it comes to Dimitri and Edelgard, the whole 'must you continue to kill' exchange is quite a mistranslation compared to the original text, where Edelgards point is to ask him if he will be satisfied, once he takes back, tramples back. This changes the entire context of the exchange honestly:

Though I will also say, I don't have personal issues with this exchange myself, as, what most people leave out, its followed by Edelgard also expressing her determination that she will not stop and do everything necessary to creat a new future for Fodlan. Initially I also took the line as Edelgard being sassy which I'm like...okay with? I'm a feminist, I like it when the queer female lead doesn't owes your typical male protagonist turned villain respect and in crimson Flower, Dimitri himself dragged his Kingdom into war by siding with the church and for the sake of Dimitris delusional desire for vengeance. Which is, again, delusional. Dimitri rants and blames Edelgard for things she had no control over and which she didn't do. He is completely obsessive over her and she has the right to be apalled by him. Again, as a feminist, I like that. She doesn't owe a guy who obsessed over her and wants to brutally murder her any respect, he himself is the one who chose to throw away any semblance of dignity he had.

I would also say that other people will feel as you do towards Rhea and Dimitri. With Rhea I already laid it out why I don't get why people love her so much and consider her heroic and good. With Dimitri, I was initially kinda excited to play Blue Lions after CF. Dimitri was, ultimately, a cool villain in my opinion, I liked his Post Timeskip Design more than his Pre-Timeskip one and I wanted to see where his route leads into and whats his perspective is. I ended up not liking it. Like, I played it before I went into all this discourse with high hopes and I just ended up not liking it or him. He seems very flat to me, with people conflating a character focussed story and a character going through a a redemption arc with deep storytelling, when for me it just seemed comical how he jumps in personality, especially when he just immediately snaps from somebody who sadistically glees like he's some dark isekai self-insert about torturing a man and then immediately jumps into being the enlightened and redeemed savior king. I didn't like how afterwards there were zero consequences for his actions. The parley also didn't sold me, it seemed for me like him engaging in ad hominems and framing him as morally superior because he got people who carry him, it had some very unfortunate implications of how abusers irl might act. Ultimately, I also found his whole position rather pessimistic and miserable, that humans can't rise above themselves when they are given the opportunity and that they should be kept reliant because its safe. Thats how he came off to me. Many of his scenes also come off to me like trauma dumping and him being somewhat self-centered, only relating to others by making them fit into his personal perspective.

If thats not your experience, I will not argue that. If you love him and consider him a great and touching character, all the more power to you. Same with Rhea. This wasn't meant to convince you of my perspective, but to lay it out to show you, how I experiences the game and its characters in a fundamentally different way than you did. I personally would love it more, if I totally stoked by Azure Moon, I would love it if I had ended up loving and cherishing every single route equally, I paid money for and invested time into that game after all. But thats not the case and for me personally, Edelgard just resonated the most and I feel similarily to Rhea and Dimitri as you do towards Edelgard.

[monstierider]

Ya know what, fair enough. I can understand each of these points and I do respect them. The Fodlan games were designed pretty much to start debate and discourse, for better or for worse, and ultimately that's what it has done here. I will admit that I.....really don't like Rhea, like, at all, but I just, can't accept Edelgard either, not only because of my own personal views aligning more with Dimitri, someone who wants to take the safer, more stable method towards change, very likely due to how Faerghus will almost certainly react HORRIBLY to rapid change, "old stubborn country" and all that, but also due to, please correct me if I'm wrong here, I would love to be wrong on this, Edelgard knowing that the heroes relics are made of the bones and hearts of the nabateans and believing that to be perfectly fine because "it gives more power to humanity, not something that isn't human", please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong here, because after so many fire emblem games where we are consistently shown the human side of dragons, through characters like Tiki and Mryh, and even in three houses and hopes with Seteth and Flayn, the idea of a character knowing about people genociding a widely peaceful, purely reactionary, race and making their bodies into monster hunter weapons and thinking that's okay because they aren't human just....really screws with me, even if the rest of their ideals are noble, that sort of line of thinking just....leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

[diaphin93]

Thanks that you can respect that and I'm glad that I didn't came off too pushy. I personally can respect your stance as well and I ultimately think that the game is made for each person to have their own perspective on what is the right route. I myself often went hard into argueing for CF being the best in the past, but that also was more of a reaction to just so many people spreading their HC's of how CF's ending will lead to collapse as fact. The devs deliberately didn't include a revalation-esque route after all, because they didn't want to have a true route

But on Edelgard and her attitudes towards Dragons, that a community spread misconception to frame her as some kind of racist and fascist, predominantly by the kinds of people who, in a game where people of color exist and are opressed, make pale-skinned dragon gods their chosen racial allegory. I could be wrong but please correct me, but to my knowledge Edelgard never learns that the Heroes Relics are made out of Dragons. I'm not even sure if Silver Snow Byleth does learn that, it could be actually just Claude. What she knows is that the heroes relics are manmade and the history the church propagates, that Nemesis became corrupted and evil later on, was a lie propagated by the church. Though Edelgards also doesn't seem to care much about Heroes Relics outside of their immediate use and the fact, that the church is controlling them.

Edelgard and Hubert hold negative views on the Nabatheans as inhuman, but that is predominantly out of their limited perspective, where they only know them as immortals who hide among humans to control them and falsify history. Though they also don't seem to see them as a race and more as a divine family of self-appointed gods, which is the role the Nabatheans did play in the past. I think here its kinda messy because outside of the few nabateans alive, there aren't really any other intelligent non-human races and humans don't know anything about Nabateans outside of their myths about the children of the goddess. And ultimately, what they hold against the Nabatheans is their deception and their misrule over humanity. And Rhea does express very supremacist attitudes against humans and considers themselves to be unfit to govern themselves without her guidance, despite herself being as flawed as humans and misusing her power the same they do, with Seteth being an active accomplice.

Ultimately, she doesn't even want to kill the Nabateans, she just wants their control over humanity to end. She expresses herself very harshely with terms like obliterate and striking her down, which I think are supposed to be taken as her exaggerating when talking about her ideals, but otherwise she does express a preference to sparing Rhea. She does give Rhea a chance to surrender before Fhirdiad and even before that shows a genuine interest in capturing instead of killing her.

So she prefers stripping Rhea of power and keep her away from politics and is neutral towards turning the church into an imperial institution, which is to say, a state institution, while actively disliking the idea of killing her if she surrenders. This is consistent with the fact that she does keep Rhea as a prisoner over the 5 years, where Seteth does confirm after finding her that she is left unharmed

Hopes confirms this notion, as during Edelgards support with Claude, she treats capturing instead of killing Rhea as the natural course of action and even questions Claude, if it isn't enough to subdue her enemy and remove her from power. Which is consistent with Edelgard usually giving her enemies a chance to surrender after the battle, as seen in her conquest of the Alliance, which is highly unusual compared to other Lords where routing missions and giving their enemies no quarter is the usual outcome. In VW and SS, Count Bergliez has to sacrifice himself for his soldiers to be spared. And here is how Seteth reacts to the notion of not killing Edelgard.

So yeah. Edelgard does not want to kill the Nabateans, she just views them negatively due to her limited knowledge of them and perceiving them through Rheas actions at the expense of humanity. 3H in general goes a different way of humanizing the Dragons, by emphasizing their human flaws. It subverts the notion, that immortal divine beings are better, wiser or more intelligent than humans.

Personally, I kinda dislike the fact that Flayn doesn't stick along or at least is re-recruitable in Crimson Flower, really. Its one of the flaws of the game I see, especially since I've heard that there are datamines that hint at Crimson Flower Flayn being a consideration at one point. I care less so about Seteth because I like him less, but I also see more of a case where the game may benefit from him not being recruitable, but in Flayns case I feel like it strips Crimson Flower, but also Flayn, of possibilities. I would have liked Edelgard and Hubert to react of the notion of a child of the goddess siding with their ideals, but also how Flayn could develope if she was faced with Rheas deceptions.

More importantly though, I think that Flayn being permanently lost in Crimson Flower kind of devalues her relationship with Byleth and the Black Eagles class. It makes it conditional. We have many students who are pushed into a similar position, where they are are willing to fight against their families, former friends and country for the sake of Byleth and their bonds to the class they joined. In Crimson Flower, Anette and Felix will fight their own fathers. Hell, Caspar basically just stands by and watches as Dimitri tortures his uncle. So generally, I think it was just an all around bad move to make her lost for CF. Especially since I think that one of the interesting aspects of CF for some characters is them emancipating themselves of the control their parents have over their lives. With Seteth being a well meaning and loving but also overbearing father, I think the story possibility of Flayn chosing another side than him and taking a more independent role for herself would have been something worthwile.

[monstierider]

Honestly, I always viewed Flayn and Seteth being unable to be recruited in crimson flower as them being unwilling to strike down one of the only other Nabateans still alive, especially considering the only other living Nabateans I'm aware of are the windcaller, who is a full on recluse who hates humanity, and...I can't remember his name, but the turtle who just lives at the bottom of a river and only comes up to mess with humans. Rhea's really all they have left, even if they don't agree with her, Flayn less so, but Seteth actually shows a great amount of disdain for Rheas methods, it's just that she's too stubborn and set in her ways to listen to him, he only goes along with it because, well, he's trying to look out for Flayn' safety and views Rheas methods as the only way to make sure she's safe, even if he doesn't like them.

To be honest though, I've always viewed the Fodlan games not as "country versus country", but "Edelgard versus Rhea" because....well, it all starts due to their clashing ambitions, ambitions that can't coexist not because their too different, but because they're so similar. Edelgard wants a world for humanity, but is unwilling to truly learn more about those her world would cast out or to share the burden with others, whereas Rhea wants a world for all people, but has grown far too controlling out of fear of another Those who slither in the dark or Nemesis showing up and is so dead set in her idea that only Sothis can truly guide Fodlan she's sacrificed her own morals and sanity for it, because in truth she's desperate to have someone to tell her she did the right thing even when a cursory glance shows that she didn't, despite the good things she did accomplish.

[diaphin93]

I get that view, though I think it is quite a missed opportunity. I feel like with Seteth its fine that he's los for Crimson Flower, though like I said, I think with Flayn it kind of is a missed opportunity for both sides to get more input of the others perspective and for Flayn to have a route that is more about her emancipation from Seteth. With which I don't want to say that he's a bad or abusive father, quite the opposite, but he is quite clearly an overbearing father who shelters Flayn from the world. Though that could be just me. I generally feel like the games kind of refuse to force Flayn and Seteth into a position, where they have to question their own role in the system and towards humans much.

I would also agree with the notion that at its core its really Edelgard vs Rhea, but I think it also plays into the weakness of 3 Houses, that it doesn't really do much to make the ambitions and goals of Dimitri and Claude stand out very much. But I will disagree with your notion on what both want and think your personal bias talks again, because Edelgard very much cares about those who are left out by the current system. She is the one who feels empathy towards Miklan, who expresses care about those who are left out or wronged by the system and cares about creating a place for everyone in her new world, as seen for example in her Linhardt support.

Rhea is the one who refuses to truly learn about humanity and to put trust in others. She does regularily express alienation from others and her incapability of connecting with those around her. The issue with Rhea is, that she does not respect humans and looks down to them, having a very supremacist and paternalistic outlook on them as being reliant on her rule.

The issue is, that Rhea had a thousand years to solve the issues in Fodlan. She has the means to do it, she has the power. She just doesn't wants to, because she prefers the control and illusio nof peace she created for herself. She does uphold the crest system and hides away those who are harmed and cast out by it into the Abyss, which is basically just an underground ghetto.

Like, ultimately she just does nothing to make things better for anyone? When the tragedy of Duscur happened, she didn't do anything despite showing with her scapegoating and executing Christophe for it. When Loog started a TWSITD backed up Revolt against the Empire, something the church at least suspected looking at the Abyss library, she ended up rewarding him by splitting up the Empire and creating the church as her loyal vassal. She did nothing in turn to support Leicester when they revolted against the Empire, nor when they were annexed by the Kingdom. We know that she actively suppresses technological advancements, especially those that could hurt the authority of the church or threaten the nobility system. Hopes has even very strong indications that Rhea withheld aggracultural knowledge from the Kingdom until the point it has to harbor her and she suddenly drops it, something Shez can be suspicious of and that I will go further into. Rhea had every opportunity and all the means in the world to creat a better world, she just does not want to do that. She wants to revive Sothis against her wills, so that she can rule over humanity and fix things.

Thats the big issue of Rhea. She does inheritly not view humans as her equals, but she also fails to be better than them. This is actually even further hammered home by her similarities to Thales, who represents humanities worst and most evil aspects, to the point where hopes frames them as equals and foils, the two main villains of 3 Hopes. And I think thats what makes her interesting.

[monstierider]

I will admit, I was unaware of those Abyss dialogues, thank you for bringing them up. In regards to Loogs rebellion I always saw Rhea legitimising it as a way to avoid another Nemesis situation, especially since, if I remember correct, Nemesis and his ten elites were from Northern Fodlan and most of their relics were left there, so I always saw her vassalising Faerghus as more a desperation play. And in regards to her mistrust of humanity, I mean, she's in the wrong for it, but I understand why she has it, the genocide of your entire species isn't going to be something that'll be easy to forgive, no matter how old you get. Also, regarding my point about Edelgard "not caring about those her ambitions leave behind" I was more so referring to the people her actions will just make bitter, since, no matter how hard she tries, the annexation of a country and destruction of its culture, since we know Edelgard is actively seeking an imperial take over, even if for genuinely well meaning reasons, will breed resentment no matter what. That resentment can be mitigated, but it can't be avoided entirely. Life getting better for the common folk will only do so much to make up for the war she started and the complete and utter destruction of people's lives as they knew it.

Actually, regarding Thales, I hope you don't mind me going on a short tangent, but after hopes came out and showed us Epimenides I actually began to view the Agarthans a little differently, not as in, I began seeing them as if they were good people, but rather I saw them as being reflections of the one who holds their reigns. Epimenides after all is pretty much the exact opposite of Thales within Agartha, Thales doesn't give a damn about his subordinates and will happily leave them to die just to save his own skin, Epimenides actively risks his own life to save Nemesis, who he doesn't even like. Thales wouldn't even hesitate to rob someone of their free will, which is not a good thing for Edelgard if Azure gleam is anything to go off of, but Epimenides actively shows remorse for taking Arvals and Shez's bodies and wills from them, and even the game even states that his....core, whatever that means, is to be inherited, not implanted, like it probably is for the other Agarthans, but instead passed down, showing he likely despises such things, hell, he even states in the Arval/Epimenides paralouge in hopes "I know Thales has his methods, but they don't sit right with me". I also find it really interesting that Epimenides, going off his paralouge, is much more of an upfront fighter then an in the shadows schemer, to the point of having fought the imperial army, Seteth/Cichol, Flayn/Cethleann and Rhea/Seiros to a stand still almost entirely on his own, meanwhile Thales....gets smacked around by literally everyone at least once. We also have the fact that Epimenides doesn't seem to hate non-Agarthans like....literally every other named Agarthan, but by his own admission, pities them.

What was the point of this tangent again?.....oh, right, Epimenides was basically the moral backbone of Agartha and once he died it took after Thales instead.

Please feel free to ignore that, that's just me ranting and is entirely unrelated to the main point of this debate.

[diaphin93]

No problem, you actually do catch me on a special interest of mine, which I love to headcanon alot about.

When it comes to Edelgard, I think it boils down to my position which I mentioned when it comes to her vs Dimitri, that every approach will end uo leaving somebody out and cause suffering. Though I have to admit, that my biggest problem is actually how the whole conquest works in Azure Moon. Not necessarily when it comes to Adrestia, as this is basically similar to the reverse and we should assume that people would be very unhappy with him coming in and re-introducing the status quo and the rule of the Central Church to the nation, but Leicester, how it just ends up falling in line and submit to Faerghus rule, when their history is how Faerghus backstabbed and annexed them when they tried their own revolt against the Kingdom and had to fight a war against Faerghus to win their independence, as well as the Kingdoms meddling with House Daphnel. When it comes to Rhea, the rationale behind it is there, but it is still ag reat betrayal of the Empire, which helped her to begin with and basically yet another example of Rhea making bad compromises and choices that end up biting her, and all of Fodlan, in the ass. When it comes to her trauma, it is understandable, but it is also her putting all of humanity on a collective burden for the crimes of very few people.

But the Thales and TWSITD topic is much more interesting, lol. And I agree with you. I really like Epimenides because he is the one nuanced agarthan we ever get. He is outright heroic, he just happens to be on the opposing side, which I think is always interesting and I like how he is singlemindedly dedicated to save his people. It puts the agarthans in a very different light, the implications where already there, but its different when somebody who seems somewhat noble puts them forward. I also generally like him as this counterpart to Rhea and Sothis, despite his godlike power being adamant of being a mere human and taking pride in his humanity. I just generally love this kind of character, who reject the megalomania of calling themselves gods and taking pride in their archievements as humans. I also like how apologetic he is about sacrificing Solon. It creats a sense of human connection, that he is not viewed as this mad evil villain by his own people.

So this really generally leads me to some of my frustrations with the games, like how Hopes itself feels very unfinished and abandoned. Like Hopes introduces very interesting implications, combined with the Shadow Library document for example the idea, that the original Sothis might not have been fully good and much more cruel and ruthless than we would have assumed, as seen in her more vengeful and ruthless demeanor in Hopes. Some hate it, but I kinda like the idea of the Goddess Sothis not being as good as Rhea makes her out to be. It adds relationship to the way Byleth shaped Sothis through their shared experiences and more nuance to the background of the world. Though I also kinda feel like Epimenides and Arval were somewhat of a largely aborted story for Hopes? Its basically handled inside a bonus chapter that has no lasting consequences to the ending of the game and we never gain more clarity on Shez Background and origins, which are implied to be agarthan. We know that Hopes ends more open ended so to not devalue Byleths involvement in Houses, but I can't stop but feel like they also held really back on the entire concept of Byleth & Sothis being villains in Hopes, which was what the game originally advertised itself as, which could have had Epimenides take a bigger role in the story and show us the agarthans in a different light. Then there is also how the game feels pretty much aborted to move towards Engage, when it just feels like it was created with at least some story DLC in mind.

But generally the agarthans and them being one-dimensionally evil inside the games is my big criticism. The world building, informations from interviews and ingame documents feel like the entire concept was imagined to be more nuanced, but then they ended up being really flat. And with the way they are presented as and handled, there are some messy implications due to the choice of making them not some ancient evil cult, but actually a human race of people and seemingly also the original inhabitants of Fodlan. Like to they have civilians? Do they have children? Its super messy and I feel like the game would have done better by giving us at least an agarthan recruit. You know, basically a Tharja, who gives us more insights and depth to the agarthans as a people and offers a route of redemption and survival for them through their ending, instead of us just wiping them out or be stuck in an eternal gridlock with them. Though I guess its a good place for headcanons, rpgs and fanfic though, where I love to expand on the agarthans more for myself, giving them more depth and purpose. I think offers the potential of an interesting circle of hatred narrative, being more critical of Sothis just wiping them out with a flood and effectively commiting a biblical genocide on them, which forced them into the dark and turned them vengeful and evil, in turn enacting their own cruel and unjust collective punishment on all Nabateans for the sins of their mother. Though I personally just like the idea of a narrative, where there are nuanced agarthans and that offers a story about how agarthans and nabateans have to learn to share the world with each other and with the current humans inhabiting it as equals, instead of one side trying to wipe the other out for eternity, with humans being their puppets in all of it.

If you are familiar with FF14, I also feel like the Ascians are basically the Agarthans, but done right. The Ascians in this game are themselves a race of sinister and scheming bodysnatchers who try to spread chaos to revive their dark god, but then we learn more about how they were advanced ancient humans, who survived the end of the world and try to rebuild the world as they knew it. They are still villains, but there is empathy for them, the suffering and loss they faced. Like there is one who clearly views himself as the hero who will save the world, who at one point is enraged over us, the player character, having murdered his brothers. They are never justified, but we get to understand their position.

[monstierider]

Yeah, it really does feel like hopes was just....left unfinished. What we have is good for the main lords, let's us see them under different circumstances, for better or worse, but for Shez, Arval and Epimenides it's just....disappointingly clear they had more in mind that never got made or at the very least never got released. Like, they clearly had more planned, the unused characters in the files, the voicelines in the gallery for npc only characters, and just Shez's story in general all makes it feel so...unsatisfying. Honestly, the only thing I can think of that might have caused them to have clearly planned the dlc out so much and then just dropped it would have to be the passing of Ferdinands voice actor, may his soul rest in peace, but it doesn't make the fact that we get all these fun details dangled in front of us, just to drop us into that cliff Byleth fell into during the attack on the monastery.

Like, who is Shez's mother? What is Agarthan society like? Are they all similar to Kronya, Solon, Cornelian and Thales, or is the average Agarthan more similar to Epimenides? How did Arval end up with Shez? Did they wind up together on accident? Is Shez some kind of homonculus clone body Epimenides had planned for his return? If so, how did they end up not only getting out of Shambala as, very likely, a baby and getting raised in Fodlan?

So many questions, and the only way we might ever get any answers is through.....fire emblem heroes, and even then, that'll probably only be the case if Shez ever wins CYL.

It sucks so much, because before hopes I didn't care about the Agarthans too much, they were just an evil cult for the sake of having an evil cult. But Epimenides single handedly got me wanting to know more about them.

[diaphin93]

I'm not really sure if Billy Kametz tragic death plays into their decission of not doing any more 3 Hopes content. I'm not discounting the possibility, but on the other hand they did recast Ferdinand when they released a new alt for him in Heroes. I personally assume it might have been in preparation to Engages release, that they wanted to wrap up Fodlan quickly and move on to the next game, especially since I wouldn't be surprised if they had banked on the game attracting a much higher audience. Its less obvious but the game just has some elements that feel rushed or incomplete, as you said, unused characters, voicelines, Shez, but also other elements. For example the lack of any story diviation if you fail to recruit Byleth outside of Scarlet Blaze, which is fairly weird. With AG, the story just full on stops making sense if you recruit Byleth. Though AG in general feels super rushed, the first half is actually good but then it just feels like they just stopped trying and just scrambled together the second half, it doesn't make any sense at all.

When it comes to Shez mother, I kinda assume she might have been an agarthan who came to save them from Shambhala and whatever experiments had them end up with Arval, but it is really never answered. Its quite a shame, as the game just was brimming with potential and there was lots of potential for fun DLC. I would have loved Nemesis and the Agarthans as unlockable units just for record keeper, as this would have been fun gameplay wise and opened the door for some fun non-canon interactions, see Edelgard and Rhea being deployed together.

It also feels like a bad call in retrospect, lol. Considering how there seem to be more people left who would love to play a Hopes DLC and talk about it then any genuine discourse about Engage, which is mostly just people whining about how people don't like Engage.

[monstierider]

Honestly, as someone who does love Engage, the lack of any dlc content for hopes still infuriates me a little to this day. I would honestly have taken anything, like, even if they couldn't give us a whole new route, I would have loved a few new paralouges you can play to unlock some new units and the wrap up some loose ends. Also, yeah, my favorite route in Hopes is Azure gleam, I just love the way all the lions bounce off each other and it feels like the only route where Shez really belongs if you ask me, since they seem much less focused on revenge against Byleth, and more focused on what's best for the people they've grown close to, whereas with the other routes they just kinda feel like they're either, there for a paycheck, or there because Hubert would kill them if they weren't, but even I have to admit the second half was kind of rushed, though I do like it actually giving Dimitri proper closure for the tragedy of Dusur by letting him actually fully defeat those who slither in the dark.

Also, I just realised something of a possibility I hadn't considered before, being that those who slither in the dark being Agarthans, doesn't mean that the Agarthans are those who slither in the dark, but just means that TWSITD is something of an extremist group within Agarthan society. I have no evidence to back this up, aside from the existence of Epimenides showing that not all Agarthans are like Thales and his cronies, but I do rather like the idea so I'm just gonna add that to the list of things to think on.

[monstierider]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like Crimson flower did a terrible job of making Edelgard....not a villain

Like, I feel like IS sort of couldn't find a good way to justify siding with Edelgard to the player beyond liking her as a character and the only way the could sort of doing it was by reducing Rhea to near Duma levels of insane, but even then while I won't condone her actions I can understand why she lost it, from her perspective she just saw someone she allowed into her home, break into the burial site of her dead siblings with the intention of desecrating them and robbing their graves and then watched what is, from her sad, broken perspective, her own mother choose to side with the person trying to take all she has left of her family away from her, I too would lose it under those circumstances. And then there's Edelgard not even being very smart, like, does she really believe her troops would hear "the church has nukes" and not either, question why they only dropped the one on the one location and why only now or just....lose all morale??? And then there's the battle at the Tailtean plains and the good old conversation between Dimitri and Edelgard, "must you continue to conquer?continue to kill?!" "Must you continue to re-conquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" Like.....it's like even she realises she has no moral high ground over him and is just trying some desperate redirection to not be the villain she knows she is. And also the entire "king of delusion" scene where Dimitri, in his final moments, swears to avenge everyone who died for her, who she killed, to avenge all his fallen friends and family who died because of her and her ambitions and she basically just calls him a nut job.

Like??? Did IS just....give up on trying to make Edelgard look good and just hope that off her fucking rocker Rhea and Edelgards tragic backstory would cover that up???

[diaphin93]

Hi, I hope its okay when I reply with my own perspectives? As we already were able to keep things somewhat civilized?

First off I would say, its very obvious looking at the state of discourse that you're not the only one (but you at least don't make entire posts trying to frame Edelgard as some sexual seductress, lol. That person exists!), but I think its also more of a you issue. Not in that you do something wrong, but that Edelgard and her route are simply not for you, because as is clear with the large popularilty Edelgard enjoys, thats not the experience all people have with Crimson Flower. In the end, its a game about different perspectives and values and chosing your side when those ultimately come to a clash. It would be boring if this doesn't spark discourse and fundamentally different perspectives of what is right and whats wrong. For all of its flaws, the fact that 3 Houses sparks this amount of Discourse even years after its release is a testament to what it does right.

For example my perspective in all of this, when I played the game on Crimson Flower Route first, was that I came to broadly agree with Edelgards point of view during Part 1. She shares alot of her perspectives during it and as I saw early on, how the entire social structure of Fodlan is heavily inspired by the three estates of the realm feudal structure of medieval europe, I was naturally inclined to by sympathetic towards her viewpoints, as I will usually prefer to side against feudalism in a narrative that allows and encourages me to do so. I got bad vibes from Rhea from the start and tended to believe Jeralt, who as the father of my character I was prone to believe, in not trusting her, especially since very early on, we see more of the oppressive and tyranical nature of the church and the evils of the crest system. In my personal first playthrough, I came to suspect that the Flame Emperor is more nuanced than it appears at first, while Rhea became more and more creepy after Sothis awakening, so when it came to the holy tomb, I did a leap of faith and trusted in Edelgard, as I agreed that the church must be destroyed.

For me, the reactions towards Rheas turn in Crimson Flower feel very similar to the outrage people expressed in the recent Elden Ring DLC, when a certain character as was expected didn't turn out to be as noble as they would have assumed, because by that point they were set in their headcanons of him being a benevolent and purely good figure. Rhea in Crimson Flower is consistent. She is consistent with the bloodthirsty side of hers we saw during the games first cutscene and her cruel and vengeful attitude whenever somebody challenges her during White Clouds. Silver Snow is textually not a validation of Rhea as we saw her in part 1, what it does is offering a potential redemption for her under the condition that Byleth forms an especially strong bond with her. She herself admits her wrongdoings and expresses guilt in the following S-Support. What Crimson Flower shows is that at this stage of the story, Rheas love and adoration for Byleth is conditional, as not long before she literally tried to mind erase them to revive Sothis in full, and that Rhea is prone to immediately devalueing and dehumanizing them if they disobey her. After all, at this point Byleth hasn't even taken arms against Rhea, they are just standing against outright killing their student. I would also say that for me personally, Rheas entire demeanor during part 1 comes off heavily like grooming and love bombing, which is why I personally tend to dislike her.

When it comes to Arianrhod, I personally tond like this part of the story. For me it is one of the flaws in it, as it is left without any lasting consequences, and feels very much like the writers just forcefully inserting it into it to remind us of TWSITD still being there and inform Crimson Flower players of the Javelines of light. What I will say is, that it is not the only such forced inclusion just for the sake of it. I can see the rationale of Edelgard though. Edelgard took a gamble with killing Cornelia in Arianrhod and was punished by it for Thales and reacting to it prematurely would them losing momentum and the Kingdom successfully launching a counter offensive, as well as further interventions by TWSITD if she openly revolts against them now, so she has to lure Thales for the moment into a false sense of security, that she falls back in line again. I don't like it, but I will also say that if thats the dealbreaker, then the route probably wasn't for one to begin with.

When it comes to Dimitri and Edelgard, the whole 'must you continue to kill' exchange is quite a mistranslation compared to the original text, where Edelgards point is to ask him if he will be satisfied, once he takes back, tramples back. This changes the entire context of the exchange honestly:

Though I will also say, I don't have personal issues with this exchange myself, as, what most people leave out, its followed by Edelgard also expressing her determination that she will not stop and do everything necessary to creat a new future for Fodlan. Initially I also took the line as Edelgard being sassy which I'm like...okay with? I'm a feminist, I like it when the queer female lead doesn't owes your typical male protagonist turned villain respect and in crimson Flower, Dimitri himself dragged his Kingdom into war by siding with the church and for the sake of Dimitris delusional desire for vengeance. Which is, again, delusional. Dimitri rants and blames Edelgard for things she had no control over and which she didn't do. He is completely obsessive over her and she has the right to be apalled by him. Again, as a feminist, I like that. She doesn't owe a guy who obsessed over her and wants to brutally murder her any respect, he himself is the one who chose to throw away any semblance of dignity he had.

I would also say that other people will feel as you do towards Rhea and Dimitri. With Rhea I already laid it out why I don't get why people love her so much and consider her heroic and good. With Dimitri, I was initially kinda excited to play Blue Lions after CF. Dimitri was, ultimately, a cool villain in my opinion, I liked his Post Timeskip Design more than his Pre-Timeskip one and I wanted to see where his route leads into and whats his perspective is. I ended up not liking it. Like, I played it before I went into all this discourse with high hopes and I just ended up not liking it or him. He seems very flat to me, with people conflating a character focussed story and a character going through a a redemption arc with deep storytelling, when for me it just seemed comical how he jumps in personality, especially when he just immediately snaps from somebody who sadistically glees like he's some dark isekai self-insert about torturing a man and then immediately jumps into being the enlightened and redeemed savior king. I didn't like how afterwards there were zero consequences for his actions. The parley also didn't sold me, it seemed for me like him engaging in ad hominems and framing him as morally superior because he got people who carry him, it had some very unfortunate implications of how abusers irl might act. Ultimately, I also found his whole position rather pessimistic and miserable, that humans can't rise above themselves when they are given the opportunity and that they should be kept reliant because its safe. Thats how he came off to me. Many of his scenes also come off to me like trauma dumping and him being somewhat self-centered, only relating to others by making them fit into his personal perspective.

If thats not your experience, I will not argue that. If you love him and consider him a great and touching character, all the more power to you. Same with Rhea. This wasn't meant to convince you of my perspective, but to lay it out to show you, how I experiences the game and its characters in a fundamentally different way than you did. I personally would love it more, if I totally stoked by Azure Moon, I would love it if I had ended up loving and cherishing every single route equally, I paid money for and invested time into that game after all. But thats not the case and for me personally, Edelgard just resonated the most and I feel similarily to Rhea and Dimitri as you do towards Edelgard.

[monstierider]

Ya know what, fair enough. I can understand each of these points and I do respect them. The Fodlan games were designed pretty much to start debate and discourse, for better or for worse, and ultimately that's what it has done here. I will admit that I.....really don't like Rhea, like, at all, but I just, can't accept Edelgard either, not only because of my own personal views aligning more with Dimitri, someone who wants to take the safer, more stable method towards change, very likely due to how Faerghus will almost certainly react HORRIBLY to rapid change, "old stubborn country" and all that, but also due to, please correct me if I'm wrong here, I would love to be wrong on this, Edelgard knowing that the heroes relics are made of the bones and hearts of the nabateans and believing that to be perfectly fine because "it gives more power to humanity, not something that isn't human", please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong here, because after so many fire emblem games where we are consistently shown the human side of dragons, through characters like Tiki and Mryh, and even in three houses and hopes with Seteth and Flayn, the idea of a character knowing about people genociding a widely peaceful, purely reactionary, race and making their bodies into monster hunter weapons and thinking that's okay because they aren't human just....really screws with me, even if the rest of their ideals are noble, that sort of line of thinking just....leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

[diaphin93]

Thanks that you can respect that and I'm glad that I didn't came off too pushy. I personally can respect your stance as well and I ultimately think that the game is made for each person to have their own perspective on what is the right route. I myself often went hard into argueing for CF being the best in the past, but that also was more of a reaction to just so many people spreading their HC's of how CF's ending will lead to collapse as fact. The devs deliberately didn't include a revalation-esque route after all, because they didn't want to have a true route

But on Edelgard and her attitudes towards Dragons, that a community spread misconception to frame her as some kind of racist and fascist, predominantly by the kinds of people who, in a game where people of color exist and are opressed, make pale-skinned dragon gods their chosen racial allegory. I could be wrong but please correct me, but to my knowledge Edelgard never learns that the Heroes Relics are made out of Dragons. I'm not even sure if Silver Snow Byleth does learn that, it could be actually just Claude. What she knows is that the heroes relics are manmade and the history the church propagates, that Nemesis became corrupted and evil later on, was a lie propagated by the church. Though Edelgards also doesn't seem to care much about Heroes Relics outside of their immediate use and the fact, that the church is controlling them.

Edelgard and Hubert hold negative views on the Nabatheans as inhuman, but that is predominantly out of their limited perspective, where they only know them as immortals who hide among humans to control them and falsify history. Though they also don't seem to see them as a race and more as a divine family of self-appointed gods, which is the role the Nabatheans did play in the past. I think here its kinda messy because outside of the few nabateans alive, there aren't really any other intelligent non-human races and humans don't know anything about Nabateans outside of their myths about the children of the goddess. And ultimately, what they hold against the Nabatheans is their deception and their misrule over humanity. And Rhea does express very supremacist attitudes against humans and considers themselves to be unfit to govern themselves without her guidance, despite herself being as flawed as humans and misusing her power the same they do, with Seteth being an active accomplice.

Ultimately, she doesn't even want to kill the Nabateans, she just wants their control over humanity to end. She expresses herself very harshely with terms like obliterate and striking her down, which I think are supposed to be taken as her exaggerating when talking about her ideals, but otherwise she does express a preference to sparing Rhea. She does give Rhea a chance to surrender before Fhirdiad and even before that shows a genuine interest in capturing instead of killing her.

So she prefers stripping Rhea of power and keep her away from politics and is neutral towards turning the church into an imperial institution, which is to say, a state institution, while actively disliking the idea of killing her if she surrenders. This is consistent with the fact that she does keep Rhea as a prisoner over the 5 years, where Seteth does confirm after finding her that she is left unharmed

Hopes confirms this notion, as during Edelgards support with Claude, she treats capturing instead of killing Rhea as the natural course of action and even questions Claude, if it isn't enough to subdue her enemy and remove her from power. Which is consistent with Edelgard usually giving her enemies a chance to surrender after the battle, as seen in her conquest of the Alliance, which is highly unusual compared to other Lords where routing missions and giving their enemies no quarter is the usual outcome. In VW and SS, Count Bergliez has to sacrifice himself for his soldiers to be spared. And here is how Seteth reacts to the notion of not killing Edelgard.

So yeah. Edelgard does not want to kill the Nabateans, she just views them negatively due to her limited knowledge of them and perceiving them through Rheas actions at the expense of humanity. 3H in general goes a different way of humanizing the Dragons, by emphasizing their human flaws. It subverts the notion, that immortal divine beings are better, wiser or more intelligent than humans.

Personally, I kinda dislike the fact that Flayn doesn't stick along or at least is re-recruitable in Crimson Flower, really. Its one of the flaws of the game I see, especially since I've heard that there are datamines that hint at Crimson Flower Flayn being a consideration at one point. I care less so about Seteth because I like him less, but I also see more of a case where the game may benefit from him not being recruitable, but in Flayns case I feel like it strips Crimson Flower, but also Flayn, of possibilities. I would have liked Edelgard and Hubert to react of the notion of a child of the goddess siding with their ideals, but also how Flayn could develope if she was faced with Rheas deceptions.

More importantly though, I think that Flayn being permanently lost in Crimson Flower kind of devalues her relationship with Byleth and the Black Eagles class. It makes it conditional. We have many students who are pushed into a similar position, where they are are willing to fight against their families, former friends and country for the sake of Byleth and their bonds to the class they joined. In Crimson Flower, Anette and Felix will fight their own fathers. Hell, Caspar basically just stands by and watches as Dimitri tortures his uncle. So generally, I think it was just an all around bad move to make her lost for CF. Especially since I think that one of the interesting aspects of CF for some characters is them emancipating themselves of the control their parents have over their lives. With Seteth being a well meaning and loving but also overbearing father, I think the story possibility of Flayn chosing another side than him and taking a more independent role for herself would have been something worthwile.

[monstierider]

Honestly, I always viewed Flayn and Seteth being unable to be recruited in crimson flower as them being unwilling to strike down one of the only other Nabateans still alive, especially considering the only other living Nabateans I'm aware of are the windcaller, who is a full on recluse who hates humanity, and...I can't remember his name, but the turtle who just lives at the bottom of a river and only comes up to mess with humans. Rhea's really all they have left, even if they don't agree with her, Flayn less so, but Seteth actually shows a great amount of disdain for Rheas methods, it's just that she's too stubborn and set in her ways to listen to him, he only goes along with it because, well, he's trying to look out for Flayn' safety and views Rheas methods as the only way to make sure she's safe, even if he doesn't like them.

To be honest though, I've always viewed the Fodlan games not as "country versus country", but "Edelgard versus Rhea" because....well, it all starts due to their clashing ambitions, ambitions that can't coexist not because their too different, but because they're so similar. Edelgard wants a world for humanity, but is unwilling to truly learn more about those her world would cast out or to share the burden with others, whereas Rhea wants a world for all people, but has grown far too controlling out of fear of another Those who slither in the dark or Nemesis showing up and is so dead set in her idea that only Sothis can truly guide Fodlan she's sacrificed her own morals and sanity for it, because in truth she's desperate to have someone to tell her she did the right thing even when a cursory glance shows that she didn't, despite the good things she did accomplish.

[diaphin93]

I get that view, though I think it is quite a missed opportunity. I feel like with Seteth its fine that he's los for Crimson Flower, though like I said, I think with Flayn it kind of is a missed opportunity for both sides to get more input of the others perspective and for Flayn to have a route that is more about her emancipation from Seteth. With which I don't want to say that he's a bad or abusive father, quite the opposite, but he is quite clearly an overbearing father who shelters Flayn from the world. Though that could be just me. I generally feel like the games kind of refuse to force Flayn and Seteth into a position, where they have to question their own role in the system and towards humans much.

I would also agree with the notion that at its core its really Edelgard vs Rhea, but I think it also plays into the weakness of 3 Houses, that it doesn't really do much to make the ambitions and goals of Dimitri and Claude stand out very much. But I will disagree with your notion on what both want and think your personal bias talks again, because Edelgard very much cares about those who are left out by the current system. She is the one who feels empathy towards Miklan, who expresses care about those who are left out or wronged by the system and cares about creating a place for everyone in her new world, as seen for example in her Linhardt support.

Rhea is the one who refuses to truly learn about humanity and to put trust in others. She does regularily express alienation from others and her incapability of connecting with those around her. The issue with Rhea is, that she does not respect humans and looks down to them, having a very supremacist and paternalistic outlook on them as being reliant on her rule.

The issue is, that Rhea had a thousand years to solve the issues in Fodlan. She has the means to do it, she has the power. She just doesn't wants to, because she prefers the control and illusio nof peace she created for herself. She does uphold the crest system and hides away those who are harmed and cast out by it into the Abyss, which is basically just an underground ghetto.

Like, ultimately she just does nothing to make things better for anyone? When the tragedy of Duscur happened, she didn't do anything despite showing with her scapegoating and executing Christophe for it. When Loog started a TWSITD backed up Revolt against the Empire, something the church at least suspected looking at the Abyss library, she ended up rewarding him by splitting up the Empire and creating the church as her loyal vassal. She did nothing in turn to support Leicester when they revolted against the Empire, nor when they were annexed by the Kingdom. We know that she actively suppresses technological advancements, especially those that could hurt the authority of the church or threaten the nobility system. Hopes has even very strong indications that Rhea withheld aggracultural knowledge from the Kingdom until the point it has to harbor her and she suddenly drops it, something Shez can be suspicious of and that I will go further into. Rhea had every opportunity and all the means in the world to creat a better world, she just does not want to do that. She wants to revive Sothis against her wills, so that she can rule over humanity and fix things.

Thats the big issue of Rhea. She does inheritly not view humans as her equals, but she also fails to be better than them. This is actually even further hammered home by her similarities to Thales, who represents humanities worst and most evil aspects, to the point where hopes frames them as equals and foils, the two main villains of 3 Hopes. And I think thats what makes her interesting.

[monstierider]

I will admit, I was unaware of those Abyss dialogues, thank you for bringing them up. In regards to Loogs rebellion I always saw Rhea legitimising it as a way to avoid another Nemesis situation, especially since, if I remember correct, Nemesis and his ten elites were from Northern Fodlan and most of their relics were left there, so I always saw her vassalising Faerghus as more a desperation play. And in regards to her mistrust of humanity, I mean, she's in the wrong for it, but I understand why she has it, the genocide of your entire species isn't going to be something that'll be easy to forgive, no matter how old you get. Also, regarding my point about Edelgard "not caring about those her ambitions leave behind" I was more so referring to the people her actions will just make bitter, since, no matter how hard she tries, the annexation of a country and destruction of its culture, since we know Edelgard is actively seeking an imperial take over, even if for genuinely well meaning reasons, will breed resentment no matter what. That resentment can be mitigated, but it can't be avoided entirely. Life getting better for the common folk will only do so much to make up for the war she started and the complete and utter destruction of people's lives as they knew it.

Actually, regarding Thales, I hope you don't mind me going on a short tangent, but after hopes came out and showed us Epimenides I actually began to view the Agarthans a little differently, not as in, I began seeing them as if they were good people, but rather I saw them as being reflections of the one who holds their reigns. Epimenides after all is pretty much the exact opposite of Thales within Agartha, Thales doesn't give a damn about his subordinates and will happily leave them to die just to save his own skin, Epimenides actively risks his own life to save Nemesis, who he doesn't even like. Thales wouldn't even hesitate to rob someone of their free will, which is not a good thing for Edelgard if Azure gleam is anything to go off of, but Epimenides actively shows remorse for taking Arvals and Shez's bodies and wills from them, and even the game even states that his....core, whatever that means, is to be inherited, not implanted, like it probably is for the other Agarthans, but instead passed down, showing he likely despises such things, hell, he even states in the Arval/Epimenides paralouge in hopes "I know Thales has his methods, but they don't sit right with me". I also find it really interesting that Epimenides, going off his paralouge, is much more of an upfront fighter then an in the shadows schemer, to the point of having fought the imperial army, Seteth/Cichol, Flayn/Cethleann and Rhea/Seiros to a stand still almost entirely on his own, meanwhile Thales....gets smacked around by literally everyone at least once. We also have the fact that Epimenides doesn't seem to hate non-Agarthans like....literally every other named Agarthan, but by his own admission, pities them.

What was the point of this tangent again?.....oh, right, Epimenides was basically the moral backbone of Agartha and once he died it took after Thales instead.

Please feel free to ignore that, that's just me ranting and is entirely unrelated to the main point of this debate.

[diaphin93]

No problem, you actually do catch me on a special interest of mine, which I love to headcanon alot about.

When it comes to Edelgard, I think it boils down to my position which I mentioned when it comes to her vs Dimitri, that every approach will end uo leaving somebody out and cause suffering. Though I have to admit, that my biggest problem is actually how the whole conquest works in Azure Moon. Not necessarily when it comes to Adrestia, as this is basically similar to the reverse and we should assume that people would be very unhappy with him coming in and re-introducing the status quo and the rule of the Central Church to the nation, but Leicester, how it just ends up falling in line and submit to Faerghus rule, when their history is how Faerghus backstabbed and annexed them when they tried their own revolt against the Kingdom and had to fight a war against Faerghus to win their independence, as well as the Kingdoms meddling with House Daphnel. When it comes to Rhea, the rationale behind it is there, but it is still ag reat betrayal of the Empire, which helped her to begin with and basically yet another example of Rhea making bad compromises and choices that end up biting her, and all of Fodlan, in the ass. When it comes to her trauma, it is understandable, but it is also her putting all of humanity on a collective burden for the crimes of very few people.

But the Thales and TWSITD topic is much more interesting, lol. And I agree with you. I really like Epimenides because he is the one nuanced agarthan we ever get. He is outright heroic, he just happens to be on the opposing side, which I think is always interesting and I like how he is singlemindedly dedicated to save his people. It puts the agarthans in a very different light, the implications where already there, but its different when somebody who seems somewhat noble puts them forward. I also generally like him as this counterpart to Rhea and Sothis, despite his godlike power being adamant of being a mere human and taking pride in his humanity. I just generally love this kind of character, who reject the megalomania of calling themselves gods and taking pride in their archievements as humans. I also like how apologetic he is about sacrificing Solon. It creats a sense of human connection, that he is not viewed as this mad evil villain by his own people.

So this really generally leads me to some of my frustrations with the games, like how Hopes itself feels very unfinished and abandoned. Like Hopes introduces very interesting implications, combined with the Shadow Library document for example the idea, that the original Sothis might not have been fully good and much more cruel and ruthless than we would have assumed, as seen in her more vengeful and ruthless demeanor in Hopes. Some hate it, but I kinda like the idea of the Goddess Sothis not being as good as Rhea makes her out to be. It adds relationship to the way Byleth shaped Sothis through their shared experiences and more nuance to the background of the world. Though I also kinda feel like Epimenides and Arval were somewhat of a largely aborted story for Hopes? Its basically handled inside a bonus chapter that has no lasting consequences to the ending of the game and we never gain more clarity on Shez Background and origins, which are implied to be agarthan. We know that Hopes ends more open ended so to not devalue Byleths involvement in Houses, but I can't stop but feel like they also held really back on the entire concept of Byleth & Sothis being villains in Hopes, which was what the game originally advertised itself as, which could have had Epimenides take a bigger role in the story and show us the agarthans in a different light. Then there is also how the game feels pretty much aborted to move towards Engage, when it just feels like it was created with at least some story DLC in mind.

But generally the agarthans and them being one-dimensionally evil inside the games is my big criticism. The world building, informations from interviews and ingame documents feel like the entire concept was imagined to be more nuanced, but then they ended up being really flat. And with the way they are presented as and handled, there are some messy implications due to the choice of making them not some ancient evil cult, but actually a human race of people and seemingly also the original inhabitants of Fodlan. Like to they have civilians? Do they have children? Its super messy and I feel like the game would have done better by giving us at least an agarthan recruit. You know, basically a Tharja, who gives us more insights and depth to the agarthans as a people and offers a route of redemption and survival for them through their ending, instead of us just wiping them out or be stuck in an eternal gridlock with them. Though I guess its a good place for headcanons, rpgs and fanfic though, where I love to expand on the agarthans more for myself, giving them more depth and purpose. I think offers the potential of an interesting circle of hatred narrative, being more critical of Sothis just wiping them out with a flood and effectively commiting a biblical genocide on them, which forced them into the dark and turned them vengeful and evil, in turn enacting their own cruel and unjust collective punishment on all Nabateans for the sins of their mother. Though I personally just like the idea of a narrative, where there are nuanced agarthans and that offers a story about how agarthans and nabateans have to learn to share the world with each other and with the current humans inhabiting it as equals, instead of one side trying to wipe the other out for eternity, with humans being their puppets in all of it.

If you are familiar with FF14, I also feel like the Ascians are basically the Agarthans, but done right. The Ascians in this game are themselves a race of sinister and scheming bodysnatchers who try to spread chaos to revive their dark god, but then we learn more about how they were advanced ancient humans, who survived the end of the world and try to rebuild the world as they knew it. They are still villains, but there is empathy for them, the suffering and loss they faced. Like there is one who clearly views himself as the hero who will save the world, who at one point is enraged over us, the player character, having murdered his brothers. They are never justified, but we get to understand their position.

[monstierider]

Yeah, it really does feel like hopes was just....left unfinished. What we have is good for the main lords, let's us see them under different circumstances, for better or worse, but for Shez, Arval and Epimenides it's just....disappointingly clear they had more in mind that never got made or at the very least never got released. Like, they clearly had more planned, the unused characters in the files, the voicelines in the gallery for npc only characters, and just Shez's story in general all makes it feel so...unsatisfying. Honestly, the only thing I can think of that might have caused them to have clearly planned the dlc out so much and then just dropped it would have to be the passing of Ferdinands voice actor, may his soul rest in peace, but it doesn't make the fact that we get all these fun details dangled in front of us, just to drop us into that cliff Byleth fell into during the attack on the monastery.

Like, who is Shez's mother? What is Agarthan society like? Are they all similar to Kronya, Solon, Cornelian and Thales, or is the average Agarthan more similar to Epimenides? How did Arval end up with Shez? Did they wind up together on accident? Is Shez some kind of homonculus clone body Epimenides had planned for his return? If so, how did they end up not only getting out of Shambala as, very likely, a baby and getting raised in Fodlan?

So many questions, and the only way we might ever get any answers is through.....fire emblem heroes, and even then, that'll probably only be the case if Shez ever wins CYL.

It sucks so much, because before hopes I didn't care about the Agarthans too much, they were just an evil cult for the sake of having an evil cult. But Epimenides single handedly got me wanting to know more about them.

[monstierider]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like Crimson flower did a terrible job of making Edelgard....not a villain

Like, I feel like IS sort of couldn't find a good way to justify siding with Edelgard to the player beyond liking her as a character and the only way the could sort of doing it was by reducing Rhea to near Duma levels of insane, but even then while I won't condone her actions I can understand why she lost it, from her perspective she just saw someone she allowed into her home, break into the burial site of her dead siblings with the intention of desecrating them and robbing their graves and then watched what is, from her sad, broken perspective, her own mother choose to side with the person trying to take all she has left of her family away from her, I too would lose it under those circumstances. And then there's Edelgard not even being very smart, like, does she really believe her troops would hear "the church has nukes" and not either, question why they only dropped the one on the one location and why only now or just....lose all morale??? And then there's the battle at the Tailtean plains and the good old conversation between Dimitri and Edelgard, "must you continue to conquer?continue to kill?!" "Must you continue to re-conquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" Like.....it's like even she realises she has no moral high ground over him and is just trying some desperate redirection to not be the villain she knows she is. And also the entire "king of delusion" scene where Dimitri, in his final moments, swears to avenge everyone who died for her, who she killed, to avenge all his fallen friends and family who died because of her and her ambitions and she basically just calls him a nut job.

Like??? Did IS just....give up on trying to make Edelgard look good and just hope that off her fucking rocker Rhea and Edelgards tragic backstory would cover that up???

[diaphin93]

Hi, I hope its okay when I reply with my own perspectives? As we already were able to keep things somewhat civilized?

First off I would say, its very obvious looking at the state of discourse that you're not the only one (but you at least don't make entire posts trying to frame Edelgard as some sexual seductress, lol. That person exists!), but I think its also more of a you issue. Not in that you do something wrong, but that Edelgard and her route are simply not for you, because as is clear with the large popularilty Edelgard enjoys, thats not the experience all people have with Crimson Flower. In the end, its a game about different perspectives and values and chosing your side when those ultimately come to a clash. It would be boring if this doesn't spark discourse and fundamentally different perspectives of what is right and whats wrong. For all of its flaws, the fact that 3 Houses sparks this amount of Discourse even years after its release is a testament to what it does right.

For example my perspective in all of this, when I played the game on Crimson Flower Route first, was that I came to broadly agree with Edelgards point of view during Part 1. She shares alot of her perspectives during it and as I saw early on, how the entire social structure of Fodlan is heavily inspired by the three estates of the realm feudal structure of medieval europe, I was naturally inclined to by sympathetic towards her viewpoints, as I will usually prefer to side against feudalism in a narrative that allows and encourages me to do so. I got bad vibes from Rhea from the start and tended to believe Jeralt, who as the father of my character I was prone to believe, in not trusting her, especially since very early on, we see more of the oppressive and tyranical nature of the church and the evils of the crest system. In my personal first playthrough, I came to suspect that the Flame Emperor is more nuanced than it appears at first, while Rhea became more and more creepy after Sothis awakening, so when it came to the holy tomb, I did a leap of faith and trusted in Edelgard, as I agreed that the church must be destroyed.

For me, the reactions towards Rheas turn in Crimson Flower feel very similar to the outrage people expressed in the recent Elden Ring DLC, when a certain character as was expected didn't turn out to be as noble as they would have assumed, because by that point they were set in their headcanons of him being a benevolent and purely good figure. Rhea in Crimson Flower is consistent. She is consistent with the bloodthirsty side of hers we saw during the games first cutscene and her cruel and vengeful attitude whenever somebody challenges her during White Clouds. Silver Snow is textually not a validation of Rhea as we saw her in part 1, what it does is offering a potential redemption for her under the condition that Byleth forms an especially strong bond with her. She herself admits her wrongdoings and expresses guilt in the following S-Support. What Crimson Flower shows is that at this stage of the story, Rheas love and adoration for Byleth is conditional, as not long before she literally tried to mind erase them to revive Sothis in full, and that Rhea is prone to immediately devalueing and dehumanizing them if they disobey her. After all, at this point Byleth hasn't even taken arms against Rhea, they are just standing against outright killing their student. I would also say that for me personally, Rheas entire demeanor during part 1 comes off heavily like grooming and love bombing, which is why I personally tend to dislike her.

When it comes to Arianrhod, I personally tond like this part of the story. For me it is one of the flaws in it, as it is left without any lasting consequences, and feels very much like the writers just forcefully inserting it into it to remind us of TWSITD still being there and inform Crimson Flower players of the Javelines of light. What I will say is, that it is not the only such forced inclusion just for the sake of it. I can see the rationale of Edelgard though. Edelgard took a gamble with killing Cornelia in Arianrhod and was punished by it for Thales and reacting to it prematurely would them losing momentum and the Kingdom successfully launching a counter offensive, as well as further interventions by TWSITD if she openly revolts against them now, so she has to lure Thales for the moment into a false sense of security, that she falls back in line again. I don't like it, but I will also say that if thats the dealbreaker, then the route probably wasn't for one to begin with.

When it comes to Dimitri and Edelgard, the whole 'must you continue to kill' exchange is quite a mistranslation compared to the original text, where Edelgards point is to ask him if he will be satisfied, once he takes back, tramples back. This changes the entire context of the exchange honestly:

Though I will also say, I don't have personal issues with this exchange myself, as, what most people leave out, its followed by Edelgard also expressing her determination that she will not stop and do everything necessary to creat a new future for Fodlan. Initially I also took the line as Edelgard being sassy which I'm like...okay with? I'm a feminist, I like it when the queer female lead doesn't owes your typical male protagonist turned villain respect and in crimson Flower, Dimitri himself dragged his Kingdom into war by siding with the church and for the sake of Dimitris delusional desire for vengeance. Which is, again, delusional. Dimitri rants and blames Edelgard for things she had no control over and which she didn't do. He is completely obsessive over her and she has the right to be apalled by him. Again, as a feminist, I like that. She doesn't owe a guy who obsessed over her and wants to brutally murder her any respect, he himself is the one who chose to throw away any semblance of dignity he had.

I would also say that other people will feel as you do towards Rhea and Dimitri. With Rhea I already laid it out why I don't get why people love her so much and consider her heroic and good. With Dimitri, I was initially kinda excited to play Blue Lions after CF. Dimitri was, ultimately, a cool villain in my opinion, I liked his Post Timeskip Design more than his Pre-Timeskip one and I wanted to see where his route leads into and whats his perspective is. I ended up not liking it. Like, I played it before I went into all this discourse with high hopes and I just ended up not liking it or him. He seems very flat to me, with people conflating a character focussed story and a character going through a a redemption arc with deep storytelling, when for me it just seemed comical how he jumps in personality, especially when he just immediately snaps from somebody who sadistically glees like he's some dark isekai self-insert about torturing a man and then immediately jumps into being the enlightened and redeemed savior king. I didn't like how afterwards there were zero consequences for his actions. The parley also didn't sold me, it seemed for me like him engaging in ad hominems and framing him as morally superior because he got people who carry him, it had some very unfortunate implications of how abusers irl might act. Ultimately, I also found his whole position rather pessimistic and miserable, that humans can't rise above themselves when they are given the opportunity and that they should be kept reliant because its safe. Thats how he came off to me. Many of his scenes also come off to me like trauma dumping and him being somewhat self-centered, only relating to others by making them fit into his personal perspective.

If thats not your experience, I will not argue that. If you love him and consider him a great and touching character, all the more power to you. Same with Rhea. This wasn't meant to convince you of my perspective, but to lay it out to show you, how I experiences the game and its characters in a fundamentally different way than you did. I personally would love it more, if I totally stoked by Azure Moon, I would love it if I had ended up loving and cherishing every single route equally, I paid money for and invested time into that game after all. But thats not the case and for me personally, Edelgard just resonated the most and I feel similarily to Rhea and Dimitri as you do towards Edelgard.

[monstierider]

Ya know what, fair enough. I can understand each of these points and I do respect them. The Fodlan games were designed pretty much to start debate and discourse, for better or for worse, and ultimately that's what it has done here. I will admit that I.....really don't like Rhea, like, at all, but I just, can't accept Edelgard either, not only because of my own personal views aligning more with Dimitri, someone who wants to take the safer, more stable method towards change, very likely due to how Faerghus will almost certainly react HORRIBLY to rapid change, "old stubborn country" and all that, but also due to, please correct me if I'm wrong here, I would love to be wrong on this, Edelgard knowing that the heroes relics are made of the bones and hearts of the nabateans and believing that to be perfectly fine because "it gives more power to humanity, not something that isn't human", please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong here, because after so many fire emblem games where we are consistently shown the human side of dragons, through characters like Tiki and Mryh, and even in three houses and hopes with Seteth and Flayn, the idea of a character knowing about people genociding a widely peaceful, purely reactionary, race and making their bodies into monster hunter weapons and thinking that's okay because they aren't human just....really screws with me, even if the rest of their ideals are noble, that sort of line of thinking just....leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

[diaphin93]

Thanks that you can respect that and I'm glad that I didn't came off too pushy. I personally can respect your stance as well and I ultimately think that the game is made for each person to have their own perspective on what is the right route. I myself often went hard into argueing for CF being the best in the past, but that also was more of a reaction to just so many people spreading their HC's of how CF's ending will lead to collapse as fact. The devs deliberately didn't include a revalation-esque route after all, because they didn't want to have a true route

But on Edelgard and her attitudes towards Dragons, that a community spread misconception to frame her as some kind of racist and fascist, predominantly by the kinds of people who, in a game where people of color exist and are opressed, make pale-skinned dragon gods their chosen racial allegory. I could be wrong but please correct me, but to my knowledge Edelgard never learns that the Heroes Relics are made out of Dragons. I'm not even sure if Silver Snow Byleth does learn that, it could be actually just Claude. What she knows is that the heroes relics are manmade and the history the church propagates, that Nemesis became corrupted and evil later on, was a lie propagated by the church. Though Edelgards also doesn't seem to care much about Heroes Relics outside of their immediate use and the fact, that the church is controlling them.

Edelgard and Hubert hold negative views on the Nabatheans as inhuman, but that is predominantly out of their limited perspective, where they only know them as immortals who hide among humans to control them and falsify history. Though they also don't seem to see them as a race and more as a divine family of self-appointed gods, which is the role the Nabatheans did play in the past. I think here its kinda messy because outside of the few nabateans alive, there aren't really any other intelligent non-human races and humans don't know anything about Nabateans outside of their myths about the children of the goddess. And ultimately, what they hold against the Nabatheans is their deception and their misrule over humanity. And Rhea does express very supremacist attitudes against humans and considers themselves to be unfit to govern themselves without her guidance, despite herself being as flawed as humans and misusing her power the same they do, with Seteth being an active accomplice.

Ultimately, she doesn't even want to kill the Nabateans, she just wants their control over humanity to end. She expresses herself very harshely with terms like obliterate and striking her down, which I think are supposed to be taken as her exaggerating when talking about her ideals, but otherwise she does express a preference to sparing Rhea. She does give Rhea a chance to surrender before Fhirdiad and even before that shows a genuine interest in capturing instead of killing her.

So she prefers stripping Rhea of power and keep her away from politics and is neutral towards turning the church into an imperial institution, which is to say, a state institution, while actively disliking the idea of killing her if she surrenders. This is consistent with the fact that she does keep Rhea as a prisoner over the 5 years, where Seteth does confirm after finding her that she is left unharmed

Hopes confirms this notion, as during Edelgards support with Claude, she treats capturing instead of killing Rhea as the natural course of action and even questions Claude, if it isn't enough to subdue her enemy and remove her from power. Which is consistent with Edelgard usually giving her enemies a chance to surrender after the battle, as seen in her conquest of the Alliance, which is highly unusual compared to other Lords where routing missions and giving their enemies no quarter is the usual outcome. In VW and SS, Count Bergliez has to sacrifice himself for his soldiers to be spared. And here is how Seteth reacts to the notion of not killing Edelgard.

So yeah. Edelgard does not want to kill the Nabateans, she just views them negatively due to her limited knowledge of them and perceiving them through Rheas actions at the expense of humanity. 3H in general goes a different way of humanizing the Dragons, by emphasizing their human flaws. It subverts the notion, that immortal divine beings are better, wiser or more intelligent than humans.

Personally, I kinda dislike the fact that Flayn doesn't stick along or at least is re-recruitable in Crimson Flower, really. Its one of the flaws of the game I see, especially since I've heard that there are datamines that hint at Crimson Flower Flayn being a consideration at one point. I care less so about Seteth because I like him less, but I also see more of a case where the game may benefit from him not being recruitable, but in Flayns case I feel like it strips Crimson Flower, but also Flayn, of possibilities. I would have liked Edelgard and Hubert to react of the notion of a child of the goddess siding with their ideals, but also how Flayn could develope if she was faced with Rheas deceptions.

More importantly though, I think that Flayn being permanently lost in Crimson Flower kind of devalues her relationship with Byleth and the Black Eagles class. It makes it conditional. We have many students who are pushed into a similar position, where they are are willing to fight against their families, former friends and country for the sake of Byleth and their bonds to the class they joined. In Crimson Flower, Anette and Felix will fight their own fathers. Hell, Caspar basically just stands by and watches as Dimitri tortures his uncle. So generally, I think it was just an all around bad move to make her lost for CF. Especially since I think that one of the interesting aspects of CF for some characters is them emancipating themselves of the control their parents have over their lives. With Seteth being a well meaning and loving but also overbearing father, I think the story possibility of Flayn chosing another side than him and taking a more independent role for herself would have been something worthwile.

[monstierider]

Honestly, I always viewed Flayn and Seteth being unable to be recruited in crimson flower as them being unwilling to strike down one of the only other Nabateans still alive, especially considering the only other living Nabateans I'm aware of are the windcaller, who is a full on recluse who hates humanity, and...I can't remember his name, but the turtle who just lives at the bottom of a river and only comes up to mess with humans. Rhea's really all they have left, even if they don't agree with her, Flayn less so, but Seteth actually shows a great amount of disdain for Rheas methods, it's just that she's too stubborn and set in her ways to listen to him, he only goes along with it because, well, he's trying to look out for Flayn' safety and views Rheas methods as the only way to make sure she's safe, even if he doesn't like them.

To be honest though, I've always viewed the Fodlan games not as "country versus country", but "Edelgard versus Rhea" because....well, it all starts due to their clashing ambitions, ambitions that can't coexist not because their too different, but because they're so similar. Edelgard wants a world for humanity, but is unwilling to truly learn more about those her world would cast out or to share the burden with others, whereas Rhea wants a world for all people, but has grown far too controlling out of fear of another Those who slither in the dark or Nemesis showing up and is so dead set in her idea that only Sothis can truly guide Fodlan she's sacrificed her own morals and sanity for it, because in truth she's desperate to have someone to tell her she did the right thing even when a cursory glance shows that she didn't, despite the good things she did accomplish.

[diaphin93]

I get that view, though I think it is quite a missed opportunity. I feel like with Seteth its fine that he's los for Crimson Flower, though like I said, I think with Flayn it kind of is a missed opportunity for both sides to get more input of the others perspective and for Flayn to have a route that is more about her emancipation from Seteth. With which I don't want to say that he's a bad or abusive father, quite the opposite, but he is quite clearly an overbearing father who shelters Flayn from the world. Though that could be just me. I generally feel like the games kind of refuse to force Flayn and Seteth into a position, where they have to question their own role in the system and towards humans much.

I would also agree with the notion that at its core its really Edelgard vs Rhea, but I think it also plays into the weakness of 3 Houses, that it doesn't really do much to make the ambitions and goals of Dimitri and Claude stand out very much. But I will disagree with your notion on what both want and think your personal bias talks again, because Edelgard very much cares about those who are left out by the current system. She is the one who feels empathy towards Miklan, who expresses care about those who are left out or wronged by the system and cares about creating a place for everyone in her new world, as seen for example in her Linhardt support.

Rhea is the one who refuses to truly learn about humanity and to put trust in others. She does regularily express alienation from others and her incapability of connecting with those around her. The issue with Rhea is, that she does not respect humans and looks down to them, having a very supremacist and paternalistic outlook on them as being reliant on her rule.

The issue is, that Rhea had a thousand years to solve the issues in Fodlan. She has the means to do it, she has the power. She just doesn't wants to, because she prefers the control and illusio nof peace she created for herself. She does uphold the crest system and hides away those who are harmed and cast out by it into the Abyss, which is basically just an underground ghetto.

Like, ultimately she just does nothing to make things better for anyone? When the tragedy of Duscur happened, she didn't do anything despite showing with her scapegoating and executing Christophe for it. When Loog started a TWSITD backed up Revolt against the Empire, something the church at least suspected looking at the Abyss library, she ended up rewarding him by splitting up the Empire and creating the church as her loyal vassal. She did nothing in turn to support Leicester when they revolted against the Empire, nor when they were annexed by the Kingdom. We know that she actively suppresses technological advancements, especially those that could hurt the authority of the church or threaten the nobility system. Hopes has even very strong indications that Rhea withheld aggracultural knowledge from the Kingdom until the point it has to harbor her and she suddenly drops it, something Shez can be suspicious of and that I will go further into. Rhea had every opportunity and all the means in the world to creat a better world, she just does not want to do that. She wants to revive Sothis against her wills, so that she can rule over humanity and fix things.

Thats the big issue of Rhea. She does inheritly not view humans as her equals, but she also fails to be better than them. This is actually even further hammered home by her similarities to Thales, who represents humanities worst and most evil aspects, to the point where hopes frames them as equals and foils, the two main villains of 3 Hopes. And I think thats what makes her interesting.

[monstierider]

I will admit, I was unaware of those Abyss dialogues, thank you for bringing them up. In regards to Loogs rebellion I always saw Rhea legitimising it as a way to avoid another Nemesis situation, especially since, if I remember correct, Nemesis and his ten elites were from Northern Fodlan and most of their relics were left there, so I always saw her vassalising Faerghus as more a desperation play. And in regards to her mistrust of humanity, I mean, she's in the wrong for it, but I understand why she has it, the genocide of your entire species isn't going to be something that'll be easy to forgive, no matter how old you get. Also, regarding my point about Edelgard "not caring about those her ambitions leave behind" I was more so referring to the people her actions will just make bitter, since, no matter how hard she tries, the annexation of a country and destruction of its culture, since we know Edelgard is actively seeking an imperial take over, even if for genuinely well meaning reasons, will breed resentment no matter what. That resentment can be mitigated, but it can't be avoided entirely. Life getting better for the common folk will only do so much to make up for the war she started and the complete and utter destruction of people's lives as they knew it.

Actually, regarding Thales, I hope you don't mind me going on a short tangent, but after hopes came out and showed us Epimenides I actually began to view the Agarthans a little differently, not as in, I began seeing them as if they were good people, but rather I saw them as being reflections of the one who holds their reigns. Epimenides after all is pretty much the exact opposite of Thales within Agartha, Thales doesn't give a damn about his subordinates and will happily leave them to die just to save his own skin, Epimenides actively risks his own life to save Nemesis, who he doesn't even like. Thales wouldn't even hesitate to rob someone of their free will, which is not a good thing for Edelgard if Azure gleam is anything to go off of, but Epimenides actively shows remorse for taking Arvals and Shez's bodies and wills from them, and even the game even states that his....core, whatever that means, is to be inherited, not implanted, like it probably is for the other Agarthans, but instead passed down, showing he likely despises such things, hell, he even states in the Arval/Epimenides paralouge in hopes "I know Thales has his methods, but they don't sit right with me". I also find it really interesting that Epimenides, going off his paralouge, is much more of an upfront fighter then an in the shadows schemer, to the point of having fought the imperial army, Seteth/Cichol, Flayn/Cethleann and Rhea/Seiros to a stand still almost entirely on his own, meanwhile Thales....gets smacked around by literally everyone at least once. We also have the fact that Epimenides doesn't seem to hate non-Agarthans like....literally every other named Agarthan, but by his own admission, pities them.

What was the point of this tangent again?.....oh, right, Epimenides was basically the moral backbone of Agartha and once he died it took after Thales instead.

Please feel free to ignore that, that's just me ranting and is entirely unrelated to the main point of this debate.