Alright, because I’m constantly thinking about her and why not! Here’s part one in a series about Rhea and her view of her identity and selfhood: focusing on her name and aliases throughout the years.
spoilers for the entirety of three houses below :)
As a preview part two and three will be on her role as a mother and then her role as a child in the story and psychologically. Both will probably be quite a bit longer than this one as here I’m covering stuff I’ve mostly talked about before, but good to have it in one place with citations, so let’s go!
An interesting tendency I’ve seen in fandom is to place Rhea’s role as Rhea, herself, the archbishop and Rhea as Seiros, the warrior and avenger, as diametrically opposed to one another. This makes a lot of sense as Crimson Flower - the one route where Rhea literally has any agency at all in part two of the game - itself uses this in both story and gameplay. Here when we meet Rhea on the battlefield at Taltean she is in the unique “Saint” class and her dialogue prior to being fought makes it quite clear that she has “become Seiros”.
Field of Revenge
Church soldier: Lady Rhea….
Rhea: Call me Seiros now.
Rhea: I am no longer the archbishop, but rather a warrior.
(later on in the final map Catherine also ends up correcting her speech and referring to her as “Lady Seiros”)
But hm. I wonder what difference in the CF route split led her to take on this persona? Could it have something to do with the fact she has once again come face to face with a human using Agarthan technology to infiltrate / sack her family’s tomb in aid of another who’s literally wielding her mom aka god as a weapon of war?
The one thing fandom overlooks is that from the few scant sources we have in canon Seiros is just as much a falsified identity as the current Rhea is, if not more so. You can see in the official FE3h character design breakdown that there is a note pointing to Seiros’s hair that has been translated as “her hair is dyed, but only the tips show another color” (source post for that here).
It is difficult to see in book scans available but thankfully her Fire Emblem Heroes art makes it even clearer that the light blond we see on Seiros isn’t her true coloring. Compare to the in game Saint model.
(slightly related: back when FEH seiros came out there was some fan pondering on whether nabatean hair darkens as the person gets older and i just think that’s really neat)
All of the references to her in The History of Fódlan and other church doctrine describe her as a saint and messenger of the goddess, but never otherworldly or inhuman. This combined with Rhea’s claim in VW that she “called herself Seiros” seems to make it clear that this was a role she took on after the Red Canyon Massacre had happened, most likely to hide her origin as the one survivor there and protect the other remaining Nabateans of the land from further scrutiny.
I actually think its quite creative that fandom has decided to use Seiros as shorthand for Rhea before she started playing at human, but I also think it is very haunting and deliberate that we do not know Rhea’s real name. Most likely not even Seteth or his brothers know it seeing as Rhea being the one surviving Nabatean from Zanado must mean they all met some time after the Red Canyon Massacre took place and most likely right around when Rhea became Seiros.
The only person who could possibly know Rhea’s true name is Sothis, and I think that’s important. I also think it is important to note that everything we know of the Seiros identity was created due to the trauma of Zanado’s destruction as it is pertinent to understanding why she falls back on it when she interprets events as repeating in Crimson Flower.
[set not long after sigurd and arvis’s confrontation. toa adjacent but non-canon drabble.]
Magic not of Fodlan held a different aftertaste to it, and even visiting the cathedral days after the much discussed skirmish between a Judgralian mage and one of the Seiros knights Rhea can still taste it in the air mixed with the burning of incense.
The matter has been dealt with and punishments dealt but still Rhea stands where each man stared the other down as if to gain some insight into the events.
Despite her sympathy for Deirdre she does not care as much as a holy woman should, perhaps. She felt no obligation to help any of the players involved wash themselves clean of their sins but she thinks of time and obligations and the strange rumors in Abyss of the Professor who looks so like their fiery haired dark mage. But surely, they say, he and his wife are too young, too in love to have birthed such a boy as that (still consider the family history).
She cares neither for the truth of such rumors but it is the mention of warped time and misbefitting youth that has her stand face to face as if in conversation with the statues of her brothers who have long since abandoned her.
Macuil, who’s left handed sword could melt to the bone of the unworthy wielder and who’s right could knit the flesh back together again; and Indech, he of the Inexhaustible who fashioned new arrows from the air itself and who’s strikes flew faster than the wind.
Such abilities were paltry in comparison to the one who’s heart pulsed in time to the core of the earth and who’s divine will split timelines and built new realities.
“Mother?”
Rhea walks back to the center of the cathedral, breathing in the acrid scent of Arvis’s left over magic and the fear built into the stones here (Sigurd’s? Her own? It mattered little); and for a moment, looking up at the ceiling she almost expects an answer.
But miracles do not happen for Rhea. They have all dried up since him, but still she believes, still she knows her mother is here and listens.
“Was this your doing? I do not mean to overstep, but truly, do you still care for children such as these? Those not of your flesh and blood, those who would carve into it for a fraction of - ”
Rhea’s breathing has become haggard and she puts a hand to her chest to calm the burning there. No, the sins of these children in particular are nothing in comparison to those of the slithering, creeping monsters that still pour forth from the bowels of Fodlan like the insipid parasites they are.
This altercation had been a mistake, an unlikely one granted but nothing she and the others had not accounted for when the Officer’s Academy had been open to foreign lands.
“No, forgive me,” Rhea says, bowing her head, “if anything I am sure it is your power still slumbering within that vessel and Sitri’s influence there. She cared for everyone within these walls whether they deserved it or not and that child.... they are so like their mother.”
Rhea may not have the capacity to love like that but she could still care for, still oversee all of those in her safe keeping. Yes. She would do that.
“Please, continue to let us all at Garreg Mach keep you as refuge, great goddess. If you see fit to grant our new visitors your blessings I shall not intervene. I will protect them all, this time. I swear it.”
Working on headcanons page and Sitri started to take over so she gets her own post! In a different format too so I can address the many thoughts I have *laughs*
So canon does not give us much information about Sitri besides her being Byleth’s mother but what we know is:
She was the twelfth creation of Rhea’s in one of many attempts to bring Sothis’ soul back into a material form using the Crest of Flames crest stone.
She was born frail but with a soul of her own and lived for twenty or so years as a nun at Garreg Mach (she was born in 1139 according to her gravestone).
She fell in love with Jeralt during his time in the Knights of Seiros and twenty one years before the games events gave birth to Byleth and died during the process
I think a few things are important here. Firstly, that Rhea lies in the game. She lies a lot. But her lies are usually well scripted in the fashion of the Seiros scriptures. When it comes to emotional topics like her mother/the goddess and Byleth’s eventual awakening she actually lets slip an excessive amount.
“Just as the goddess blessed you with her own power... I, too, received her divine protection. Long, long ago. Though different, our fates are entwined.”
- A support dialogue (seiros who)
So when she says this to Aelfric when she asks him to stop in his attempt to bring Sitri back to life yeah she is probably just saying stuff as his immediate rebuttal implies.
But I find it harder to believe she pulled all of this out of nowhere as neither in the Japanese or English does it sound rehearsed (and honestly she probably wasnt going to tell the player at all but u know kinda had to in order to own up to stuff #smh)
“Sitri looked upon me as though I was her mother, and I wished for her to have a bright future... I would not have her buried in the cold, dark soil. Prior to her funeral, I arranged for a fake burial. Afterward, I brought her body to Abyss, where I would sometimes visit her.”
In fact, Rhea caring for Sitri as a daughter seems congruent across both the DLC and Silver Snow. Aelfric says that Sitri’s body was deep in the caverns of Abyss and that it was kept alone. If putting bodies in dragon cryogenesis was a thing Rhea did for all of her past vessels I don’t see why all twelve of them wouldn’t have been there.
Rhea speaking to Byleth in SS calls the vessels that came before them “failures”, a word that carries a lot of weight if you’ve played CF and I think that’s probably true so far as her other attempts go. She considered her other creations as failures when they were unable to revive the goddess’s soul and so got rid of them but Sitri was different, special to the point Rhea still wanted to see her even after her death.
We know from the Crimson Flower route that the one thing to make Rhea emotional and completely lose her head is the loss of her loved ones whether from more permanent causes or simply what she sees as abandonment. Her only true family left are Seteth and Flayn and it is only when they leave her that we get to see how much that means. She’s held herself above them all this time, so the fact Rhea admits that Sitri is a vulnerability of hers makes me think it is the truth.
Another hint as to Rhea considering Sitri special is this: while she may not have ever left the monastery Sitri was still walking around with the Crest of Flames in her fragile body for a decade. That certainly isn’t a very long time in Rhea’s perspective but based on how fiercely protective she is of her mother and her sheer desperation for Sothis to return there really isn’t a good reason for Rhea to have let Sitri live if she hadn’t become so attached.
She could have been working hard on the thirteenth vessel or trying something else with the Crest! But she didn’t because she knew that would mean losing Sitri which brings me to my final (and honestly most interesting re: viewing the game) point:
Byleth was the result of Sitri and Jeralt’s choices and had nothing to do with Rhea until Sitri asked her to help revive the baby. In fact, it isn’t hard to read between the lines and see Rhea really did not want to take the crest out of Sitri but did so under emotional duress.
There is a lot that can be said about how Rhea treats Byleth as an object, but learning that she really never wanted Byleth to live or even exist at all really puts it into perspective. Rhea says that Sitri “loved like a person” and in the Japanese implies that she, Rhea, learned to love her in the same way. Sitri though born as an empty shell became a fully formed individual and despite her intentions Rhea learned to love her for it.
And then she insisted on having Byleth who was just another empty shell, but this time an empty shell who took Sitri from her.
Rhea knows mcuh of design but she is never logical about herself and her own emotions. It’s one of the reasons I find her so interesting, because she wishes for control so fervently but cannot even keep herself in check. The cycle of trying to bring her mother back and finding only despair was halted when Sitri came into the world and brought joy instead. And then Byleth happened and they took Sitri away from her and then of course Jeralt ran off with Byleth and the only thing left that really mattered to Rhea: the Crest of Flames.
So yeah. As illogical as it may be I do think Rhea resents Byleth for their mother’s death and that she distanced herself from the child, well, at least until the Crest of Flames awakened within them.
I don’t plan on rping this without permission from any Byleth I interact with, of course, but I wanted to express that if Sitri comes up in any of Rhea’s posts she is looking at her as a mother who lost a daughter. I really like this for her, because it does not excuse Rhea’s previous experimentations and creating of life in eleven other literal people just to snuff it out but instead makes it even more horrifying in a way. Sitri is the only one of those Rhea considered her true child, after all.
(Rhea’s thoughts on motherhood would take another post entirely...)
19. the sun : in general, how optimistic is your muse ? does your muse appreciate the small things in life ?
How optimistic is your muse? Does your muse appreciate the small things in life?
Rhea is in my opinion in the interesting position of being a highly determined and stubborn individual who is staunch in her ideals but who lacks genuine optimism. Her twin driving motivations of I cannot let the Red Canyon happen again and I will undo what Nemesis has done are the cornerstones of not just her own being but her entire worldview.
The world isn’t something to be experienced for her, it is merely a stepping stone toward what the world should and will look like. That probably affected her decision to create a monastic order in the first place and come up with something other than “worldly cares” because she truly does not see the point in creating connections in a world she’s only ever seen as transient and inherently duplicitous in nature.
Rhea keeps Fodlan in stasis and is in a kind of stasis herself in her time as an archbishop.
But while she may be an ancient being she’s also living and breathing and interacting every day so I do think she genuinely has likes and dislikes though she will deny it. In general she prefers animals to humans and I am writing a plethora of headcanons about the dogs and cats of Garreg Mach (laughs) because while she mostly lets them stay to themselves she has named every one of them. Just long lived archbishop things. :^)
I think the few activities similar to animal watching that she actually enjoys are ones she deems “safe” i.e. not probable to stir up powerful emotions or attachments. I like to think one of the reasons she treats Byleth in-game as a tool is because she grew to truly love Sitri, and felt guilty for that (for having a child when she was never a good one herself), so when Sitri died she just. Shut that empathetic part of herself away. I think it’s happened multiple times throughout the ages as she also seems to still feel something for Wilhelm despite all the time between them.
tldr; no, she is not an optimistic person but she is determined to a fault. The closest to optimism she has is her ardent belief that by bringing the goddess to Fodlan she really will be creating something better for everyone, not just her (though it of course a deeply selfish wish at the same time)
