Unlike in Three Houses where you could recruit almost every other student except the opposite house leaders and their retainers to your house, Three Hopes has a lot more students who are locked to a specific route when they weren't previously this time around (Ferdinand and Caspar in Scarlet Blaze; Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain and Annette in Azure Gleam; Hilda in Golden Wildfire). This could be because unlike in Three Houses, everyone's stay at the Officer's Academy was cut short due to the political affairs of their respective nations and the school closing down, meaning they never had the chance to explore other possibilities outside their comfort zone, unlike in Three Houses where they spent the full year at the academy.
This also works in a different way - the characters in Three Hopes are recruitable during the war because their bonds with others are nowhere near as strong (and those whose bonds are established, are not recruitable). Meanwhile, in Three Houses, the only character who is recruitable during the war is Lysithea, and even then only because of her Commonality Connection with Edelgard.
Another aspect that is important is the time frame. In Three Houses, most of the students at the Officers Academy had some kind of idea of their future, and were studying there to prepare for it, or to at least look into a potential future. If they joined Byleth's class, the war starting completely changed their future and so they stuck to their Professor due to believing in them. In Three Hopes, the students are only at the Officers Academy for a few months before returning home, where many of them are suddenly thrust into important roles because of the turmoil caused by the altered timeline. So while in Three Houses they had time to make new plans, here they get none, and become better entrenched in their nation's system. Notice how a number of the characters you can recruit in almost every route are ones who aren't in super high-ranking positions (the Ashen Wolves, Petra, Ashe, and Ignatz to name a few), making it easier to defect to other sides. By contrast, characters like Ferdinand, Felix, and Hilda are effectively put into important roles that make them unlikely to defect.
The method of recruitment is also quite different from Three Houses, where most recruitment was done via a character asking to join Byleth out of admiration of them as a teacher and warrior, with no higher stakes at the time other than the house they belonged to. In Three Hopes almost all recruitment is more persuading the character to surrender and join the opposing side instead of dying for their faction during the war. For specific characters, some more specialized persuasion may be used, such as offering them special knowledge or opportunity to do something that matters to them personally (Hapi getting revenge on "those who slither in the dark" and Lysithea finding a means to restore her life expectancy), or using an already recruited friend of theirs or knowledge of their family's wishes to convince them. That the recruited character stays loyal afterward no matter what is at least partly explained by most of them holding the view that changing sides once may be justified or explainable, but doing so twice would render them untrustworthy for life. Much as the story of Three Hopes leans further into Gray-and-Grey Morality, so too do the methods of recruiting. Many of the characters will express they don't know who is really right in the war, and ultimately decide to fight for whoever they think will end it more quickly while giving them the biggest chance to personally survive. The biggest irony in all of this is that Three Hopes uses classic recruitment methods, persuading an opposing unit to switch sides.
Also consider how many students of each nation actually defect. The Leicester Alliance, due to its fractured nature, sees all of the students outside of Hilda able to be recruited in the other routes, mainly due to self-preservation as they see that the Alliance is unable to fend off the invading countries, though Lysithea and Leonie will not join in Azure Gleam. The Adrestian Empire, as the country that declared war, sees Petra, Dorothea, Bernadetta, and Linhardt able to be recruited to either route, citing their disagreement with Edelgard's war. Finally, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, due to how close each student was to begin with, only sees Ashe, due to his loyalty to Lonato, defecting to either side, and Mercedes, who will join her brother Jeritza in the Imperial Army.
This could also be because unlike Byleth who joined the Officer's Academy as a Professor; Shez joins the Officer's Academy as a student alongside them meaning that Shez lacked the status and renown that Byleth had that would inspire a student to switch houses. This also works on a personal level too: Shez's supports with the students only start during the war phase as opposed to Byleth's which started during the school year itself.
plus the kingdom of faerghus culture values loyalty which would be instilled in to felix and ingrid etc unless broken ( them being able to defect doesnt mean they are less loyal or caring to edelgard edelgard permitted it
The fact that some Adrestians are able to surrender isn’t a sign of disloyalty to Edelgard just as the Faerghans mostly being unwilling to surrender isn’t a sign of their rock-solid loyalty; it’s a sign that the Adrestians value their lives and have an Emperor who values theirs, while the Faerghans grew up in a culture that values death in service.
Edelgard actually permitted Petra to surrender if the worst should come to pass. Edelgard chose her bond with Petra over her duty as Emperor here
when she’s defected? She doesn’t want to fight the Empire
Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France.
Delacroix depicted Liberty as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people. The mound of corpses acts as a kind of pedestal from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer. The Phrygian cap she wears had come to symbolize liberty during the first French Revolution, of 1789. The painting has been seen as a marker to the end of the Age of Enlightenment, as many scholars see the end of the French Revolution as the start of the romantic era.
The fighters are from a mixture of social classes, ranging from the bourgeoisie represented by the young man in a top hat, a student from the prestigious École Polytechnique wearing the traditional bicorne, to the revolutionary urban worker, as exemplified by the boy holding pistols. What they have in common is the fierceness and determination in their eyes.
The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne.
The "mound of corpses" reminds me of Dimitri's line from CF Ch. 17 - "This future of yours is built on a foundation of corpses and tears!"
Not gonna elaborate on the above in too much detail, but you can see how various things fit. The painting symbolizes the end of an era, the fighters are from a mixture of social classes (appropriately, one of them a student from a prestigious school), and the "allegorical goddess figure" fits with all the religious undertones of her character.
We can see ironic allusions to the "goddess" thing in certain dialogue, such as when Dimitri accuses Edelgard of intending to become a goddess herself. In contrast with her intentions, the game does portray her as a metaphorical goddess of Liberty.
The bit about Marianne is interesting because of how much Marianne admires Edelgard in CF. It already makes sense that the timid, supremely unconfident Marianne would look up Edelgard, but this additional context further ties it all together. Her admiration works on both a personal level and a symbolic level.
Historical context surrounding the painting
More on Charles X, who was overthrown in the revolution the painting is based on:
Charles X was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. After the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, Charles (as heir-presumptive) became the leader of the ultra-royalists, a radical monarchist faction within the French court that affirmed rule by divine right and opposed the concessions towards liberals and guarantees of civil liberties granted by the Charter of 1814. Charles gained influence within the French court after the assassination of his son Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, in 1820 and eventually succeeded his brother in 1824.
His reign of almost six years proved to be deeply unpopular from the moment of his coronation in 1825, in which he tried to revive the practice of the royal touch. The governments appointed under his reign reimbursed former landowners for the abolition of feudalism at the expense of bondholders, increased the power of the Catholic Church, and reimposed capital punishment for sacrilege, leading to conflict with the liberal-majority Chamber of Deputies. Charles also initiated the French conquest of Algeria as a way to distract his citizens from domestic problems.
Rule by divine right, power to the Church, capital punishment for sacrilege - all things Edelgard opposes and seeks to eliminate from Fodlan.
The part about the French conquest of Algeria is quite interesting, and it seems like one of the main inspirations for the Tragedy of Duscur. It fits well, considering that Faerghus partly represents France, both surface appearance-wise and also in the Meiji Revolution metaphor.
Following the conquest of the Regency of Algiers, the Pacification of Algeria was a series of military operations which aimed to put an end to various tribal rebellions, razzias and massacres of French settlers, which were sporadically held in the Algerian countryside.
During their pacification of Algeria, French forces engaged in a scorched earth policy against the Algerian population. According to Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, the colonization of Algeria lead to the extermination of a third of the population, due to multiple causes (massacres, deportations, famines or epidemics) that were all interrelated.
Not gonna get into it too much but you can read more on the Pacification of Algeria if interested.
A brief note on Christian symbolism in the CF art
In the section about the painting, I linked a thread that analyzes the ending art of all the routes.
These observations from the OP especially stuck out to me:
Some interesting symbolism can be noted here. Palm branches, typically in real world media, is often associated with Christianity symbolism. The palm branch is a symbol of victory, triumph, peace, and eternal life. Angel's can have a variety of symbolic meanings, such as being a messenger of god.
More on the palm branch:
The palm seems to have been adopted into Christian iconography to represent victory, i.e. that of martyrs, or the victory of the spirit over the flesh.
I've been talking about how this game frames Edelgard as a Christ figure in various subtle ways, and here's one of them. In CF, the martyr is victorious.
Part 2: The Church, Garreg Mach, Rhea, Nabataeans, and TWSITD
Part 3: The Empire, Edelgard, Black Eagles, Enbarr, Derdriu, The Alliance, Almyra, and Claude
Part 4: The Kingdom, Blue Lions, Dimitri, Arianrhod, Crests
Over a series of posts, I'm gonna talk about just how much it seems the developers have pulled from a turning point in their own country's history, and how basically everything - Fodlan history/society, the Empire, the Kingdom, the Alliance, the Church, TWSITD, Almyra, other countries, Crests, key characters, key locations, and the war phase of the game - ties into this.
Speaking of the war phase, much has been said about how oddly quick Crimson Flower's is. You stomp through the opposition with minimal effort and end the war more quickly than any other route. Did the devs just run out of time?
Maybe, but here's my theory, and I'd bet good money on this one:
Much of the sociopolitical situation of the game and the events that unfold in the main plot is based on the waning years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which eventually culminated into a civil war called the Boshin War.
This war involved two principle factions - pro-Imperial nationalists seeking to fast-track Japan's modernization by unifying the country under Imperial rule, and Shogunate loyalists defending their lands and old way of life against the Imperialists. The Imperialists won this war relatively easily and ushered Japan into the [Meiji Era]
Fun fact: Nintendo was originally founded during the Meiji Era in 1889 as a company manufacturing playing cards called "hanafuda" (flower cards).
This analysis is mostly about the broad strokes. Certain things fit really well, but if you get too nitty gritty there will obviously be a lot of stuff that doesn't match up, which makes sense because Three Houses is very much its own story with tons of fantasy elements, and this is just about the Japanese historical inspirations behind various things.
And certain concepts, rather than matching up, are instead completely opposite to how it was in Japanese history, which to me still suggests authorial intent; the concepts are there, just flipped in some way.
Even the outward appearances of certain things is relevant to this period of history and ties nicely into the allegory - for example, France notably sided with the Shogunate during the Boshin War; Faerghus (which also represents other things such as the Aizu clan and the Ezo Republic, will elaborate in future posts) is outwardly based on France.
At the end, I'll bring it all together to support my claim that Crimson Flower's war phase is essentially a Boshin War re-enactment, connecting stuff like troop movements, shifting allegiances, and overall order of events. I think you'll be surprised how well some stuff ends up fitting.
The circumstances leading up to the war: Japanese History vs. Three Houses
Japanese History (Super simplified version, still long because real life is complicated... what can I say?)
Europeans make first contact with Japan in 1543. There's trade and cultural exchange, resulting in the introduction of a lot of Western tech to Japan. This tech included stuff like firearms and new ship-building styles, and on the cultural side, Roman Catholicism. This period of trade/cultural exchange is known as the Nanban trade period. (On a not-so-serious note: Nanban... Nanbaneans... Nabataeans? Hm. Yeah I know Nabata was a thing in FE before, but hey)
Tokugawa shogunate eventually comes into power after the Battle of Sekigahara. They institute an isolationist policy, severely restricting trade/relations with the outside world. They also enforce a strict class hierarchy. These policies are essentially to help maintain order. The period where the Tokugawa shogunate reigned is called the "Edo period" or the "Tokugawa period". Another word for the shogunate government is "bakufu". (Just an FYI on certain terms, they might come up later)
Fast-forward to the mid 19th century. Japan had been an isolationist, feudal society for ~220 years, so their technology is behind that of Western powers
Western imperialists are threatening Japan's sovereignty. They use demonstrations of their tech superiority as thinly veiled threats, bullying Japan into opening itself to trading with them. They force Japan into a bunch of unequal trade agreements.
Some Japanese Daimyo (nobles) are pissed off about these unfair trade agreements and see it as a sign of the shogunate's weakness
Western culture, technology, and overall influence are becoming increasingly prevalent in Japan. Nationalist sentiment and xenophobia are brewing in response to this foreign encroachment.
Following this was a period of minor nationalist uprisings and various attacks with little regard to public safety i.e domestic terrorism. Foreigners are often targeted with violence, and Japanese civilians are also caught up in the attacks. One of the defining slogans of the time: "Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians" [(Sonnō jōi)] (en . wikipedia . org/wiki/Sonn%C5%8D_j%C5%8Di) Some of these nationalists hate Christians. The shogunate responds to these uprisings with military force.
Soon after, the Boshin War occurs where an alliance of several daimyo rise up with Emperor Meiji and various nationalists to unify Japan under Imperial Rule.
You can see how a lot of this stuff factors into Three Houses' plot.
Sothis arrives in Fodlan from a faraway land, creates Nabataeans, they share knowledge and spread religion.
Ok so this is where I need to clarify stuff due to the fantasy element here of Rhea's lifespan. Rhea is the shogun in this allegory, but she doesn't initially have the political power that she has in present-day Fodlan. Fodlan history is sort of like Japanese history in how Imperial influence waned over time, eventually giving way to the period where shoguns ruled Japan. And I'd say Fodlan really starts looking like the Tokugawa shogunate in ~980 with the establishment of the Garreg Mach Officer's Academy, will elaborate on that later.
Fast-forward to the "present day" of the game. Fodlan is an isolationist society with a strict class hierarchy. Almyran invasion attempts are threatening Fodlan's sovereignty. And a sort of unfair "agreement" is being imposed on humanity (i.e the truth about the Church and its teachings that mostly nobody knows about). And you could also argue that Rhea being in control of the continent indefinitely is also a type of "unfair agreement".
Adrestian nobles/TWSITD are pissed about the situation and they've had enough. Furthermore, there's a lot of discontent overall with the current state of things - Claude alludes to stagnation, etc.
Thus begins a period where TWSITD instigates various rebellions/uprisings/incidents, with little regard for public safety. I'm not sure how much TWSITD really cares about "revering the Emperor", but they sure as hell want to "expel the barbarians", and maybe do a little more than expel. TWSITD also hates "Christians". The Church responds with military force.
Soon after, the war phase begins where an alliance of Adrestian nobles/TWSITD rise up with Edelgard. They seek to unify Fodlan under Imperial rule (and in TWISTD's case, just fuck shit up in general I guess).
Hopefully a lot of the similarities are clear, despite some key differences as well.
If this still seems too far-out for you, check out the basis for the plot of the anime Gin Tama, which is based on this period of Japanese history (I'm not familiar with this anime myself, just thought it was a good example):
The story is set in an alternate-history late-Edo period, where humanity is attacked by aliens called "Amanto" (天人, "Sky People"). Edo Japan's samurai fight to defend Earth, but the shōgun cowardly surrenders when he realizes the aliens' power. He agrees to an unequal contract with the aliens, placing a ban on carrying swords in public and allowing the invaders to enter the country. The samurai's swords are confiscated and the Tokugawa bakufu (shogunate) becomes a puppet government.
You can see the similarities - aliens come from a faraway planet and eventually control the land. They proceed to impose an "unfair situation" on the people. The Nabataeans are a lot more well-intentioned and sympathetic, but the point is to illustrate some precedent for the whole "aliens-are-the-shogunate" thing.
In general, Japan loves basing stuff on this period in their history. Japanese history in a Japanese game, an anime game no less. Not too crazy, right?
But if you're still skeptical which is understandable, there will be heavy elaboration in future posts. Feel free to correct me on whatever, I tried to get all my facts straight but there's a lot here.
If you're a fan of Rurouni Kenshin, you may have noticed a lot of similarities between the moral conundrums that Rurouni Kenshin and 3H focus on in respect to killing, protecting people, etc.
There was a great thread a while back analyzing Felix's character arc in Crimson Flower.
It references some of Felix's support dialogue, such as this line in his C support with Dedue:
Felix: Blind obedience. You're right. I did misunderstand. I shouldn't have called you a lapdog. You're a rabid cur. You and the boar prince make quite a team—two crazed animals.
Re-visiting some of the stuff Kenshin said in his youth, this line stuck out to me:
A human being who feeds on his brother is not a man anymore - he is a mad dog.
The contexts are kind of different - Felix is talking about blind obedience resulting in senseless massacre, while Kenshin is talking about bandits/pillagers preying on the weak. Nevertheless, this manner of judgmentally comparing others to crazed animals is distinctly similar, and in both cases it's in response to the general idea of innocents being harmed.
Furthermore, Felix's realization that in the end, he was just a big hypocrite, mirrors Kenshin's character arc quite closely. Felix starts off thinking he's somehow doing the "right" thing by joining the Imperialists, only to realize after killing so many people, that he's just a mass murderer himself.
And Kenshin, thinking he's doing the "right" thing by joining the Imperialists, eventually comes to the same realization as well. Even the way he's remembered is a testament to this - not as "Kenshin Himura, protector of the weak" - but instead as "Battousai the Manslayer", a mass murderer. This guilt haunts Kenshin for the rest of his life, and he decides the only way he can try to atone is to vow to never kill again, and takes up the life of a wandering swordsman who protects the weak.
These similarities were not obvious to me at first, and didn't occur to me when I initially read the thread about Felix's CF character arc.
However, I slowly started piecing things together when I noticed other things I thought seemed suspiciously like Rurouni Kenshin references.
I noticed that Ingrid had similarities with both Tomoe Yukishiro and Kaoru Kamiya, the two main love interests of Kenshin.
Like Tomoe, Ingrid loses her fiance. Tomoe's last name, "Yukishiro", means "snow white", while Ingrid's last name, "Galatea", means "milk white".
Like Kaoru, Ingrid loves swordsmanship, and like Kaoru, Ingrid loves food, especially meat.
Those Ingrid observations had me curious - is this shit just a coincidence? Could there be something more to this, or am I just crazy?
I looked through some of Ingrid's endings, and there it was:
Even after the war's end, skirmishes continued to break out across Fódlan. Learning that there were still places where he could fight, Felix abandoned his noble title and chose to make a living with his sword. Unwilling to leave him to travel alone, Ingrid, too, relinquished her claim to nobility, and they both became wandering mercenaries. They skirted the line between life and death countless times in their dangerous work, but once they had a child, they settled down in a small farming village far from their homeland. With all but each other left behind, they began a warm and tranquil life as a family.
This ending seems like the only ending in which Felix explicitly has a child, and it's pretty similar to the ending of the Rurouni Kenshin manga where Kenshin and Kaoru have a son and happily live out the rest of their days in a peaceful village. Plus, the whole "wandering swordsman" thing following the war. Felix and Ingrid both relinquish their claims to nobility; Kenshin and Kaoru are both commoners. And Kenshin and Kaoru both "skirt the line between life and death" many times throughout the story.
At this point, I started looking for other clues. Maybe this is still all just a coincidence.
And then I saw it: Felix and Ingrid's middle names, and the characters that make up Kenshin's name: 剣心.
剣 (ken) means "sword".
心 (shin) means "heart/mind/spirit".
Ingrid's middle name is "Brandl".
German (Brändl): from a pet form of the personal name Brand
What does Brand mean, then?
English, Scottish, Scandinavian, North German, and Dutch: from the Germanic personal name Brando, a short form of various compound personal names containing the element brand ‘sword’
Hell, we don't need that definition to know that "Brand" means sword. Just look at "Thunderbrand", the sword wielded by "Thunder Catherine".
Felix's middle name is "Hugo". What's "Hugo" mean?
Hugo is the Latin form of Hugh, as well as the typical form in Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German and Scandinavian countries. The name derives from the Old German hugu meaning "heart" as well as "mind," "spirit," "soul," and "thought."
Everything matches up. How could this all still be just a coincidence?
I see other Rurouni Kenshin similarities sprinkled around as well, such as Dimitri's desire to protect others while having some "Battousai the Manslayer" aspects to him. His role as the sole surviving royal in the tragedy of Duscur seemed quite similar to how Kenshin is the sole survivor in the massacre at the beginning of Trust and Betrayal, and the imagery of young Dimitri surrounded by bodies instantly made me think of that opening scene. Dimitri's character arc of redemption in AM also felt kind of similar in spirit to Kenshin's - the death of a loved one is a catalyst for gaining a better understanding that fundamentally changes them for the better, and they go on to live lives of virtue. And his obsession with vengeance is very reminiscent of Enishi, in the way he hunts Edelgard like Enishi hunts Kenshin. They both do the crazed eyes thing. And it's also kinda funny that Dimitri and Ingrid look like they could be siblings, like Enishi and Tomoe.
And speaking of Edelgard and Battousai the Manslayer - they're both red consequentialists on the side of the Imperialists. And like Enishi, Edelgard's hair turns white due to childhood trauma involving the death of sibling(s). That one might be a coincidence though.
All these little things I associated with Rurouni Kenshin are what set me down the path of analyzing Crimson Flower as an allegory for the Meiji Revolution in the first place.
And it makes sense they'd include some Kenshin tributes in the game in terms of the manga's era. The Rurouni Kenshin manga began syndication in the mid 90s, which is also the period when FE4 came out. I'm pretty sure the writers grew up with that stuff.
It's actually surprising how much Rurouni Kenshin influence there is in the game, considering all the characters it involves are quite prominent. Then again, it seems quite appropriate considering how much of this game revolves around the concepts of "trust" and "betrayal".
We know that Dimitri and Edelgard are defined in opposition to one another, and I believe yin and yang is one of the primary inspirations in that regard. In the introduction, I'll talk about what yin and yang symbolize, and then I'll discuss how Dimitri and Edelgard consistently align with yin and yang elements, respectively.
The implications of this yin/yang thing are enormous. I believe it goes a long way in helping confirm that we are indeed on the right track in our various theories, that it can help assuage doubts that we're just falling into confirmation bias - because what are the odds that all these details would align so consistently? Either it's the biggest coincidence ever, or there is authorial intent behind it.
Introduction: Symbolism and stuff
Yin/Yang symbolism explained:
Yin is the black side, and yang is the white side. The relationship between yin and yang is often described in terms of sunlight playing over a mountain and a valley. Yin (literally the 'shady place' or 'north slope') is the dark area occluded by the mountain's bulk, while yang (literally the "sunny place' or "south slope") is the brightly lit portion. As the sun moves across the sky, yin and yang gradually trade places with each other, revealing what was obscured and obscuring what was revealed.
Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, wet, and passive; and is associated with water, earth, the moon, femininity, and night time.
Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and active; and is associated with fire, sky, the sun, masculinity and daytime.
Furthermore, yin is associated with fall and winter, and yang with spring and summer. Source 1 and Source 2.
In summary...
Dimitri/Yin Edelgard/Yang
Fall and Winter Spring and Summer
North of mountain South of mountain
Passive and slow Active and fast
Femininity Masculinity
Water Fire
Moon and night time Sun and day time
Earth Sky/Heaven
Yielding Solid
Dark Light
I'll elaborate on every row of this table, but those last 2 rows are pretty abstract so they'll be more speculative as you might expect.
The seasons
For anyone unfamiliar, each game's route is associated with a certain season, as /u/captainflash89 explains here:
The Japanese title (of the game) is 風花雪月 fuukasetsugetsu or "Wind-Flower-Snow-Moon." Hence the four route titles-Verdant Wind, Crimson Flower, Silver Snow, Azure Moon. Now, this a reference to a very old Chinese poem where Snow represents Winter, Moon represents Autumn, and the Flower represents Spring. The developers added Wind to represent Summer.
So we've got Azure Moon -> Fall, and Crimson Flower -> Spring.
Furthermore, Dimitri's birthday is on winter solstice, and Edelgard's birthday is on summer solstice.
Even the tone of the music in the final cutscene of each route matches this. Light and Shadow (AM) and Wailing (SS) are rather somber, while A World for Humanity (CF) and A New Dawn (VW) are upbeat and triumphant.
North and south of the mountain
This one is really cool because even Fodlan's geography plays into it. The Oghma Mountains sit in the center of the continent - The Kingdom to the north, the Empire to the south.
Passive/Slow and Active/Fast
Dimitri favors slower, gradual change within the system, while Edelgard is proactive and wants to enact change by tearing the system down. Dimitri believes he should only take the throne when the proper time comes, whereas Edelgard just goes and takes the throne ahead of schedule.
Femininity and Masculinity
Dimitri is a man and Edelgard is a woman, so this might seem like a contradiction. But there are quite a few ways this actually makes sense, with certain feminine/masculine traits that stick out particularly noticeably in contrast with what one stereotypically associates with their genders.
I'm only listing what comes to mind at the moment, I'm sure there are more examples if you delve deeper into the game text.
Also, I wanna emphasize that I'm speaking in terms of tradition/stereotypes here. When I say something is "masculine" or "feminine", I don't want to have to keep qualifying it with "traditionally" or "stereotypically" because it gets annoying and clunky. So just keep in mind, whenever you see the word "masculine" or "manly" or whatever, what I really mean is "traditionally/stereotypically masculine/manly". Same goes for "feminine", etc.
For Edelgard and masculine traits:
Emperor.
Conquerors are traditionally men, which is acknowledged by the devs in the Nintendo Dream interview.
Edelgard suppresses her emotions and dislikes "losing control", trying her best to make rational decisions as a leader. She's practical and solution-oriented.
Edelgard responds to Byleth with "tough love" following Jeralt's death. I know there's a lot of nuance to her response that's lost on her detractors, but I still think it's fair to say her advice can be condensed into "Wallowing in sadness ain't productive, you gotta man up and move forward". Which is clearly a masculine sort of mindset.
Edelgard is proactive and assertive. We can see this in big ways, like how she starts the war, and in small ways, like how she interrupts Dimitri after the prologue asking Byleth to lend their services to the Empire before Dimitri gets the chance to make his own proposal.
Edelgard can be brash, proud, and arrogant in her speech. She's competitive and likes to talk shit. "No matter the tactics you devise, we will destroy you. The best thing you can hope for is to learn a thing or two", she says before the mock battle early in the game, just as an example. Again, this is more of a male trait.
Edelgard is strong, courageous, and ambitious, with an indomitable will. Manly stuff right there.
For Dimitri and feminine traits:
Dimitri is very humble and self-effacing in his speech, which is a typically feminine trait and strongly contrasts with Edelgard's boastfulness. He's always like "if it's not too much trouble", "if that's alright with you", etc. Not gonna pull up examples but this is obvious for anyone familiar with his dialogue.
Dimitri is sensitive to delicate social situations. For example, in the explore phase before the Miklan mission, he comments on how he thinks it's insensitive of Rhea to have Gilbert tag along with them, given how awkward that must be for Annette. This sort of thoughtfulness is more of a feminine trait.
In his support with Flayn, Dimitri claims to like her cooking and asks for seconds, despite the game making it pretty clear that her cooking sucks. Furthermore, we know Dimitri can't even taste it because he lost his sense of taste, so he's basically embellishing things to make her happy. This sort of conduct in such a social situation is more of a feminine thing.
In their support, Hapi mentions that Dimitri is uncannily similar to his stepmother in his mannerisms. We don't really know too much about what kind of person Patricia was, but it's fairly safe to say this is a pretty strong statement about Dimitri's feminine aspects.
Dimitri is more emotional than rational, which is one of the more offensive stereotypes against women but I just gotta mention it anyway cuz it fits with this analysis lol
Dimitri is overtly gentle, caring, sensitive, and compassionate, all qualities associated with femininity.
Water and Fire
There's the obvious blue/red association with their respective color palettes, and with their route names: Azure is a shade of blue, Crimson is a shade of red.
Edelgard has the literal Fire Emblem (i.e the Crest of Flames).
You can also see the opposite affinities referenced in their "dislikes": Dimitri dislikes scorching heat (fire), Edelgard dislikes swimming (water).
Moon/Nighttime and Sun/Daytime
Now the second half of their route names is relevant: Moon and Flower (flowers grow towards the sun).
This part of Edge of Dawn is especially relevant:
I look to you
Like a red rose
Seeking the sun
No matter where it goes
I long to stay,
Where the light dwells
To guard against the cold
That I know so well
There's also The Color of Sunrise which plays at the end of Crimson Flower.
Earth and Sky/Heaven
I want to make something clear: even though that part I quoted in the introduction said "yang" is associated with "sky", "yang" is also associated with "heaven". This isn't just me making stuff up, you can google "yang heaven" and you'll see plenty of stuff about it. Edelgard -> yang -> heaven is extremely important to the "CF-is-pro-faith" analyses we have going on here, since it corroborates with them. The Chinese concept of "heaven" is different from the Christian view, but I am very confident the game conflates these ideas.
Here's a simple example - the final sentence in Byleth's solo CF ending:
With his/her legendary blade in hand, he/she will never stop standing against those who slither in the dark until Fódlan at last knows everlasting peace."
Thought "true peace" was a powerful statement? How about everlasting peace? Of course, the language here doesn't claim "everlasting peace" is actually achieved, which makes sense because that's pretty unbelievable. But I just want to point out the sheer religiousness of the phrase: when I google "everlasting peace", all I see is stuff related to Christianity. Byleth's solo CF ending is the only ending where this phrase shows up. Heaven indeed.
Anyway, on Dimitri -> Earth:
"Dimitri" means "devoted to, dedicated to, or follower of Demeter (i.e mother-earth)".
"Blaiddyd" means "wolf-lord". And lions, like wolves, are also land animals. More earth stuff.
On Edelgard -> Sky/Heaven:
"Reach for my hand, I'll soar away"
Eagles. 'nuff said.
"Hresvelg" is based on "Hræsvelgr", a giant eagle that sits on the edge of the heavens according to Norse mythology.
"El" means "god" in Hebrew
The Mandate of Heaven is a Chinese concept kind of similar to the European concept of divine right of kings. Intrinsic to the concept of the Mandate of Heaven was the right of rebellion against an unjust ruler. "Mandate of Heaven" literally translates to "Heaven's will" which ties surprisingly well into the theme of Edelgard's indomitable will.
I've written before about how SS/CF is based on the Book of Revelation/second coming of Christ. /u/ramix-the-red I'm telling you bruh, there's something to it lol!
You can even see this idea in the game's OST, with the song Between Heaven and Earth.
Yielding and Solid
So this is getting abstract but I'm gonna take a shot at it. In what way is Dimitri yielding while Edelgard is solid (i.e unyielding)? I'd say it's in their willpower. (Edelgard straight up has a Cipher card with the title "Unshakable Will of Flames")
Definition of "willpower":
control exerted to do something or restrain impulses.
We know that Edelgard doesn't enjoy doing any of the bad things she does - she cherished her peaceful days at the monastery, wishing she could stay (Edge of Dawn makes that clear). And before Byleth kills her in SS/VW, she tells them, "I wanted... to walk with you". IMO if there's any reason to prefer SS over VW, it's this - because it makes Edelgard's willpower all the more apparent. The entire time, she wanted to walk with Byleth, but to Edelgard, it's not about what doing what she wants - it's about doing what she believes is right. If her friends are in the way, she hates fighting them, but she'll force herself to do so.
In contrast, boar Dimitri is unable to avoid yielding to his sadistic impulses. His self-loathing shows he's aware shit's fucked up, but even so, he can't control himself from doing what he believes is immoral. To be fair to him, my understanding is this condition is due to a combination of trauma and enantiodromia.
We can speculate all day about this stuff because we can frame the idea of "yielding vs. unyielding" in all sorts of ways, so let's move on.
Dark and Light
See how the CG where Edelgard executes Dimitri fits with this. Also note that the final AM cutscene which shows us a similar situation with their positions reversed, is titled Light and Shadow. In the cutscene, there isn't any blatant light/dark symbolism like in the Crimson Flower CG, making it more ambiguous. Hmm.
I'm assuming y'all are familiar with DnD (Dungeons and Dragons) alignments, where Law/Chaos is on one axis, and Good/Evil is on the other. People have tried to use DnD alignments to classify 3H characters, but it doesn't seem appropriate given that 3H is supposed to be a story with a lot of moral ambiguity.
However, there's another alignment system we can use, from a series closely affiliated with Fire Emblem: Shin Megami Tensei.
The SMT alignment system is kinda similar to DnD's, but instead of a "Good/Evil" axis, there's a "Light/Dark" axis. I'll let the SMT philosophy wiki explain:
The axis from light to neutral to dark has to do with people's emphasis on the greater good, to normal scale, to egoistic action.
See how well this fits for Edelgard: Light -> emphasis on the greater good.
As for Dimitri, this is interesting because this seems to align very well with what /u/captainflash89 has written about Dimitri's egocentrism. This also makes the sheer Dimitri-centricness of AM make sense in a meta sort of way.
I cannot understate how serious I am about the Shin Megami Tensei influences. I've realized a huge SMT-related detail that further validates the "true peace" of Crimson Flower, along with some other theories, which I'll elaborate on in a future post because I don't want to pack too much stuff in here lol.
A common use of darkness and light as literary devices is to symbolize ignorance and knowledge, foolishness and wisdom, delusion and truth. This doesn't mean that Edelgard is right about everything and Dimitri is wrong about everything, but just in certain key plot points and important disagreements about the way of the world.
For Dimitri, there's the whole Edelgard/Duscur misunderstanding and the "King of Delusion" moniker. But there's also a bunch of stuff he says after his redemption arc that just sounds extremely naive.
One example is that he takes issue with Edelgard's methods, claiming that they will never work and can't truly change the way of the world. And yet the Meiji Revolution, which restored Imperial rule to Japan and transformed the country from an isolated feudal society to a modern industrialized nation state, was spearheaded by the nobility. Even if people headcanon that CF's ending is a bad ending, Dimitri is still proven wrong by real history.
I could list more of my reasoning why I believe central aspects of Dimitri's views are naive/wrong, but since this is the Edelgard sub it seems like beating a dead horse, so I'm gonna move on to talking about Edelgard.
Similar to the above paragraph, I could list my reasoning about why I believe central aspects of Edelgard's views are correct and well-reasoned, that she knows the truth about the nature of the world and thus what has to be done, but again it seems like beating a dead horse on this sub. So I'm gonna just point out some small details indicating her interest in science and history, that she values and desires knowledge.
There's this science-y advice box question from her:
People used to believe the goddess once fell here from the Blue Sea Star, but according to astronomical research, the light from that star takes millions of years to reach us.
One of her "Likes" in her character bio is "debating historical viewpoints and strategies". And another advice box question of hers is about what to do on a hot summer's day, where she likes the answer "focus on reading to occupy your mind". The CF Hanneman/Manuela ending is also the only version of their paired ending where Garreg Mach offers classes on "a wider variety of practical subjects".
I'm aware of the all-too-common view that Edelgard "blindly believes TWSITD's lies", probably due to her questionable claims in her declaration-of-war speech. This view of Edelgard as a "naive, stupid, gullible puppet" completely flies in the face of what all this symbolism suggests. Knowing Edelgard's character, I think it's pretty obvious she doesn't just blindly believe what she's saying, and that a lot of it is calculated propaganda on her part.
For example, she claims that the Church wants to "rule the world". This might seem like an indefensibly incorrect statement, and if you interpret "rule the world" as "military conquest of the entire world" then yes it's obviously wrong. However, the Crest of Flames's in-game description is "the crest of the goddess that governs the world", and we know that Rhea is trying to revive the goddess. If Rhea wants to revive the goddess that governs (i.e rules) the world, with the intention of having said goddess guide humanity, then is it not "technically correct" that the Church wants to "rule the world"?
This is obviously dishonest, and in some cases she might even be completely lying (I don't recall any in-game information indicating that the Church played a role in splitting the Alliance from the Kingdom for example, although maybe she could be right, we just don't know), but the critical point here is that Edelgard is not ignorant or naive, and therefore this does not contradict her association with "knowledge". Perhaps she is in fact incorrect about some details of the true history involving Nemesis and the Elites, but again people just blow that stuff way out of proportion because they're desperate to nitpick.
But "Black" Eagles though!
I don't like leaving obvious inconsistencies unaddressed, so I want to mention this one: the introduction mentioned that "yin" (Dimitri) is the black side, and yet the color in the house name of the Black Eagles is, well... black.
There could be a lot of reasons for this and I'm not gonna bother speculating why. But regardless of what the reason might be, I would argue this is merely an exception to the rule, rather than a critical detail that invalidates this entire analysis, given all the other details that consistently fit.
Conclusion
Hopefully I have provided sufficient proof (or at least, really compelling evidence) of the authorial intent here with all the symbolism. I plan to reference this essay in various future essays, because I think all these details in tandem help establish a compelling basis for believability beyond mere confirmation bias and wishful thinking. To reiterate what I said at the beginning: How could it be a coincidence that these details align so consistently?
I'll leave you with this famous passage:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way
So this post may come across as the ravings of a nut job... but what better way to subvert that than starting with a bible quote.
The story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22)
God tempted Abraham, and said to him: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am. He said to him: Take thy only begotten son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and go into the land of vision; and there thou shalt offer him for an holocaust upon one of the mountains which I will shew thee. So Abraham rising up in the night, saddled his ass, and took with him two young men, and Isaac his son: and when he had cut wood for the holocaust, he went his way to the place which God had commanded him. And on the third day, lifting up his eyes, he saw the place afar off. And he said to his young men: Stay you herewith the ass; I and the boy will go with speed as far as yonder, and after we have worshipped, will return to you. And he took the wood for the holocaust, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he himself carried in his hands fire and a sword. And as they two went on together, Isaac said to his father: My father. And he answered: What wilt thou, son? Behold, saith he, fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust? And Abraham said: God will provide him-self a victim for an holocaust, my son. So they went on together. And they came to the place which God had shewn him, where he built an altar, and laid the wood in order upon it; and when he had bound Isaac his son, he laid him on the altar upon the pile of wood. And he put forth his hand, and took the sword, to sacrifice his son. And behold, an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am. And he said to him: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou any thing to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake.
The binding of Isaac is one of many acts of faith stories recorded in the Old Testament. Interpretations in the past viewed Abraham’s faith in God such that God would either resurrect Isaac, or stop Abraham just before his sword fell on Isaac. However, for the existentialist Soren Kierkegaard this wasn’t the point of Genesis 22. For the point then, was that Abraham must have meant to suffer the loss of Isaac forever. For Kierkegaard, Abraham must have had faith in God and God’s plan, but not have had faith in God’s plan to save Isaac.
He calls this the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. From Kierkegaard’s perspective the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, are dependent on God and God alone, not mortals. The argument holds that one ought to suspend their ethical code at the behest of God, but for this to happen there are stipulations:
To understand freedom and the consequences of sin, one must have anxiety engendered in them (one ought to feel angst)
Eternal salvation or damnation hangs over monumental existential choice; where one holds the burden of choosing for eternity, the other holds the exhilaration of freedom and choice
Over against God, we are always in the wrong. To always be in sin is the condition of faith; it must be instilled in us by God and only God
Faith cannot be mediated by the clergy or by human artifacts, it must be an individual subjective passion
What this means then, is that the act of Abraham killing Isaac was a morally just act, if and only if, he: fears and trembles at the thought (1), he chooses to do it (2), his faith is in God and God alone, he truly does not believe that God intends to save or resurrect Isaac (3), and that his faith was not mediated to him through another mortal or via human artifact (4).
Christian dogma embodies paradoxes. Central to this claim is that God, the eternal, infinite, and transcendent being became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). Kierkegaard gives us two attitudes we may hold in response to this: we can have faith or we can take offense. What Kierkegaard says we cannot do is hold to virtue of reason. To choose faith then, is to suspend reason in favor of something that is even greater than reason. This is Kierkegaard’s virtue of the absurd. Recall now Genesis 22, where Abraham is given reprieve from killing his son Isaac. Kierkegaard says that he must have had full intention to kill his son for this to be a true test of faith; It is thus, by the virtue of the absurd, for his fear and for his trembling (for his angst) that Abraham is given this reprieve.
Oh right, this is a Fire Emblem post
Many of you probably see where this is going; this post is about the events in the holy tomb. Byleth is Abraham, Edelgard is Isaac, and Rhea definitely isn’t God.
It is here that Rhea tells Byleth to sit on the throne and receive a divine revelation- and there was a revelation alright. Here Byleth is presented with two choices, and critically, this is the point in which time and eternity intersect- for here Byleth as an individual creates a temporal choice which is judged for eternity. If Byleth chooses Rhea, certainly (1) is fulfilled. That’s about it. Yeah. This is r/Edelgard btw lmao. However, Byleth choosing Edelgard is much more complex and difficult to articulate. At the very least we can say (4) is met by the very nature of going against Rhea.
When Rhea orders Byleth to kill Edelgard in the name of the Goddess Byleth knows this is bullshit as he/she knows Sothis cannot give this order because of events earlier. It is important to point out here that whether Sothis wants/doesn’t want Byleth to kill Edelgard is irrelevant. I cannot stress this enough; one cannot speak on behalf of God. For the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical to be applicable Sothis must command Byleth herself.
Sothis is the in-game equivalent of God, but she is not the Christian God. She does not order Byleth (Abraham) to kill Edelgard (Isaac). The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical is not applicable because Sothis did not demand an existential test of faith- she did not put Byleth in a position of monumental choice (the choice itself could be called monumental, however) in which eternal salvation or damnation hung over them. Byleth ought not feel angst at her decision (1) because it was not an invocation of the virtue of the absurd. It was a monumental choice in which time and eternity intersected, but it was not a choice God ordained to be a test of faith (2). (3) is not applicable as Sothis tells you otherwise. It is Rhea who gives you commands, not Sothis (4).
Faith and religion is so much more than regurgitating church dogma. It is the spirit in which these tenants are respected and practiced. These are Serios’s tenants you can find in the library:
The Book of Seiros, Part V The Five Eternal Commandments
• Dare not doubt or deny the power or existence of the goddess.
• Dare not speak the goddess's name in vain.
• Dare not disrespect your father, mother, or any who serve the goddess.
• Dare not abuse the power gifted to you by the goddess.
• Dare not kill, harm, lie, or steal, unless such acts are committed by the will of the goddess.
I’m going to do what you should never do when you write anything: I’m just going to assume people can spot the hypocrisy of the one who literally wrote these five commandments. It is here that she uses church dogma (again, that she wrote herself) to justify her actions. But there is a point that should be brought up here; Rhea probably wrote this with the best of intentions. None of these commandments are particularly offensive, but she uses them in a way in which violates the very spirit in which she probably wrote them in. Further, there is irony here in that Sothis, in instructing Byleth to choose their own path, also gave out a free pass to Byleth.
Byleth and Sothis embody something similar to the Christian paradox mentioned earlier. Sothis, the Goddess of Fodlan, is incarnated in the body of a mortal. Moreover, she instructs a mortal to choose their own path. The paradox encompassed then is a divine being ordaining a mortal can do no wrong here. The very nature of this paradox is offensive to reason, that a higher divine being can bestow upon a lesser being the aspect of freedom without sin. Recall then that we have two answers to this; we can take offense or we can have faith. What we cannot do is believe by virtue of reason.
(Small note here: when we refer to morality, we aren’t referring to modern notions of consequentialism, Kantian, or anything of the like. In the context of Kierkegaard and theology what is morally right is similar to Aquinas’s theories of action. What is morally right is what brings us closer to God.)
The rational being ought to choose what is best for them. In the context of the holy tomb, it is a monumental existential choice in which time and eternity intersected for Byleth. To choose Edelgard over Rhea is to throw away eternity, rulership, power, and hedonistic pleasures in favor of rebellion and the exhilaration of freedom. To choose the church is to choose for eternity; it is with great angst that Byleth must strike Edelgard down. But that’s not what this choice ought to mean. Sothis had given Byleth the burden of choice. But what is choice? The rational being ought to choose the church for promise of ease and leisure. To rule behind the most privileged walls in all of Fodlan. But for Dostoevsky this is a farce. If the rational being ought to have chosen one decision over the other, did they make a choice at all? He calls this the most advantageous advantage. Or rather, it is the ability to fuck it all up. It is the active human ability to choose what is bad for one’s self in favor of something else. It is the ability to choose something worst, or to choose for something greater.
There is one question that I have avoided answering: why faith? to that end, why choose Edelgard? Remember the beginning of the game in which Sothis forces Byleth’s confession: ‘I am a mortal’. Remember that Sothis tells Byleth to choose their own path. Five years later, after Byleth’s monumental existential choice, we see Crimson Flowers ending... yet on a metaphysical level this didn’t happen five years later. When Kierkegaard says that time and eternity intersected, he meant that at the moment of choice is a temporal decision that will be judged for eternity. When Byleth made the choice to choose Edelgard this was both going to happen, but also happened immediately. It was the moment in which Byleth was judged for eternity. It is in Crimson Flower, at Edelgard's side, that this all comes to fruition; As the burden of choice fades, so to does the green from Byleth’s hair. As the feeling of angst leaves, so to does the green from their eyes. For in this moment all reason is suspended. It is the ultimate expression of faith: by virtue of the absurd Byleth’s heart begins to beat, for faith leads to unlocking one’s true self.
comment on reddit
First, holy crap this is awesome. I love Kierkegaard, and I hadn't considered the idea of the kill/protect choice in the context of the Abraham/Issac sacrifice. This just articulates so much of why CF works so well for me as a route, so thank you.
I'm going to springboard off of this to talk about the theological implications of the Abraham/Issac moment: the testing of Abraham acts as a means to demonstrate that the Hebrew's God is different than other "pagan" deities. There was not the linkage of morality with gods that exists in popular Judeo-Christian consciousness today. A god commanded an action, and the individual obeyed it, because they were a mortal.
Abraham being requested to sacrifice Issac would be an action that Abraham would follow, not because it had anything to do with right/wrong, but because it was commanded of Abraham. When Abraham goes to kill his son, Yahweh stops him because that action is not right. Abraham instead is told to sacrifice a sheep, because as Kierkegaard articulates, asking a man to sacrifice his own son is a monstrous action, and one that would mark Yahweh as barbaric, and the relationship between Yahweh and his followers as one where Yahweh's commands are followed solely because of His power, instead of His goodness. It also is inherently contradictory-Yahweh promises Abraham his descendants will rule nations, yet tells him to kill his son.
In other words, the real choice is to ignore what is commanded, for what is right. And this is what we see in the Holy Tomb as well. Byleth, according to the Church's teachings, must not disrespect those who "serve the goddess", Rhea. Yet by doing so, they will be killing Edelgard in cold blood. By refusing to kill Edelgard, Byleth makes the seemingly non-moral choice to ignore the Goddess' teachings, but in doing so, they are truly following Sothis' command to "cut their own path" like a mortal, as OP points out. The actual path of the Goddess.
It's phrased as "protecting" Edelgard for a reason-it's the morally correct thing to do, despite Edelgard's many sins. By ignoring the false morality that Rhea commands, and instead choosing what is truly moral. Byleth finds their own humanity, and again like OP says, becomes human.
BTW, if anyone is going, “OP is reading too much into this.“ Byleth (Beleth) and "El" are both ancient demons/pagan gods in the Old Testament. The biblical references were in the writer's heads. Guaranteed.
In terms of Christian symbolism, I have a theory about how the Silver Snow ending art is rather sinister.
Protestant Reformers, including John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Thomas, John Knox, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley, as well as most Protestants of the 16th–18th centuries, felt that the Early Church had been led into the Great Apostasy by the Papacy and identified the Pope with the Antichrist.
So here we have a solid basis for the idea that Rhea, the "Pope" of Fodlan => Antichrist/Satan/whatever. This view is part of Historicist interpretations of the Book of Revelation.
And it seems like the game deliberately alludes to this idea, with people accusing Rhea and the Central Church of apostasy.
Notably, one major figure Historicists associated with the Pope/Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon. For people familiar with Shin Megami Tensei, this is the demon Mother Harlot.
She appears as wearing a purple robe. The color purple was associated with the Roman Empire, as well as the garments of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the Harlot and her beast can be seen as an allegory of the Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Empire respectively.
The Harlot is seen riding on the seven-headed beast as she represents the apostate church, The Roman Catholic Church, which rose to prominence on the back of the power of the Roman Empire.
Note how this fits Rhea/The Church, which rose to prominence on the back of the power of the Adrestian Empire. And overall this seems appropriate because 3H is full of SMT influences.
The really important thing to take away from that description is the color purple.
The Book of Revelation also describes Satan as "the great dragon who deceives the whole world".
Now let's consider what we see in the SS ending art.
purple dragon banners (i.e Satan/The Harlot is victorious!)
Purple dragon wheel thingy on the side of Byleth's carriage
Byleth's clothes (or at least, their cape) is white on the outside, but purple on the inside
the person with a bunch of purple colors climbing onto Byleth's carriage. Is that guy a jester? I can't really tell, but that's what it looks like to me. If so, it kinda seems like a diss, like the game telling you "lol you're a fool". And in any case, the imagery seems to allude to Mother Harlot
Let's take this a step further and look at some passages from the Book of Revelation about the fall of Babylon. Note that Babylon is essentially a metaphor for some sort of sinful nation/land/city which has earned the ire of God's wrath.
“With such violence
the great city of Babylon will be thrown down,
never to be found again.
22 The music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters,
will never be heard in you again.
No worker of any trade
will ever be found in you again.
The sound of a millstone
will never be heard in you again.
23 The light of a lamp
will never shine in you again.
The voice of bridegroom and bride
will never be heard in you again.
Your merchants were the world’s important people.
By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.
24 In her was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people,
of all who have been slaughtered on the earth.”
I feel like the SS ending art alludes quite a bit to this passage.
On the right side of the art, we can see people playing trumpets/pipes and a harpist.
We can see a couple of lamps on the right side as well
The dark skinned dude and the woman with the purple shawl at the bottom of the picture look like a bridegroom and bride to me
You could even say the SS ending art looks lightly based on this famous artwork of Alexander entering Babylon.
The immediate next chapter in the Book of Revelation talks about the Battle of Armageddon. Note that a lot of this is HEAVILY metaphorical but check it out:
11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.”
19 Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. 20 But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. 21 The rest were killed with the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.
Okay, so like I said a lot of this is HEAVY on metaphor. And obviously there are TONS of differing interpretations on what this actually means.
I could elaborate on a lot of things here but since this comment is getting so long, I'm gonna focus on just the Silver Snow part for now. The passage mentions "an angel standing in the sun" who announces The Battle of Armageddon. What do we notably see in the SS ending art?
An angel in the sun.
In conclusion, a lot of the imagery seems to point to the idea that the second coming of Christ and the Battle of Armageddon is right around the corner. To further tie into this, what route comes after Silver Snow in terms of the seasons metaphor? Crimson Flower.
Gonna elaborate "a bit" on the Crimson Flower part of my theory - the Battle of Armageddon is CF's Tailtean Plains chapter. The epic confrontation between the army of heaven and the combined armies of Satan and the kings of the earth.
What does the name "Dimitri" mean? "Earth-lover". Dimitri, the "king of the earth", joining forces with Rhea, the Antichrist.
And let's talk a bit more about why the BEs represent the army of heaven.
Eagles in the Bible are often used as metaphors for God's wrath against sinful nations, and God's protection.
"Edelgard" means "noble protector". "Hresvelg" is a variation of "Hræsvelgr" in Norse mythology, which is a giant eagle that sits on the edge of the heavens. So Edelgard's full name is literally something like "Noble protector eagle from heaven".
I'll end by quoting some Bible passages involving the eagle-as-God's-protection metaphor. Pay extra attention to the final two lines:
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
This theme of "peace" is pretty prominent in various CF endings. For example, Byleth/Hanneman and Byleth/Manuela paired endings both mention "true peace" while their non-CF paired endings do not. The Edelgard/Byleth ending also says "to ensure a lasting peace". IIRC the German translation of that ending is even more direct, saying that they create an era of peace.
Another one - what's the purpose of the CG from Edelgard's coronation?
If you ask me, the main purpose is the imagery of how it looks like she's praying to her father, like Jesus prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest. Obviously, Ionius IX is NOT God, but the idea is just that the Jesus figure is praying to their father.
This ceremony makes Edelgard Emperor. If you check the wikipedia article about the title King of Kings, it specifically mentions that it's equivalent to "Emperor" and is often translated as such. Who is known as the King of Kings in Christianity? Jesus.
And Edelgard says some ominous shit following the coronation ceremony:
"Now that I'm the emperor, it's time to grasp my destiny. After the ceremony in the Holy Tomb, I must return to Enbarr. This may be the last we see of each other."
So yeah, I know a lot of this might sound like a stretch but whatever, just sharing my thoughts for fun. Make of it what you will! If at the very least I make people's headcanons more fun then that's good enough for me :D
In contrast, even just the name "Byleth" is a demon name (while "Edelgard" means "noble protector" - which sounds more appropriate for the true messiah?). In Byleth's Silver Snow ending, they're left hoping for true peace, while in Crimson Flower, true peace is actually achieved. A key aspect of the true messiah is they bring about an age of peace. This is why one of Jesus's names is "Prince of Peace".
Jesus's main antagonists in the Bible were corrupt religious authorities. He came out and accused them of being corrupt (like Edelgard accuses the Church), and in response the authorities pointed back at Jesus and claimed he was the wicked one (which is how the Church reacts after Edelgard declares war).
There was an essay (referred to as OP from now on) posted to this sub recently that got quite a number of things wrong about Fodlan and its political situation (ironically, in a post that claimed to address misconceptions), and so I have risen from my reddit dormancy to correct the record. I will start with a discussion of the state of Fodlan and the crest system, move onto the role and power of the Church in all this, and end with a discussion of Edelgard and her partnership with the murder muppets.
All quotations are sourced from fedatamine . com/en-us/ The location of the quote (explore chapter, battle, or event name) will be provided for reference.
The Aristocrestocracy
The OP makes the argument that because Crests are not uniformly and consistently a requirement for a person or family to be noble, they are not intrinsically tied into the aristocratic power structure of Fodlan. This is laughable considering how much of the game focuses on Crests and their impacts on characters and power. Just because an exception exists does not mean that a consistent pattern is invalid. For instance, to argue that the Victorian era was not a restrictive time to be a British woman because the monarch of the time was female would be idiotic.
Starting off at the Kingdom, there are seven major families listed in the Register of Kingdom Nobles – Blaiddyd, Fraldarius, Gautier, Charon, Galatea, Rowe, and Kleiman. Of these, Blaiddyd, Fraldarius, Gautier, and Charon have always held significant power in the Kingdom, and all of them have crested bloodlines. Galatea defected from the Alliance with a Major Crest and a Relic and was instantly granted land and status in the Kingdom. Notably, they brought no land and were given some, showing the importance of a crested bloodline. The two major houses without crests essentially bought noble titles through the addition of land to the Kingdom (through deceit or outright murder) – Rowe with Arianrhod and Kleiman with Duscur.
If this isn’t enough to show the overwhelming dominance of Crests over Kingdom politics, we have two families where the secondborn crested son was made heir over the firstborn crestless son, explicitly because of his crest – the Blaiddyds and the Gautiers.
Dimitri (Crests: The Good and the Bad): It’s far from uncommon for someone to lose their ability to lead their house because they don’t bear a crest. Just like Miklan. It happened to my uncle as well. The eldest child of the king, and yet he never ascended to the throne. All families whose bloodlines carry Crests of the 10 Elites are much the same.
Sylvain (Byleth B): Most children who are born to noble families are tested upon birth to see if they bear one. Even descendants of the 10 Elites, like myself, can't be legitimate heirs without a Crest. That means, as children, we're only accepted if we're born with one. The heads of most noble houses keep having kids until they get one with a Crest. Those children then grow up to be heads of their houses, and the vicious cycle continues.
All three female Lions also have problems caused by their crests. The OP acknowledged that Annette suffered in her home due to pressure from her crested status. However, Ingrid’s and Mercedes’ situations highlight how the legitimacy that crests lend to Fodlan’s nobility plays into their importance. Ingrid’s father is trying to sell her to a suitor. Her value is given by her crest – her suitors hope to buy their way into the nobility and legitimize their position with crested offspring.
Ingrid (before paralogue): He began life as a merchant but has somehow achieved rank in court. An enterprising noble from an allied territory. It's most likely that he wants the Crest of Daphnel that I bear to adorn his family name.
We see what may have happened to Ingrid had this transaction gone through in Hanneman’s A-support with Edelgard.
Edelgard: Your father bore a Major Crest, and both you and your grandfather inherited Minor Crests. Your sister was born without one...but as the daughter of a family in which Crests are prevalent, others saw...potential in her. That's why she was married off to a certain noble whose influence was waning. He was undoubtedly desperate for power. But no matter how many children she bore him, none manifested a Crest. She fell from her husband's favor and was mistreated...ultimately leading to…
[…]
Hanneman: My sister is far from the only victim. Many noblemen have done the same to their own wives, and I despise them for it.
Mercedes’ situation is similar. Her adoptive father bought her from the church where she’d been living, and plans to use her and her crest as leverage to become nobility.
Mercedes (Ferdinand B): Life was becoming...difficult for us, so my mother and I fled from House Bartels. We found refuge in a small church in Faerghus and lived there for a few years. A man appeared one day and said that he wanted to adopt me. It was obvious that he only cared about my bloodline and Crest. The priest refused to let me go, but the man used his money to overwhelm the church. In the end, I had no choice but to leave with him.
Mercedes (Byleth A): [My father is] the reason I first came to the Officers Academy. He's also the one who dragged me from the church where I was living just so he could use my Crest. My Crest does not yet belong to a house, so he plans to use it as leverage to marry into the nobility.
On that note, let’s take a look into how important crests are to the Imperial nobility. We’ve already seen above that it is common in the Empire for nobles to abuse their wives in hopes of lifting their own statuses with a crest-bearing child. Mercedes's time in the Empire was no better than her time in the Kingdom, again due to the political importance of crests. Her stepfather married her mother with the goal of obtaining a crested heir, and once he had Emile he mistreated them so badly they fled. Once he changed his mind, he tried to get Mercedes back to marry her and produce more crested heirs! The OP uses House Martritz as an example of an Imperial house with no crest-related problems, ignoring that its only two surviving members were hounded out of the Empire due to people desiring their crest.
Mercedes (Jeritza B): A young boy left all alone in House Bartels without us... I can't imagine how lonely and terrible that must have been. To our half-siblings who bore no Crests, we were nothing more than...intruders. Their horrible words and violent actions were only bearable because the three of us supported one another through it...
Jeritza (Mercedes A): On the day I took his life, Father had just discovered that you and Mother were hiding at a church in the Kingdom. He was considering bringing both of you back home, but by then, Mother was past the age to bear children. And so he proclaimed that he would take the only other female of the Lamine bloodline... That he would take you as his wife.
Dorothea was born to an Imperial noble who threw her and her mother out on the street specifically because she was crestless. If she had a crest, she would have been raised as that man’s daughter to elevate his status.
Dorothea (Hanneman B): Eventually, after I became a singer... I met the nobleman that I think is my father. […] He'd had a child with a maid, but the child didn't have a Crest… So he threw them both away. Those were his very words.
Let’s not forget the most egregious example of the importance of crests to the Imperial nobility – the horrendous experiments on the Hresvelg and Ordelia children, explicitly with the goal of creating a “peerless emperor.” As these experiments had the goal of creating a weapon, not a ruler, I won’t be using them in my argument for the political power of crests, although they show the consequences of the never-ending pressure for crests within Fodlan.
The Empire is unique because its major noble houses are descended from the Saints (Hresvelg, Hevring, Varley) and Emperor Wilhelm’s crestless allies (Bergliez, Vestra, Gerth), so they have fewer crested bloodlines than the other two countries. Given this, it is all the more relevant that the minor nobles are so desperate to have crested offspring, as it shows how important crests are even in a country with numerous crestless noble houses. The OP lists other crestless noble houses (Ochs, Arundel, Hrym) in an effort to argue that crests are not important, but these are minor houses with little power. Arundel, in particular, gained all of his current power after Ionius fell in love with Anselma, then kept it through the Insurrection by siding with Aegir.
Register of Imperial Nobles: Formerly a minor noble house of the Empire. As head of the house, when Volkhard's younger sister became betrothed to Emperor Ionius IX, Volkhard was granted the title of Lord Arundel.
In the Alliance, the initial roundtable was initially entirely composed of crested bloodlines – Reigan, Goneril, Gloucester, Ordelia, and Daphnel. However, Daphnel's Major Crest-bearer fled to the Kingdom with their Relic to establish House Galatea (per the Letter to a Mysterious Noble in the Shadow Library); as a result the Daphnels have been without a Crest for generations. This weakness allowed a wealthy minor noble to push them off the Roundtable.
Register of Alliance Nobles: House Daphnel: Descendants of one of the 10 Elites and formerly among the Five Great Lords of the Alliance, it lost much power due to internal discord. For the last several generations, no head of House Daphnel has born a Crest. In spite of this, it still maintains its status as a noble family.
I would like to note the phrasing of the last line in the Register. It notes that they still remain nobility despite their lack of crest. If this was not notable, if crests had nothing to do with nobility, there would be no need for this remark.
To conclude, of the seven major noble families of the Kingdom, five have crested bloodlines, and all four of the original founding major houses were crested. Of the six great families of the Empire, three have crested bloodlines. Of the five noble houses of the Alliance Roundtable, all five used to have crested bloodlines, and the fifth lost their position when it lost its crest. In all three countries, there are many minor lords and barons who desire to improve their statuses by producing crested children, and willing to abuse women for this end. This does not describe a society in which crests are unimportant or unrelated to the source of aristocratic power. It is a society in which the most powerful nobles are largely crested, and the less powerful nobles are desperately searching for that added legitimacy.
Lastly, OP attempts to prove that there is no problem with crests (a completely different question than whether the crest system is integral to the aristocratic system) because Houses Aegir, Hevring, Varley, Fraldarius, Charon, Dominic, Reigan, Gloucester, and Goneril have no issues. Of course they have no issues: their heirs have crests! This is an equivalent argument to “male primogeniture is not a problem because some nobles have sons.”
The Theocracy of Seiros
Now that we have established that crests are an integral part of Fodlan’s aristocracy, it is time to answer why, to take a bigger look at the Church of Seiros as an institution and its role in the governance of Fodlan.
Why are crests so important to the nobility? They are certainly important for the physical and magical boosts that they give to their owners, and the ability to wield their respective Heroes Relic. However, if crests were solely valuable for enabling knights to wield Relics, that’s no reason to make them heir of the house over uncrested elder siblings. In fact, it would be smarter to have the non-crested govern and deploy the crested Relic wielder to the front lines at all times. This is not what we see happening. The Imperial crested bloodlines possess no relics and yet still desire Crests. Also, it is not as if Ingrid, Mercedes, Hanneman’s sister, or any of the other crested women mentioned in Hanneman-Edelgard A are being married off with the intention of deploying them on the battlefield. The objective in all those cases is to produce crested heirs.
Why are crested heirs so important? Because they signify the Goddess’s favor. Within the Book of Seiros, crests are explicitly stated to be divine gifts to humanity.
Book of Seiros, Part II: To face this evil force, the goddess created a new well of power. She gifted certain chosen individuals with sacred blood, allowing them to wield mystical weapons, that they may prevail against the darkness.
Book of Seiros, Part IV: Dare not abuse the power gifted to you by the goddess.
The consequences of these teachings are spelled out by Edelgard.
Edelgard (Crests: The Good and the Bad): People believe Crests are blessings from the goddess, that they're necessary to maintain order in Fódlan. [...] Their power is granted only to a select few, whom we elevate and allow to rule the world.
Now, Rhea was obviously responsible for writing the passages in the Book of Seiros that linked Crests to the blessing of the goddess. But that was a long time ago; does she do anything to maintain that association in the current day? Yes, she does. On every route, after Chapter 5, she states:
Rhea: See to it that you keep what transpired at the tower to yourself. People would lose faith in the nobles should rumors spread of one using a Relic and transforming into a monster. All regions of Fódlan would fall into chaos. We must avoid that at all costs. Please ensure the students who accompanied you understand that as well. Have I made myself clear?
[…]
Byleth: You knew?
Rhea: Of course. That is why we rushed to recover it. Sadly, we did not arrive in time.
Rhea is explicitly acting to preserve the status quo of the crested nobility in this scene. As she says herself, people may begin to lose faith in their divine blessing (and thus, the source of their legitimacy) if rumors spread that a supposedly holy relic corrupted a noble into a monster. She cares little about bandits in general – both Felix and Sylvain have paralogues addressing banditry in the Kingdom to which the Knights of Seiros are not deployed – but as soon as a bandit acquires a Hero’s Relic and risks revealing their true nature, she moves immediately to address the issue.
The relationship between the Church and the nobility is a mutually beneficial one. The nobility display piety and donate to the church, and in return the church provides theological legitimacy to their power. This is why the Church acquiesces to the nobility’s sense of propriety when it comes to the room layout – no point in needlessly antagonizing donors.
The OP cites Lorenz’s lines from the Chapter 2 explore as evidence that the church has little power, presumably because he is not devout. However, despite not being a believer, Lorenz feels obliged to pretend to pray, as public piety is a tool that the nobility uses to maintain their power. The church’s scriptures say that the goddess gifted certain bloodlines with sacred power, so crested nobles must maintain the appearance of piety to cement a connection to the institution that legitimizes them.
Lorenz (ch.2 explore): It is the duty of every Fódlan noble to demonstrate piety toward Seiros. […] The truth is, I am not a particularly devoted believer either. But it would be unbecoming for a noble like me to neglect his prayers, wouldn't it?
Lorenz (CF ch.17 explore): Personally I take no issue with attacking Lady Rhea. But the eagerness of my fellow nobles does vex me, despite so many grand displays of piety from them in the past. It gives the impression that faith is little more than a tool they use to maintain their positions of power. […] If it is no longer useful as a tool, then I expect the nobles will cease to give it any credence.
Having shown that the church offers theological legitimacy to the nobility in turn for piety and financial support, let’s now discuss the power that the church truly holds in Fodlan. The OP attempts to assert that the Church has no power over the other countries because they do not directly control them or and because they don’t force the nobility to donate to them. But consider: Arundel stopping his donations was apparently so suspicious that it made Dimitri suspect him of regicide. This is indicative of an environment where it is considered socially unacceptable to not be donating to the Church of Seiros.
Speaking of relations between the Church and the nobility, the Church shows that it has the ability to confiscate property from the most powerful noble families in Fodlan. Sylvain reveals that he had a serious fear that the Church would confiscate the Lance of Ruin from the Gautiers (one of the most powerful noble families on Faerghus) after the incident with Miklan.
Sylvain (Byleth A): One wrong step and we would have lost our Relic to the church.
Additionally, Constance’s paralogue involves the Church sending her to retrieve a Relic from Duke Gerth, one of the six great Imperial noble families.
Constance (before paralogue): The church wishes to obtain a Hero's Relic thought to reside in House Gerth's collection. […] The Church of Seiros was displeased to learn this. They feel the Relic should belong to them and have made that plain to House Gerth.
The Church sends people to demand that one of the six most powerful nobles in the Empire hand over his validly acquired possession to them with no recompense. This is not the action of a powerless organization. By the way, OP pointed out that Duke Gerth wanted the Relic as leverage over the Church.
Duke Gerth (after paralogue): The Empire's Minister of Foreign Affairs must hold on to every bit of leverage that he can. As the Empire's relations with the church have chilled, it makes for a strong card to play.
However, OP’s statement that this is evidence that the Church has little power is invalid. You do not need leverage to deal with people who are less powerful than you. It is only necessary when you are at parity or at a disadvantage. Duke Gerth is one of the most powerful people in the Empire, and yet he still needs to grasp for every piece of leverage that he can when dealing with the Church of Seiros because it is more powerful than he is.
Another addition of the DLC is the Shadow Library, which reveals the Church is censoring books and deliberately blocking technology it feels would undermine its power and position, including telescopes, oil, the printing press, and autopsies. Notably, autopsies are banned because, “A notable cardinal asserted that if medical science were to excel over faith-based white magic, it would destabilize the foundation of the church.” If the Church were not in charge of Fodlan, it would not be able to ban technology like this. Yet it does.
Now, let’s take a look at the Church of Seiros and its actions in White Clouds. Firstly, there’s the obvious elephant in the room: the Knights of Seiros. This is an independent army of highly skilled soldiers who answer to no one but the Archbishop and were, at their peak, equivalent in strength to the Adrestian Empire’s army.
Shamir (ch.12 explore, non-CF): However hard we fight, I give us a 50 percent chance of winning.
An organization whose army is tied for the most powerful on the continent cannot be said to be powerless. Rhea holds an immense amount of soft power simply by the fact that she possesses this army and can deploy it should she wish. Let’s take a look at how Rhea and the Church have chosen to use this power in the past.
The first and most prominent example in (relatively) recent history is the formation of the Kingdom. But wait, you say, the Church had no role in that war. How is this a demonstration of their power? The answer: the church gave the newfound Kingdom legitimacy. The first thing that a new nation needs is to be recognized as such by its peers. Without legitimacy as a state, the Empire could have declared Loog a rebel, regrouped, and attacked again later, as the Empire had the rightful claim to the land… Until the Church of Seiros stepped in and gave that rightful claim to Loog.
Knight of Seiros (ch.4 explore): Have you heard of the War of the Eagle and Lion? It was the battle that won the Kingdom its independence from the Empire. Even the Church of Seiros had no choice but to recognize the courage of Loog, the King of Lions, who emerged victorious. The church awarded him a crown and the right to govern the Faerghus region, backing him in his bid to found the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. In return, Loog agreed to make the Church of Seiros the religion of his territory, and permitted them to publicly proselytize across the Kingdom.
The Church awarding Loog a crown is repaid with permitting proslytization because they did him a service. It also means that the Church possesses the authority to award the right to govern to somebody. Let me repeat that: the Church has the right to say whose claim to land is valid, to confer legitimacy to rulers. Loog won the battle, but it was the Church who ended the war by giving the rightful claim to Faerghus to Loog. This is prime evidence that the Church is the supreme authority over all of Fodlan – they cannot give the land from one nation to another if the land was not ultimately theirs to begin with.
An example of the Church demonstrating its hard power is the third chapter of the game, in which Rhea sends Fodlan’s future leaders on a mission where they are to watch the Knights of Seiros cut down Lonato and his militia. The lesson that she hopes to impart here is that the nobility turning on the Church (the only authority in Fodlan above themselves) will lead to them being slaughtered with no mercy.
Rhea (Rumors of a Rebellion): This mission should prove useful in demonstrating to the students how foolish it would be to ever turn their blades on the church…
Rhea (Report: Garland Moon): I pray the students learned a valuable lesson about the fate that awaits all who are foolish enough to point their blades towards the heavens.
Another example of the Church’s power occurred after the Tragedy of Duscur. When Christophe was (falsely) implicated in the Tragedy, he was executed by the Church.
Catherine (Into the Fog): Speaking from the church's perspective, we simply passed judgment according to our doctrine in place of the Kingdom, which was in complete chaos.
This means that the Church had the authority to execute a noble of the Kingdom for (what appeared to be) a crime against the Kingdom with no relation to the Church itself at all. This is not something that an inferior power can get away with. The Church can only do this because it holds authority that supersedes the sovereignty of the nations of Fodlan. They are perfectly comfortable marching into Kingdom territory to kill Kingdom citizens – Lonato, his militia, and the Western Church were killed while still on Kingdom land.
Speaking of the Church imposing its justice on the nations of Fodlan with no repercussions, they also flout national sovereignty in the other direction. Catherine is a criminal in the Kingdom, accused of participating in the Tragedy of Duscur, the very same crime that led to Christophe’s execution and the massacre of the people of Duscur. However, she fled to the Church and has been shielded from the Kingdom’s justice since.
Catherine (Byleth A): I was implicated in a plot to kill the king. It was a totally false accusation, of course. I had to flee the Kingdom, and the archbishop took me in.
The protection afforded by being a Knight of Seiros is so complete that she has no concern whatsoever about walking around within the Kingdom itself – she knows that the Kingdom authorities can’t touch her. Thus, the Church has the authority to unilaterally execute any citizen of the Kingdom, but the Kingdom cannot render justice against a criminal that the Church is harboring while that criminal is walking around on its own territory. This is not a relationship of equals: the Kingdom is under the Church’s jurisdiction. The other nations are as well; it is notable that when the Southern Church led an insurrection against the Empire, the bishop in charge was exiled. When Edelgard led an insurrection against the Church, however, Rhea demanded her immediate execution. That Rhea feels comfortable in ordering the death of the Adrestian head of state with no due process whatsoever speaks volumes about the level of relative power the Church holds over the nations of Fodlan.
Speaking of insurrections, what do Rhea and Seteth think about the Church, it’s power, and Edelgard’s actions?
Rhea (The Imperial Army Rises): I have acted all these long years as a mere proxy for you. But the duty is yours and yours alone. Only you can lead the people of Fódlan. […] I am waiting and hoping for the moment when our creator rules this wayward land once more.
Seteth (Aftermath of War): She asked for you to take her place should anything ever happen to her. She entrusted you with leading the people of Fódlan.
Seteth (Imperial Invasion): If we do not defeat Edelgard and retake control of this world, Fódlan's future shall be as dark as night.
Seteth (The Imperial Palace): [Edelgard] is one of your students. I understand your desire for a path to peace. But she will never bend to our will.
Rhea (S-Support): I am not qualified to continue leading the people…
Rhea (The Holy Tomb): Professor. Destroy these villainous traitors who dare dishonor our creator!
Rhea (chapter 11 battle): I will not allow such violence from the Empire! Strike down the rebels and protect the Holy Tomb!
Rhea (Fateful Farewell): To think that a descendant of House Hresvelg would dare betray the holy church… […] Such a rebellious heart cannot be allowed to keep beating.
Rhea (CF chapter 12 battle): Come forth! Protect Garreg Mach Monastery from those despicable rebels! […] So you have sullied yourself by joining the rebels? I hope you came prepared to breathe your last.
Rhea (non-CF chapter 12 battle): The goddess protects us... What is there to fear of rebel swords…
Seteth (SS chapter 14 battle): Ugh... To think we'd let Garreg Mach fall twice to these rebels...
Rhea (CF chapter 17): You are all damned, with no hope of salvation. For the sin of insurgency, you shall be consigned to hell!
Rhea (CF chapter 18): And at their head is the one who stole my mother from me and likely that mutinous whelp, Edelgard.
Seteth and Rhea seem to consider themselves to have been in charge of Fodan before the war, and think of Edelgard’s attack as a rebellion against their rule. Straight from the horse’s mouth.
Edelgard and the Murder Muppets
Let’s move to the last misconception of this (already far too long) essay. In order to fully understand Edelgard’s alliance with the murder muppets, we need to take a look at the Insurrection of the Seven and the political situation in the Empire pre- and post- timeskip.
In the Insurrection of the Seven, the six great noble families of the Empire (and Hrym) stripped the Emperor of his political power.
Register of Empire Nobles: [House Hresvelg] boasted supreme authority both within the Empire and without until the Insurrection of the Seven in 1171, in which much of its power was stripped away by the nobility. […] House Aegir led the Insurrection of the Seven and, in many ways, holds the true power governing the Empire. […] Having worked closely with House Aegir, House Arundel is seen as one of the chief instigators of the Insurrection of the Seven.
At the beginning of the game, Emperor Ionius is a puppet. He has no power whatsoever. He could not even stop the murder of 10 of his own children! Aegir, Vestra, Hevring, Bergliez, Varley, and Gerth hold all of the power in the Empire, with Aegir ruling in the Emperor’s stead. Arundel, after fleeing with Edelgard to Faerghus, is bodysnatched by Thales and returns to the Empire with Edelgard to assist in the completion of the Insurrection and the experimentation on the Hresvelg children. As Aegir ordered the experiments, he is obviously in cahoots with the Agarthans – and given that the Ordelia experiments were conducted when Lysithea was very young, he likely has been for some time.
Edelgard (Byleth C+): [Who was to blame?] The prime minister and his gaggle of nobles. They had the Empire under their thumbs. My father, the emperor, tried to stop him, but...it was futile. My father was nothing but a puppet on a string by then. He was powerless to save us.
Emperor Ionius (Coronation): When the prime minister did those horrible things... I could only watch in horror.
If Edelgard had ascended to the throne as per Aegir’s and Thales’s plans, she would also have been politically powerless like Ionius. In her C+ support with Byleth, she says the experiments were conducted in order to “create a peerless emperor to rule Fódlan.” Both Aegir and Thales desire to rule over Fodlan, and so their intentions were most likely to use her (with her dual crest strength) as a military asset in their dreams of controlling all of Fodlan.
Ferdinand (ch,8 explore): Even now, among the nobles of the Empire, there are some who dream of reunifying Fódlan...
Thales (A Form of Grief): You are our greatest creation. We used the defiled beast's blood as the fuel to your flame, that you may burn even the gods. Now is the time to cleanse Fódlan with that power, and bring forth our salvation.
Hapi (VW ch.19 explore): Sounds like there were shenanigans happening behind the scenes in the Empire. I think war was basically inevitable no matter what Eddy did, with those creeps pulling the strings.
So, during the first half of White Clouds, Edelgard was destined to become a puppet ruler and a tool for Aegir’s conquest. However, she avoids this fate and pulls a counter coup on Aegir. How is she able to do so? She gets Hevring, Bergliez, and Gerth’s support. It is heavily implied that she wins over Bergliez with her performance during the Battle of the Eagle and Lion.
Caspar (ch.8 explore): Did you see that my father came by during the Battle of the Eagle and Lion? He left soon after, but I saw him talking to Edelgard first.
Linhardt (ch.12 explore): The most important nobles in the Empire are known for taking power from the previous emperor, my father included. I didn't think it possible that the Imperial princess could ascend the throne so easily. However, it seems that both my father and Caspar's are supporting Edelgard… Having both the Minister of Domestic Affairs and Minister of Military Affairs on your side gives you total control over the Empire's military and finances. They must have been making preparations for quite some time without anyone noticing...
With Bergliez, Hevring, and Vestra on her side, Edelgard was able to take power back from Duke Aegir and establish a power base for herself that was independent of Aegir’s and Thales’ machinations. Until her coronation, she was nothing but a puppet to them.
The OP notes that when Edelgard talks with Thales pre-timeskip, she says some pretty bold things to no effect.
The Flame Emperor (A Form of Grief): There will be no salvation for you and your kind.
This is because she has no power in the relationship, and both of them know it. She is all bark and no bite, and so Thales ignores her rhetoric. See how she acquiesces to his request for the Death Knight – she has no power to refuse his “request,” in actuality an order.
Flame Emperor (Slithering in the Dark): As for your request, I assent. The Death Knight is at your command. Use him well.
Hubert (before paralogue): Request? That is an unusual word choice. A request, by definition, can be refused. But if you have orders, Regent, I will follow them.
As her panicked appearance in Remire shows (and her bafflement at finding the Death Knight there), she has no idea what he has been up to and does not approve. If she had the power to say no, she would have.
However, post-timeskip, things are different. Edelgard has a power base separate from Arundel’s control, and the nature of her partnership with them has accordingly changed. Hubert explains it in the Disquiet scene in Crimson Flower.
Hubert: The regent of the Empire, Lord Arundel. Although he is currently cooperating with Her Majesty, he maintains his own sizable military troops. It seems to me that his plans differ from our own. I assume you recall a certain group's scheming from five years ago. Solon and Kronya... They both served Lord Arundel.
Byleth: Why must we cooperate? / He must be dealt with.
Hubert: Professor, I understand how you must be feeling, considering what they did to your father. I know it must be foul to even consider cooperating with their kind. However, their power is essential for us at present. Edelgard also strongly opposed the idea at first. Our enemy is the Church of Seiros itself. It cannot be toppled with the Empire's might alone. Those working under Lord Arundel are extremely hostile toward the church. And the enemy of our enemy is... Well, I think you sufficiently understand by now.
Byleth: Are you sure that's a good idea?
Hubert: Until all of Fódlan is united, it is a necessary evil. As for how we deal with them afterward... time will tell. […] You should know that in her heart, Her Majesty regards that group as enemies of herself and her family. They used her father, the former emperor, as a puppet and murdered her siblings with their vile experimentation. […] That is why this was a...very painful decision for her to make.
Edelgard is in a temporary alliance with the murder muppets for the course of the war. Hubert believes that their strength is useful for countering the Church, and he is proven right. During non-CF routes, the Immaculate One is captured by Thale’s artificial beasts. This removes Rhea from play, breaks the military force of the Knights of Seiros (who scatter to search for her rather than joining in the war effort), and indirectly leads to the dissolution of the Kingdom. In Crimson Flower, where Edelgard sidelines Arundel as much as possible and stops using his beasts, Rhea is able to escape and her presence in Fhirdiad inadvertently foils Cornelia’s coup, leading to both the Kingdom and the Knights being united in resisting the Empire.
Now, if Edelgard is not using the murder muppets TWSITD during Crimson Flower, why does she not attack them? Well, Arundel has his own army. If she attacks him overtly, she turns her two-front war into a three-front war against internal forces with spies in her own ranks, which is suicidally stupid. She doesn’t know where their base is, who their spies are, how to fight them. She and Hubert are actively investigating this, however, so that when the war with the Church is over they can act against them.
Hubert (before paralogue): I am investigating their true identities. I want to know their origins. Their numbers. Their base of operations. Their plans. I want to know where they acquired their dark powers. How they disguise themselves.
Hubert (after paralogue): They are looking down on us. They think we cannot touch them. But the closer we get to them, the less true that becomes. […] We will keep them close, for now, while we still need their strength to rule Fódlan. Once Fódlan is united, however, the focus of this war will shift. […] We who rule the shadows will eradicate those who slither in the dark.
Edelgard’s ultimate defeat of the murder muppets is attested by multiple endings in Crimson Flower.
Outside of Crimson Flower, Arundel has more power (due to his more active role in her military) and Cornelia has more power (due to her coup). Due to her relying on his resources, Edelgard cannot move against Arundel and his treatment of Aegir’s people, or Cornelia and her treatment of Fhirdiad, until the war is over. That said, she and Hubert are still very much after their destruction. They are happy when Arundel bites the dust during AM (even though the rest of the news is bad for them), and their efforts to discover the murder muppets’ base pay off in VW and SS, where she and Hubert are posthumously responsible for Shambhala being destroyed.
Just because Edelgard is not willing to commit to open warfare with Arundel while her other war is going on, does not mean that she is not willing to move against them at all. She uses veneers of plausible deniability to act against the murder muppets. During White Clouds, as soon as she has the cover of fighting for the Church, she is more than happy to kill Monica and Solon. During Crimson Flower, Edelgard feigns ignorance of Cornelia’s allegiance to Arundel to kill her under the cover of plausible deniability. Arundel calls her bluff.
Edelgard (Argathan Technology): It can't be true… So… this is my uncle's trump card. In exchange for striking down Cornelia, he has destroyed Arianrhod!
Hubert: Perhaps we acted too soon in our disposal of Cornelia…
Edelgard: No. If we'll be fighting them soon, there's no disadvantage to weakening their forces. It's also extremely valuable that we forced them to show their hand.
OP points out that Edelgard is shocked in this scene in a clumsy attempt to imply that she is surprised that her actions have consequences. However, she had no way of knowing of the Javelins of Light. Of course she is shocked! Orbital ballistic missiles would be a shocking technology for a person in the middle ages!
If it were not for the Javelins of Light, if Arundel had wanted to retaliate against her, he would have had to summon his army and attack her while she is surrounded by the entire Imperial Army. He would not risk such losses by bringing his troops out into the open, so it was a reasonable gamble given the information that she had at the time. And even still, VW and SS prove that Hubert can use the Javelins to locate Shambhala. By showing his hand, Arundel paves the steps to his own defeat.
Conclusion
I set out to correct some common misconceptions about the political situation of Fodlan that had been helpfully condensed into one post on this subreddit and ended up with this behemoth of an essay. The worldbuilding of Fodlan was thoughtfully constructed and asks a number of challenging questions about the standard assumptions of fantasy narratives. It is frustrating to see all of that steamrolled in a bad faith attempt to enforce a black and white narrative where the Rudolf archetype is unequivocally evil and happily works with the setting’s murder muppets while the Mikoto archetype can do no wrong. I’m not asking that people like or agree with Edelgard; I’d just appreciate it if we could all engage with FE3H how it was written – a complicated and nuanced view of a fantasy society and the revolutionary who attempted to change it.
some fire emblem three houses characters who went through terrible trauma
While most students at the academy have had some sadness in their lives, a few have had terrible abuse or trauma given to them.
Bernadetta's father, who was slowly falling out of nobility, took his anger out on his poor daughter, desperate to create 'the perfect wife' so he could still have noble connections. However, he instead ended up abusing her horribly, including tying her to a chair to force her to stay still. It got so bad that Bernadetta's mother ended up stealing her away to the Officer's Academy in the dead of night, an occasion that made Bernadetta think she was about to die. Due to the fact that her father's abuse gave her a horrible anxiety disorder, it's no wonder Bernadetta is so afraid of connections or criticism, even believing that the all-complimenting Sylvain, who read her book, must be making fun of her, and even wonders for a second if she should actually do something bad to stop him from ever mentioning it again.
Bernadetta is very small before the Time Skip before growing quite a bit in five years. It's not hard to imagine that in addition to being physically and emotionally abusive, her father also wasn't feeding her very well.
Edelgard lost all her siblings to Crest experimentations, and also lost most of her lifespan, living for years in a dungeon, trapped away. There's no wonder as to why she hates Crests so much.
Dimitri lost all of his family from betrayal, and was the sole survivor of the party at the Tragedy of Duscur. Even years later, they continue to haunt him. There's no doubt that Dimitri has some sort of terrible mental illness from the experience, and even worse when you realise he had to conceal it until he just /couldn't/ any more, and ended up causing a bloodbath of his own.
Sylvain's entire personality has been shaped by abuse - confirmed physical abuse by his own brother, Miklan, implied emotional abuse by his father (in the Japanese version, he mentions that his father will do bad things to him if he finds out he ran away to fight in the war) and implied CSA*, which makes his flirting with Ingrid's grandmother not quite so amusing any more. He has a high defence growth (40%) similar to those of a typical future Heavy Armour specialist, which is a bad reminder of how his brother hurt him, including pushing him into a well and leaving him on a mountainside - which is even worse when you consider that he lives in the /coldest place in Fódlan/. He is angry towards Byleth for having a powerful Crest with no repercussions, has no ability to trust anyone new, hides his intelligence (as seen in his supports with Annette), and has eye bags even in his pre-time skip portrait. He refuses to flirt with Bernadetta and Marianne because he recognises how damaging it would be to them, and only really connects with Mercedes, who sees through his persona with kindness, Dorothea, who recognises someone who is only valued for their inherent talents, and Felix in their A-Supports, where it is implied that Felix knows how little Sylvain values his own life.
Lysithea, like Edelgard, was the only survivor of an experiment to implant a second Crest, losing most of her siblings and friends who have undergone the same procedure, and emerging with her health damaged and lifespan shortened. Again, it's little wonder that she came to despise the Crests and belief placed into them, to the point where trying to tie her magic abilities to her Crests rather than her work, skills and knowledge is a major Berserk Button for her. In fact, on the Golden Deer route Lysithea, after discovery of similarity between the two, vows to avenge Edelgard after the latter's defeat and demise, whereas on the Black Eagles route she'll be eager to switch sides and join Edelgard in her campaign against the Crest-based nobility even if she hadn't been approached in the Academy phase.Then there's
Marianne. The poor girl, adopted by a small noble hoping to increase his influence through a marriage of convenience, was shunned and abused simply due to her "improper" Crest that is believed to be cursed and bring misfortune (due to its association with Maurice, one of the Elites who eventually turned into a Demonic Beast). What else could be expected from it — other than her turning into an utterly broken asocial loner and, at one point (as she admits in A-Support with Byleth), contemplating suicide?
Jeritza/Emile, as mentioned before, was estranged from his mother and half-sister when they fled to Faerghus, and ended up killing his father when the latter decided to bring Mercedes back to have Crest-bearing children. Out of the trauma brought by this event the Death Knight persona was born, haunting him ever since and turning him into a bloodthirsty monster now and again. Even after getting a position from Edelgard, he fears that the Death Knight can activate at the worst time, struggles to keep it in check and openly hates it — and by extension, himself. Suddenly, the lines about his desire to have Byleth 'pierce' him sound less like a combat-or-erotic Double Entendre and more like a call of desperation. Granted, he gets better towards the end Crimson Flower, but still...
of course there is Dedue whose people and culture were massacred in a genocide
to quote dedue
in his felix C support :
Dedue: Faerghus destroyed my homeland. Burned it all to the ground. Slaughtered my people.
Dedue: My father, my mother, my siblings—all were killed. We received no aid. No respite. Faerghus murdered our dignity and torched our pride
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Perspective, Tragedy, and the Value of Connection
comment by a
Pinned by Aleczandxr)Table of Contents: Introduction: 0:00 Rhea and the Church of Seiros: 4:22 Claude and the Golden Deer: 15:35 Edelgard and the Black Eagles: 29:10 Dimitri and the Blue Lions: 37:57 Conclusion: 58:11 Please note that a decent portion of this video involves summarizing certain lore, backstory, character and plot elements in order to provide a foundation for my arguments about the themes and ideas presented. This game has an extensive and quite complex setting and story, and it is told piece-meal across four routes, so I felt the need to summarize them for the sections in which they were relevant. Also, the main point of this video is now to have four all-encompassing character analyses for Rhea, Claude, Edelgard and Dimitri, but to go over their backgrounds, mindsets, philosophies and how they are integrative with the game's main themes of perspective and the importance of a connection and "light" like Byleth. This isn't intended to discuss every little nuance of each character, and there are undoubtedly some things I left out about each of them, simply because they wouldn't contribute to the intent of the video. So simply put: don't expect me to talk about every aspect of these characters, because that isn't the point. HAVING SAID THAT - I now realize that the main problem with this video is that I didn’t really delve into Rhea to the fullest extent. In the process of writing her part I got a bit too caught up in leaning on summarizing the lore of the game and talking about how you can be her “light” and didn’t give her quite as much sympathy as she deserved with regards to her motivations. My phrasing should’ve been more fair and elaborate to help justify her perspective. ALSO: Note that I said that Rhea created the Empire, but it’s more accurate to say that she fostered the founding of the Empire, which is what she said in the scene I provided.Show less
comments I saw on the channel
I think it’s interesting to characterize Byleth as a light for Dimitri and Edelgard but not for Claude. There’s some nice visual storytelling in the fact that in the reunion cutscene with Claude, he’s already in the light while Byleth has to walk out of the darkness to meet him (which is the exact opposite for Dimitri’s cutscene). It reinforces the fact that what Claude needs isn’t “a light” or someone to pull him up, but a partner and companion with the power to help bring his dreams to fruition.
Edelgarld isn't in need of a light either, she also just needs someone who she can trust to break the stalemate situation, because if byleth didn't come she would have still won the war with the help of cornelia and house Gloucester in the alliance, this is made proof in the amount of chapters you have to beat.
yes she can win, but the " with the help of Cornelia" caveat to that statement is the big problem there. Yes if Byleth didn't exist she likely would have been able to win the war, but in order to do so she would have had to sell her soul completely to the devil (TWSITD) and compromise her morals for the sake of victory. Once you start down that slippery slope, it's difficult to pull yourself back. We see this in the Azure moon route where Edelgard becomes so committed to attaining absolute victory, that she's barely even tries to reach an understanding with Dimitri to avoid greater bloodshed. She becomes convinced of the fact that only she knows what is right for Fodlan and is prepared to do anything to win, including using her own people as meat shields and trap bait if need be. She's even willing to quite literally surrender her own humanity in order to increase the odds of her success. Edelgard and Dimitri are both good people who find themselves surrounded by darkness in different forms. They both need Byleth to act as a guiding light of sorts to lead them out of that darkness and into the brighter future that they hope for.
I feel like in that cutscene Claude is in a way serving as Byleth’s light which is why they have to walk out to meet Claude in the light. Claude focuses mostly in comforting Byleth, offering food and companionship first and foremost and throughout the story serves more in a guiding or advisor role letting Byleth be the leader/figurehead. This is all the more clear in the final battle where Claude sets up Byleth for victory even at risk of his own well being.
The tragedy of the game really hit me when the new difficulty mode came out and I had to pick a route again. I realized that no matter what house leader I chose to support, it meant i would have to watch the lives of others end in tragedy because my choice deprived them of the support they would desperately need
@kamden madan that’s why I feel like a dick in silver snow I canonically upheld a system that harmed my students was the cause of multiple wars lead to death innocents and then put people for responsible said system on top with no reforms no matter how much I like the church characters I can’t side with them it makes me sick to the core .
if Byleth doesn't join any faction, Edelgard probably would have won eventually, but at that point she probably would've compromised so many of her moral stances that I'd see it more as TWSITD's victory and not Edelgard's
What I love about Edelgard is just how much the butterfly effect is conveyed with this one character. If you opt not to help her, she closes off her heart completely. She becomes a ruthless empress intent to conquer all and absolutely destroy anyone in her path with no qualms or empathy. But the one action you choose in the crypt changes everything. Edelgard did not expect Byleth to side with her. In every single situation, Byleth should try to kill her. They have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by siding with her. The Church turns on them, they become one of the biggest enemies there. But in that instant, Byleth's choice to believe in Edelgard purely because they care about her shakes her to the core. When you next see her, she cries tears of joy over Byleth's reappearance. Her moves are less brutal and cruel, and she has opened up more to her fellow classmates. The Agarthans do not dominate every choice that Adrestia makes, and as such she tries to win the war while minimizing casualties. The Agarthans do not seize Faerghus, and Dimitri is not driven out. He does not lose himself with madness, and instead goes down as a noble king who harbored the Archbishop and tried his best to fend off Adrestia. Claude can be spared, which will ultimately lead to peace between Fodlan and Almyra as he is the next in line. Edelgard's willingness to show empathy pays off in the end, as she mentions that she wanted to create a treaty with the nation. Who better to help create ties than Claude?
All because Byleth reached for her hand.Show less
I always wondered why there wasn't such a heavy emphasis on Edelgard's and Dimitri's relationship in BE but if you recall the conversation that Edelgard, Dimitri, Byleth and Hubert have right before the attack on the Empire in the BL route, it's revealed that Edelgard forgot that Dimitri was the boy that she stayed with for all those years which makes sense if you realise Edelgard was tortured shortly after her time in FaerghusShow less
It is apparently a realistic symptom of trauma like Edelgard endured that huge chunks of her life surrounding the trauma would fade from memory. One of the things I liked a lot about 3H was that all four of the leads Byleth can side with are carrying around a lot of trauma but it manifests in very different ways for all of them. Of course, it's a major knife in the heart to realize that if things are consistent between Azure Moon and Crimson Flower, Edelgard's memories of who Dimitri was to her come back into focus when he calls her "El." Which in Azure Moon happens moments after they realize neither of them can back down and they're going to fight to the death for their principles, and in Crimson Flower happens as Dimitri's bleeding out at her feet.Show less
More of a joking observation Sothis is known as the beginning, which usually synonymous with The Alpha Byleth being a key route factor in end of the current status quo of Fodlan and the accidental final vessel attempt in ressurecting Sothis.
-Byleth is the Omega And Byleth being a key factor...
a series of posts regarding that
More of a joking observation
Sothis is known as the beginning, which usually synonymous with The Alpha
Byleth being a key route factor in end of the current status quo of Fodlan and the accidental final vessel attempt in ressurecting Sothis.
-Byleth is the Omega
And Byleth being a key factor to what lord and route ending and the beginning of the New Fodlan. Especially if becoming the Church head or even God Emperor.
- Byleth becomes the Alpha and the Omega
I'm just glad that this is the context that Alpha and Omega are being used in for this discussion. I actually had a 'not this shit again' moment when it was initially brought up, before realizing we weren't talking about... that.
Well we are going with the classical and theological use of the Alpha and the Omega with 3 Houses' god-mc dynamic
Not everything is Devil May Cry, Internet Culture gets annoying at times
Moving on though, I'd like to point out that, thematically, Edelgard could also count as the Omega in this context.
She does posses the Crest of Flames, and her whole motivation is essentially to wipe out all of the remnants of ancient Fodlan. Both Rhea, for holding Fodlan back and pushing Crests to such great importance, and the Agarthans, for pretty much trying to do the same, just with them in charge, and everyone suffering under them.
That's true as well, though 3 out of the routes she also dies
And in the other routes that Byleth becomes the Archbishop of the new church, and in Silver Snow the god emperor
- Byleth was part of the end of the world, then the beginning of new world = the Alpha and the Omega
Sothis was the Alpha, the beginning of the Nabetian reign. The god who started it all.
Crimson Flower Byleth was the Omega, the end of the Nabetian reign. Or more dramatically, the end of Sothis’s (anime god’s) influence on humanity and the world.
It’s a pity. Sothis seemed pretty cool.
We need more people bringing Sothis as a major party in the fiction scene, rather then leaving her a ghost. I want to see the impact of god’s second coming on Fodlan.
Well one idea as shown in 3 Hopes is letting Sothis be able take control of Byleth's body to use and speak through
Theoretically timewise would be the paralogue in Zanado with Sothis and possible Remire that Byleth and Sothis can do that
Another idea is that Sothis slowly becomes visible and heard by the crest bearers given she is the Origin of their dragon blood and Byleth and her gradual growth in strength and power
Yeah, I'd love to see what a true return of Sothis would be, rather than as a voice in Byleth's head. Especially if she comes back at near full power, or with the alien morality compass rather than a more human one.
