Alright no fancy intros let's dive right into what we can glean about the lore behind Fortune's Weave from the trailers and its possible relation to 3H. Yes I spent a concerning amount of time in the past 6 years poring over 3H worldbuilding and now I'm gonna spend like 10 more doing the same for this. Thanks Intsys
1. Nabateans
Detail with biggest lore implications, even though it was shown in just the beginning and the end. The guy making the declaration as "Divine Sovereign" has his ears out, unlike the Nabateans of 3H who hide them post-Nabatean genocide. And the reason they hide them is almost certainly because they don't want to get clocked and experimented on (see: Flayn kidnapping)/killed to make more Relics.
In other words, whatever happened in the game's backstory, it's apparently safe for at least this one Divine Sovereign guy to walk around as openly Nabatean with his pointy ears. Massive lore implications there.
Sothis is also in her adult form; and if you remember, the reason why she appeared in child form in 3H is because she lost her memories after being killed by Nemesis. The fact she appears in her adult form here implies 1. either she didn't get killed or 2. her ghost self somehow regained her memories. Either way, also lots of lore implications.
Plus character design detail: the Divine Sovereign guy has blue eyes, unlike most Nabateans in 3H who all have curtains matching the window. And the only other Nabatean who has blue eyes is Sothis.
2. there are still Crests, Relics, and Demonic Beasts
As you can see in the gameplay. Cai and Dietrich have Crests of Elites, even. And if we assume they were made like in 3H (=kill Nabateans, drink their blood, make weapons out of their bones), it implies that at least some Nabateans still got killed like that here too.
And while there are regular giant monsters in the 3H works, Leda is shown controlling Demonic Beasts, which are specifically associated with Crests/Relics, and more specifically, human interactions with them. Interesting...
3. the factions and cultural/religious inspirations
We see that there are factions in the gameplay bits, but they're not the ones we know. Some color schemes are remniscient of 3H factions however, ex: Cai's faction being blue and both the logo and his clothes having Celtic knot motifs, invoking Faerghus.
Theodora's faction logo is yellow and appears to be Persian inspired? That winged lion + fire. And if we assume that the irl cultural motif counterpart factions from 3H carry over, she might have something to do with Almyra or the Almyra equivalent.
Dietrich has a black faction logo and he seems to be able to use dark magic. He even teleports, which is a very Agarthan thing in 3H (Agarthans or Agarthan associated characters are the only ones shown doing space shenanigans in the cutscene and/or having exclusive space abilities mechanics wise, like Shez). He's also very pale, palest one in the main four, wears armor that looks vaguely like Thales' armor. Might not be Agarthan but probably at least has Agarthan related backstory.
Leda is the hardest to tell; her faction logo is red but it doesn't look Adrestian as we know it, nor does her design invoke mainstream Adrestian designs we see in 3H. She might still be from the Empire/Empire equivalent, though; see number 6 for why.
As for the Divine Sovereign and presumably the Red Empire™ archetype of this game that's holding the competition: probably Adrestia or Adrestia equivalent, I think? Remember that before things went sour between Adrestia and Church in the recent few hundred years of 3H, Seiros and the Saints (Nabateans) helped found the Empire and whatnot, so Adrestia there already has the strongest claim to being the arbiters of the faith and successors of Saints/Nabateans (if they knew what Nabateans were); a similar country being ruled by an actual Nabatean isn't too much of a stretch.
Also one interesting thing to note is that from what we've seen in the trailer, the aesthetics are far less... west/north European. It's giving Byzantine including the Near Eastern/North African territories. Which, again, interesting given that Fódlan was "what if Stereotypical Fantasy Europe™ (so the north/western parts mostly) went isolationist for 1000 years." And idk what Cai's name is short for but Dietrich is the only one in the main four with a super Germanic sounding name, while Theodora and Leda are very Greek/Byzantine, matching the aesthetics shown.
For religion: the Divine Sovereign's name and his declaration at the start invoke faith. Meanwhile Theodora mentions having to protect her faith, implying that she might follow a different one. Also her design is obviously a Seiros homage, which has interesting implications regardless of whether Seiros as we knew her exists in this world.
Plus, considering the relationship between irl Christianity, Rome, and other regions/people that were under their rule (ex: Celts), interesting stuff about the spread of religions coming?
4. Adrestia and gladiators
I am brainrotten and lorepilled enough that as soon as I heard the whole arena gladiator thing, my mind immediately went to this doc in the Shadow Library. The one about the Adrestian emperor's wedding being celebrated with lavish feasts... and featuring northern gladiators being torn up by beasts as entertainment(!)
So, if the country holding the competition is Adrestia or the Adrestia equivalent of this verse: this might take place at a point where the Empire does nominally rule over the northern (3H world's Kingdom) and eastern (3H's Alliance) parts but they aren't fully culturally/religiously integrated yet. Cai talks about fighting to save his father too; maybe his dad got dragged off by the Imperial rulers for something idk
5. other interesting details
In 1:52, the woman Dietrich is fighting holds something that looks... like a gun???
In 1:54; Egyptian inspired cat mask?
6. the Japanese title
萬紫千紅, banshisenkou, is another Chinese expression like fuukasetsugetsu.
The kanji breaks down to: ten thousand (ban) purple and thousand (sen) red (kou). It's commonly used to refer to the sight of flowers in full bloom— and kou 紅 is the kanji used for crimson in Crimson Flower.
So, I'm willing to bet that this is almost certainly about Adrestian Empire at its peak (those 500? 600 years between end of War of Heroes and the First Mach War~Faerghan independence where they held hegemony over Fódlan) or another timeline/world/whatever with similar conditions.
Anyway I'm off to go finish my 3H longfics before this game throws a wrench to all the extrapolation/worldbuilding I did for them bye
Kromer and Ahab Limbus Company are proof that if you wanna write female antagonists well one way to do it is to just make them unapologetically evil and fucked up without preemptively handwringing about whether that "has unfortunate implications" or trying to soften the blow somehow
Sometimes women attempt Total Cyborg Genocide or gaslight people to death and that's great
Absolute emperor, chieftain king, merchant prince: the three different Fódlans and why the lords (and their fans) talk past each other
Follow up from the previous essay on Fódlan's (lack of) Overton window, let's examine why the lords of 3H talk past each other. And no I don't mean that in terms of their individual personalities, frankly that stuff barely matters. I'm talking about their political positions, and more specifically, the political structures and logic of their countries.
What are the Adrestian Empire, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance? And why can't they "just talk it out?"
And apparently I didn't make it clear enough in my previous essay, but the reason why I don't bring up the whole Agarthan/Nabatean war all that much is because this essay series is about how most everything post-Nemesis (aka known human history to the in-universe humans of IY 1180) can be explained with human level incentives and politics.
The cosmic drama explains specific and unusual (both in-universe to places outside of Fódlan and out of universe because 3H is a fantasy media) material conditions and circumstances like Crests and Relics, sure, but it does not warp humans into acting in ways that would otherwise be utterly unimaginable. It enables and accelerates existing tendencies and incentives but this is not a "ohhhh those poor Fódlanis are just victims caught up in the big dragon people/mole people war." We are assuming that humans (and human-like dragons) have human(-like) psychology and incentives. Humans are not just collaterals here they are actors. That's what we are assuming because otherwise it's boring.
We are also not going to debate the personalities and traumas of the lords and Rhea. That is not what this is about either. Because any imperial/royal/ducal/papal shaped being in their place would have similar political and structural incentives. Maybe the specifics would defer maybe they would be less (or more) competent but they are still dealing with the same institutions in the same situations. This isn't mutually exclusive with the above of "humans as actors," it's a part of it. We are not treating the lords and Rhea as people who exist in a vacuum we are treating them as (one of the many) in-universe historical and political actors existing in a specific in-universe historical and political context.
Anyway you can probably guess from the title, but it's because their political structures and incentives and social contracts are very different. Maybe on the surface it seems like they're all "Crests = blessings of goddess and believes in Church of Seiros that tells them that," and that's certainly the idea the Church wanted to push so that they'd get along, but that clearly didn't work, and they are indeed pretty damn different.
Or at least, that's my conclusion from extrapolation based on canon + comparisons with real history. Maybe that's not what the writers intended, but I think it makes a lot more sense politically if you see it this way, so here's my take on what the three countries are.
First, the Empire. Which, within the Fódlani context, isn't just an empire but The Empire™. They're like (the popular image of) Rome: the defining civilization, believers of The Religion™ (this one is post-Christianization Rome), the one whose standards and structures everyone else adopts and follows.
They are mighty and won against Nemesis and the Ten Elites, but it's not just because they were strong, oh no, that's how those barbarians think. The Empire won because they were righteous, because Saint Seiros chose them and the goddess blessed them. They're not only militarily and administratively superior, but also the morally and religiously legitimate sole sovereign of Fódlan. This is the Adrestian Empire's self image.
Fast forward about a thousand years later. And Adrestia is not the sole sovereign of Fódlan.
They're not even the one closest to the Church which was supposed to be their twin and bestie who told them they were legitimate. Their territory is still the largest on the continent, but considering that they used to rule over almost all of it rather than just half, yeah seeing Kingdom and Alliance as independent entities probably hurt their egos, and even within their current territory who knows which ones the Agarthans have compromised.
The emperor exists, but as of 1180 he's a puppet with no power while the nobles do whatever. The nobles haven't outright broken away into smaller states, because the form of the empire, of being an imperial noble, is what gives them that prestige they love; but the function, the things that made Adrestia actually formidable once upon a time, is on the verge of croaking.
Now, what was it that made Adrestia formidable?
Probably everything Nemesis and the Ten Elites didn't provide for their people.
Organizing and training armies so that the death of one commander didn't make everything fall apart. Using weapons that didn't rely soley on having the right Crest for power (A rank Sacred Weapons vs E rank Relics). Infrastructure in cities that made it pleasant to live in (Seiros helping with canals and waterways etc). Leaders who care about people (Wilhelm, etc). Safety nets and charity for weaker members of society. A belief and an ideal to fight for beyond immediate survival that actually looked possible, due to the previous factors.
Adrestia was probably the first true institutional government within Fódlan, and you can see hints of it in their government office titles. They have ministers, which imply ministries, and although they're traditionally tied to specific houses, they can technically exist independent of them. Different people can take the seat and the institution can keep going, which was probably revolutionary in a world where the biggest political force was previously a bunch of personalist kratocratic warlords. That's a genuine achievement and improvement.
Problem is, that was over a thousand years ago. Adrestia of 1180 would not be able to build those institutions on their own.
First they grew complacent from success, then when it was revealed just how weak they grew from the Kingdom and Alliance breaking off, they presumably began chasing after the symbols of success/divine favor (Crests) rather than the substance. Again this is insane because most Adrestian noble houses have Saints' Crests, they do not have Relics, having a Crest is not a requirement for using a handheld nuke like in the other countries, but they're doing it anyway for the love of the status game. And that's a game the Agarthans are great at encouraging for their own ends, but even if it wasn't the mole people you can bet that Adrestia would still have been in a pretty sad state around this point. It's the classic imperial decline.
The ruling class is malicious, lobotomized, or both. The only reason why the system continues to exist is because the nobles are parasites who want the prestige of being associated with its hollow shell without contributing anything substantial back into it. Yeah it's bleak.
So how does one fix it? Specifically, how do you fix this as the heir of a throne that holds no real power.
War, of course. Specifically, a war of imperial revival and conquest. Because it can justify almost anything you want to do internally.
"Why is the emperor centralizing all the power to herself?!" For the war dumbass she can't conquer Fódlan under the Adrestian banner if she doesn't have power to command the troops. "Why are all the nobles being purged?! Why is everything being restructured?!" Because they're incompetent and Adrestia can't conquer with incompetent elites. Do you want Adrestia to be glorious and majestic or not?? Get with the program.
"Wait but the Church—" shhh Church of Seiros began in Enbarr, not Garreg Mach. We're reviving the Southern Church, that's the real OG Church, not those Central frauds who went and legitimized the Faerghan assholes. Also the emperor said that the Crest based hereditary nobility is bad or something? But you don't even need to go that far to support this okay, the optics of this conquest sounds pretty sweet for any imperial political actor who's not a dumbass.
So Empire = late stage hollowed out bureaucratic empire aiming for a glorious revival through a centralizing overhaul both internally (reform) and externally (conquest, which from their POV would still be re-centralizing the rogue regions).
Now, the Kingdom. You know that joke about Holy Roman Empire not being holy, Roman, or an empire? I strongly suspect that the Kingdom is a bit like that. The people up there probably don't have a full grasp of Church's orthodox "holy" doctrine, the structure is probably closer to successful tribal confederation than a proper kingdom most people think of, and technically it seems that only the eastern half is known as Faerghus. (Western half is Mach.)
If it sounds like I'm suggesting that Kingdom is closer to the Nemesis-Ten Elites era structure than the Empire with its institutions, I am. Sure the Church and Empire must have tried to push them away from the pure kratocracy that it used to be, but culture is difficult to change, especially if the nature around them is that unforgiving and the Adrestian heartland where all that newfangled Church of Seiros came from is waaaay down south while the big strong chief (Loog, Blaiddyds, whoever) is right here and crushing skulls.
Also one interesting thing about Kingdom and religion is that aside from Mercedes (Adrestian) and Dedue (Duscurian), the Blue Lions students have neither strength or weakness in Faith. You'd expect them to have something when it's called the "Holy" Kingdom but they don't. I like to think this implies they just don't have a strong opinion either way because like yeah Church is important because they make the king look cool, whatever, our main loyalty is to the king, and then said king (Dimitri) also isn't religious. Meanwhile in Adrestia they have multiple characters who have opinions even if it's negative but the Faerghans are like (shrug). Even Catherine and Gilbert don't have any and they literally work at the Church. (Yuri does have strength in faith but he did have a special life trajectory with Aubin and all)
Imo these guys wouldn't have had to adopt the Church of Seiros as national religion or put "holy" in the name if the baseline was already religious orthodoxy, like in Adrestia. The Kingdom needs to signal at being religiously orthodox precisely because it's not, or at least, it wasn't at the time of its founding. And on average I don't think Faerghans (esp commoners) are completely irreligious, but I do think that Church of Seiros in the Kingdom is... syncretic in ways that would probably get them called heretic in the Adrestian heartland. Like they probably still do the old prayers to nature spirits but just swap in the saints' names. You get the gist.
Anyway, on the rule of strength thing: notice how the ruling family's Crest is the one that gives them super strength? Yeah. Still relies on king being the strongest one around, still relies a lot on personal or clan level blood oaths (Loog and Kyphon -> House Blaiddyd and House Fraldarius) rather than formal offices and ministries, still a martial culture that reveres strength (and honor, it seems like Kingdom is pretty textbook honor culture), they just call it chivalry now. It's a set of rules about how and when you are allowed to use violence.
Speaking of that, some of these guys didn't quite get the memo about state monopoly on violence, or like... the concept of a state at all. Look at how easily the western lords took money from outside forces (for Tragedy of Duscur, according to Hopes) and how easily they flip once the war breaks out? These guys don't have the concept of treason, because they are not loyal to the Faerghan state. What the fuck is a state? They're loyal to the strongest warlord who will help their clans settle scores against rival clans who slighted them. The religion stuff is something that you deploy mostly for hype moments and aura, and if you don't like the one at the store (Central Church) homemade (Western Church) is fine. The goddess is far up in the sky but a weapon is in your hands and the guy who dishonored your clan is right across the river/hill/etc. Rule of law? The only rule here is that you need to avenge dishonor by any means possible, get with the program.
So in this context, Lambert and Dimitri's projects are quite literally trying to make institutions, a government, a proper state that doesn't run soley on clan-level politics and the Blaiddyds being the strongest guys in the room. They are trying to turn it from a Kingdom (alleged) into Kingdom (real). That's also why they politically need the Church the most out of the three countries, they need an institution that tells people "here are reasons why the chieftain should rule outside of his ability to crush your skull in one hand you goddamn barbarians." They're trying to do the thing Adrestia did over a thousand years ago.
And it might be easy to think that the Faerghans are all very loyal to the Faerghan state(building project) because the named characters are, but this is a skewed sample; they're either already from the royalist eastern faction, and the few western ones are either an exception that proves the rule like Annette or a commoner like Ashe (who might have been adopted into Gaspard but whose personal interests aren't entrenched like the actual born and bred nobles would be). If you had one of the Hopes Western Lords or their kids (not adopted) be a full character with supports and stuff their political views would not sound like the Blue Lions'. They'd probably think committing genocide on Duscur was awesome and cool and based, for one.
And one important point is that the state-building reforms are probably pretty recent, again probably only kicked in during Lambert's rule. Cornelia being hired for infrastucture projects was during Lambert's rule, and I suspect that the Fhirdiad School of Sorcery was also built fairly recently. In the very least, Lambert's time is probably the fastest the centralization/state and institution buulding proceeded. Which explains why the most rabid reactionary Nemesis-brained assholes on the continent (western lords) killed him. I'll probably write a separate post including speculation on why the western lords are especially terrible, but tl;dr being defined by grievances/perceived slights (mainly from the east/royalists) + honor/blood feud culture = establishing rule of law that says your personal grievances are not good reasons to kill people is an existential threat.
So Kingdom = warlord confederacy trying to become a proper unified state that desperately needs a justification for its existence beyond the Blaiddyds being very good at killing.
Finally, Alliance. They're an odd one, and a lot of people think they're just "the faction that's not red or blue," and admittedly even the canon is kind of prone to doing that, boo Intsys, justice for my favorite faction etc. But from what we do get, I think it makes a lot of sense to say that their identity is decentralized autonomy based on mercantilism.
It's not decentralized as in "has no institutions, just warlords" like Kingdom because it has institutions. They have the Roundtable, which is explicitly mentioned to have had change of members recently, with Daphnel being pushed out and Edmund making its way in. But it's not an institution meant to serve a superior authority, like the Empire. Even in Three Hopes, when the Alliance becomes the Federation, the king is clearly a more first among equals thing, not something to be passed down in a single bloodline. (If Claude tried that I think other nobles would have killed him lmao)
So the reason why they're fiercely autonomous and insists on being their own country, I think, is for motives that modern audiences should be the most familiar with: profit. These guys love their money and they're not sharing it with some faraway crown because of some shit about legitimacy or honor, fuck that. They might normally hate rach other's asses, but that's probably the one thing they can all agree on, and that's why they continue to exist against all odds.
(I suspect both the Leicester Rebellion where they broke off from the Empire and the Crescent Moon War where they broke off from the Kingdom might have began as tax revolts. Look at the Alliance and tell me they wouldn't do that, they absolutely would.)
And you know the thing about Count Gloucester supposedly killing merchants who went into Riegan territory? According to Hopes that was by some Agarthan sneaking in and messing around, but the fact it could pass as "eh yeah sounds like shit he'd do" externally indicates that economic warfare, targeting the flow of money, is fair game in the Alliance. In the Empire you bully the emperor's favorite concubine out of the harem (Anselma, prestige), in the Kingdom you massacre the royal family's diplomatic guests/allies (Duscur, honor), in the Alliance you target the duke's merchants (the Kirstens, profit).
So yeah merchants and trade are clearly more significant in Leicester than anywhere else; House Edmund got into the Roundtable by being good at business, and you have Ignatz, whose family (Victors) is something like proto-bourgeoisie. They're a commoner merchant family whose son can afford to grow a taste for things normally only associated with nobles (arts, etc) and can hire a private military (one of the battalions is called Victor Private Military); this is a pretty big deal in a world like Fódlan's.
Plus in Leicester, even knighthood is treated as an employment in a fairly modern sense. Raphael literally wants to be a knight for economic stability, rather than ideals of chivalry or honor or whatever else. And Leonie wants to be a freelancer (mercenary) in the original sense of the word. The nobles and commoners here, but especially commoners, see things in terms of economic transactions and profit; so in this sense I think Leicester feels the most "modern" or "familiar" out of the three. The rise of the bourgeoisie class and capitalism is pretty much what defined the world we're in today, after all.
It's also why within Fódlan, Claude's vision is the one that makes sense for Leicester. The ending racism stuff is cool and all, but do you know what else Leicester gains if they stop fighting the Almyrans and become friends with them?
Money. A fuck ton of money. Premium from selling Almyran products to Fódlan and vice versa. All that good stuff.
Leicester's the least established and therefore the least "prestigious" country, they're the prey stuck between two predators, all of that won't matter if they get so goddamn rich that they can just buy out the other two. That's what Almyra represents: the opportunities and benefits of free trade and capitalism for whoever's the first to shake the invisible hand.
If they do that, Leicester doesn't need to win this musty old "who is the most legitimate ruler of Fódlan" game against Adrestia and Faerghus feat. Church. They can just change the game (and the playing board) into the one they will win, at least against those two, which is trade and capitalism.
So Alliance = mercantile republic that sticks together because they might not like each other but they hate some distant crown trying to take their money even more, and would benefit immensely from being marginally less racist so they can stop being isolationist and get into global free trade.
So, there it is. Adrestian "back in my day" Empire, Holy "big violence means big legitimacy" Kingdom of Faerghus, and Leicester "I draw the line at paying taxes" Alliance. Now that we've examined what the three countries are, you can probably tell why I'm saying that the lords talk past each other politically.
What makes a state legitimate? What should the state's policies be driven by? What should the state protect? All three are going to give different answers, because their societies are at three different stages of political development. I'd argue that they're even from three different eras. Their incentives, their definitions, their priorities are all different.
It probably wouldn't be as much of a problem if they weren't right next to each other and/or weren't involved (directly or indirectly) in the same Overton window shattering event at the start of their known history that had to be smoothed over with the same myth/religion, but they are. Whatever answer one of them come up with to their own society's problems, the others can't just sit back and watch. Because they have to worry about whether that will spill over, whether that makes them look bad in comparison, whether their neighbor will be a threat (militarily or otherwise) to them after undergoing that change, etc.
And most of the time they are implicitly a threat, invalidation, insult, or at least an inconvenience to each other's self-legitimizing narratives just by existing. Adrestia can't tolerate the sovereignty of breakaway states when their legitimacy is built on themselves being the sovereign of Fódlan. Faerghus can't tolerate the "burn everything (including our neighbors)" method of imperial reform or the decentralized governance of Leicester when their main problem is that the warlords who don't answer to central authority are already setting everything on fire. Leicester can't tolerate the existence of crowns who consider themselves entitled to interfere in local internal (economic) affairs.
FE3H is about how they pretended they could ignore all this with the power of a pretty myth, of Fódlan being a big happy family that's not allowed to fight lest they make the goddess in the sky sad (real reason: under most circumstances, aka without the metaphysical cheat key that is Byleth, it will probably be very difficult to find another language to describe morals and ethics in that enough people will even pretend to accept if this current one falls apart), but the contradictions and poison from its founding exploded anyway.
So that's why the lords can't just "talk it out." And even if those three specifically somehow manage to find a compromise in their generation, possibly with the help of their superpowered middle manager (Byleth) and maybe the pope (Rhea) who's been checked out for a while (for both structural and personal reasons)?
You can damn well bet the generations after them won't let it hold.
Introduction to Fódlan's politics: the Overton window shattered at the start of known history (feat. how Nemesis permanently poisoned the well)
So I said a while ago I'd make an essay/meta series about each country/faction's national myths. Well I lied because I think this is just going to end up being a general FE3H in-universe political analysis, order for that to make sense, I need to start earlier.
By which I mean, Nemesis.
The real beginning of in-universe Fódlan's written/known history that the human civilization is Nemesis. The standard in-universe in Imperial Year, aka Adrestia(+Church), but the reason why they were founded in the first place and how they became dominant is through their fight against Nemesis.
So let's take a look at what Nemesis is to Fódlan's politics, stripped of the personal relationships and emotions.
Nemesis is a warlord from a pre-state era who got into power via a massacre, then remained in power for centuries by being stronger and better at killing than everyone else. The reason why people couldn't/didn't challenge him probably isn't because of morals or ethics or legitimacy of cause or whatever more sophisticated political concepts we think of, it's that he will literally kill you with his handheld nuke if you try. It's a pure kratocracy, the strong can do whatever the hell they want because they're strong, there are no safety nets like law or other procedures or any kind of institutions. The Ten Elites' allegiance to him is strongly implied to be purely personalist: he's strong, he can give them things that make them strong too, so they obey and follow.
You guys know the concept of the Overton window? Nemesis' rulership is like shattering the Overton window, or rather, stopping it from forming in the first place. He killed a goddess while she was asleep and turned her spine into a sword with the help of racist mole people, and the message to society is that nothing is "off limits" or "unacceptable" if you can do it.
And this was at the beginning of known human history in-universe. This is the guy whose name was synonymous with "hero" and "ruler" in the northern half of the continent for a very long time.
Nemesis is the political precedent of Fódlan.
All that came afterwards, Seiros and War of Heroes and so on, that's been just cleaning up after his mess. The initial project of Adrestian Empire, Church of Seiros, etc should be best understood as desperately trying to (re)construct the Overton window and pull it away from "getting help from racist mole people, committing genocide, killing anyone you don't like, eternal cycles vengeance."
Which would have been extremely difficult, because when you tell people who have been living under WMD-holding warlord rule for centuries, they will hit you with the NPC stare if you tell them "please do not kill that person and take their shit just because you can." How do you explain the concept of like, human dignity, when the only thing on their mind has been survival and the way you survive is by grabbing resources by force, which includes killing other people and taking their shit?
You can't. At least, not on a large scale. That's where religion comes in.
You can't debate every single person who lived in northern Fódlan to convince them of the inherent value of human life, but you can go "actually there's a goddess in the sky who's even stronger than all those warlords, she's the one who gave them the things that makes them super strong. She can also take them away and them face consequences if they don't use it how she intended. Evidence? Look at us, the Saints and the Adrestian Empire, we defeated the warlords, which means we're stronger and more righteous and favored by the goddess. Okay now we'll tell you what the right way to treat each other is on behalf of the goddess who is very very strong, please fucking listen."
It's not perfect. It has caveats. Lots of them, actually. But this was probably the best immediate way to explain morals and ethics to a population that doesn't know wtf those are. You have to speak the language they know, aka strength.
It also explains why the descendants of the Elites aka the Crested bloodlines were allowed to survive. Because before the Church, it's likely that the default in the north when you win conflicts, probably clan level conflicts, was... killing as many of the rival clan members as you can. Which usually leads to the surviving ones swearing vengeance and kill as many of the other one back, so on. Blood feuds.
If Seiros, Adrestia, etc went around killing as many of the Ten Elites' bloodlines as possible out of vengeance because they could, because they were stronger and the victors, then they're showing people that they are not offering an alternative to Nemesis and Elites' rule, just more of the same. They'd be playing the Elites' games, and at that point they've already conceded that the worldview of Nemesis and the Elites' are right.
They can't do that. No matter how much Seiros hates Nemesis and the Elites and no matter how awful it is that there will be living reminders of what they did in the form of their Crested descendants, you can't kill them all if she wants a true political and social and moral victory, not just a military one.
So they're forgiven and accepted into the fold of the new order, the one under the Empire with the Church of Seiros. Official narrative says "the goddess let the Ten Elites' kids keep their Crests because they've repented and promised to use them as she wanted" because it's consistent with the lore from earlier (+can't tell the full truth about what Crests and Relics are without outing herself as another Nabatean to be killed and butchered for Relics). It's a case where you can't put the genie (Crests and Relics) back in the bottle, so you opt for soft leashing it with religion.
Problem being that even if it's understandable how it got there, the whole "Crests are blessings from the goddess" is still a lie/not the full truth.
But once you build institutions (Church, Empire, the general political structure of Fódlan) on the lie, you have to keep lying. Even if a noble house is acting like shit, if they have Crests then they're still under the goddess' favor according to their own doctrine. You can't suddenly switch up and say "actually the OG hero king of the continent was never heroic, his + the Ten Elites' Crests and Relics are fucked up trophies from a genocide whose inheritance through bloodlines have nothing to do with the goddess' favor, we know this because the Five Saints were survivors of said genocide and are secretly dragons whose bones can be used to make more super powerful weapons."
Can't do it early on because it would get the remaining Nabateans hunted down, can't do it later because it collapses the legitimacy that the current order is founded on and the nobles might go "oh ok Crests have nothing to do with whether we're moral so we can all do whatever we want, there's no need to even pretend to care" and/or declare war on Church for making their bloodlines look bad and also possibly get the remaining Nabateans hunted down.
Ideally, that whole Church doctrine should have been nothing more than first aid before truth and reconciliation wrt the Nabatean genocide. But those who got into power from that genocide made a world where truth and reconciliation were mutually exclusive. If you tell the truth, many humans would not have tried to reconcile with the victims, they would've tried to kill them for more power and not even understood why that was wrong.
This is why Fódlan's politics sucks so much, its first ruler committed genocide and was so successful in normalizing it that the survivors gave up justice in favor of (immediate) stability and damage control. No memorials, no trials, no history lessons where it's taught as a horrible thing that must never happen again, just a vague metaphor in the scripture and survivors in disguise saying "so like... be nice to each other. Please?"
Much of 3H Discourse™ is about whether so and so were right or wrong, but in-universe the reason why all of that happened was because the continent's history began with an atrocity that made it nearly impossible to even establish the concepts of right and wrong in society. And translating those into the only language people understood at the time, of might making right, inevitably warped the definitions forever while covering up said atrocity.
Tl;dr Nemesis bad not only because he massacred Nabateans but because he took such a massive shit on Fódlan's politics and society that everything afterwards is just cleaning up after him. So don't give WMDs to warlords I guess
If this game takes place in Fódlan in the timeline we know, and if it's before the Zanado massacre entirely with Dietrich being the odd one out (Agarthan connections?) for having a Relic, then it would explain a lot of things.
Namely why there's a Nabatean with his ears out, why Sothis is an adult, and why it seems to have more influences from places outside of fantasy Europe. It literally takes place before The Shit™ that led to Fódlan becoming an isolationist dark ages Europe caricature. Byzantine/Near East aesthetics check out too considering the real Nabat(a)eans.
Additionally I think Divine Sovereign might be one of the many Nabateans ruling (a part of) Fódlan during what's supposed to be an interregnum period, aka while Sothis is asleep
Personal predictions
The tournament and the Divine Sovereign granting a wish is not the end of the game, that's the midpoint where everything changes like the timeskip in 3H
Whichever wish he grants is somehow linked to the massacre occuring, like the victor got an answer/clue to breaching security
The massacre occurs on-screen
We will get to see younger Rhea
Theodora is somehow linked to Rhea, and her design being similar to Seiros has something to do with this; ie Theodora influences the Seiros outfit not vice versa
Dietrich having a Lamine Crest might be something too, specifically about why there's no House Lamine in Faerghus and the descendants are in Adrestia instead
The thing about trying to evaluate or analyze characters like 3H lords is that the narrative primarily frames them morally and personally/emotionally, but if you treat the in-universe logic seriously then you have to look at them institutionally, and the institutional incentives generally run orthogonal to the moral concerns and are often not particularly relatable to normal people who do not hold the kind of power politicians do.
Like these characters are heads of states, and states are generally amoral and self-interested. Sometimes the morally correct thing happens to intersect with those interests, but that's generally not the main driving principle, and politicians often have incentives to greatly exaggerate the moral dimensions.
Edelgard wants to end hereditary Crest-based nobility -> because the Empire is a bureaucratic state that doesn't have Relics = aren't reliant on Relics for military purposes anyway so they can feasibly do that. Is a war on Central Church 100% necessary if your main goal is soley internal meritocratic reforms? Probably not. Is it easier to gain executive control if you can invoke wartime emergency powers and easier to rally domestic support if you invoke imperial primacy and reunification of lost territories and accuse Church of laundering imperial decline? Hell yes. Does allying with Agarthans and giving them a chance to entrench themselves in the wartime apparatus a good idea? Probably not. Is it less embarrassing and project the impression of a strong empire better than explaining to other factions that the Empire is so compromised that wartime emergency powers are basically the only way the emperor can have any real authority? Yes.
Dimitri wants to find the conspirators behind Tragedy and restore Duscur -> because fundamentally all of that was a state capacity issue and that would eventually have to be addressed regardless of the moral dimension. Was genocide on Duscur morally wrong? Yes. Was it also an embarrassing demonstration of how little control the crown exercised over its own nobles/how much they lacked a monopoly on violence? Also yes. Would restoration of Duscur be morally correct? Yes. Would that be the exact kind of project that both demonstrates and lets him consolidate the power to ensure his own elites can't just kill him over disagreements? Yes. Was it morally/ethically wrong for him to torture and kill suspects out of vengeance? Probably. Could he have gotten away with being vengeful if he just tortured and killed the suspects in dungeons where nobody else could see and get alienated? Also yes.
Claude wants to open borders and allow freer movement of people and ideas -> Leicester is highly mercantile and the only country sharing land borders with a non-Fódlani country that's confirmed to be massive, powerful, and probably wealthy (Sreng is notably resource poor). Would this result in less prejudices and problems for people like him? Yes. Would Leicester and Almyra be the ones primarily making a fortune off of all the trade back and forth? Also yes. Would Claude sympathize with Brigid/Duscur/Sreng issues on principle? Probably. Would he have a good reason to prioritize those above a myriad of other stuff unless Leicester or Almyra gain something by helping them? Probably not. Does Leicester and Claude have reasons to ally with any of the other factions depending on the situation? Absolutely. Does that mean they'd actually give a flying fuck about whatever political/ideological conflict over legitimacy the whole Empire-Church-Kingdom issue revolves around or that allying one of them means eternal loyalty and commitment to anyone else's cause? Fuck no.
In other words, from an institutional perspective the the correct rational answer characters like lords would give to most moral criticisms of them would be "you might be right but that's your problem, not my institution's."
Would the moral criticisms still be valid? Yeah. Would objectively correct moral criticism without any other accompanying pressures/consequences deter a political leader from pursuing institutional interests because they suddenly had an epiphany about how morally wrong their ways were? No.
Because the thing about epiphanies is that they usually occur after the person has gotten into deep shit and faced undeniable/overhwhelmingly negative consequences (and somehow survived). People who are doing something morally bad and getting what they want out of it, or at least do not feel the negative consequences as directly, tend to not have those epiphanies. And power tends to insulate you from consequences, or at least you only pay the consequences after everyone else has.
So personally I think debates that are like "what this powerful character does is wrong and harming people and they are a morally bad person vs no it's not they're actually making things better and they're a morally good person" don't actually do much to help understand/explain these types of characters.
"How does this character's power work (source/extent/what's required to maintain it) and what does that let them get away with," in my opinion, tends to explain more.
One problem with popular fandom criticisms of the Church is that trying to mirror irl criticisms of religion into 3H is straight up incoherent if your main issue with them in-universe is that they are complicit in peddling Crest worship/abuse.
For example, "Rhea/Church could have stopped Crest abuse by the ruling class, but didn't" is a terrible lead if you're trying to argue that the church and the state needs to be more separate. For them to turn that "could" into "does," Church would need to directly and heavily interfere in secular politics. This is the opposite of separating the church and the state. Like you want them to do what a theocracy does without actually being a theocracy? Not how it works.
"They (presumably) kept taking donations from nobles who abused Crests/don't explicitly condemn the specific cases when it happens" is more legit, but refusing donations from those nobles/scolding them doesn't necessarily guarantee that they will not abuse Crests, unless the Church also combines it with stuff like excommunication/refusing rites and sacrament. Which still relies on the Church having strong temporal influence.
"The problem is that it's an organized religion at all, Sothis/Seiros faith and doctrine shouldn't have been centralized/organized/institutionalized because it just became a legitimacy laundering machine for nobles" (+Relics should've been taken away from Ten Elites' clans and locked away forever with no possibility of return) might have solved problems in Adrestia bc they don't have Relics, but in the northern Ten Elites/Nemesis territory...? What exactly stops the opportunists from just immediately reskinning Crest + Relic (=brute strength) fetishization/worship and then either trying to take back the Relics by any means possible while creating even more opportunities for Agarthan infiltration. And re: "take the Relics away," Church did do that. That is a thing they did. But the Elite descendants later lobbied to have them back and the Church accepted, presumably because refusing would mean Agarthans would supply them with alternatives like they did for Loog.
Yes not centralizing would have prevented the problems associated with organized institutionalized religion from emerging, in exchange for a thousand smaller cults that are likely to be even more batshit and uncontrollable. Just because a religion isn't organized/institutionalized doesn't mean it can't be harmful, trust me I am South Korean and corrupt shamans (mudangs) there get up to some disgusting shit.
If you go a step further and say "the problem is that Crests/Relics became a religious thing/something to be worshipped" that's technically correct and practically unfeasible. The memoir of an Elite already calls the Relic a "sacred weapon"; the Church of Seiros didn't come up with the idea of these objects of great power being associated with divinity, humans did that shit on their own. Were they try to eradicate that wholesale, it would have required either the Church of Seiros or the Empire or both to commit turbo cultural and religious repression(at softest)/genocide(at worst) on the north.
And if that was the backstory, I have a feeling that not only would the part of fandom that mainly takes issue with the Church still hate them, they would also think that the Empire was just as evil for helping/being complicit in the "sorry but the Crest/Relic/Ten Elites and Nemesis worship WILL stop" campaign, even though that's probably more morally justifiable than many historical Christianizing campaigns were, considering the origins of the Crests and Relics.
So even if Church had perfect track record on not tacitly enabling the worst elements of Fódlani society, there isn't a solution to the Crest + Relics (especially the issue of some Crests having associated Relics and others not, aka some Crests being from genocide and others not, aka not all Crests being morally or militarily equivalent) issue short of humans being perfectly immune to power-related (both literal superpowers and political powers) brainworms.
Now for criticism of Church that's not "Schrödinger's right amount of religious influence in society and politics," there's the issue of them trying to stifle human technological innovation, possibly including breakthroughs that could solve the Crest/Relic related inequalities, directly through bans (albeit we don't know if this NGO ass Church can actually enforce those bans but still their words are influential) and indirectly through isolationism (scripture might not outright endorse isolationism but it's easy to lean that way in practice because everything about the religion is so heavily tied to Fódlan and Fódlan only).
And this is actually one of the most valid criticisms, due to it mirroring irl negative regressive religious measures.
Not only because it suppresses freedom of thought and curiosity and all that, but because it will literally get people killed. You can't keep the rest of the world out forever, and if you've stagnated while the rest innovated, your population will take a one-sided ass beating; just ask Korea in the late 19th~early 20th century. Braindead isolationism (different from rational protectionism) bad.
That being said: for Crest/Relics issue specifically, technological advancement that "solves" this problem requires engineering something that
can match the level force unleashable by Crests and Relics and
is usable by anyone.
Some Hanneman endings implies he did this; it just says "magical tools" rather than weapons outright, but come on we damn well know it would realistically include weapons. And do not tell me "oh but what if they used advanced technology to decomission Crests/Relics," we all know that's bullshit, we all know that's not how it would go.
To put it bluntly, the only meaningful material way to end Crest/Relic-based inequality is the democratization of Crest/Relic-level violence. You can say "Crest fetishization and worship bad" "whether you can use a Relic should not decide your worth as a human" all fucking day, but if there isn't a viable alternative to what those enable ie Big Fucking Violence (or some other superpower that gives you an edge in violence related activities), nothing will change.
Finding those alternatives is necessary for baseline survival, plus it would break old hierarchies and improve life for a lot of people. It would also enable impersonal industrial level slaughter and previously unimaginable horrors and cruelty. Once it happens, humans won't be able to take just one or the other. No amount of religion, or lack of religion, can change that.
Basically what I'm trying to say is: it's been 6+ years of this discourse, if you want to say "Church bad for [insert reasons]," at least have the balls to be structurally coherent and follow through on the full implications of what them being "less/not bad" would actually entail.
Tl;dr
What did you think "thou shall not abuse Crests" and "human progress" meant? Vibes? Sermons? Essays?
