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Absolute emperor, chieftain king, merchant prince: the three different Fódlans and why the lords (and their fans) talk past each other

Follow up from the previous essay on Fódlan's (lack of) Overton window, let's examine why the lords of 3H talk past each other. And no I don't mean that in terms of their individual personalities, frankly that stuff barely matters. I'm talking about their political positions, and more specifically, the political structures and logic of their countries.

What are the Adrestian Empire, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance? And why can't they "just talk it out?"

And apparently I didn't make it clear enough in my previous essay, but the reason why I don't bring up the whole Agarthan/Nabatean war all that much is because this essay series is about how most everything post-Nemesis (aka known human history to the in-universe humans of IY 1180) can be explained with human level incentives and politics.

The cosmic drama explains specific and unusual (both in-universe to places outside of Fódlan and out of universe because 3H is a fantasy media) material conditions and circumstances like Crests and Relics, sure, but it does not warp humans into acting in ways that would otherwise be utterly unimaginable. It enables and accelerates existing tendencies and incentives but this is not a "ohhhh those poor Fódlanis are just victims caught up in the big dragon people/mole people war." We are assuming that humans (and human-like dragons) have human(-like) psychology and incentives. Humans are not just collaterals here they are actors. That's what we are assuming because otherwise it's boring.

We are also not going to debate the personalities and traumas of the lords and Rhea. That is not what this is about either. Because any imperial/royal/ducal/papal shaped being in their place would have similar political and structural incentives. Maybe the specifics would defer maybe they would be less (or more) competent but they are still dealing with the same institutions in the same situations. This isn't mutually exclusive with the above of "humans as actors," it's a part of it. We are not treating the lords and Rhea as people who exist in a vacuum we are treating them as (one of the many) in-universe historical and political actors existing in a specific in-universe historical and political context.

Anyway you can probably guess from the title, but it's because their political structures and incentives and social contracts are very different. Maybe on the surface it seems like they're all "Crests = blessings of goddess and believes in Church of Seiros that tells them that," and that's certainly the idea the Church wanted to push so that they'd get along, but that clearly didn't work, and they are indeed pretty damn different.

Or at least, that's my conclusion from extrapolation based on canon + comparisons with real history. Maybe that's not what the writers intended, but I think it makes a lot more sense politically if you see it this way, so here's my take on what the three countries are.

First, the Empire. Which, within the Fódlani context, isn't just an empire but The Empire™. They're like (the popular image of) Rome: the defining civilization, believers of The Religion™ (this one is post-Christianization Rome), the one whose standards and structures everyone else adopts and follows.

They are mighty and won against Nemesis and the Ten Elites, but it's not just because they were strong, oh no, that's how those barbarians think. The Empire won because they were righteous, because Saint Seiros chose them and the goddess blessed them. They're not only militarily and administratively superior, but also the morally and religiously legitimate sole sovereign of Fódlan. This is the Adrestian Empire's self image.

Fast forward about a thousand years later. And Adrestia is not the sole sovereign of Fódlan.

They're not even the one closest to the Church which was supposed to be their twin and bestie who told them they were legitimate. Their territory is still the largest on the continent, but considering that they used to rule over almost all of it rather than just half, yeah seeing Kingdom and Alliance as independent entities probably hurt their egos, and even within their current territory who knows which ones the Agarthans have compromised.

The emperor exists, but as of 1180 he's a puppet with no power while the nobles do whatever. The nobles haven't outright broken away into smaller states, because the form of the empire, of being an imperial noble, is what gives them that prestige they love; but the function, the things that made Adrestia actually formidable once upon a time, is on the verge of croaking.

Now, what was it that made Adrestia formidable?

Probably everything Nemesis and the Ten Elites didn't provide for their people.

Organizing and training armies so that the death of one commander didn't make everything fall apart. Using weapons that didn't rely soley on having the right Crest for power (A rank Sacred Weapons vs E rank Relics). Infrastructure in cities that made it pleasant to live in (Seiros helping with canals and waterways etc). Leaders who care about people (Wilhelm, etc). Safety nets and charity for weaker members of society. A belief and an ideal to fight for beyond immediate survival that actually looked possible, due to the previous factors.

Adrestia was probably the first true institutional government within Fódlan, and you can see hints of it in their government office titles. They have ministers, which imply ministries, and although they're traditionally tied to specific houses, they can technically exist independent of them. Different people can take the seat and the institution can keep going, which was probably revolutionary in a world where the biggest political force was previously a bunch of personalist kratocratic warlords. That's a genuine achievement and improvement.

Problem is, that was over a thousand years ago. Adrestia of 1180 would not be able to build those institutions on their own.

First they grew complacent from success, then when it was revealed just how weak they grew from the Kingdom and Alliance breaking off, they presumably began chasing after the symbols of success/divine favor (Crests) rather than the substance. Again this is insane because most Adrestian noble houses have Saints' Crests, they do not have Relics, having a Crest is not a requirement for using a handheld nuke like in the other countries, but they're doing it anyway for the love of the status game. And that's a game the Agarthans are great at encouraging for their own ends, but even if it wasn't the mole people you can bet that Adrestia would still have been in a pretty sad state around this point. It's the classic imperial decline.

The ruling class is malicious, lobotomized, or both. The only reason why the system continues to exist is because the nobles are parasites who want the prestige of being associated with its hollow shell without contributing anything substantial back into it. Yeah it's bleak.

So how does one fix it? Specifically, how do you fix this as the heir of a throne that holds no real power.

War, of course. Specifically, a war of imperial revival and conquest. Because it can justify almost anything you want to do internally.

"Why is the emperor centralizing all the power to herself?!" For the war dumbass she can't conquer Fódlan under the Adrestian banner if she doesn't have power to command the troops. "Why are all the nobles being purged?! Why is everything being restructured?!" Because they're incompetent and Adrestia can't conquer with incompetent elites. Do you want Adrestia to be glorious and majestic or not?? Get with the program.

"Wait but the Church—" shhh Church of Seiros began in Enbarr, not Garreg Mach. We're reviving the Southern Church, that's the real OG Church, not those Central frauds who went and legitimized the Faerghan assholes. Also the emperor said that the Crest based hereditary nobility is bad or something? But you don't even need to go that far to support this okay, the optics of this conquest sounds pretty sweet for any imperial political actor who's not a dumbass.

So Empire = late stage hollowed out bureaucratic empire aiming for a glorious revival through a centralizing overhaul both internally (reform) and externally (conquest, which from their POV would still be re-centralizing the rogue regions).

Now, the Kingdom. You know that joke about Holy Roman Empire not being holy, Roman, or an empire? I strongly suspect that the Kingdom is a bit like that. The people up there probably don't have a full grasp of Church's orthodox "holy" doctrine, the structure is probably closer to successful tribal confederation than a proper kingdom most people think of, and technically it seems that only the eastern half is known as Faerghus. (Western half is Mach.)

If it sounds like I'm suggesting that Kingdom is closer to the Nemesis-Ten Elites era structure than the Empire with its institutions, I am. Sure the Church and Empire must have tried to push them away from the pure kratocracy that it used to be, but culture is difficult to change, especially if the nature around them is that unforgiving and the Adrestian heartland where all that newfangled Church of Seiros came from is waaaay down south while the big strong chief (Loog, Blaiddyds, whoever) is right here and crushing skulls.

Also one interesting thing about Kingdom and religion is that aside from Mercedes (Adrestian) and Dedue (Duscurian), the Blue Lions students have neither strength or weakness in Faith. You'd expect them to have something when it's called the "Holy" Kingdom but they don't. I like to think this implies they just don't have a strong opinion either way because like yeah Church is important because they make the king look cool, whatever, our main loyalty is to the king, and then said king (Dimitri) also isn't religious. Meanwhile in Adrestia they have multiple characters who have opinions even if it's negative but the Faerghans are like (shrug). Even Catherine and Gilbert don't have any and they literally work at the Church. (Yuri does have strength in faith but he did have a special life trajectory with Aubin and all)

Imo these guys wouldn't have had to adopt the Church of Seiros as national religion or put "holy" in the name if the baseline was already religious orthodoxy, like in Adrestia. The Kingdom needs to signal at being religiously orthodox precisely because it's not, or at least, it wasn't at the time of its founding. And on average I don't think Faerghans (esp commoners) are completely irreligious, but I do think that Church of Seiros in the Kingdom is... syncretic in ways that would probably get them called heretic in the Adrestian heartland. Like they probably still do the old prayers to nature spirits but just swap in the saints' names. You get the gist.

Anyway, on the rule of strength thing: notice how the ruling family's Crest is the one that gives them super strength? Yeah. Still relies on king being the strongest one around, still relies a lot on personal or clan level blood oaths (Loog and Kyphon -> House Blaiddyd and House Fraldarius) rather than formal offices and ministries, still a martial culture that reveres strength (and honor, it seems like Kingdom is pretty textbook honor culture), they just call it chivalry now. It's a set of rules about how and when you are allowed to use violence.

Speaking of that, some of these guys didn't quite get the memo about state monopoly on violence, or like... the concept of a state at all. Look at how easily the western lords took money from outside forces (for Tragedy of Duscur, according to Hopes) and how easily they flip once the war breaks out? These guys don't have the concept of treason, because they are not loyal to the Faerghan state. What the fuck is a state? They're loyal to the strongest warlord who will help their clans settle scores against rival clans who slighted them. The religion stuff is something that you deploy mostly for hype moments and aura, and if you don't like the one at the store (Central Church) homemade (Western Church) is fine. The goddess is far up in the sky but a weapon is in your hands and the guy who dishonored your clan is right across the river/hill/etc. Rule of law? The only rule here is that you need to avenge dishonor by any means possible, get with the program.

So in this context, Lambert and Dimitri's projects are quite literally trying to make institutions, a government, a proper state that doesn't run soley on clan-level politics and the Blaiddyds being the strongest guys in the room. They are trying to turn it from a Kingdom (alleged) into Kingdom (real). That's also why they politically need the Church the most out of the three countries, they need an institution that tells people "here are reasons why the chieftain should rule outside of his ability to crush your skull in one hand you goddamn barbarians." They're trying to do the thing Adrestia did over a thousand years ago.

And it might be easy to think that the Faerghans are all very loyal to the Faerghan state(building project) because the named characters are, but this is a skewed sample; they're either already from the royalist eastern faction, and the few western ones are either an exception that proves the rule like Annette or a commoner like Ashe (who might have been adopted into Gaspard but whose personal interests aren't entrenched like the actual born and bred nobles would be). If you had one of the Hopes Western Lords or their kids (not adopted) be a full character with supports and stuff their political views would not sound like the Blue Lions'. They'd probably think committing genocide on Duscur was awesome and cool and based, for one.

And one important point is that the state-building reforms are probably pretty recent, again probably only kicked in during Lambert's rule. Cornelia being hired for infrastucture projects was during Lambert's rule, and I suspect that the Fhirdiad School of Sorcery was also built fairly recently. In the very least, Lambert's time is probably the fastest the centralization/state and institution buulding proceeded. Which explains why the most rabid reactionary Nemesis-brained assholes on the continent (western lords) killed him. I'll probably write a separate post including speculation on why the western lords are especially terrible, but tl;dr being defined by grievances/perceived slights (mainly from the east/royalists) + honor/blood feud culture = establishing rule of law that says your personal grievances are not good reasons to kill people is an existential threat.

So Kingdom = warlord confederacy trying to become a proper unified state that desperately needs a justification for its existence beyond the Blaiddyds being very good at killing.

Finally, Alliance. They're an odd one, and a lot of people think they're just "the faction that's not red or blue," and admittedly even the canon is kind of prone to doing that, boo Intsys, justice for my favorite faction etc. But from what we do get, I think it makes a lot of sense to say that their identity is decentralized autonomy based on mercantilism.

It's not decentralized as in "has no institutions, just warlords" like Kingdom because it has institutions. They have the Roundtable, which is explicitly mentioned to have had change of members recently, with Daphnel being pushed out and Edmund making its way in. But it's not an institution meant to serve a superior authority, like the Empire. Even in Three Hopes, when the Alliance becomes the Federation, the king is clearly a more first among equals thing, not something to be passed down in a single bloodline. (If Claude tried that I think other nobles would have killed him lmao)

So the reason why they're fiercely autonomous and insists on being their own country, I think, is for motives that modern audiences should be the most familiar with: profit. These guys love their money and they're not sharing it with some faraway crown because of some shit about legitimacy or honor, fuck that. They might normally hate rach other's asses, but that's probably the one thing they can all agree on, and that's why they continue to exist against all odds.

(I suspect both the Leicester Rebellion where they broke off from the Empire and the Crescent Moon War where they broke off from the Kingdom might have began as tax revolts. Look at the Alliance and tell me they wouldn't do that, they absolutely would.)

And you know the thing about Count Gloucester supposedly killing merchants who went into Riegan territory? According to Hopes that was by some Agarthan sneaking in and messing around, but the fact it could pass as "eh yeah sounds like shit he'd do" externally indicates that economic warfare, targeting the flow of money, is fair game in the Alliance. In the Empire you bully the emperor's favorite concubine out of the harem (Anselma, prestige), in the Kingdom you massacre the royal family's diplomatic guests/allies (Duscur, honor), in the Alliance you target the duke's merchants (the Kirstens, profit).

So yeah merchants and trade are clearly more significant in Leicester than anywhere else; House Edmund got into the Roundtable by being good at business, and you have Ignatz, whose family (Victors) is something like proto-bourgeoisie. They're a commoner merchant family whose son can afford to grow a taste for things normally only associated with nobles (arts, etc) and can hire a private military (one of the battalions is called Victor Private Military); this is a pretty big deal in a world like Fódlan's.

Plus in Leicester, even knighthood is treated as an employment in a fairly modern sense. Raphael literally wants to be a knight for economic stability, rather than ideals of chivalry or honor or whatever else. And Leonie wants to be a freelancer (mercenary) in the original sense of the word. The nobles and commoners here, but especially commoners, see things in terms of economic transactions and profit; so in this sense I think Leicester feels the most "modern" or "familiar" out of the three. The rise of the bourgeoisie class and capitalism is pretty much what defined the world we're in today, after all.

It's also why within Fódlan, Claude's vision is the one that makes sense for Leicester. The ending racism stuff is cool and all, but do you know what else Leicester gains if they stop fighting the Almyrans and become friends with them?

Money. A fuck ton of money. Premium from selling Almyran products to Fódlan and vice versa. All that good stuff.

Leicester's the least established and therefore the least "prestigious" country, they're the prey stuck between two predators, all of that won't matter if they get so goddamn rich that they can just buy out the other two. That's what Almyra represents: the opportunities and benefits of free trade and capitalism for whoever's the first to shake the invisible hand.

If they do that, Leicester doesn't need to win this musty old "who is the most legitimate ruler of Fódlan" game against Adrestia and Faerghus feat. Church. They can just change the game (and the playing board) into the one they will win, at least against those two, which is trade and capitalism.

So Alliance = mercantile republic that sticks together because they might not like each other but they hate some distant crown trying to take their money even more, and would benefit immensely from being marginally less racist so they can stop being isolationist and get into global free trade.

So, there it is. Adrestian "back in my day" Empire, Holy "big violence means big legitimacy" Kingdom of Faerghus, and Leicester "I draw the line at paying taxes" Alliance. Now that we've examined what the three countries are, you can probably tell why I'm saying that the lords talk past each other politically.

What makes a state legitimate? What should the state's policies be driven by? What should the state protect? All three are going to give different answers, because their societies are at three different stages of political development. I'd argue that they're even from three different eras. Their incentives, their definitions, their priorities are all different.

It probably wouldn't be as much of a problem if they weren't right next to each other and/or weren't involved (directly or indirectly) in the same Overton window shattering event at the start of their known history that had to be smoothed over with the same myth/religion, but they are. Whatever answer one of them come up with to their own society's problems, the others can't just sit back and watch. Because they have to worry about whether that will spill over, whether that makes them look bad in comparison, whether their neighbor will be a threat (militarily or otherwise) to them after undergoing that change, etc.

And most of the time they are implicitly a threat, invalidation, insult, or at least an inconvenience to each other's self-legitimizing narratives just by existing. Adrestia can't tolerate the sovereignty of breakaway states when their legitimacy is built on themselves being the sovereign of Fódlan. Faerghus can't tolerate the "burn everything (including our neighbors)" method of imperial reform or the decentralized governance of Leicester when their main problem is that the warlords who don't answer to central authority are already setting everything on fire. Leicester can't tolerate the existence of crowns who consider themselves entitled to interfere in local internal (economic) affairs.

FE3H is about how they pretended they could ignore all this with the power of a pretty myth, of Fódlan being a big happy family that's not allowed to fight lest they make the goddess in the sky sad (real reason: under most circumstances, aka without the metaphysical cheat key that is Byleth, it will probably be very difficult to find another language to describe morals and ethics in that enough people will even pretend to accept if this current one falls apart), but the contradictions and poison from its founding exploded anyway.

So that's why the lords can't just "talk it out." And even if those three specifically somehow manage to find a compromise in their generation, possibly with the help of their superpowered middle manager (Byleth) and maybe the pope (Rhea) who's been checked out for a while (for both structural and personal reasons)?

You can damn well bet the generations after them won't let it hold.

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