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
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?
Meet Potential Church: or, how 99% of problems in the game wouldn't have happened if the Church of Seiros were actual theocrats
(uploaded this before but I originally made it for this essay so you get it again)
Let’s cut right to the chase. The (Central) Church in FE3H often gets accused of being theocrats or whatever, and I have an extremely hot counter-take on this:
If the Church of Seiros was actually theocratic, a majority of things shown in the game and cited by fans as in-universe problems would not have happened.
I mean there would have been a plethora of different problems, theocracies usually do, but the things that actually happen in the text are a case of the Church not exercising (or being unable to exercise) hard power where it would probably help. Yeah they an armed force in the form of Knights of Seiros… who do the equivalent of social work with swords (fighting bandits etc), and they run the Officer’s Academy, but I’m talking about using hard power for things that they’re supposed to do as the arbiter/enforcer of religious doctrine and orthodoxy.
So what does it mean to enforce religious doctrine, in this context? Policing the use of Crests and Relics to be theologically correct, for one. With force, if necessary.
Now, considering that the scripture says that they're holy blessings, the matter of Crests and Relics would fundamentally be treated as a religious matter under theocratic rule. Inheritance disputes arising over heirs and Crests, which house gets Relics, so on and so forth, those would all be religious affairs and the Church would have the final say on them. And if you mishandle the divine blessings, for example a Relic gets stolen by your shitty disowned son, your family (the main branch at least) should probably expect to kiss those titles goodbye.
These things do not happen in canon. House Gautier gets off with a mild scolding after the Miklan affair despite the fact that it involved a sacred WMD getting lost, Daphnel-Galatea split (which involved a sacred WMD changing hands) is framed as a secular power struggle, and so are pretty much all the other Crest-related inheritance feud cases. And absolutely no noble worries that misusing Crests and Relics will result in the Church barging in and delivering judgement by the goddess’ will like Seiros did for Nemesis and Ten Elites. The Church straight up covers up Miklan turning into a demonic beast, even though that's actually a great example to advertise for "do not fuck around with the goddess' gifts or else that happens."
Under a theocracy, nobles getting stabbed (or at least facing major disadvantages and punishments) for sacrilege should be considered a real ongoing possibility, not a history lesson. The Knights of Seiros would have more focus on inquisition/otherwise enforcing doctrine than social work. Sure, the reason behind the knights doing all that is religious, ie scripture says you should help people, but in a theocracy the Church’s armed forces would be carrying out a lot more orders “about/on behalf of religion and doctrine” rather than doing things “for religious reasons.” Anybody can do things for religious reasons; not everyone is considered qualified to do things on behalf of a religion.
Now, if you were to search for the case of a church trying to directly interfere with hard power in a country’s secular politics in more recent Fódlan's history, there is the Southern Church uprising, the one with Victoria von Hrym over minister seats. The noble documenting this even wonders about possible Central Church involvement behind the scenes. That being said. nothing is outright confirmed, and when the Southern Church fails at their goal and gets kicked out, the Central Church can’t/doesn’t do anything about it, which is actually more evidence for them not being theocrats. Even if regional churches decide to get funky with it and pick up swords, at most the Central Church goes “yeah good luck, we’re rooting for you” from Garreg Mach about it, apparently.
And then the writer of this document straight up ends it with “Central Church will probably scold us about kicking out the regional church but whatever, the plan was already to put more distance between us and them anyway.” That's right, you can exile the oldest church branch on the continent and the consequence is the Central Church getting annoyed and doing exactly what you wanted. This, plus the Eastern Church disarming affair, strongly suggests that the Central Church has been a “we will frown sternly and issue some strongly worded statements and then go back to not doing anything” institution for a good while. If the Church was ever aspiring to directly rule Fódlan (I don’t think they were in the first place but if we assume they were), then they’re doing it like Japanese emperor ruled did during shogunate eras (=they don’t).
The most damning evidence of the Central Church’s failure mode being “too passive/reactive” rather than “too proactive” is everything related to western Kingdom and the Western Church. It doesn’t seem like it on the surface because Lonato’s rebellion and Christophe’s death appears to be the one time where the Central Church acted first to interfere in secular politics…
…until you find out that that was actually over the attempted assassination of Rhea, in coordination with the Western Church, which means that it was another defensive/reactive move regarding Church affairs. I mean the public handling of this was botched and invited misunderstandings and confusion (both in and out of universe) about to what extent the Church is willing to interfere in secular politics and why, but either way it remains that what appeared to be an exception to the rule... wasn't actually that.
I do think it's likely that the Tragedy of Duscur and the assassination attempt on Rhea were related, considering the link between Western Church (infiltrated by Agarthans) and the western lords. Not a theocracy here either but it’s a case of clergy and lords allying for a very specific reactionary political project known as “fuck Lambert, fuck his reforms, and fuck anybody he’s close to (Central Church included).”
And again the Central Church doesn’t know how to react. This is a real power struggle with real stakes that can't be smoothed over with "may the goddess' blessings be with you (=agree to disagree, please don't raise a fuss)" so they bluescreen, cough up that incoherent excuse wrt Christophe when it almost gets them, then hope nobody looks too closely in that general direction for the next few years. They don’t do jack shit about a known murderous rogue regional branch of their own institution until they break into the Holy Mausoleum, and they definitely don’t know what to do about Kingdom lords who are in league with the Western Church.
On Lonato, it shouldn’t take a genius to be able to tell that killing a dude’s son + that dude being a lord in The Problem Region™ where Western Church has influence = he’s gonna do some shit against you down the line, and yet Lonato gets to keep his castle and title and power and chill (or stew in vengeance, same difference) for 4 years instead of being neutralized, whether that’s through bribe/co-option or murder or anything other than what happened. Nevermind strongarming civil society, they cannot/do not even clean up their own house until the last possible minute.
And “cracking down hard against Western Church risks triggering an open civil war in the Kingdom” is probably true and why they didn’t interfere; if they were theocrats though, that wouldn’t stop them. They’d risk that war and they’d probably fight it too.
For a more visceral analogy of how bizarre the Western Church situation is, it's a little bit like if a major Catholic patriarchate became the Westboro Baptist Church and screamed loudly that they hate the Vatican and the pope must die because he is a heretic, tried to assassinate him before, and is allied with political extremists responsible for genocide and pogroms and assassination of a national leader, but the Vatican just vibes for a few years until terrorists dispatched from this rogue patriarchate is literally at the Holy See with bombs.
At this point you’d wish they got more involved. Raise a crusade against the Agarthan infiltrated Western Church and their buddy western lords or something. Maybe stab a few disgusting nobles in the Empire like Baron Bartels and whoever Hanneman’s sister was married off to while they’re at it... if they have the capacity to do that, and I think it's possible that they don't, but you get what I'm trying to say. We don't even see the Church excommunicating (or whatever the equivalent would be in-universe) or withholding religious rites etc as leverage to control behavior. They're like “damn that sucks… let’s go pray to the goddess so that they may see the errors of their ways some day” about the rampant pissing contest the ruling class engages in wrt these supposedly sacred blessings, as long as it doesn't smell too much from where they are.
So yes the Central Church’s behavior that we see in canon is embarrassing and bad and culpable for a lot of problems in Fódlan. But it’s embarrassing and bad and culpable in ways that suggests them not being theocrats.
Then how do you explain the amount of influence/prestige/name value they have if it’s not a theocracy, you might ask, and my answer is: they’re religion flavored UN.
Prestigious, high name value + runs useful relief/aid programs that act as band-aid to the worst symptom of structural problems, but cannot fundamentally solve them. Because addressing the root causes comes with the risk of it blowing their head off (nobles screaming and trying to kill them etc or at least refusing to give donations) and leaving the most vulnerable populations on the continent unable to get the bare minimum. So they keep writing strongly worded letters about the problem that are never followed through with force.
The Central Church claims moral authority and they have no institutional will or capacity to enforce it in ways that matter. That’s the problem, not that they’re ruling with an iron fist.
UN analogy is also why I don’t consider them helping administer Faerghan villages to be the equivalent of them directly controlling civil society btw, at least not in the way you’d expect in a theocracy. It sounds like they’re there to run soup kitchens, not to go around enforcing religious law. In the very least you’d expect theocrats to be like “no soup kitchens unless doctrinal adherence” to the Kingdom about it but that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on. You might go “but they still have Church in the government/administration,” however they have it in the same way somebody with a broken leg walks with a crutch. You can argue that it’s a problem if the crutch becomes an excuse to never properly treat the broken leg, because it is; but it’s a crutch, not the rat from Ratatouille or an alien parasite controlling how the leg moves.
And to be clear a religious institution doesn't have to be violent about enforcing religious law all the time to be theocratic, but the reason why it can be enforced is usually implicitly because they are capable of using violence if needed and/or because of some other coercive leverage like the soup kitchen example above. At their softest they should be restricting or conditioning stuff like marriages funerals inheritances etc on doctrinal adherence, especially for nobles, but we already know the Church is pretty (shrug) about the noble inheritance stuff, and of all the marriage-related problems that come up in FE3H we rarely (if ever?) see "the Church would not approve of this marriage" as an obstacle.
They don't even condition entrance to a sacred site (Garreg Mach) or employment in the Church's armed forces and educational institute on believing the faith. I mean, the game wouldn't have started if they did. The last time they conditioned something on faith was them recognizing the Kingdom in exchange for the Church of Seiros becoming the national religion, and 400 years later the (future) king and his closest political allies are like "faith, yep that sure exists." (See prev essay's Kingdom section about Faerghans being neutral on faith)
Even Edelgard never outright accuses the Church of being theocrats. She accuses them of being corrupt, self-serving, manipulating the narrative, aka soft power, but at no point does she say that they are literally the overlords. Because that’s not true and Edelgard isn’t stupid enough to say something that can be verifiably countered. She does leave room for it to be interpreted as anywhere between “the Church is incompetent/corrupt/failing” to “the Church is maliciously competent in what they do” as is convenient because she is a politician and that’s how you do politics (will get into this in the Empire essay), but at no point does she say that the Church has too much direct hard power. If you think that the Church is theocratic you are missing the point of the anti-Church lord.
So why did the Church become like this, you might ask. What has to go wrong for "let's kill Nemesis" to become "0 schisms stopped 0 doctrine enforced 7 terrorist attacks on your HQ in a single year."
What went wrong is that they won.
They went up to demigod warlords who gained powers from a genocide and stabbed them a thousand times to show that there were consequences to abusing power. They introduced the concept of morality to Fódlani politics (for whatever issues there was in the details). They were what you'd call a historically progressive force and generally a net positive for society.
They won for very good reasons, and then history continued past their triumph, but they didn't follow.
To the Church, everything after the War of Heroes is just… epilogue. A beautiful diorama to be maintained in remembrance of The Struggle™ to end all struggles. Their job is to keep the diorama looking pretty. They're not interested in drastically rearranging things unless they're forced to.
Some cite Rhea checking out and trying to revive Sothis around this point to explain why the Church is stagnant, but you don’t actually need to bring that up. Anybody who takes the position of archbishop is filtered and chosen within an organization that treats “victory over Nemesis and Ten Elites” as the end of history. They'd have similar political incentives as Rhea even if they're not Rhea.
Now, I just spent the whole essay explaining why that’s both understandable and a terrible failure, so I’m not going to regurgitate Church good vs Church bad. That's not what this is about, at least not in the usual Fandom Discourse™ sense.
I am going to say that the Church, as a faction, is interesting because its failures come from a trap that’s easy to fall into, both in and outside of universe, especially for those involved in intense political struggles: the trap of seeing politics, seeing society, seeing history as something with an endpoint, and that endpoint being your victory in this current struggle.
Their presence in the narrative is inherently discomforting, imo, because they're a preview of what the lords and their projects could become. The game and the characters talk a lot about what's at stake and what terrible things will follow if they fail, but the Church is an example of what terrible things can follow if you succeed. Their history casts a shadow of realistic historical doubt over the text's emotionally satisfying end cards saying:
