Fire Emblem Three Houses: Deduction of the Flame Emperor’s Veracity and the Remire Massacre
Random thought (well, not "random" so much as "wheel that's been spinning in my head for a little while now"): I think...I think I believe the Flame Emperor when they said they didn't know that Solon had planned that for Remire.
And this isn't based on finding future spoilers. This conclusion was reached through pure logic, on the basis of what I currently know.
A. The first reaction to hearing that is, naturally, not to believe it. But lies are not told for the heck of it. They're told to accomplish a purpose. A lie unbelieved is a lie wasted.
Now, some lies are told just to confuse people, the verbal equivalent of white noise. Their purpose is to confound and confuse, to make it harder to discern what is true and what is not.
The attitude of the Flame Emperor, their sudden appearance, and the offer of assistance to kill Solon so as to prevent more "Remires", even when they had been enemies and hadn't exchanged 5 words hitherto...and even thinking about it being an act, it's hardly the most convincing one to give compared to, say, attacking Solon himself to cement that impression, if there was such a plan.
A lie this implausible, told quickly after the fact, and given no additional reason to actually believe the offer on it's own...I'd call it "the sort of lie that could only be the truth": because nobody who wanted to be believed would try to lie this poorly.
B. Comparing the rest of the events that had happened that are suspected to have Flame Emperor involvement, Remire stands out as almost...out-of-character. No, "out-of-character" isn't the right word. More..."unusually brazen". Let's look at Lenato's rebellion, the attempted robbery of the Tomb of Seiros, and Flayn's kidnapping.
Lenato: Lenato was convinced to raise a rebellion against Rhea, specifically, so as to better serve the Goddess. After his rebellion was smashed and Lenato killed, a note was found on his body, detailing a plan to assassinate the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros, Rhea, during the Rite of Rebirth.
Tomb of Seiros: Security measures had been taken to defend Rhea during the Rite of Rebirth but it had been deduced that the assassination plan is actually a red herring, a trick to keep them focused elsewhere while they institute their true plan. The letter, after all, had been found with no attempts to disguise or encode it.
And that turns out to be a solid deduction: the Death Knight and members of the Western Church had been found trying to break into the Tomb of Seiros, nowhere near where Rhea is actually supposed to be, unless the idea was to dig underground into the sewer and climb up to stick a spear into her toilet.
(Also, this was another recent conclusion: the Death Knight absolutely refusing to attack unless attacked makes more sense if you think the plan never had their protection in mind once they were found out. His job ended with escorting them to the Tomb of Seiros. After that, why should he care about the fate of a cat's paw?)
("I don't take orders". Yes, you bloody do.)
Flayn: Flayn had been kidnapped by the Death Knight for her special blood but it wasn't Flayn that was also found, it was a student that had disappeared a year ago, Monica. Monica later turns out to be a spy called Kronya in disguise, working for the Flame Emperor and Solon, keeping a close eye on Edelgard and kidnapping students to turn them into Demonic Beasts, presumably to provide a distraction to spread out the Knights of Seiros for another hidden attack at the Monastery.
With these attacks, there's always been an element of "wheels within wheels", the obvious attack hiding a secondary goal that leads to a better position. Lenato's rebellion hid a plan for the assassination of Rhea, which was a red herring to disguise the true objective, breaking into the Tomb of Seiros, and Flayn's kidnapping was not only to procure her special blood but to sneak in a spy in the form of Monica.
And all of these attacks share another important factor: being aimed at the Church of Seiros and the Monastery. Direct and aimed, focused subversion. Random attacks on distant villages isn't how they rolled hitherto.
With that in mind, it's hard to take what had happened at Remire at face-value, just at what we see and Solon says. Especially since Solon just revealed himself to be an evil magical shape-shifter.
C. Solon himself, in fact, is another main factor. Preceding the Remire mission, it's been noticed that Tomas, the librarian of the monastery, had disappeared. When Byleth and their class finally come to Remire, they found Tomas himself, standing off in the center of the carnage, watching over the bloodshed.
He's not even surprised that they're here and quickly transforms into his true form, Solon, gloating that he had them all tricked, caused this horrible act with Flayn's blood, and will knock down all these beasts, even inviting the Death Knight for the fun.
For an experiment like this, there was no reason for Solon himself to be here or to come in his Tomas disguise. If Tomas was in danger of getting burned, perhaps, but Tomas wasn't under any suspicion until he suddenly left the Monastery with no explanation. Solon, after 40 years of being undercover, had outed himself for seemingly no reason- at first glance. If you take everything he said as the whole truth, an idea that I find more unreasonable then Solon's behavior.
If the "experiment" was not done purely for the sake of experimentation, what was the other purpose, the wheel hidden within the wheel?
A useful logical trick I had found from mystery novels when trying to think about why a thing had been done is to start thinking about what had been done, what had been accomplished by the act. Once you start thinking about the result, it's easier to think about the motivation. Think backwards, I guess that's a way you could put it.
What had been accomplished by the attack on Remire? The village of Remire had become devastated, "Tomas" had revealed himself as Solon, the Death Knight got to have some fun, and Byleth and Jeralt had become personally enraged at the destruction of Remire, ostensibly for the sake of "experimentation" and Remire was chosen because "it could have happened anywhere".
A horrific and random atrocity by a cackling monster, aimed at a personal home connected to Byleth and Jeralt, indelibly associated with the Flame Emperor through the presence of the Death Knight and the explanation, freely given, that Flayn's blood had caused this.
...There's a conclusion that leads to another question: I wonder why Solon felt the need to try to burn any bridges between Byleth and the Flame Emperor. What could have made him think there would be any attempts to cooperate between the two?
