Among those who've played Three Houses, Rhea is a very polarizing character and for good reason. She's a bit crazy. However most of her actions, if not simply understandable, have actively helped the people of Fodlan.
Claude's route: "I think Rhea might be a dragon, and you might be related to the Goddess" Edelgard's route: "Rhea is an evil dragon, and you might be tied to the Goddess" Church route: "Rhea's an emotionally unstable dragon, and as her mother/grandchild you're her replacement" Dimitri's route: "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!" and then "SAVE EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!"
@@deathcon6261 lol I didn’t have Cyril and Catherine in my post-war monastery, didn’t really vibe with them. So it was mostly just Seteth popping in every now and again being like ‘y’know if we’ve got time maybe we could look for Rhea..?’ And that never getting resolved.
@@thepax6390 it would basically be persecution, when people are persecuted, they flee, (Jews in Nazi Germany, Underground Railroad for example) she would have driven crest users either right to TWSITD, or out of Fodlan, or both.
@@davyt0247 No it wouldn't. The 10 elites and their possible decendants, wouldn't have been many, not even enough to warrant beeing called a "minority", at the point of their defeat. Centuries later, they are still not many, a ruling elite/minority/nobility but they obviously couldn't have procreated so much or weren't many to begin with, if their numbers are still so low. It stands to reason then, that Rhea/Seiros ending things right then and there, couldn't have meant the planned death of more then a hundred inviduals with crests, possibly fewer. A acceptable price, barely comparable to the deaths at Zanado.
@@thepax6390 I think the point is that Rhea doesn't want people to know that you could make weaponry from her body. Its not the question of the Nobillity or commoners, both sides would want to create weapons and crests Rhea's kin, especially in the case of the commoners since having a crest gives them power on par woth the nobles.
Claude is the nicest guy of the three house leaders for sure, but still not perfect. He still admits he only warmed to Byleth at first to make use of his/her power (though his intentions were just).
I believe the reason why Rhea created the myth that Crests are a gift from the goddess is this: The Crests were already in the blood pool and there was no way for her to prevent them from being passed on. And they do give a person significant power, so she could not have simply pretended that they do not exist. So she had two options. One, she could have declared them some sort of curse and tried to eradicate Crests altogether. That would have resulted in the persecution of anyone with a Crest. And when people are persecuted, they flee. Which would have spread Crests past the borders of Fodlan, and resulted in possibly more noses trying to get into Rhea's business. Two, she could declare Crests to be a gift from the goddess. By doing so and giving the descendants of the 10 elites nobility status Rhea was able to: 1. keep record of all crest bearers and make sure they stay on her radar, 2. make sure that Crests were not passed down to more people than necessary as nobility tends to keep to themselves, 3. entice Crest bearers to stay in Fodlan for possible benefits in status, etc. to prevent the spreading of Crests beyond Fodlan's borders. It probably pained Rhea to do this, since the Crests were really the result and a daily reminder of the terrible crime committed against Rhea's kin, but it was the smartest choice she could make to keep absolute control over the situation.
take into account as well that if they were persecuted this would allow the Agarthans a more easier access to people with crests and would allow them to do their experiments more freely then they do now.
@@trulymrword yeah, or in my thinking, a problem that doesn’t exactly have a good clean answer either. How do you tell people that the weapons are actually the Sothis’ children’s hearts and bones without people trying to make more with her’s Seteth’s and Flayn’s bones and heart? (I do admit that her, obsession with bringing Sothis back is a major part of the problem)
I do remember that during one conversation (for the chapter 4 mission) a monk states that there is a storeroom for gold and such however seeing as in this game there are 19 nobles (petra and ashe are nobles just don't have crests) between the 3 houses (8 BE, 7 BL, 5 GD) it's very likely that a lot of funding does come from donations by noble families.
There's also logistic reasons for that. Knights constantly move across the continent to deal with conflicts across the nations. Especially in current years. Knights and Priests need food, clothes, etc. The orphans Rhea takes in and its noted that Rhea always takes in orphans after incidents and those orphans need food and shelter. Schools aren't cheap, all the food that has to be brought in, materials for weapons, books, teachers, etc. And there are a lot of NPC students in the several hundred. The nobles pay the tuition for their kids and Leonie throws herself into a black hole of debt that her poor village and nobles she beggef paid for her tuition.
Don't forget that if you recruit nobles they give you a bullion and if you recruit commoners they give you stat boosts (mostly veggies and fruits). Ashe is still a commoner under those standards.
@@kellyjohana516 Ashe is a commoner by birth but he was adopted by Lonato and with Christophe dead Ashe is pretty much the only eligable heir to Gaspard territory that we know of
I mean, Silvain said in one of his support's, that his Parent's only gave him the best of the best. Obviously they donate, that he still get's the best
atleast the church manipulated fodlan to establish order, peace, and security, the agarthans literally genocided an entire peaceful race of aliens, subjected their people to horrendous experiments, and turned their corpses into weapons. The only thing rhea did wrong was the witholding of technology but its understandable given the fact that humanity literally DESTROYED earth to the point that sothis had to put herself into an inescapable coma just to rehabilitate it.
She allied herself with that group because it was the only way she could gain enough power to take down the church, she in no way agrees with what they do quite the oposite she hates TWSITD for obvoius reasons but she knows she needs there help to take down Rhea and so she allies with them until she can kill them when she’s done
The fact that a single *video game* has so much lore and skewed history that it causes the fan base to bicker amongst themselves blows my god damn mind. It’s crazy that you have to completely 100% the game or heavily research everyone’s perspectives, backgrounds, and connections to get an objective view on a video game.
which i actually adore lol, practically every edelgard fanboy i've spoken to hasn't even completed the game 100%, and take her word as the gospel, and i'm here like really?
evilryu4489 I mean when I finished my first play through, I chose Edelgard and you can bet your behind I ALSO believed her words like gospel. Her charisma and confidence combined with Rhea’s shadiness in the beginning really convinced me to believe her. Yet, when I played Dimitri’s route after, I developed a much different view and saw a different side to the emperor.
In the interlude before the final map, Edelgarde says something along the lines of "unlike you, I have no desire to release atrocities among the world"... That's kinda rich coming from a girl who started a war spanning the continent.
@@Ninjaananas The US thought it necessary to start wars in Vietnam and all over the Middle East, and look at what's happened. US lost Vietnam, Iraq was left in shambles once Saddam was executed. Libya is an unstable landscape ravaged by war since Qaddafi was killed. And Iran is constantly fearmongered about in the media rooting all the way back to the US and British backed coup on behalf of an oil company in 1953. The US escalated tensions with the Soviet Union constantly during the Cold War. Without the failure that was the Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuba likely would not have sought nuclear missiles, which itself would not have happened if not for Kennedy ordering nukes placed in Turkey, and because his first step was a fucking blockade, the possibility of a nuclear exchange rose to a peak during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Every war is claimed to be necessary, but since the second world war, more often than not, it's just been for the interest of the capitalist class. Whether it be for oil like our constant disputes with Iraq, or mineral deposits, which is the case with Afghanistan. And just like in Vietnam, our presence in the Middle East is increasingly unpopular, to the point we would have a mass defection if conscription would be declared.
Ultimately Rhea and the Church are used as propaganda for Edelgard to gain support, have a clear enemy and achieve her goals and ideals. It’s pretty interesting that a lot of players just sort of buy everything el says. I actually really love how this game shows bias in each route and how history is written by the winners. Edelgard herself tells plenty of lies/half truths/ spreads mis-information about the church which will be history now. Rhea and El are (I think intentionally) very similar in a lot of ways.
This is very important. El definitely needs support against the church and Rhea is in her eyes a monster who has been lying to control people... But we never know how much of what she says is what she believes and how much is propaganda she is spreading to gain support. TWSITD probably lied and manipulated her, but Rhea also fucked up enough to give them some semblance of evidence to use against her.
This is also why BL's route feels so different. You barely get to know why Edelgard is so pissed at the church, you only know that she is pissed at it. At the same time, you don't even hear about people discussing who actually Rhea is or what the flying fuck is going on with Byleth. At least Claude explores the dark side of Fodlan on his way. Azure Moon is essentially the story of a guy who goes crazy for understandable reasons just to bring down world peace with sheer military strength. Not saying that I don't like Azure Moon (actually it's my favourite route on virtue of being the one Dimitri is in the most lmao), but it surely has a different feel.
I think it's also important to note that another reason Rhea didn't tell the truth was because she was probably protecting herself and the last remaining Nabateans. If people learned they could get crests and relics from their bones and blood, they'd be hunted down. Also, while I agree Rhea is at fault for not coming up with a better lie or at least trying to tell the truth, it's important to note that the nobility would have come to value crests regardless of what Rhea said. Crests grant material, measurable benefits and would've come to dominate society regardless. This was a great analysis! Rhea is probably the most misunderstood character in Three Houses, and it bugs me to see a genuinely well written morally grey character reduced to "crazy dragon bitch." These sorts of analysis really get to the root of why I find her such an interesting character. I also like how you pointed out the similarities between her and Edelgard; they're two sides of the same coin, but that's rarely acknowledged in the fandom in favor of putting Edelgard on a pedestal and reducing Rhea's character to "pure evil." (about the living in extravagance thing, I'm inclined to say it was straight up false. You can literally go into Rhea's room, and it's no more extravagant than anywhere else.)
lunarcountdown thinking of a cultural standpoint too, her lie also does create stability through culture and folktale. Kids can grow up and dream of becoming heroes, they could even get a crest like the heroes of legend. There are bedtime stories and moral tales to be told, and idk I think it’s nice that she created a culture for the people of the nations, and this simple children’s story can be interpreted as a coping mechanism for her. Idk I’m rambling but I thought I’d say it
I think the reason she had to throw a bone to the Ten Elites is first generation Crest users live A LONG TIME, Jeralt stopped counting his age around 100 after he got Rhea's Crest. If the Ten Elites had been around long enough to have no doubt multiple kids who know the truth about Crests (kill Rhea, get a new badass Crest and Heroes Relic for example) then she needed to either keep fighting till she wiped out ALL of them, the Ten Elites and all they children (and probably grandchildren) OR she had to offer them a peace deal that they would be willing to take. Rhea had influence as Seiros, but she didn't have much material goods to use so all she really could offer them to try and end the war (since the war carried on well after Nemesis' death) was the rewrite of history.
@ElectricPrincess100 Technically that wouldn’t work. Once the children of the goddess are all dead or unable to reproduce or transform, crests vanish from the world. Crimson Flower proves that.
@@rezahydra but technically the children of the gods aren't all dead. Maquil and Indech is canonically alive in Crimson Flower and one of alternative path is to let Flayn and Seteth escape with their life. Why the death of Rhea should trigger something toward the existence of Crest?
I have watched this video many times and this has to be my favorite FE video on RU-vid. Amazing analysis, your voice is so chill and the jokes are well put.
You listen to a guy's bullshit analysis that actually whitewashes Rhea while perving on her and being overall a sexist, and THAT'S your favorite FE video on RU-vid? The freaking thumbnail is a cropped porn image of Rhea.
Omega I see no bullshit in this analysis. And it is this analysis that shows a valid interpretation of Rhea, her actions and her opposition. The perving is played as a joke. And I see no real sexism in his video. As far as I see he doesn’t degrade anyone for being a woman. Only foolishness. The thumbnail is a part of the joke.
@@rustkarl Dude, the guy literally admits that he would worship Rhea cause she's sexy if she was his pope. Trying to claim that it's just a joke doesn't help the case. If you wanna be serious about defending Rhea, you don't start perving on her. It's degrading and insulting. And no, there's SO much wrong about this video, but if I were to try to point everything out, it would take up too much space here. Instead, I'll direct you to a place where someone actually deconstructed most of my issues: old.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/hnzpzv/why_saying_rhea_did_nothing_wrong_is_bad_for_lady/
Omega The top comment is the only one that seems to be anti-Rhea and all it says is that both Rhea and Edelgard have innocent blood on their hands without citing anything. It is true that people have died because of Rhea’s actions, though mostly as a result of a long standing effect instead of the direct actions of Rhea herself. Christophe being the only example that comes to mind and that appears to mostly be Catherine’s fault. It is true that Edelgard has a lot of innocent blood on her hands as a direct result of her instigating a war but I do t really think the same can be so easily applied to Rhea. Rhea made mistakes, but not much that is overtly ‘wrong’. The only other one being that the title is something of a joke which the template is. It’s recognisable and ties in a joke with an argument. As for the perving, it’s a joke that has been perpetuated by the fandom already, BOOFIRE is not degrading or insulting Rhea he’s just running with a joke based on an opinion that the fandom has already run with. BOOFIRE doesn’t seem to whitewash Rhea at all, he consistently says that she is broken, mad or anything along those lines. And that while her system got good results it wasn’t perfect and had societal issues. The rest regarding the execution of the Western Church is rather easily explained due to the feudal nature of the setting. Attacking heads of institutions or state gets you killed. I find that I agree with BOOFIRE’s analysis and Pheonixmaster’s opinion based on the good quality of reason and evidence presented with some humour tossed in for flavour.
I played Azure Moon first, so yeah, I definitely have bias towards the "I'm not a fan of Edelgard" camp, but something that really stuck out to me that made me really mad for some reason, was Edelgard's post time skip design. She's wearing a crown made to resemble dragon horns with the plate in the middle and a single star-like drop hanging from the bottom. The horns obviously being the Immaculate One inspired and the star shaped tear referring to how Sothis is the Blue Star or Fell Star (according to Slither). With her ideals being to destroy the church and their belief in the goddess, it feels blasphemous for her to take on the resemblance of the Immaculate One and Sothis. She takes the belief that the church followers have, puts on her fancy crown that symbolizes, "Hey, I'm your Goddess now. You will bend to MY will and no one else's. And I'll tear anyone who stand in my way a collective new one." That was one of the tipping points for me. The whole "we're going to tear down the gods," and then puts on a headpiece that symbolically and aesthetically puts her as a goddess. The hypocrisy was what got me. That and the fact she was totally misinformed by Slither.
I never even considered that Edelgard appearance in her emperor design was meant to resemble the Immaculate One. Wow. That's an amazing parallel and it definitely highlights her hypocrisy. She's basically saying abandon that goddess for me, as I become your next goddess.
She also spent a good deal of her like in a dungeon. You do realize just because someone lives a life of wealth doesn't mean that they can't criticize others.
@@alexanderwidmar2850 well in game edelgard also makes it clear to even byleth themself that after she was done she was going to take time to pick a proper heir and retire. After all she doesnt have the same life span of others when all is said and done. She lives in wealth for maybe a 3rd of her total life. This isnt to say she is not without flaw as her ideas are just as radical as the rest. After all that's the greatness of three houses. Everybody is flawed, greatly so
@@alexanderwidmar2850 but also remember her '"later years" is relative as hell given the whole shortened life span thing due to the experiments done on her in her youth. given the already high amount of stress of the job, and her already well.....rather bleak fate i cant imagine she'd actually survive too long past the events of the story all things considered
So, I'd like to point this out. Spoilers for all those who haven't played Cindered Shadows. Byleth's mother, Sitri, was shown to have lived a great life at the monastery along with her companions. She may have been a failed vessel for Sothis, but she didn't seem to be negatively impacted by this at all. She had close friends at the monastery such as Aelfric and ended up falling in love with and marrying Jeralt. Aelfric, Jeralt, and I believe Alois (maybe?) reminisced about how happy Sitri was at the monastery and how she was a beacon of light to those in her life. It was at Sitri's request that her life was traded for her child's when Byleth was revealed to have no heartbeat. Rhea simply granted her request. She didn't deliberately kill Sitri in order to resurrect the perfect vessel. THAT would have been messed up. At least in Sitri's case, the "human sacrifice" argument is disproven.
And it's even implied that Rhea loved Sitri a lot too, so much that in dlc she actually stole her daughter's body instead of letting go. Pretty much an extreme version of a grieving mother. The fact that Rhea only created 12 lives in over 1000 years tells us that she most likely let her "children" live their full life until they died of natural cause. On a side note, I suspect they died so young (around 80s which is young for dragons) because Rhea's knowledge in creating life isn't as good as Sothis's.
Rhea needed another body for Sothis anyway, since Sitri, as Rhea pointed out in her infinite wisdom, was already considered a "failure" (Rhea's words), at that point. I personally think its funny that Rhea is supposed to have feelings for her experiments, akin to real family even, but refers to them as "failures", more then once. You can't deny how convenient Byleths birth was to Rhea, it spared her the trouble of creating another artificial human. Byleth only grew up free, because Jeralt ran away with her/him. And what happened once Byleth was back at the monestary? Right, Rhea tried to go through with the ritual, in order to have a meat puppet for Sothis. She essentially walked all over Sitri's requests, since I highly doubt thats what she would have wanted for her child.
It's honestly pretty ironic that Edelgard and Rhea are pretty similar in terms of motivation and backstory, both being traumatized horribly which shaped their world views and decision making, and yet so many people JUST focus on Edgy's instead of both. Edelgard - was kidnapped along with her siblings and experimented on as a child after her father was stripped of power and given two crests which shortened her lifespan Fandom: OMG best character! We love you Edelgard, Rhea sucks! Rhea - watched her ENTIRE RACE get massacred and learned their corpses were desecrated and turned into weapons to try and conquer Fodlan (seriously, not enough people talk about how utterly FUCKED UP this is) Fandom: Who cares, Rhea sucks, down with the church! Viva la revolution!
yeah, I really don't undestand how the same people who can excuse the unwonton destruction caused by edelgard can at the same breath denouce rhea when what she did was to establish order out of a world that saw her entire people get massacred.
I don’t draw the line with those I always draw the line at Rhea has been intentionally killing her children for decades to bring back sothis who obviously doesn’t want to be brought back even if the ritual had happened it would have failed since Byleth is sothis and Rhea would have just killed Byleth and all the students in the room and claimed the ritual failed
@@MikeSmith-kk9er Rhea doesn’t kill her children what are you talking about? There is no evidence of that given in the game, quite the contrary. Sitri (Byleth’s mother) after failing as a vessel for Sothis was allowed to live her own life completely independent of Rhea’s motivation to bring her mother back. She formed relationships, fell in love and was apparently quite the ray of sunshine according to Cindered Shadows. Rhea didn’t have her silenced to prevent her actions from being revealed, that’d be completely pointless. It’s likely that Sitri didn’t even know her own purpose so why would she? And if she left Sitri to her own devices it’s incredibly likely that she did the rest of her creations. As for your next point ‘Sothis obviously doesn’t want to be brought back’, what do you mean by that? How is that meant to be obvious to Rhea that her slaughtered mother wouldn’t want to get back the life that was taken from her? Even if Sothis didn’t want to be revived (which there is little to no evidence of), Rhea would have no way of knowing that and I’d say it’s pretty rational to assume that a murdered person would want to return to life if given the choice. It’s not like there’s an afterlife that Sothis is living in, she’s been turned into a Sword and some rock. It’s quite rational to assume that’s a miserable existence that life would be preferable to. And as for your last point, I genuinely have no idea what game you played. Because it wasn’t the same as mine I can tell you that. Provide me a single piece of evidence that Rhea would kill innocent bystanders once the ritual failed, especially considering that one of the people in that group of innocent bystanders is Flayn, Seteth’s sister who Rhea has said she considers family. Rhea also treats Byleth with affection after this event and her outlook on them doesn’t change once she realises that Byleth isn’t an eligible vessel. She is never cited once as committing senseless acts of violence to silence those involved in her experiments. As no one in the room actually knows what the ritual is actually meant to do, Rhea would’ve most likely said ‘oh well, it didn’t work. Go home everyone’ and tried a different vessel once Byleth had died on their own, much like what happened with Sitri. I also think you vastly overestimate Rhea’s capability of doing such things. Rhea isn’t stupid (morally questionable and emotionally unstable yes, but not stupid) and discounting the fact that she is vastly outnumbered and one of the people in the room may be Dimitri who is inhumanly powerful, how would she get away with such an obvious crime like this? Go back to the surface and just dodge Seteth’s questions about where the small group of children went while they were down there? You have quite literally no evidence that Rhea was intending to do this if the ritual failed and I have no idea what could’ve possibly clued you in that this was her intention.
A bunch of people from Twitter just hate rhea cus she's involved with the church and they hate churches in real life. Also because on top of that edel is bi....despite rhea being bi as well
There’s one thing that you missed about Edelgard’s point about the church dividing the Empire and Kingdom: without the Church, the Empire wouldn’t exist.
I'm not 100% sure but according to the game's timeline doesn't the formation of the empire predate the formation of the church, or do you mean it continues to exist because of the church?
Mastermind It’s more like the Empire wouldn’t exist without Seiros/Rhea, as at the very beginning of the game one of the students mentions that the crest of Seiros is part of their flag. Not to mention that the royal line carries the crest of Seiros as well
@@calitz87 No Enbarr predates the formation of the church but Seiros established the empire. Before the invasion there is also a man in the monestary that says Seiros herself helpped construct a canal in the capital that has been a major life line for them ever since. I have also seen posts online saying that based on Flann being born into the church it most likely existed before the end of the war and Rhea just reorganized it not created it but I am not sure of that last one.
@@dbv8600 I think the church existed in some form, from the time of Sothis but Rhea just reorganized it into the Seiros faith sometime during the Nemesis conflict. And while I think there were a lot of people who worshiped Sothis and her children I think Wilhelm was instrumental in uniting the land and forming the Empire, Rhea just supported him(she could have been the Tiki to his Marth).
Spoilers for blue Lions route. I played Blue Lions first, and the devastation and heartache that I saw after the time skip destroyed me. Seeing best boi Dmitri lose sanity, hearing that my favorite character Dedue had died before Byleth came back from the 5 year slumber, seeing Dmitri's redemption arc, and just having to witness the aftermath of the war, I can't agree with Edelgard or her decisions. Rhea isn't perfect, as you stated, but seeing how Edelgard was willing to kill anybody who went against her and sacrifice other peoples lives to further her objective, I can't ever agree with her. I don't care what your past is, starting a war and causing countless deaths in order to force other people to abide by your views is evil. I don't think Edelgard is evil at her core, but I think that she chose all of the evil decisions and elevated herself as a Goddess.
Well thought out argument. As someone who played Blue Lions Route first I didn't hate Edelgard, but there were many times where she was blatantly worse than Rhea.
Bless you for saying all of this, I cant believe how many people honestly see Rhea as the True Big Baddie along with the slitherers. Completely ignoring that the "lie" she instated over Fodlan is actually a pretty altruistic gesture that protects humans and lets them keep the power they STOLE from Rhea and Sothis's kind. Edelgard's end goal vision is such a parallel to Rhea and I can't believe how many ppl didn't pick up on the irony AAAHHHH
If Edelgard succeeded she would just become the next Rhea, replacing the old false history with a new one that will inevitably fail just as Rhea's did.
The parallel to modern history is there to prove that the abolition of feudalism would be a beneficial thing. There's a reason we don't have any more kings and queens with power in the current era.
@@erickim8122 Depends on the endings. Some she doesn't until her later years like with Hubert, and that's also because of her short life-span. (Linheart's ending has her just take a break, not give up the throne also) Also, successor can also mean her child since she isn't immoral like Rhea. Plus the same can still happen even without her there.
Tbf to Rhea, the Church of Sothis is already implied to be a thing as Cethleann was born in a Church to Sothis before the Church of Seiros or the empire was formed. Enbarr existed for a few centuries before the empire. So what Seiros likely did was reorganize the religion and made it into a dominant religion. Crests were already seen as Divine and even the Sword of the Creator was known as such when Nemesis made himself King years before the Empire or Church of Seiros. It's why Nemesis and the Elites had to erase Maurice and say his Crest was cursed but THEIRS was definitely holy and not stolen by mass genocide. Honest!
5:10 "The church divided the empire to create a kingdom, and then an alliance" How ironic lol. In the shadow library in the dlc it's said that twsid played a major role in dividing up the kingdom and alliance, so really they were the ones who divided everything and caused instability lol
@@yunuss58 They just wanted peace. That's the church's main goal. The Kingdom had already pretty much won the battle and only the current borders they had at the moment were legitimised after years of fighting. How is that doing something wrong
@@yunuss58 No they didn't. They needed to grant it's independence so that they would not try to take more Empire territory than they already have. When Loog won the battle of the Eagle and the Lion, they already were liberated. That would have been realized by you earlier, if you were more able to listen, instead of jumping to Conclusions, instead of defending a dictatorship, just like the Dimitri vs Edelgard, where he was 100% right and Edelgard was 100% wrong.
@@basilofgoodwishes4138 Dimitri is a shit politician. "Those who change the world aren't the rulers, but the people". What kind of nonsense is that. Is a ruler suppose to ignore problems and wait till the population picks up pitchforks. And how are the uneducated masses supposed to change anything. Edelgard and Ferdinand introduce free education. That alone makes CF the best ending. Edelgard puts and end to all the crest bullshit and ends her own dynasty while in some of Dimitri's endings it talks about how his dynasty lasted for hundreds of years. I played the game in this order VW>CF>AM. And AM ist the story about a group of people (the blue lions) upholding the very same system that fucked them over.
@@yunuss58 He is not at all, Because he actually created a constitutional Monarchy unlike the Others and he wanted to change the Crest system far better than Edelgard wanted it. He also changed the Continent for the better and got Claude to respect him enough to Grand him his bow, something Edelgard never gets and has instead to contend with Almyrans, unlike Dimitri. Also History is not some grand tale of inevitably and consistency, it's a story of accidents and many other stuff and reducing bit all to a elite group is bullshit. Our history is a collection of personal stories that connect us all and not written by few. Also Rulers would have no chance to get their will without people supporting them or how do you, as a German, think Hitler got his power? Also Edelgard has no right to invade other countries and expect them to like her, that's what got Randolph killed alongside many other fools in the war. If you want to add a Meritocracy, you already lost the Social justice war by a miles shot, because creating a system that will benefit the elite is worse than anything, especially when you commit Genocide to achieve that. Also the devs Admitted that Dimitri is the foil to Edelgard and that his route is the opposite of hers, namely 'Righteous Government", whereas her route is "Military rule", so Dimiti is meant to be seen as in the right.
I've finished playing the Edelgard route and doing the Dimitri one so I will be skipping this video as spoilers but I will say that I too would Clap Rheas CHEEKS.
@@BOOFIRE191 I will say the Edelgard route does do it's best in portraying the church in a Illuminati sort of force. Keeping everyone fractured on purpose to control everyone. Although her goal is admiral I dont see it working long term as there will always be nobles as it's just not feasible to have control over a continent without having some sort of oversight.
Daniel Boyas As someone who finished the Blue Lions Route I can safely say that without spoiling anything Rhea doesn’t have much of an impact on it through.
@@danielboyas7645 edelgard just does´t know anything about fodland, for some reason she trusts the lies of the ones that slither in the dark, even knowing that they did experiment on her. Edelgards route is the full propaganda route in my Opinion, nothing you learn in this Route is true or does matter in any way.I think people should learn to not trust everythink they hear
Sakutaro〈3musik except what you just said is false. Edelgard specifically said that she received her information from secret sealed archives passed from emperor to emperor. Where does it say she received her information from TWSITD? Last time I checked Thales and TWSITD refer to Nemesis as a thief while Edelgard refers to him as the King of Liberation. Also, Flame Emperor/Edelgard got pissed at Arundel/Thales for referring to Nemesis as a thief and she’s says, “Thief? Hmph.” So it’s obvious she doesn’t buy what they say.
@@slicksullen the emporer has no Power at all, we now this because he couldn't stop the experiments in his childs. Many scummy things happend in Adrestia and i assume the Information Edelgard got which she thought were from other emperor, are most likely false Information that the ones who slither in the Dark faked. Edelgard doesn't know the truth behind Nemesis and the Red Canyon and how much rhea tried to help the people while some human tried to abuse their power no matter what. Somehow Edelgard comes to the conclusion that Rhea is the the big bad
It happened to me too. I was on board until the timeskip but the way the war was handled felt a bit sour. Rhea had gone nuts, but CF also feels like ecalation and war is a terrible form of communication. I also felt Edelgards take on various plot hooks such as Nemesis’s identity(goes against the intro movie) or Rhea’s motivation felt a bit odd and untrue, which chipped away at the feel good feeling some seem to have with the route.
@@ladlegard1757 There is some weirdness with the translation being a bit more blunt with that moment. That being said the shadyness is there. The problem is that all the shadyness is resolves offscreen, and a lot of only makes sense if you played another route. I thought her actions would cause a problem but it cuts to a happy ending. Which makes all the talk about Edelgards balancing act moot. It’s not extremely bad or anything, I just don’t like all the fawning how well Edelgard handled it when you never see it.
I really like this video. I think both sides definitely have their flaws like you are saying, and that for sure Edelgard's is basically another take on the same thing. I did do Crimson route first, and so I feel like this entire thing could have easily been solved peacefully. Just say at school, "I want to punish those that caused the Duscar incident and make crests less important" and both Dimitri and Claude would have supported her all the way. And then when you have 3 of 3 major nations all banded together the church would probably let them change stuff up. Edelgard's stance that war was the first and only option before trying to negotiate seems so weird to me for an otherwise very rational and calm person.
Edelgard fully believes that she's the only one who can save Fodlan. She thinks that she has all the answers, and that no one else is qualified for her role. Worse, she refuses to change her stance no matter what. It's her biggest flaw.
F*cking thank you! War is supposed to be a *last resort* scenario. The fact that El didn't even *try* another way, makes it incredibly hard for me to be sympathetic to her.
What the guy above me said essentially Yeah it’s hard to sympathize with someone who didn’t even attempt diplomacy in any way first. She worked with TWSITD, tried getting Rhea killed, Dimtri, Claude, and just she caused a lot of stuff to happen. Edelgard isn’t necessarily evil. She just clearly did not think this through and isn’t the most sane person out there. Calm demeanor yes. Logical thinking? 0
I do find it interesting that there are more Blue Lions that dislike the crest system than Black Eagles. Sylvain, Mercedes and Ingrid all have reasons to desire change. Sylvain straight up hates crests, and his ending has him working to reduce their importance. These three's problems are also actually due to the crest system, Edelgard and Lysithea were victims of the Illuminati experimentation, not necessarily the crest system itself. Rhea/Seiros herself has reason to dislike the crest system, given that it's effectively people fighting over her family's body parts. Had Edelgard used her position and location at Garreg Mach to attempt diplomatic reform, there's a good chance that she could have swayed a significant number of important people, especially those who already thought similarly. Instead, she uses that time to plan stealing more crests to start a war using the same things she despises. She never seems to realize that other people might agree with her goals, but not her methods.
I played BL route first and then CF and despite Rhea being irredeemable in CF, knowing what I learned about her in BL made it difficult to see her as a total villain. Especially considering how absolutely broken and betrayed she must have felt at having Sothis' vessel turn against her, which to her meant Byleth was effectively "stealing" her mother from her, who she was desperate to see again. It's a shame because Edelgard genuinely believes Rhea is evil, because she doesn't have the full story, only pieces of it. I can't help but wonder just how different Edelgard's path would have been if she knew everything.
"Stealing her mother"? Byleth is his/her own person, more then Rhea's meat puppet and vessel for Sothis. I don't see how Byleth "steals" Sothis, thats arrogant and ridiculous
@@thepax6390 Sothis was within Byleth, so to Rhea Byleth was basically taking the most important person in the world away from her. Someone she had been trying to bring back for centuries and ensured countless hardships and heartbreaks to try and achieve. And just when she was starting to see signs that her mother was actually beginning to return (in Byleth), Byleth then turned against her. I mean I can see why Rhea felt betrayed.
@@eye_of_pluto Thats the fundemental flaw, Rhea's experiments are to blame not the unfortunate subjects chosen for Sothis resurrection. Who put the heart/crest stone into Byleth? Rhea, she can only blame herself, there is no loyalty owed and certainly no obligation for the professor to give up their own body for Sothis or Rheas sake, if they even fight for the church and its dragon pope, then its because they CHOOSE to. Not because of some false debt and misguided loyalty. Byleth, as her mother before him/her, are real people, with emotions, dreams, wishes, thoughts and goals of their own and still Rhea gave them no say in the matter. She's essentially mad that her experiments won't hold still for a ritual with the goal of estinquishing their individuality and personality. Rhea does not own them. Period, whether the dragon lady throws a hissy fit about it or not
@@thepax6390 Yes, I agree. I'm not saying Rhea is in the right here, I'm just saying I UNDERSTAND why she was so angry and hurt. Take into consideration the fact that without the Crest stone transplant, Byleth would not be alive. Byleth quite literally owes Rhea their life. Byleth was stillborn and if Rhea had not used Sothis' crest stone, Byleth would've never had a chance to be an individual in the first place. Again not saying I agree with Rhea, but that extra information goes to explain why she was so enraged by Byleth turning the Sword of the creator, made from her mother's bones, against Rhea to protect someone she saw as an extremely evil individual. Yeah, Rhea is fucked up and did some messed up shit. But her anger isn't unjustified either.
@@eye_of_pluto Indeed, Byleth was saved as a babe, its a shame then, that Rhea abuses that and makes it meaningless by trying to go through with the experiment years later. Now its not a selfless act anymore, but almost a calculated one, after all, Rhea needed another body anyway, considering Byleths mother was declared a "failure" and well... dead. Do you understand my problem with the whole situation? The nature of this argument reminds of the support between Shamir and Catherine, where Catherine threatens to cut Shamir down, because Shamir does not whorship Rhea or wants to die for her. With Catherine exclaiming: "She saved your Life!" and Shamirs response: "I know and I'm thankful, its why I agreed to go into service with the knights. To fight for the church and Rhea. But I won't pray to her, I won't die for her and I won't blindly follow her" (paraphrasing here, but I think I got the gist of the dialogue down) Rhea acts like she owns people and installs the same arrogance in her followers. I understand Rhea's need for her mother, I don't think its healthy, not how she displays it at least and she could have used several hundred years to properly grieve instead, but who wouldn't understand a daughter longing for her mother. It doesn't mean however that I cut her slack for it, not like that, this video got it right. The experiments are f*****, no matter the perspective...
Finally glad that there's a Rhea video out that tries to explain her motives, I like Edelgard but I wholly disagree with her decisions and I never understood how people can prefer a woman who due to her actions costs the lives of many people to Rhea who gives orphans a place to stay as shown in game and generally avoids conflict unless the enemy strikes first. She's not a perfect character of course, your points do stand and I do like Edelgard's supports which is why I don't loathe Edelgard but those flaws make these characters much more endearing than just can-never-do-wrong Corrin. One thing I do dislike is the justification that Edelgard is always right, it's become kind of a joke in itself that Edelgard fans just discount any of the bad things she does and justify it with "church bad" and honestly I think it also stems from the persons own mindset as well as whose route they played first as if you're a lot more of a let's say rebellious person you definitely empathise with Edelgard more.
I think a lot more people are sympathetic to "the ends justify the means" than even they suspect. It's fairly intuitive to people to think that making the world a better place (which is how CF is framed) is worth the struggles and sacrifice that come with it, especially when they are following that character as the hero. Now mix that with the heavy bias for and against each character depending on what run you did, and people getting overly defensive and well, the end results speak for themselves.
Rhea is by far the most unjustly hated character in the game by Edel stans just because she is the person Edel hates & obssesed with the most, while Rhea doesn't even know Edel but reacts to the evil shit Edel does. What really annoys me is how Edel says Rhea is evil & controlling Fodlan along with the church when this is absolutely false. The empire literally kicked Rhea out & the southern church too years before the story starts, the ones who control & ruin the empire are TWSITD & shitty royals, Rhea has nothing to do with either but we ally with TWSITD to take out Rhea & complete their genocide of the Nabateans?! Lol talk about delusional. I will alway take the side of a victim who tries to keep the peace, than a warmonger who through sheer military force invades an entire continent & engulfs it into a vicious 5 years war & force her ideals on everyone just because she has the power of military & her authority as empress.
ShadedHydra I personally believe that if Edelgard hadn’t started a war, it would have come anyway sooner or later. At least with Edelgard starting it, it could be made to minimize atrocity. Imagine a war starting with nobody monitoring what TWSITD were doing!
Rhea could have easily done worse to humanity. She could have made humanity totally consumed by guilt for what Nemisis did an original sin for the humans that betrayed the Goddess. She did not, instead of painting humanity as murderers she gave humanity a noble origin and powers beyond their wildest imagination, even if it was partially to bind them to the Church. And up until an assassination attempt Rhea allowed the other church branches an extreme amount of freedom in divergent religious expression. Also the church seems surprisingly hands-off with the Empire and Leicester Alliance. Considering all the plotting those that Slither and those that want to rebellion against the church are allowed to carry out in practically the open. Granted this does not make her actions morally good, but Rhea is not pure evil just like Edelgard isn't.
@@BOOFIRE191 Rhea also did protect the remaining Children of the Goddess by rewriting the origin of the crests and relics, which prevented hunters from going after them for relic weapons and desecrating the corpses of dead children of the goddess. So that was a pretty good act even if it was partially in Rheas best interests. Any other action that did not conceal and hide the true origin of crests and relics probably would have meant the complete genocide of the children of the goddess. So Rhea did not have much of a choice in writing her false history if she wanted to protect her people and their corpses.
BOOFIRE191 I made a comment on here explaining why Rhea is a far better person than Edelgard. Edelgard is basically a discount Arvis. While not evil, it’s impossible to sympathize with her when better choices were clearly laid out before her.
_She could have made humanity totally consumed by guilt for what Nemisis did an original sin for the humans that betrayed the Goddess. She did not, instead of painting humanity as murderers she gave humanity a noble origin and powers beyond their wildest imagination, even if it was partially to bind them to the Church._ If she did that, she would have been killed within the decade. Apathy is a powerful thing after all and people generally won't feel bad about something that had nothing to do with them yet they're being blamed for. It doesn't help that Rhea established the church of Seiros. She couldn't have done that while trying to make everyone feel bad about what a few people did to her kin. It just wouldn't have stuck. _And up until an assassination attempt Rhea allowed the other church branches an extreme amount of freedom in divergent religious expression._ If by _freedom_ you mean not burn you at the stake for being an outsider that didn't believe in the goddess, as long as you didn't talk shit, then sure. _Also if the church seems surprisingly hands-off in the Empire and Leicester alliance for all the plotting of those that Slither and those that want to rebellion against the church to carry out their plots successfully in almost the open._ More like it's due to Rhea being incredibly naive and short-sighted, not to mention arrogant. Considering how she reacted to Edelgard's "betrayal," despite it being obvious to anyone that paid attention to what was happening around Fodlnd, i'm pretty sure she just assumed that she could get away with doing whatever she wanted because she was basically in charge via the church. She seemed convinced that her mother would be able to magically make things work out, so much so that she didn't notice the mob forming outside her door. Sure, Rhea isn't evil, but she isn't exactly above someone like Edelgard or Dimitri either.
I'd like to mention that Edelgard was essentially manipulated just like the Western Church. In CF you see that she intends (and does) to destroy TWSITD, but they were just using her as a method to plunge Fodlan into war, in order to gain power. It really makes her argument seem insignificant - we don't even know where she got her information from. She is just a puppet, and Rhea sees her as such. I personally played CF first, and after playing all the routes I can comfortably say I strongly dislike Edelgard.
A bit late maybe but I experienced exactly the same played CF first chose her and after playing the other Routes I can't choose her ever except for wanting to Replay the Levels. Whenever I replay the game and it says it's Edelgard Birthday wanna do something? I'm like NO lol
I mean, yes they manipulated her but the result likely would be similar if they hadn’t. She despises the church’s secrecy and views Rhea as a tyrant of her own free will, and loathes the crest system that the church promotes. Rhea, Dimitri, and Edelgard are all very psychologically damaged, and it pushes them to do illogical things for the sake of healing their trauma, but it never works for them. Rhea tries to bring Sothis back, Dimitri tries to avenge the dead, and Edelgard tries to destroy the society that brought her family and her immeasurable pain and suffering. Rhea only finds peace when she acknowledges her wrongdoings and lets her mother rest. Dimitri only finds peace when he chooses to live for himself. Edelgard really never truly finds peace, because she doesn’t realize how scarred she is.
Edelgard was not manipulated. She was acting as some sort of double agent. Cornelia, upon her death in CF, remarks in her original line how Edelgard was the one who has been fooling those who slither in the dark all along.
MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING AHEAD: Edelgard was extremely naïve but ambitious. She could have (multiple times) stopped and talked or thought about what she was actually doing and how others viewed the system. Rhea was completely justified in almost everything she did, the emotional trauma she went through because of what Nemesis did explains why she is how she is and why she despises the heretics and those who would see the church destroyed and stripped of power. A support convo with Cyril reveals that Rhea wants to do away with the Crest system and doesn’t care if people don’t believe in the faith - the two things Edelgard thought Rhea was using to keep a hold on people and what drove her so strongly. Had she sat and actually talked to literally anyone instead of being so headstrong and blind to reality things could have ended up differently.
Agreed on everything. El is just too damn stubborn while Rhea, while does have her own error, is very much justified in many, many things. Hell, the fact that Fodlan could live in peace for a thousand year was because Rhea went out of her way to spare the families of her mother and siblings's killers and actually protected them. If it was a human in her place, I'm pretty sure there'd be another mass genocide.
In terms with Dimitri and Claude, she could have learned that they also both hate the Crest system and if the three worked together, they would have overpowered the Church in a less bloody path. But she only talks to Dimitri near the end of the Blue Lions path and never really gets to know Claude. Unless you count butting into a conversation and demanding all of Claude's secrets to be getting to know someone XD
Actually, Rhea wanted Bylrth to become the Archbishop. She said, that she did this title for him. Edelgard then just could talk with Byleth and finished
Thats the thing that is sad about all that. I love how when Bernadetta asks Byleth why Edelgard would do this, after revealing her plans, he only says "It seemed to her like it was the only option" or somesuch, its the truth, with everything that has happened to her and everything she knew she couldnt see the world clearly, her own point of view was what limited her understanding and thus her paths of solution. The Agarthans really did a number on her and while its not fully stockholm syndrome a degree of it applies, due to her upbringing she ignores the greater threat and justifies her actions using explanations that would make no sense to a normal person. Everyone who always advocates for her route makes me sad, because helping her win the war does not help Edelgard, stopping the war before it happens and teaching her of the world as it actually is would. She doesnt have friends or equals, she has retainers, servants, confidants at best, Hubert is the worst in this, not caring for Edelgard as a friend or a loved one would, only making her issues more ingrained.
In no way will I say Rhea is innocent, but between her and Edelgard, I’ll always pick Rhea’s side. Edelgard started a war and intends to conquer all of Fodlan out of bullshit ideology. Crests themselves aren’t bad, it’s the overvalue and prejudices people have towards them that’s the problem. Edelgard can conquer Fodlan all she wants, but she cannot make its people’s hearts her own. Rhea, on the other hand, has committed far fewer atrocities, and on smaller scales. Plus, her motivation is far easier to sympathize with. Add to all this, her abdicating her position of archbishop negates any reason to side with Edelgard, because then the Church of Seiros that she hates no longer exists.
I see in a much simaler way but simpler Rhea can fix problems that come along since she lives for so dam long while el can't and therefore can't save the future
Yup. Crests are not bad but the nobles valuing them to much is what’s bad. Damatri also comes to same conclusion and wants to fix it without war but as King. He would be loved by many of his people and they already love Rhea. Slyvain also noble who would work under Damatri came to same conclusion. I really think since Damatri would have continued the very friendly relationship with the church and with Rhea getting help from Byleth they would have made it better.
@@Daydream_N Rhea is the one who made the Crest bearers nobles?? Youre factually wrong. She is the one who put them in power. Not to mention all of the others in this comment section who are like "Edelgard hates the crests themselves and that's it" she constantly talks about that the system that props them up is the problem. it really just proves all of you don't actually read the story or any of the material. Rhea commits genocide and murders inventors to keep her power because she wants her mommy back, and if Rhea stays in power eventually the Almyrans or Dagdans will come through and bowl fodlan over because it's stuck in time.
I feel like you didn't address one part of the lie regarding Nemesis and the 10 Elites. If everyone knew you could just murder a dragon and drink their blood to gain a crest, given the seemingly natural violent tendencies of humans in 3H history, it would have led to the continued pursuit of her people for power. That being said, there was an easy but immoral solution she could have taken prior to forming the Church of Seiros. She could have just killed some innocent people whose only crime was being a descendant of the 10 elites. I always view it as Pandora's Box had already been opened. She made the most of a terrible situation.
The only thing missing here is how the Church itself frowns upon the abuse of Crests, as seen in the Book of Seiros. One could argue that Rhea still implicitly supports the Crest system or that she does not do enough to stop it, but I find this to be a weak argument for a number of reasons. For one, as others have previously stated, Rhea needed to create a magnanimous origin for Crests in order to reconcile things with the descendants of the Elites. For two, the Crest system itself is not arbitrary, as Crest blood bestows tangible benefits to those with it including access to the army-shattering Relics as well as things like House Blaiyddid's super strength. Therefore, humans and especially the nobility were always going to put a huge emphasis on Crests. For Rhea to actively combat the Crest system (beyond attempts to spur an accepting environment within Garreg Mach) would require *more* historical revisionism and exerting more direct influence over the sovereign nations of Fodlan. The other option would have been for her to simply exterminate anyone with Crest blood when she had the chance. These are all the things Edelgard already criticizes the Church for doing and would have made Rhea even more of a tyrant. In principle, I agree with Edelgard that the course of humanity should probably not be dictated by an ageless space lizard, but that doesn't seem to be what Rhea is about. At least, not when you consider how much control she could have over humanity if she so desired. Beyond resurrecting her mother and getting humans to not annihilate each other, Rhea seems content to make her impact on humanity as a whole relatively minor. Hence, I can't really get behind violently attempting to remove her and the Church.
@@appelofdoom8211 Oh yea true. My friend who escaped North Korea with his family and became a South Korean citizen still call North korea by communist government... so I don't know
Interestingly the Cindered Shadows DLC reveals that the civil wars that created the Kingdom and the Alliance were actually spurned on by Those Who Slither in the Dark, Edelgard’s future allies. The church had absolutely nothing to do with them, so that point that she makes is even further disproved by the game itself.
@@genericyoutubeaccount4756 Guess what? You didn't convert me into an Edelgard fan with that comment. I'm still siding with Rhea. Amazing how that works, isn't it? It's almost like you spamming the entire comments section with innate bullshit didn't convince anyone to change their stance.
Played all routes except CF first and I seriously couldn’t be playing the CF route without regretting every choice I was making. When you see the same person be the antagonist for three routes, I just couldn’t see her as a protagonist. Every battle was torture for me. I keep talking to the screen that Edelgard is not seeing the bigger picture. Not only did she never made a convincing argument to really make me change sides, she was working with those who slither in the dark who killed Byleth’s father. Like that’s seriously gonna make me want to join Edelgard’s cause? Hell no! Like every time Hubert thinks that Byleth might betray them any moment, I’m just hoping it to be a reality and some sort of plot twist occurs.
Byleth kinda does "betray them" in a way: at least from Hubert's perspective. You just need to pick SS instead of CF lol. But yeah I agree, there were times that I wish I could sway Edelgard when playing CF to no avail.
@@l.n.3372 the church is the worst route for foldlan imp esially when rhea dies anyway if you do not s support her that final battle was a deal breaker for me on top of everything else in silver snow.
It would be interesting to see an update on this video since Cindered Shadows DLC added some interesting history to Fodlan. Which basically confirms Those Who Slither causing the 3 nations, the 1st King's advisor was possibly a member of Those Who Slither.
The Shadow Library, interestingly enough, justifies both sides more than before. It proves that Those Who Slither were behind a lot of the division (disproving Edelgard's claims that the Church is doing it) *and* that Rhea's rule, though well-intentioned, was holding Fodlan back technologically.
@@genericyoutubeaccount4756 The only one I can think of is causing Fodlan's moderate xenophobia to outsiders, and even then they allow a pagan alter in their basement, allow other religions to enroll (Petra and Dedue), and employ an atheist in their guard (Shamir).
I'm glad that this video exists. Rhea is one of my favourite characters in the game precisely because she's so complex and morally iffy, and it's nice to see someone appreciate that. Regarding Rhea's revival of Sothis through Byleth: the impression I got was that Byleth didn't have a heartbeat because they were stillborn. Because they were dead, I can understand how Rhea might rationalise it away as, "Well, if the baby's already dead, it's not like Sothis would be hijacking someone's body or anything." It's still pretty grim (and, as Byleth did develop their own personage, it didn't work) *but* I can kind of understand why she would think that, even if I don't agree with it. After finishing the whole game, I honestly don't hate her for everything that happens in Crimson Flower - I just think it's really sad. She's clearly still traumatised by the massacre at Zanado, and seeing Byleth join Edelgard has got to be something of an emotional trigger for her. After all, how would you like it if someone tried beating you to death with the corpse of *your* mother? Even burning Fhirdiad, while absolutely inexcusable, is understandable given that this is her last stand. Edelgard isn't going to let her live, she's devoted to her own delusions and is intent on completing the slithers' genocide of the Children of the Goddess - no ifs, ands, or buts. And there's no way Rhea is going to surrender to a side that is actively working with the people who took everything from her. It was only ever going to end in tragedy.
I don't understand why nobody thinks about her revival plan in other ways than 'oh, someone might die, therefore it is infinitely evil'. The baby being stillborn shows how she's already taking a lot of steps to not kill anybody if she doesn't have to. Then Byleth happens to live but not become a reborn Sothis. Meanwhile, consider the problem that comes up when Byleth fuses with Sothis. Imagine what that means from Rhea's perspective, she is immortal, she knows Byleth will eventually die. Beyond that, even Byleth can't speak to Sothis anymore, so from Rhea's point of view, Sothis's spirit already either got destroyed or sent to an afterlife she has no way of accessing. Meanwhile, the moment Byleth dies of old age, the best she can do is hope for another vessel-attempt using Sothis's heart. And if it turned out Sothis's spirit remained fused with him when he died and went to the afterlife or stopped existing altogether, she would obviously be enraged and realize her whole plan was for nothing. So, overall, Rhea is being pretty generous in how she does things already. What else is she going to do, refuse to use vessels just because it might potentially kill someone? That would amount to giving up on the whole plan. Her end goal is to either get someone to be assimilated by Sophis, become a 'host' of Sophis(aka where she is the one in control and they are either dormant or can swap control of the body with her at will, this way they wouldn't be killed) or most ideally, have a 'Sophis is reborn' scenario where she has her memories from the beginning as a baby after a successful experiment. If you were Rhea would you just give up? I don't understand what the argument is supposed to be here. Of course she might be willing to sacrifice one person's limited life to bring back the one person she can truly relate to and bond with despite her endless lifespan, that just makes logical sense, i don't get why that is so strange to so many people.
@@fosco2135 I think you've somewhat misunderstood what I was getting at. When I said I didn't agree with using a dead baby, that wasn't me literally saying that I think Rhea's plan is stupid and that I could come up with a better one. That's me saying, "This is a morally-grey action that I personally am uncomfortable with, because there's something a bit creepy about using a dead baby like this and I'm not really capable of suppressing those emotions, *but* I accept that it makes total sense for Rhea to do and, therefore, I can fully understand why she does it within the context of the game's narrative." You could argue full well that Rhea using a stillborn baby is kinder than using a fully-developed person and overwriting their personality to revive Sothis. You could *also* argue that Rhea not telling Jeralt everything that was really going on to his own child was wrong, and that he was right to be suspicious of her when his baby turned out not to have a heartbeat. You can make a case for both.
@@PureAwesamness It just seems like the guy making the video didn't think about the end result of many of the routes in the long run. Just compare this to real life to understand the problem. In the storyline of this game, Rhea and Sothis are somehow immortal. Rhea wants to revive Sothis which will achieve multiple things. One, it lets the religion she's been lying to everyone about reach its natural conclusion, other than being proven a hoax. Even if people figured out the truth eventually, or if Sothis simply revealed that she didn't create Crests at all, it would have less of a chance of mattering. If Sothis's return managed to give Rhea enough political power due to the religion being partly proven, maybe she would be able to take out Those Who Slither in the Dark. The second important point is that some of these routes end with both Rhea and Sothis effectively dead. Even if Sothis ends up merged with Byleth and conscious as a spirit due to S support, it doesn't matter in the long run, she will die with him. One other very important thing is what would happen if Sothis and Rhea managed to both be alive and try to guide humanity towards a better future. So long as at least one immortal person is still alive, if humanity in this FE universe gets more technology and doesn't turn out the same way Those Who Slither in the Dark did, ideally, there's a chance they could even replicate this effect and overcome the problem of death altogether. If they're both dead, regardless of how wonderful any social system the Flame Emperor might create is, that potential opportunity would be lost, probably forever unless they succeeded with experiments in the same line as the ones Rhea did with Sothis's heart over and over again. On top of that, Sothis is the only known person who can actually create Crests if they happen to die out somehow in the future. What I am ultimately saying is that this immortal space dragon loli goddess seems to have infinitely more potential value to humanity and to Rhea than any one human, and any one single human should be morally obligated to give up their life for this space dragon loli goddess to be resurrected. It is basically thousands of years worth of lifespan in exchange for a much lesser number, and that could multiply to be infinitely more valuable if someone found out how to replicate her immortality in a more modern age of this FE universe. Like, what would you do if you were someone in that world? Would you really think Byleth matters more than Sothis in the long run? I just don't get how anyone can argue that, people who do are not thinking through all the implications in my opinion. Also, their immortality matters in another way even if it can't be replicated. Besides it making it much easier for them to keep a stable society over generations, if humasn eventually tried to go to space and lacked warp drive, but could actually build spaceships with antigrav and such, having an immortal around would make it a whole lot easier to maintain social order. Even if they're going to die anyways for a ton of generations before they ever find a new planet, at least someone is alive who remembers them and they can trust them to make their death feel less meaningless. The reason this space travel bit matters is that without it, humans would eventually be doomed to fall into the sun eventually regardless of how perfect and advanced their civilization became, totally obliterating everything they had ever built and making it kind of meaningless. Unless, of course, they lasted for a few billion years waiting for some solution, and eventually got saved by aliens or something like that. Not totally unresaonable given that Sothis is apparently already from space. Plus, Sothis supposedly 'fell from space' and Those Who Slither in the Dark think she is an alien. So if this is correct and she's really an alien it's possible that a revived Sothis might somehow have a method to space travel on her own, assuming she wasn't somehow launched in a one-way trajectory towards the planet from wherever her home was. Even if not, whatever method was used to launch her to Earth could potentially be replicated and it could be done all over again to colonize a new planet or even possibly send her back to wherever she came from and establish first contact. This doesn't exactly solve other problems like the looming threat of the Heat Death of the Universe, assuming that is canon in Fire Emblem, or possibly the Big Rip or Big Crunch theorized by scientists, but it would still be a big step forwards overall for them to revive her. FE could be within a universe where that is somehow incorrect and it's instead an eternal universe and rather than one big bang there's lots of matter/energy being created all the time, but even if that was the case they would still want to go to space anyways to avoid being vulnerable to going extinct from a solar flare. Or possibly from their galaxy colliding with a nearby galaxy and the resulting gravitational stuff sending all planets off their orbits and making all planets become uninhabitable. Lots of stuff. So imagine you are a Modern Age person in the Fire Emblem universe and you realize this literal god from space apparently existed once upon a time but both her and Rhea are now dead even though they may have been basically the one way for you to try to expand into space. This is what most self-honest people would think: " Welll well well...Thanks a lot, Flame Emperor, we're now probably going extinct because of you. You're the worst member of the human race in all of history! Other than those primate-level intellects who killed Sothis the first time, of course. If only you'd been stopped. Then we could probably have invented literal immortality by now through cloning Rhea or experimenting with her genes on normal humans to figure out how it works scientifically. But I guess you just loved your dictatorial 'meritorious' empire that lasted literally 1 century before collapsing too much for that to ever happen. You truly were the Flame Emperor, all that's left of you is destruction, and it looks like we're all going to be joining you burning in hell in a few billion years!" Anyway hopefully you see what i mean. All positions that result in Rhea or Sothis's potential perma-death are 100% wrong IMO, I think that even if Rhea had been unambiguously evil, it would still have been worth it to keep her alive and imprisoned no matter what, solely for the sake of finding a potential way to duplicate her immortality abilities. And to me the same would go with continuing to use Sothis's heart on people over and over again as many times as necessary to attempt to revive her. I feel so disappointed that nobody else thinks about these possibilities and all discussion is usually reduced to people usually saying killing is always wrong, or that all opinions are inherently equal. Then again i may be putting too much effort into this, but I don't see much of an alternative. FE characters should not expect cosmological problems like the destruction of the universe or the death of the sun, but they should have enough common sense to realize that killing an immortal character is almost always a dumb idea and they should try to wait and see if it's possible to replicate such an ability someday. Maybe if she was incredibly evil and threatened the existence of humanity, then yes, if there's no other way for humans to be sure of their survival, do it, but otherwise, i just don't see the reason at all. The Medieval Stupidity argument, on second thought, is quite strong sometimes. Nobody would probably anticipate that potential to duplicate her powers even if it seems so obvious and important from a modern perspective. But that also works the other way. A great many religious FE people would see killing her as literally killing God, so even from a utilitarian point of view, killing her is really dumb and will enrage a whole lot of people and get them to want to kill your civilization which is founded on her death. So either way it is really stupid.
@@fosco2135 Because its ethically and morally f***ed up. Thats why. Everybody understands, on some level, Rhea's need for her mother, but to sacrifice someone else for the sake of getting her back is something else entirely. Its *wrong*, plain and simple. I don't understand what you don't understand about that
Osvaldo Alcala But why would Volkhard donate so much to the Church but then just stop out of the blue around the time of the Tragedy of Duscur? And why would he even donate to the Church in the first place, especially since Thales despises everyone in it?
Fire Blue Toad because every noble house donated to the church, that’s why his excuse is he was low on money it said this I just don’t remember where I think it was in azure moon during the timeskip
Osvaldo Alcala But didn’t Sothis say that Volkhard was one of the Church’s biggest donors from the book they read? That goes beyond just donating money because everyone does it. Why would he donate so much to his most hated enemy?
Am I the only one that doesn‘t dislike her experiments? From what we know, her goal is to resurrect Sothis so Sothis can finally bring a true paradise. Obviously she madly wants to see her mother again but whenever she had the choice, she chose to sacrifice herself for Byleth in hope that they would take her place to guide Fodlan. We also know that the experiments were not killed or harmed by any means, Byleth‘s mother for example was allowed to live and to love even though she was a failure. And to be honest, trading an artificial human for a god that can guide humanity (a race that often likes to wage war and commit genocides, etc), is not something that sounds too bad. Compared with Dimitri, crashing peoples skulls with bear hands and especially Edelgards crimes, those experiments are really not that bad.
@@ericx6969 Well we know she can heal the land they already covered that in game heck belyth probably could to with enough time since in every route but black eagles he's still alive to watch over the kingdom
Edelgard committed no crimes. Moving on... Rhea wants to resurrect Sothis, on the naive and childish hope that Sothis could bring about true paradise. However, as you can see from the church controlled fodland at the start of the game, that paradise is a shame and just doesn't work. The only one who would be happy in that "paradise" would be Rhea. That's not a paradise. Also, Rhea wasn't willing to let her vessals leave. Just because she wasn't willing to kill her lab rats doesn't mean what she did wasn't wrong. What's life if you can't live it as you see fit? Also, what good would trading 1 life for a "god" do? As you can see throughout the story, Sothis isn't a true god. She's not all seeing, or all knowing, or all powerful. She's human just like everyone else, but with time powers. She makes mistakes, has a personality, etc. Sorry, but Rhea was being childish. Her dream wasn't achievable from the get-go. This is something i'm pretty sure she realizes at the end of her route.
@@DemonicMonkey88 yeah from your first sentence alone i can tell you aren't interested in an honest discussion man, get out of here your waifu literally started a war.
Entirely off screen. Her managing to get all of them is less credible than our death before the timeskip. It's about as credible has her making a system based on merit and dumping her friends in all of the high positions.
@@Khajitxi everyone is a hypocrite as well dimitri says killing is wrong but he kills anyway claude says the war is too bloody but he wants to unite fodlan the same as edelgard and rhea preaches a lot but does not even follow her own dogma.
What exactly could Rhea have done to prevent Fodlan from building power structures around Crests? Besides hunting down and killing every man, woman and child who bore one, of course.
Rhea did not have a choice but to allow it, since letting slip that the crests were never meant for humans would have led to people figuring out how to get them.
I’d like to suggest a couple of reasons as for why Rhea may have chosen to have Crests be such an important part of the nobility. I’m not saying the idea is flawless, but I’d just like to give a few more potential reasons why Rhea chose to do this other than her struggling to move on: Even if humanity was never told about Crests, someone would realise they had one eventually. If that person was never told about this power, and no-one seemed to know about it, it's likely they'd expect even the Church didn’t know about it. What will people end up doing when they find out they have some sort of power that only they are known to have? More likely than not, try and become some sort of ruler, which could cause another war. By acknowledging the existence of Crests and integrating it into the system, she may have intended to cause Fodlan to think that, while the power of Crests is extraordinary, the Church is aware of it, and that awareness might have stopped previous Crest-bearers from starting wars to try and rule over Fodlan. After all, if the Church knows that Crests exist, then it is likely that they either have a precaution against Crests or the Church contains plenty of Crest-bearers themselves. Another argument you could make is that, if humanity WASN'T aware of Crests, then Crests may have been lost forever, including the Crests that the Nabateans have, since they aren’t immortal. Then, once that happens, if some threat arises, then humanity is less likely to survive due to no Crests and, as such, no using Hero's Relics. By essentially advising that Crests should try to be kept around, it means that humanity has an extra defence against anything that might happen to Fodlan. Not only that, but, by making Crests be a common sign that a person is from nobility, it makes them seem more appealing. Like Sylvain's supports demonstrate, people want to marry Crest-bearers and have Crest-bearing children with them because of how important Crests are.
Being a Crest-bearer also give humanity a power to be stronger than normal folks. It is the sole reason why Sreng is simply glaring at Kingdom border, because they can't win against Lance of Ruin that is safeguarded by Gautier family. Rhea just laid the foundation of stability. It is just that humanity is just so human that social problem regarding Crest exist.
Another reason could be so Crests stayed in Fodlan, by saying Crests were a blessing from Sothis this allowed Rhea to keep them on her radar and make sure they didn’t spread out of Fodlan. Trying to stamp them out would have driven Crests bearers right to TWS.
as someone who has done all routes i agree with this rhea and edelgard the way they go about things both have problems but i feel the way rheas system works is just way better but out of all the routes i think the best outcome for fodlan is golden deer yeah i did it first but still i just think what Claude wants to do leads to the best future for fodlan
Also let's not forget, Edelgard is all "let's take back Fodlan for mortals and humans from these beasts" meanwhile she turns into a grotesque Babadook lookin demon beast
Reminded me from the Doctor Strange film, where at one point the main villian was arguing with Strange how the villians cause was just and benevolent, but then Strange rightly points out "but look at your face!" as the villian's face was turning more demonic and scary looking lol.
@@rafael502 Yeah, that's a cool comparison actually. Even Dimitri says something like that in AM: where he asks is this truly what you would turn yourself into in order to win - a monster? When he who fights monsters becomes one, you know that they've fallen from their original goals.
@boofire191: You've made a fantastic video! Rhea's done some horrible things, that can't be denied, but the fact that so much of the fandom apparently hasn't bothered playing any route besides Crimson Flower and paints her as nothing more than a typical Fire Emblem villain with no redeeming qualities, complexities, or logic behind her actions drives me absolutely mad. So I can't tell you how much I appreciate this video and the much needed Rhea positivity perspective. That said there's a couple things I wanted to point out I hope you take into consideration: I played Crimson Flower --> Azure Moon --> Verdant Wind --> Silver Snow, and when I got to the big reveal in Verdant Wind I was gobsmacked at the big reveal on who Nemesis really was and where Crests and the 'Holy' weapons really came from. But at the same time I couldn't help but wonder why the Hell Rhea would lie about something like that if Crests were (ironically giving her something in common with Edelgard) what resulted in the near-total genocide of her people. And then when I saw Flayn getting kidnapped for the fourth time and Seteth mentioning her "Special blood" it hit me. You mentioned that without the Church and Rhea's influence Fodlan would devolve into endless war, but there's another reason you might've overlooked: **It's because if Fodlan knew where the Crests and Holy weapons REALLY came from, RHEA, SETETH, FLAYN AND POSSIBLY INDECH & MACUIL WOULD ALL BE DEAD AND THEIR CORPSES WOULD BE TURNED INTO WEAPONS.** Their blood would be used to form new houses of Nobility to wage war with the other Nobles in lust for power while Those Who Slither have the last laugh as Fodlan burns. Combine that with Rhea's own trauma stemmed from the initial genocide and suddenly things start to make more sense. And another thing I wanted to mention is regarding Byleth's mother. Fans have taken the assertion of Rhea's human experimentation and interpreted as her creating potential Sothis Soul Jar candidates as "She threw them away like nothing/killed them when they failed." That is explicitly not true, first and foremost being Byleth wouldn't even exist if that were the case, as Blyeth's mother was another failed candidate, but Rhea still let her live her own life to marry Jeralt and give birth to Byleth. The second being that is it implied that Rhea "Created" Sothis candidates from consuming her blood like those who turned into dragons at the end of Silver Snow? Or did she "Create" them artificially like Homonculi? ...Or did she make them "the old fashioned way" from herself? Either way Evidence suggests she did not, and would not create life only to discard it like a rotted doll. And side note, if you believe Rhea's comments on Byleth being near-stillborn and would've died if she hadn't put Sothis's crest stone within them (a claim supported by Jeralt's notes on Byleth being an emotionless husk with no heartbeat pre-Garreg Mach along with several mentions of Byleth's heart not beating until the end of Crimson Flower) along with Rhea's claim that Byleth's mother BEGGED Rhea to do it in an attempt to save Byleth's life, then a more generous interpretation can be gleaned that Rhea acted to honor the wishes of a dying woman (one who you could argue to be her own daughter) to save her baby, which even with the ulterior motive of another attempt at resurrecting Sothis, Rhea might rationalize it as if it didn't work then that at least bypasses the ethical and existential horror of Byleth's personality being overwritten, since a baby doesn't have a personality to begin with.
While I’m one to understand Rhea knowing how the people she most trusted and those by her mother betrayed and wiped out her family and people and those left that she still trusted died and there descendents tried to destroy her last remaining thread of sanctuary....the more I write this my point I was gonna make against her seems bad (shit I would be mad if I was her) but her actions with the creation of vessels for her mother (while inhuman and cruel) I can see her desperation to try and bring her back believing it will fix everything and bring it back to how it once was. I see her not as a villain or a misunderstood saint, but as a tragic figure from a time left behind who is not seen as a person but a symbol disconnected from the people she loves who’s actions where to bring thing back to how they once where. If you read this great video and keep up the great work man.
In any game, book or movie just saying "the church is evil" is enough to get the consumer on their side since people are raised to belive that narrative by media.
@@darkomihajlovski3135 Its true for any organization and something people often forget is that the vast majority of people alive today and in history were relgious.
@@darkomihajlovski3135 not more than people that lead other things, and there are also many good things that the church did. Also there are many false things that the general public believe. For example, people associate the witch hunt whit middle age and christianity, while it was mostly done by secular authorities and in the 1600.
@@Trencher1375 The vast majority of thoses people also considered foreigner "inferior races" and were against giving rights to anyone who wasn't born into the upper class. I don't think using "most of the people in the past did it tho" justify anything.
One thing that would've been cool to see is when Rhea was trapped in her cell, see her have a conversation with Edelgard, where one of them, possibly Rhea, say that they are both more similar than one would think. Would've been cool. Glad that you pointed that out in how similar they are.
Everything will be solved peacefully if we could drag Edelgard to have heart to heart talk with Rhea BEFORE the war declaration. The moment Edelgard declared war, there is no other way to let her live except Empire being the winner of war.
Wishful thinking. You honestly believe Rhea and Edelgard can have a normal conversation without trying to murder one another? Hell, it took years for Dimitri to get over her.
That would have had to have happened either before or the beginning of the game to make sense. El is stubborn and narrowminded about the events that occured after she has the narrative spun for her by the Slitherins. Even if Rhea reached out, El would only believe what she wanted to. Rhea trying to talk with her earlier hardly makes sense, either. She didn't know El, and was too stupid to pursue people's motives on trying to kill her twice. I doubt she'd be worried about El.
Edelgard was barely even willing to talk with Dimitri whom she thought was deluded rather than evil and even after she still decided that backing out of the war to just rule and reform her current empire wasn't enough, do you really think that she'd be willing to listen to the one she considered to be the worst person in the world?
Honestly, each route paints Edelgard and Rhea in different lights. Crimson Flower: Rhea and the church are evil and must be destroyed, and will resort to dirty, evil tactics to stop Edelgard Azure Moon: the vice versa. Edelgard will do whatever it takes, even transforming herself into a monster, and Rhea must be saved Verdant Wind: the "what's really going on" route, neither Edel or Rhea are painted in inherently bad lights. Both are portrayed as doing deeds that most take issue with, but are to an extent viewed as misunderstood or not communicating the truth. That sort of makes the situation tragic. Silver Snow: I see this route a more focus on Byleth over Rhea or Edelgard, hence why it plays so bare bones (no Battle at Grondor, basically diet Golden Deer until the last mission which sort of happens randomly)
SS was written first. So it's not diet VW. And it lacks the battle of Gronder because the church had no reason to participate: Gronder is about the empire vs kingdom vs alliance. Why would the church participate here?
I mean even in VW Edel is still painted as bad because... hypocritical justificatuon for war and needless bloodshed just because a bitch wants power and FORCE change
@l.n.3372 The Battle of Grondor was still lazy writing since it insisted on having whichever of the two factions against the empire you didn't pick attack the other even when they have a mutual enemy.
@@GigasGalvantula Yeah she's not nearly as bad as Hitler, people have to be trolling if they say that. But y'all can't ignore some of the parallels, ESPECIALLY how both scapegoat an ostensibly omnipotent religious minority, accusing them of being an all-powerful cabal manipulating society behind the scenes. Sure, in this case it's speciesism instead of anti-Semitism. And of course the obviously nationalist rhetoric focused on "making the Adrestian empire great again". And the Nazi eagle as well as Hubert's post-timeskip design resembling SS outfits lmao.
@@callanthemeryllia252 I mean , that's because of the church doctoring history and what not, and wtf that was not what Edelgards goal was at all did you play the same game? her entire goal was to unite a world for ALL, not just those who benefit from class inequity
@@GigasGalvantula no edelgards entire system is base on a even wilder lie and she didn’t what to unite the world, all she did was conquer fodlan and basically preserved the same system that hates, one where the nobles dominate fodlan and poor get left out
@@MrSupersmash93 this is by far the dumbest reply i've ever seen, you clearly don't understand Edelgard as a character.... and no a world without crests is still better than one with them Period
I will just say those who find Rhea burning the capital, yeah that is bad, innocents died. But Edelgard was quite literally hoping the citizens of the capital be meat shields to help repel the invasion of her capital. So yeah Edelgard has no right to find this act to be horrible when she was basically gonna sacrifice the citizens herself to block the invading armies.
@KEVIN AMAYA-CALDERON Literally almost every route they bring up the fact Edelgard is refusing to let her citizens flee and is using them as a vein attempt to keep invading armies from coming or at least slow them down.
@@oomsou5018 There's also the fact that on 3 routes (SS, AM and VW) Edelgard invaded Garreg Mach monastery without caring about whether or not the civilians in town were evacuated either. She just marched right in. It's actually Rhea and the knights of Seiros who evacuated the city and the people before the invasion. Rhea also chose to sacrifice herself twice to protect humanity: in chapter 12 when she's captured and in the chapter against the javelins of light in Shamballa.
SPOILERS AHEAD: If you played old JRPGs, you knew the empire was going to bring strife to the land in the name of good intentions. In that same vein, if you played old school JRPGs, then you knew the church was gonna be kinda shady. I'm 30, and I've played a lot of JRPGs as well as about 7 other Fire Emblems. I knew something was up with both Edelgarde and Rhea from the get go. Yet, Rhea's only real wrong is not dealing with the Argathians. To be fair, they were hiding and slithering... but still I mean, she knew and fought with Nemesis. How could her and her entire race be completely unaware of the Argathians vendetta and desire for their death? Of their gene splicing of Nemesis? She's resided in Garreg Mach for a millenium. It has technology within it, magical or otherwise, that shields it from the orbital targetting missile system that the Argathians use to destroy Ft. Merceus and to try to kill you at Shambala. How could she not know they were still around, have no desire to want to make sure they are all truly gone? I find the fact that she doesn't especially troublesome due to the nature of how she implants a crest stone into Byleth as a stillborn infant, which is similar to how the Argathian's have obtained bodies that do not age. All in all, I didn't care for her immensely on my first playthrough. She doesn't do anything for you in the Blue Lions route except play damsel in distress. When I did my second playthrough as Golden Deer, I really got attached to Rhea, due to her shielding us from the satellite dropped missiles. I detested Crimson Flower, and I haven't finished my Silver Church or whatever it's called route yet. I also haven't checked out the DLC, but will eventually due to my season pass or whatever. TL; DR - I would choose the sins of Rhea over the sins of Edelgarde every time. Especially since the sins of Rhea are what allow Byleth to fix the situation, regardless of your path, since he died at birth otherwise.
15:50 I'm not sure where you got that Rhea meant for option A anywhere. It seemed pretty clear that she was meaning to resurrect her mother no her mother's power, given that she missed her mother not needed some great power 1000 years later. You can see her be very surprised and even flinch once she first sees you in your super saiyan form, but accepts you as good enough/close enough to her mother and it's been a 1000 fucking years I'll take it.
7:56 Edelgard is wrong once again. Indeed, from what we're shown in game, the Church spends the money they receive from followers to exactly what they say they use it for: to do the Goddess' mission. -They welcome orphans as shown with Cyril and Remire's victims -They fund Abyss (again, Seteth and other bishops might have a problem with what's it become, but ultimately, it's Rhea who gets the final call on keeping it opened) to host people who absolutely cannot stay on the surface for a reason or another (be it because they are endangered like Balthus or endangering others like Hapi) -Fund the Knights of Seiros so they can keep the peace around Fodlan, and chase bandits around -Help the local economy (as shown Post-Timeskip, it's the church's money that kept merchants around) Furthermore, the Church isn't aggressive with the collect of funds, Arundel/Thales being the living embodiment of this. Arundel suddenly stopped giving money to the Church, which only said "Suit yourself" rather than send Knights to "persuade" Arundel to pay like the Mafia Edelgard implies the Church to be. On another note, Garreg Mach existed before the end of the War of Heroes, it's implied to have been there even before Sothis regenerated Fodlan. Its 'odd' placement Manuela implies is just due to Sothis installing Zanado at the center of Fodlan.
Edelgard is an evil bitch, and I don't know why people can't come to terms with that. Hitler also had a terrible upbringing and wanted what he thought was best for the German people. Does that make him not a villian?
As someone who played silver snow first, I never really understood why some people think Rhea is some sort of villain when she really just wants to see her mom again. (But we know how that turned out for the elric brothers.)
Tamara Tschebotarjew That doesn’t justify human experimentation and the advocation of a harmful social hierarchy and the subjugation of the entire continent under the often forceful rule of the Church.
In regards to Byleth and Sothis together, Rhea didnt actually have any intents with Byleth until she saw signs of Sothis's presence within Byleth. Byleths mother begged Rhea to take the crest stone out of her, and put it into Byleth in order to save the dying baby. Rhea only did so due to the mother's final wish. On that note, it seems more like she wished for Sothis to be reborn/use Byleth as a puppet due to her reaction in the holy tomb. Byleth has that Enlightened hair, and yet Sothis wasnt reborn, so for a moment she shows displeasure. But she quickly accepts it after.
There is a good chance you are right and at 1st I was sure that was it. However after rewatching things there is a more positive possibility. We do know the sword of the creator is made from Sothis' body, and Rhea was insistant that Byleth hold on to it, plus in Hilda's paralog she says regarding a hero's relic that parts were pulsating like it is still alive; so it is possible Rhea intended to transfer Sothis back into the sword, restore her body, and revive her that way.
@@Edgeperor Is that what your parents used to say to you? Regardless, its a rather strange response, considering its coming from someone that likes his own comments🤷
@@thepax6390 yes, she says that when byleth actively sides with edelgard, someone rhea sees as evil and a ''second nemesis'' of sorts. need i remind you that nemesis slaughtered almost all of her kin? i'm not denying that CF rhea is *batshit insane* (or, even worse, not even insane, but completely aware of her actions and just a full out monster) and definitely a big bad there, but judging rhea only by her actions in CF is the exact same as judging edie only by her actions in AM, which is also bad. there is more to rhea than just ''dragon lady bad!!!!!'', just as there is more to edelgard than ''revolutionary emperor bad!!!!!''
I see Rhea as a step ford smiler (and FYI: the step ford smiler is a trope used to describe someone who fakes being happy on the outside but, on the inside, is deeply unhappy, teetering on the brink of insanity, or insane).
@@FieryMeltman wrong this is very subjective in this case it depends on your morality and Ideals, Rhea founded a country based on class inequity, and her entire system is flawed beyond belief, Edelgard fights for a world for all so w/e I'm a firm believer in Edelgard, Highly reccomend this video its a non biast analysis on EDel as a character that breaks her down far better than any of the videos on youtube ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zH1b-E-XvBY.html
She and her family were tortured and slaughtered because of crests, something the church puts a huge amount of value in, and Rhea hides truths of the world and feigns benevolence; she wants to create a world where those things are removed. Also her family was betrayed by the noble houses of her nation and she seeks to destroy the foundation of the empire that allowed such people into positions of power.
@@GigasGalvantula Edelgard fights for a world for all? How? She invaded sovereign nations and tells them what to do. As if they don't have brains or ideals themselves. You cannot march into sovereign nations and force them to listen to you and simultaneously claim your nation is for all.
@@l.n.3372 you didn't play the game and also how the fuck was it her that invaded another nation? Lmao dude she's in the academy, if your talking about Petras nation that's whoever was at the top of Adrestia which was BEFORE she took over power like holy fuck your showing how much you did NOT play the game.
I like how everyone points out that Rhea made smores of the Kingdom but Edelgard used her own people as meat shields when she was desperate. Even her own soldiers at Grounder Field. Dimitri was able to forgive her even after the beef he had, but she spits on him during his final moments. Rhea sees the error of her ways and knows she must atone, but Edelgard will not admit that someone could know better than her. Why did she allow TWISTD, let alone the Adrestian Empire, to revel in its oppressive, abusive state but declare war on factions that won their independence fair and square? Idk, man. Almost everything Rhea did, Edelgard matched and more.
Edelgard pulled a Claude... Or really, she and Claude are similar in their approach to manipulation some times. El knew that in her war she would either ideally have to dominate or she would become the villain. She wanted to die, by that point. Maybe a martyr's death, but to me it strikes more as she wanted those remaining alive to be severed from her and her bloodstained path completely were she to be unable to succeed.
It's really the exact opposite. Edelgard didn't "use the people of Enbarr as a meat shield" that a dumb fuck point. "We have a fortress city surrounded by mountains- theres an enemy army outside! The obvious solution is to send the civilians out into the enemy army! Surely nothing will go wrong there!" That's nothing like Rhea's "I will set Fherdiad ablaze with all the civilians inside to draw them in" and at Gronder? "No the empress should just be on the frontlines!" Your points are literally "she's not a shitty strategist and leader- therefore evil." She does try to kill Dimitri, but that could be interpreted as- she knows there will be no peace until she's dead or Dimitri is. Rhea only sees the error of her ways moments before she dies in 1 route where she has certifiably helped in fucking the continent over more because almost all of the leaders are dead. Rhea does everything Edelgard does worse and much more. Read the books in the Abyss library
@@lizzytrip4560 How? Just how did Rhea screw over the continent more than Edelgard? Edelgard started a continent wide war, completely of her own volition, to forcibly subdue the other countries and make them bend to her will by any means necessary. What if the Kingdom and Alliance territories were fine with how things were running? Doesn't matter, here comes Edelgard to conquer your land and force her beliefs on to you. Say what you want about Rhea, but you cannot deny the fact that she keeps in Garreg Mach and only ever leaves to "deal with" other people if they are blatantly making an attempt on her life or the lives of others. Rhea established the church organization that aids in housing countless orphans, the homeless (like Mercedes) and less fortunate. It is through Rhea alone that Abyss remains a haven for all those who need it, despite the fact that others in the church dislike its existence, it remains protected by Rhea. Crests existed without Rhea's intervention (thanks to TWSITD) and a system would have been made around them either way. Her divine lie about the origins of crests, protected the remaining Nabateans from getting hunted down and likely prevented what would have been even greater mass human crest experimentation. The corrupted parts of the church, hilariously enough, are those that are specifically affiliated with TWSITD (aka EDELGARD'S allies and Rhea's sworn enemies). What has Edelgard done for anyone in Fodlan? For all her soap-box preaching and whining about the priviledged nobility, what has she done with her vast wealth and power as the heir apparent of the Adrestian Empire? What did she do for the orphans and homeless of even just her own land besides create more of them with her self-righteous war? You know, for someone who claims to care so much about the people of Fodlan, she does the absolute LEAST of all the lords to help them. Everything Edelgard does is for her idiotic holy war to force her way of life onto others. "But she reformed the system for the people!" You mean for the few who survived her bloody crusade? Yeah, that's nice. What about the countless orphans and homeless people she created? What about those who were fine with the system before? They don't matter, only Edelgard's ideology does. Also, Rhea willingly hands over power and admits that she isn't fit for the job in EVERY route except Crimson Flower.
@@lizzytrip4560 I've played all routes and the DLC (multiple times). Started with Azure Moon then did Crimson Flower, Silver Snow, Verdant Wind and then Cindered Shadows in that order. Crimson Flower is actually the route that cemented Edelgard as the villainess for me. I like the complexity of her character, but the more I uncovered about the larger story in the subsequent routes, the less justification Edelgard's actions hold. But hey, if you're determined to assume that anyone who disagrees with your ideas just haven't played the game, then have fun with that ideology. It's a completely false assumption, but to each their own. Have a nice day.
There is one thing that you misunderstood that maked Rhea extra innocent... The nature of her attempts to ressurect Sothis. It is heavily implied that the previous attempts were soulless bodies created by Rhea. Homonculi, essentially. The only exception was of course Byleth, however there was reason for this. Byleth was born on the brink of death. Byleth's mother was also dying because of if their birth. Putting Sothis's heart inside of Byleth is what saved him. Although, it had the possibility to cause Sothis to inhabit their body later, it is what ultimately give Byleth life.
I don't think they were fully soulless though as Byleth's mother fell in love with Jeralt. They must have been to some extent or another "people", or she out of all the homunculi was at the very least. I find the idea of Jeralt falling in love with a largely emotionless "manikin" a little questionable. And if they can love and experience emotions the experiments get considerably more creepy then they already are.
@@acjackson127 she created souless and lifeless bodies and then put sothis crest in them , breathing life into them. she didn't experimented on already live humans beside byleth and even then it was to save his life .
That's something I'm finding incredibly rewarding (and heartbreaking) about Three Houses. There is no real "bad guy" outside of Those that Slither. The reason Rhea and Edelgard split from the same path is because they both make each other personal enemies- not because one is actually more evil than the other. Just diverging desires. Rhea has a lot of people killed before and during the game, but she kept effectively an entire continent at peace for centuries, which is a remarkable achievement by ANY historical standards. This largely gets disregarded or ignored by the characters in the game, because they just plain don't live as long and can't comprehend the actual magnitude of what she accomplished. She's a monster in some regards, and a hero in others. It makes her interesting.
Great video, it's great to see a relatively impartial video covering her, since many debates I've seen online tend to be from very clearly anti- or pro-Rhea fans, which just clutters the entire debate. One thing I appreciate most though is pointing out the whole issue of how Edelgard's sytem, while a meritocracy, is still a autocracy. It always bothered me to see people would criticize AM, VW, and SS for ending with absolute monarchies, but ignore the fact that Edelgard's end-goal still sees a society where a single figure holds supreme political power.
And furthermore, that leader would probably always be a crest holder (the very thing she didn’t want) because as much as no one really wants to admit it, crests provide tangible advantages in regards to ones merit.
Did the people who criticized AM for that even play the route? Somewhere in the end credits, it's stated that Dmitri established a system of Constitutional Monarchy.
@@rileyrose5166 Technically no. We actually have no clue what kind of government was established if we're being honest. Yeah, the people have a voice... but how? Do they select issues for the King to deliberate on? Do they select local representatives to create a parliament that drives decision making? Do they have the ability to veto the decisions of local lords, or impeach them entirely? Is there any actual limitation placed on Dimitri's power? We don't know anything, unfortunately. A constitutional monarchy is definitely a possibility, but unless more concrete evidence is given, it's not a guarantee.
@@sageofanys3476 I believe Dimitri created something akin to an Democracy with an Monarch and Claude created an egalitarian movement that ends discrimation on any basis and spreads knowledge and resources the recipe for an revolution.
@@thepax6390 Not as much as edelgard fanbois who's brain turns to mush when they hear the word "church" in a game. Sure side with faction that literally drove an entire continent into a bloodfilled war full of death and atrocity while siding with the agarthans and for what? to remove crests? as if crests were the main danger of the continent and not the fact that those who slither kept trying to fuck over fodlan for centuries. And the justification of edelgard fanbois? That she was tortured and therefore resentful and thus understandable is so much more applicable to rhea who saw her ENTIRE RACE get genocided, subjected to horrendous experiments, and their bodies turned into weapons that was used against their own kin. BUT EDELGARD HAS A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE!!! and rhea doesn't? Rhea's whole life was dedicated to the rebirth of Sothis a central figure that led to the prosperous age of cooperation and goodwill between the nabateans and those who lived in "earth". They both had a plan, Rhea was just hindered by her caring nature to go "full blown" progress with her plan as it required the lost of an individual's life.
In terms of Rhea's conduct in Crimson flower, while her actions were objectively War atrocities that should be acknowledged and maybe even punished as such, at that point in the story I feel like as a very strong argument to be made that she was driven to this. She has lost all of her friends and family either to death or to them disappearing into obscurity for their own safety. And this is all after the player character betrays her and absconds with the last remaining physical remnants of her beloved mother. She feels desperate like a cornered animal. In her mind she has nothing left to lose as she watches history repeating itself before her eyes. Now this doesn't excuse her burning down the kingdom capital, but I understand how she could come to this point.
Rhea is gorgeous, I adore her character so much. So very compelling and well written, it's really interesting how El lies (probably because she herself is misinformed) about Rhea and the tyranny of the church, justifying the atrocities that the Adrestian Empire sponsors by making herself out to be a utilitarian ruler. Creating an interesting paradox by offering a new rule that you can only accept on bias (if you wanna romance her) or principle but can never truly go about justifying truly. Rhea on the other hand is a deeply flawed and completely tyrannical person yet she has so many spouts of maternal humanism that you can see. Protecting Byleth in every other route save for the CF one for obvious reasons. And people always wanna conveniently forget that Edel tries to murder you, yes YOU Byleth several times in every single route along with her fellow house members in CF or if you recruit them. Rhea has been alive for 1000 years and has been the head of the church for that long, it makes sense she would have had to make reprehensible decisions since then such as the Tragedy of Duscur. People only hate on her character cause they either wanna bone Edelgard OR they don't like the idea of an organized religion making secular choices for every kingdom (admittedly bad ones sometimes.)
Honestly, I can agree with the part that El is misinformed, because she very likely is. TWISTD has been around for centuries, they know how to manipulate people, and they had Edelgard under their thumb for nearly her entire life. And I dislike Rhea since she became very unstable (what we see of her in-game) and didn't become more stable in all of the 4 routes. Which led to very irrational decisions on her part during most of the game. All that said, I love both of them because the both have very real flaws, and were made into compelling characters that I actually had interest in learning about (though Rhea always gave me creepy MILF vibes tbh).
1. You are incredibly bad faith, and likely projecting really hard. 2. It's entirely possible to believe in the future Edelgard seeks without wanting to bone her. 3. Her ending is the only one that brings any **True Peace** (game's words, not mine. Check the ending cards) 4. She wipes out TWISD as well, theres no map for it, but the game tells us it happened. 5. Puppet courts to execute "heritics" and futalism are not secular. Rhea isnt secular.
@@lizzytrip4560 Wrong on all counts 1. It is not bad faith or projection to point out that edelgard's actions are irrational. 2. The world she wants is a naive idealization, meritocracy collapses for a reason. Dimitri actually pointed this out late I to AM when he is attempting to make peace with her saying that the strong will merely trample the weak. Edelgard makes no attempt to argue and instead blames the weak. 3. All of the routes end with a unified Fodlan and true peace. Also the narrator is unreliable constantly making references to folklore, rumors and historical documents, the title cards are not omniscient. Whether you trust the narrator or not your point is moot. 4. Unreliable narrator. Edelgard prioritized the church as her target over the people who tortured her, killed her family and have been guilty of genocide in the past. She clearly dislikes them less than her fans pretend. 5. The church was a political smokescreen, Rhea herself knew that half of what was taught was false. Yes she was a secular leader. You really ought to play all 4 routes.
@@Ap31920 you are not just wrong, but stupid. I've played all 4 routes multiple times. The narrator of the title cards always clearly separates belief from facts, but all that information is important to know for the story, or is good world building, fleshing out the beliefs of the people who live in the world doesn't make the narrator unreliable you brainlet. Edelgard never blames the weak in any version except the English- which is WRONG. Maybe look into your dumb ass points before making them. Rhea is not a good leader, shes actively holding Fodlan back from improving- Almyra, the country of "Savages" has the beginnings of Fire Arms, and Rhea executed the guy who invented the telescope for Heresy. Edelgard is clearly using TWISD as a means to an ends, theres a reason in VW and SS she ousts them to Byleth. Last. Bad faith arguements are when you take everything someone does in the worst possible way no matter what- you are literally calling her an idiot for deposing a tyrant and trying to implement a better system- idealistic, yes- does Meritocracy fail? Only if the people in it arnt kept in balance by healthy competition. You know what fails 100% of the time? Tyrants who stifle innovation and rule by divine right and fear. Maybe play all 5 routes, read the information available in game, and try again you simp
@@lizzytrip4560 Insults? Is that really how you wish to do this? "The narrator of the title cards always clearly separates belief from facts, but all that information is important to know for the story, or is good world building, fleshing out the beliefs of the people who live in the world doesn't make the narrator unreliable you brainlet." The point I was making is that the narrator is not omniscient, this means they must rely on historical documents which are always going to paint the winner in a positive light. I would request you answer my actual points. Yes, it is good world building, that does not mean it is reliable. On top of that, the narrator's attitude toward the church changes depending on which route you take, reffering to Rhea's rule as "the tyrrany of a godlike being" *only* in cf, in all others they have a more mild view of the church. This suggests lack of omniscience, they have to go with what is available which is history written by the victor. "Edelgard never blames the weak in any version except the English- which is WRONG. " You are not an official source, the game itself is. If in Japanese edelgard did not blame the weak then I like the Japanese edelgard better than the english edelgard. However, I will not reject what was witnessed by myself through Byleth's eyes merely because you have decided that only the version you like is to be considered correct. You do not have that authority. "Rhea is not a good leader, shes actively holding Fodlan back from improving- Almyra, the country of "Savages" has the beginnings of Fire Arms, and Rhea executed the guy who invented the telescope for Heresy." I looked up the Shadow Library text because I did not remember anything about an execution and I was right, there wasn't one. Please refrain from dishonesty. And Fodlan has gunpowder so they are not behind in that regard. Finally, Rhea remembers what happened last time humanity saw technological advancements, they used them on each other, on the Nabateans and eventually brought forth the Zanado massacre. Even if Almyra is so advanced they are equally savage in their warmongering culture. Rhea has good reason to prevent Fodlan from becoming more advanced in weaponry. "Edelgard is clearly using TWISD as a means to an ends, theres a reason in VW and SS she ousts them to Byleth." Hubert ousted them and there is no reason to believe that this was done with consultation to edelgard, in fact he explicitly mentions in the letter this is a contingency. Furthermore, siding with the genocidal monsters who tortured you and your family as a means to an end against the people who founded your country, welcomed you into their home and their school and would have, had they been informed, provided you with means to defeat the aformentioned genocidal monsters who tortured you and your family. She is not innocent, means to an end does not justify the means. If those are the ones she chooses as allies then she invites to be judged alongside them. "Last. Bad faith arguements are when you take everything someone does in the worst possible way no matter what" It was not I who started the insults. I just told you that you were wrong, you started insulting me. The only bad faith here is you. Regardless, you take everything Rhea does in the worst possible light so you either lack self-awareness or are a hypocrite, choose whichever you like. "you are literally calling her an idiot for deposing a tyrant and trying to implement a better system" I did not call her an idiot in my original reply, please do not put words in my mouth, although ful disclosure I do think she is an idiot. I am calling her irrational and naive for thinking that she could uproot a millennium old system through a bloody war and people would just accept it. Fodlan was firmly under the church's influence, edelgard's war was not only unrealistic it would have collapsed in riots and civil disobedience but because the narrator is not omniscient the history is from the point of view of the winners, as such only records of a paradise would have remained. Furthermore, Rhea wasn't a tyrrant, edelgard, however, was. Rhea was fairly hands off, as the video noted. "does Meritocracy fail? Only if the people in it arnt kept in balance by healthy competition. " Wrong again, meritocracy fails when people realize that playing fair doesn't win you the game. It is a very human thing to play to win by any means, edelgard siding with the agarthans is proof enough of that. Her system would have collapsed upon her death. "You know what fails 100% of the time? Tyrants who stifle innovation and rule by divine right and fear." In 3 of the 4 routes the church prevails and Rhea achieves her goal, to return power to the newly reincarnated goddess (to be clear Sothi's power and judgement along with Byleth's consciousness). That means that in at worst Rhea loses only 25% (and considering it is short, incomplete and hidden it would not be irrational to give even less weight to CF) of the time and so you have proven she is not a tyrant by your own logic. "Maybe play all 5 routes, read the information available in game" I have, that's how I know that you haven't since all 4 (Ashen Wolves is a gaiden story) end up with a unified Fodlan. You said only edelgard's route leads to "true peace" all the routes do. "and try again you simp" Aren't you a paragon of maturity and diplomacy.... I must say I find it interesting that my reply which was not disrespectful was met with so many insults from you. It's almost as if you lack the emotional maturity to disagree without namecalling or vitriol which ultimately makes you look irrational and, frankly, kind of pathetic. Tell me did you think you'd manage to change my mind with this kind of tone? I attacked your points head on last time making no reference to you or your intelligence. You on the other hand reply to me with half baked theses and namecalling. All you've done is further convince me that my points are accurate since your failure to address them with any degree of rationality implies they angered you. And as a rule of thumb if someone gets angry it is because they are unable to refute that which they do not wish to accept.
I've never understood why people idolize Edelgard's route so much. Imo, it's literally the evil route. I mean you're basically going around taking over everything and killing everyone who is just trying to defend their territory for a goal that ultimately doesn't justify the means at all. Also, as someone else pointed out, she sends bandits to kill your students and is in cahoots with the guys who DO kill your dad. I thought it through, and couldn't possibly justify joining her on my first BE playthrough.
@@Noahs_Chair Since the game's release, there was a theory that the point of hiring bandits wasn't to kill Claude and Dimitri, but to get the third professor (the one Byleth replaces) out of the way for her Death Knight (Jeritza) to take their place. (Caspar mentions he expected Jeritza to take the vacant spot in the first chapter exploration) It's basically confirmed with 3 Hopes where it goes as planned, Edelgard isn't disturbed by crushing hard on Byleth, and the Jeritza's class frees Monica von Ochs before Kronya takes her place, and then Solon is kicked out of the monastery. So that's the reason Still, there could still have been a better way to do that (like, I don't know, ask Hubert to kill him in a way that wouldn't put them in trouble. It couldn't be that hard considering they fled because of some bandits), but they probably wouldn't be able to lead random merc joining the staff.
@@genericyoutubeaccount4756 you're right, Edelgard is to Fodlan as Hitler was to Europe, so clearly she checks out. No war crimes committed if you're the one doing them.
Holy Christ thank you for final bringing this truth to light. Ive no idea why soo many people violently hated Rhea when she barely did anything wrong, she did some things wrong and granted those wrongs can be very wrong, bit she overall did way more good than bad things.
She did plenty wrong. But I think what really fueled the flames were the people trying to argue that Edelgard was worse, while also ignoring what Rhea did, and how long she'd been doing it. I mean, the only people that benefited from her actions were orphans and the nobility. The magority was being "controlled" by the church she basically invented. She's not evil, she's just a tragedy.
@@DemonicMonkey88 that is true, and your absolutely right. I just think both side overstated the horrors of what the other did for the sake of there side. Is it wrong to lie like that, yes. But it's not as if she did it for total control, if she was going for that I doubt she wouldve let the kingdom and alliance to rise up and instead wouldve either personally controlled the empire or do the behind scenes thing alla manfroy. She was just trying to keep order within fodlan in what she saw was the best possible option (and the results seem to be in her favor) In both cases for edel or Rhea it's up to you to deem who is and isn't justified, but to call either just evil is wrong and annoying to hear after a while.
@@thepheeesh She did do it for total control, but she wasn't a tyrant. She just wanted her safe space. Seems like her mother's death and the events surrounding it left her traumatized. To the point that, she accidentally became a tyrant. None of them are evil true. Edelgard is pigheaded while Rhea's selfish.
this is the kind of video-and mindset, that people need to see more of, its honestly horrifying how fast people are to take edelgard's word for stuff just because they did her route first, and let that miscolor what they see later on. its very much like only believing in one political ideology because its the first one you experienced, or only one religion because it was the first religion you heard of, horrifying stuff that signals horrifying futures i tell you, but yeah good video, 5/5, liked.
Exactly, Edel is just so vicious, self centered & immoral to be just "grey". It blows my mind how people argue for Edel when she is the main reason for all the suffering in Fodlan, waging war against 2 peaceful countries while invading them by military force, killing people who just defends their countries, killing anyone who stands in her way civillian innocent or not, allying with the most evil group TWSITD, killing innocent people to further her agenda, uses crests on her own soldiers & all her deeds as the Flame Emperor are what makes her a villain, but people won't see that because she is a waifu. She's a discount Walhart with worse personality. It might be weird to say this but I don't actually hate her character, I started this game by choosing CF route 1st, but I hate how people just defend such a misguided naive villain who believes false history & force her ideals on an entire continent! If you played all routes you'll see just how wrong & delusional she really was in CF, which is both sad & frustrating.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Edelgard is a great tragic villain with sympathetic and understandable motivations for her action but she DOES NOT work as a protagonist. This is very evident in how CF was only created ( and sloppily written ) due to play testers pretty much asking for a route where they could take edelgards side because they felt so attached to her. If you read interviews with the games creator you can figure out pretty quick that “protagonist edelgard” was very much the definition of an after thought. She was supposed to be this games Arvis yet she ended up as it’s Sigurd with no real reason other than people liked her.
She's still the Arvis tho. Even in CF. She's just a playable Arvis. CF is like part 1 of FE4 when Sigurd falls (aka Dimitri) and Arvis triumphs. But obviously there was a Seliph to save the day in FE4. Which doesn't happen in CF.
Same with AM. Even after playing cf, there's really nothing likeable about her. Her tragic back story really only showed me how much a person can use self pity to justify their own atrocities.
@@verdantmischief7092 Rhea isn't unhinged, she only becomes unhinged when Byleth betrays her. In every single other route she's the most calm and collected character in the game. As for reasons to hate edelgard: -Starts a continent spanning war in order to bring about her personal idea of utopia. -Her allies are guilty of genocide, corpse desecration, political intrigues and insurrections, and human experimentation. -Stabs people who stretch out their hands to her. -Blames the weak rather than protects them. -Will gladly sacrifice anyone who follows her (she mentions this explicitly) -Her's is the only route where you do not kill Thales and despite having knowledge of them do not fight the Agarthans.
@@Ap31920 This is really biased 🥴 You do realize there's a chapter in part one where Rhea flips out about people pointing their blades at the church. She has no trust for humans, and does a lot of questionable things as a means of resurrecting Sothis.
Wow this was well broken down. I never agreed with Edelgard despite playing her route first. If anything it was refreshing playing all the other routes right after. Edelgard is a self-righteous dictator and nothing more. Rhea had problems but her system wasn't unreasonable. Latching onto her mother was her undoing though.
Let not forget Jeralt didn't help either. He didn't trust Rhea and never really try to understand her and told us to NOT trust her. Honestly, it make sense for him to not to since he didn't know what happen to his wife, his child having no heartbeat, his ageing seemly stop and not to mention how his child is emotionless. He had a LOT of reason to assume she wasn't as good everyone think she is. But he never really investigate it or try to understand it and just left. But he did make hard for the player to weave through lies harder since we trust Jeralt more since he the player avatar and not Rhea, since he said we shouldn't trust her. He made it hard to trust her and try to understand her since we would just chose Jeralt since he the father. He didnt do it on purpose of course, but he did cause the player to be on edge cause of his mistrust. I learn to take information with a grain of salt, then learn all I can to make my own judgement and after some supports, I seen that Jeralt wasn't exactly the best people person. So it could just him being a bit blind in his personal anger. But I'm sure there many counter argument and would like to hear them. Cause we also need to address Jeralt role in Rhea and Eldgard routes. Edit: I also learn that games do have the Church setting as evil or have cults. That also doesn't help since people who play many games with a Church and/or Cults paint religion people as Bashir insane. That also a point why people don't like Rhea. Cause others games mostly paint Churches bad for game story.
Actually, later in the game Jeralt does come around and starts saying that maybe there was never a reason to leave after all. He can see the positive effect being a teacher has had for Byleth, though this was most likely a coincidence since the same time Byleth became a teacher is when Sothis awakened and Byleth started regaining their emotions.
@@Sergeikins Also don't forget that Jeralt found the Flame Emperor unforgivable and said the Flame Emperor should turn himself/herself in before Jeralt would even consider listening to their argument. Jeralt didn't condone the Flame Emperor at all and never would have worked with his own future killers, the Agarthans.
@@jonathanjuarez5544well, mostly edelgard and toban lesser extent Rhea.... Dimitri only snapped thanks to what happened with edelgard... but my mans needs mental health support regardless. Honestly, unless you're claude and arguably dedue they all needed therapy... But edelgard and Rhea are priority in that order
Great video, but disappointed that you didn’t go into more of Edelgard’s lies. Chiefly, ascribing the pillars of light to the church when she knows full well it was Those that Slither in the Dark. Not only that, but being grossly insensitive and oversimplistic about the “conflict” between the Children of the Goddess and Nemesis (he slaughtered her whole race. It wasn’t a petty fight.) Sure, Rhea lies a lot, but so does Edelgard. As a golden deer first impression myself, I found myself much more sympathetic towards Rhea, who attempted to cover up her own unimaginable trauma with a comforting lie for humans. She could have told the truth but she knew that humans weren’t all bad and didn’t deserve to suffer guilt forever, so she changed the story at the cost of watching the blood and bones of her brothers and sisters endlessly parade right in front of her.
The thing is that Edelgard didn't know the true about the feud between Seiros and Nemesis, most likely the knowledge from "emperor to emperor" got twisted over the time (seriously, believing knowledge passed down from person to person akin to oral tradition is a pitfall). One thing is true though, the Heroes' Relics were indeed created by mankind... except that Edelgard is obvlivious that they were made from the bones of the Nabateans who were butchered by Nemesis. Even if she knew the truth, I bet she wouldn't minded because she doesn't like the Nabateans given her attitude towards Seteth and Flayn should they face her in Verdant Wind and Silver Snow. Also keep in mind that BOOFIRE191 pointed out her speech the preludes to war agaisnt the Church, her reasons to fight agaisnt them, not the things that happened during the war. On that pretty much Rhea is a lost cause. After Arianrhod was nuked Edelgard couldn't tell her friends "hey, those not-so-evil-guys I'm wirking with nuked the fort we just captured", it would have been a pretty bad move from her part. Instead she told them it was the Church to rally their reasons to defeat them. While the nature of her lie is understandable, it's still a lie. Given that Rhea goes batshit insane in Crimson Flower, it leaves Edelgard in the right and Claude and Dimitri as mere obstacles.
@@Potato-fp3cd That makes her Hagiography still stupid and really dumb. If Claude would have heard her story, he would even point out the holes in her story like if that story came from the Emperor, why would he spread a history that could paint them in a bad light and if Herorelics are made from Humans, why are Humans in need of Crests when Edelgard believes them to be this great evil, thus making her look db and hypocritical in the process. That makes her no better than Rhea, since she lies too and for far less justifiable reason to do so, since Christophe was a special affairs during a hard time in Fearghus, so telling the truth would have made things go worse. Also Claude was neutral, there was no need to attack him.
I started with Crimson flower, and I thought she was just a another cartoonishly bad villain, I thought Edelgard was an awful protagonist and Dimitri felt like the most sympathetic character in that story. That was my initial impression, now I have empathy and understanding for Rhea, I believe Dimitri is quite possibly one best Characters in Fire emblem, and Edelgard is still understandable and subpar protagonist. Honestly thought a nation led by a long living Ruler like Rhea or preferably Byleth would be an ideal scenario for Fódlan so it can be led into a better future while recovering from the war. I feel like El’s world is destined to collapse from one bad ruler or a build up of corruption. With the knights of seiros defeated what’s the point of following that faith when those who preached that the goddesses was with them just lost. I’m not religious but Without a faith like the church of seiros in a Medieval place like Fódlan feels like it’ll be easy to fall in to cynicism and skewed morality. What’s to hold people from bribing and killing people for a position of power in El’s future. While the nobles in Fódlan where bad some of the worst where Crestless lords that church’s system didn’t create from the 10 elites. Like Mercedes’s father who took her mother for her Crest and was planing on marrying Mercie for hers too, and then there’s lords who too took part in the tragedy of Duscur and the rebellion that took place after. Considering houses Charon, Fraldarious, Galatea, and Guatier are all loyalist I don’t think they’d take part and house Dominic wouldn’t since Gilbert was in service to the royals. If awful people can rise to power with out the need of crest it’ll be what’s to stop them from doing the same in El’s world.
Jake Matthews honestly el just works better as an antagonist imo, but their attempt with her as a protagonist, mediocre as she was, still deserves respect from me
Edie was raised in priviledge so she doesn't understand that the real, underlying problem of Fodlan isn't the Crests, but the fact that the nobles are using the shit tons of wealth they've accrued over generations to oppress the peasants. Taking their Crest isn't gonna do jack if they still get to keep all the land and property and money they had before.
@@Tea_Noire and since no immortals exist anymore......hubert can´t keep things safe from the shadows forever and even elde will die eventually leaving the throne to someone that might later go mental or one of his/her kids simply create a civil war to get the throne making foddlan go back to chaos like it was before but without the church to keep things under control
Gotta love how Edelgard criticizes Rhea for trying to rule Fodlan, and in retaliation tries to take over all of Fodlan. And then she has the GAUL to call Rhea a hypocrite. SMH, this is why Claude is the only decent figure of power in the game Golden Deer for life!
It's not hypocritical to think a mentally unstable Dragon shouldn't be the supreme leader of a continent for a thousand years and then implement a meritocracy after defeating said dragon
I would agree, except for the fact that a "meritocracy" is just a nice way of saying an absolute monarchy where Edelgard gets to appoint anybody she wants to any position she wants, no questions asked. Maybe she'll be unbiased and fair, but you can guarantee that it will eventually, and probably quickly devolve into a flat out dictatorship. I don't know about you, but I'd take the dragon who'll basically leave you alone if you leave her alone
@@TheChiptide Her supports with many of the characters are about how she plans to build a society where people are not bound by anything in order to succeed. Yes, it's very idealistic, but she isn't corrupt or biased at all. And while it's true corruption can occur after her time, it's not fair to fault her on that.
@@verdantmischief7092 Maybe she herself isn't corrupt, but her system inherently is. If she really wanted to create a better system, she'd make one where the people have a say, not just 1 person. It's short sighted of her to think a meritocracy will work exactly as intended forever
Probably some bias on my part, given I played Blue Lions, then Silver Snow, then Golden Deer in that order before Crimson Flower, but the story progression in Crimson Flower felt contrived, especially with Rhea's turn to pure madness. For all her many, MANY, problems, she's at least given a nuanced view in most of the routes, whereas CF defaults her to being purely bad. Even Blue Lions gives Edelgard more of a fair hearing, and that's the route she's the most antagonistic in. It felt like another instance where the story had to be inconsistent to fit CF's narrative, as it wouldn't work otherwise, or knowledge of other paths makes it seem unjustified.
Crimson Flower only really works if you play Crimson Flower first. Because it allows you to rationalize everything that doesn't agree with the CF narrative as people hiding their true nature.
Granted, I played edelgard route first, but.... a *LOT* of the actions that Rhea takes when the western church rebels, including how she treats them after capture... it makes it easy to paint a really terrible picture of her. Rhea is absolutely *BRUTAL* against anyone who she thinks of as an enemy. Granted... to some extent this isn't really bad, as the western church did appear to plot rebellion against her. There's also characters like catherine who unquestioningly follow her orders and made me feel even less good about her character... She does get far more of a favorable outlook in other routes, but I still think it's easy to see why the Crimson Flower route works on its own.
@@axis1247 Exactly. If you play the other routes, you see how terrible edelgard is, and how much she's willing to sacrifice. Also, how much she'll work with the slithers. It also always surprises me how it's always the *enemy* side that gets the massive beast-constructs that are clearly terrible. If you side with edelgard.. she won't use em. If you side against her, she use em. Same for the church. It's like.. the PC tempers the worst in whatever side they choose.
@@platinummyrr I mean you do have to consider who she is and what if would mean if she just got killed randomly. I'm not surprised at all with her brutality. She really doesn't want Nemesis part 2 electric boogaloo. It still doesn't justify half the things that Edelguard does, starting a war, destabilizing a relatively peaceful nation, dooming said nation to destruction via invasion, killing a lot of people whiofrankly didn't deserve it, working with those who Slither, lying to you and a ton of people in her own route blinded by her own hubris.
@@platinummyrr They truely do especially with Rhea where when you betray her and go Crimson flower she loses her mind. Granted she does lose her only link to he mother in losing you so it kinda makes sense how far off the deep end she goes.
Yes! Finally someone who agrees. Tbh I don’t exactly think either Rhea or Edelgard were 100% innocent. But I think Rhea was much more in the right. Edelgard’s heart was in the right place, but she took the path that was too bloody in order to get there. I mean, at the beginning of the game, she hires Kostas to kill Claude and Dimitri. That was her plan for peace. Claude and Dimitri would’ve easily agreed with her if she just talked to them about it. Rhea realized that what she did was wrong. She realized it was toxic and unhealthy and it made her unfit to lead. So she stepped down from her position of Archbishop of the church of Seiros, even though she WAS Seiros.
It's said somewhere that Kostas was to drive off the bad teacher, not kill Claude or Dimitri. Sorry that I have no proof, but she never wanted to kill them.
Would they really have agreed with her? Dimitri seems to be fine with the status quo as is for the most part. Claude MIGHT have joined with her, and their goals are similar, but Claude is kind of an unknown factor. Not to mention him and Edelgard are both paranoid, and Claude calls himself a liar not exactly making himself seem all that trustworthy, so the two of them getting into cahoots is off the table.
knucklejoe Edelgard’s goal was peace for all, regardless of status or crests. Obviously, that’s very similar to Claude’s goal as well. At one point Dimitri does talk about how he opposes the crest/nobility system, while also fighting for people of Duscur to be treated as people, not as villains. Their beliefs and goals are all similar enough, giving me full faith that if they worked together, the ending they would’ve gotten would’ve been wonderful for them all
Munir Jassim Nope. When talking to the Flame Emperor, Kostas says he was told to kill as many “noble pipsqueaks” as possible. Of course, Edelgard knew she couldn’t die, so she intended for him to kill Dimitri and Claude
@@zigzagoon-pl7yh Eh. I think it could go both ways as either her trying to scare someone off or trying to killed Dimitri and Claude. One hand, she did tell Kostas to kill as many Nobles as possible. On the other hand, she didn't tell Kostas about the fact the nobles had the knights of Seiros with them, which I doubt he and his band of bandits could have took on. There's also the fact that Edelgard never really follows up this plan to kill Dimitri and Claude. Add onto the fact that the only reason the three of them were in danger is because Claude ran off, and its honestly a confusing mess. I think it was less a story thing and more a plot device made to get us introduced to the game with your standard fire emblem bandit attack.
Also worth highlighting how painful the lie must have been for Rhea herself. Imagine some brigands show up, genocide your entire people, drink their blood and turn there bones into weapons. Now imagine you have to get up and lie everyday that they were actually heroes so their descendants don't view their crests as a mark of shame.
Not really, she was blackmailed by those who slither in the dark, that’s why she had to conquer Fodlan, not saying she’s justified, but this guy didn’t mention her side
@@harrychristofi6725 doesn't matter since Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes completely destroys them. Crimson flower on the other hand ends with them still lurking in the dark still. Who knows how many body swapped people they have? They can easily start another war or another massacre
@@maramba32 Actually even though Crimson Flower feels incomplete and Those Who Slither In The Dark weren’t killed by Edelgard and Byleth, it said after you kill “The Immaculate One” (Rhea) that Edelgard and Byleth did deal with them afterwards, although I wish we got more chapters, fuck you intelligent systems for not completing the game before releasing it 😂
@@harrychristofi6725 the game is complete tho. Just not Crimson flower, thats just a side thing the devs put out. People that play the 3 other routes will remain fine. Im just not into edelgard cuz she reminds me of arvis from fire emblem 4, and also past fire emblem games with that archetype. Not buying it one bit.
interesting that Rhea wears a headdress with white flowers because she wishes to nuture in the ultimate way, undoing the death of her mother. But Empress Eldegarde, often described as a flower, now wears dragonic horns as she desires to take the place of the actual dragon.
Rhea and Edelgard are actually extrememly similar. Both are charismatic, natural leaders who focus their sights on far-reaching schemes that are a level beyond what most others even consider. Both use a composed but comforting front to hide the fact that they see pretty much everyone around them as a means to their end goal. They use others, even those close to them, as pawns in pursuit of this goal, and both consider their eventual end as justifying whatever ethically-questionable means they must take to get there. To this end, they isolate themseles from even their closest advisors, taking the perspective that only they can truly understand what must be done. Under this veneer of morality, they are rutheless and vindictive towards any who demonstrate resistance to their goals. They are both willing to make tenuous alliances, but have no intention of ever seeing their allies as true co-equal members in the world they are building. Finally, both have covinced themselves that their plans are for the betterment of the world, when really both are selfish goals that would benefit Rhea/Edelgard more than anyone else, and will cause great harm which could be avoided if they distanced their personal desires from the plan and actully set their sights on bettering the world rather than their own gruges. Funnily enough, both have the Crest of Seiros.
When you said you played Golden Deer first I instantly liked this video. The content is different thing anyway. Yes, I do agree that the hate to Rhea is somewhat.... stupid, for the lack of better words. It felt like they are clouded with their waifu/husbando thought and doesn't try to see that the words of their waifu/husbando is flawed af. Especially in Edelgard case since for all we see, her way of thinking is mostly shaped by the her Empire that is in the mercy of TWSITD and shitty royal. She entered the Academy with massive bias and prejudice that the Church is being a black organization that corrode Fódlan or something and the Children of Goddess are a race who discriminate human (when they clearly don't at worst Maquil just doesn't want to have anything to do with human). While the Church has its own share of questionable action, it is clear that the Church, especially Central Church, never intended to rule over Fódlan. The Kingdom heeds the words of Church the most but there is no people of Central Church who worked in the government. Heck in order to join the Church, Gilbert throw aside his nobility status. So yeah, suuuuuure Rhea ruled the Fódlan when she is no ruler of any nation. She has big influence sure, but she never used it to be active in politic. Not to mention that the thing is that Rhea is aware of her shortcoming. She is sole survivor of a massacree and in no way she is a politician. Rhea's false history is more of her wanting to protect the humanity who gave her hope that human isn't a lost cause as her biggest ally in the fight against Nemesis is the first Emperor. She is oblivious in the matter of politic and stuff and aside from her false history, she didn't do anything much more complicated. Western Church tried to assassinate her and whatever thing they do to her, she retaliate with kill them all. Edelgard fighting her, kill her. Crest and Relic is made from her family's corpse so she didn't want anyone to find out about it, give literally no comment about it. Really, all of Rhea's action isn't overly complicated I doubt she could actually scheme her way out of the conflict. People made her look like a perfect Pope and cunning villain but really, when she is in front of the real strategist (Claude) we could see that she isn't cut to be a smart villain. Fighting her in CF and SS made me seriously think that Rhea only has raw power to save her ass. If we are being really objective about things though, Crimson Flower is the worse ending. Not in the sense of it being a bad ending, it is just nightmare that anyone should seriously doubt did the country actually lasted without some plot armor involved. Edelgard basically invaded 2 country and forcefully combine it into one. Church follower was robbed of their central head. Did they really think that there will be no rebellion? You know that they also need to think about further conflict with TWSITD, Sreng, and potential Almyra? The Empire has been rotten to the core for the longest of time and who are they thinking that they could possibly keep the nation around? Not to mention that Edelgard will just drop dead soon and it is enough time to prepare a full-scale rebellion knocking on her bedroom. Even during Verdant Wind who escaped the war mostly whole (especially Claude S Support) the rebellion occurs from Imperial and remnant of Slithers. At least in Silver Snow we never truly engaged in the conquest so Kingdom and Alliance doesn't has hate toward Church. Then, we kindly finished off the 'evil' Empire so they lack the initiative to rebel on Church. The peace in Edelgard reign is an illusion because it is born out of fear from one figurehead. When she shows weakness, her utopia will crumble instantly just like how Rhea's long-lasting stability crumbled from within during the start of the war.
@@knucklejoe26 before later on if by chance the descendants of eldegard or one of the generals after he death decides to throw a civil war to make things more interesting making the continent go chaotic again since hubert is not immortal too to keep things safe from the shadows
@@xaviaxs I mean, so could any of the heirs to Fodlan. Dimitri's descendant could be a corrupt dictator, Claude's descendant could close down borders again.
@@knucklejoe26 true that is why i prefer church route where the heir to byleth would still have his dad/mom depending on the gender keep watch over them in case something goes completely wrong
@@knucklejoe26 That's bullshit. The Kingdom went to war, destroyed and eternally hate the Duscur people for the death of a single noble. Again think about the unreliable narrator, there is no way you are going to form lasting peace while also slaughtering everyone who disagrees with you and gets in your way, Edelguard is a dictator and dictatorships are horrible and are easily subject to rebellion or abandonment from it's people.
Agree with you that Edelgard's explanation of her plans is weak as hell and ironically its just about the weakest in her own route. I fully expeted some kind of revelation or explanation that would actually justify her actions beyond "Rhea said some lies in the past" which is the exact same thing she is doing now, only to start a war instead of ending it as Rhea did, its really telling when her own route doesnt provide any actual reasoning to support her, from the decision in the tomb, to the actual end game she can provide for the world, because as you said, something I thought for a long time, how exactly is she planning to enact this? With her few years of life, continent destroyed by her war, how is she going to establish schools and ensure that everyone even has a chance to excell? As it is, it will simply be the richest who will get the most opportunities and thats not even counting the bribe factor. Something all the people blaming Rhea and jumping on the Edelgards vagon (Altho its admittedly gotten a lot smaller since after launch) are forgetting is the human factor. Sure you can blame everything on Rhea but then when Edelgards future will not work out will you do the same for her? Are you assuming that people will suddenly stop being stupid, greedy, immoral? Because THAT is what leads to war, to cruelty, poverty and what have you. In all honesty its quite astonishing what Rhea did, even if it wasnt perfect and what even actually is perfect, hell in our world we had three huge wars in little over a century, they had that in over a thousand years. And yea, Rhea lied, to a degree, its not full truth but so freaking what? Our history isnt full truth either, many facts have been rewritten and uncovered, its simply how history works, if Edelgard had won her history would also be partially based on a lie. Rheas lies are very human and make sense to me and honestly I do not blame her at all. In regards to the crest system, it is cruel sometimes and often goes into the realms of stupid, but for crying out loud the crests are POWERFUL! That is why they are kept around, they are needed for fighting, flexing, political power, because they represent actual power and its hilarious that people find this so wrong in an actual feudal system which would work exactly the same way without them titles being inherited by blood and before anyone says that the child being ousted for not having a crest could be a better ruler, that is pure speculation and case to case, even as things stand you can make an argument that it can be the other way around. Im not gonna claim that Rhea lied for selfless reasons, she was clearly over emotional and personally probably not all there, you know, after losing her family, people and her mother, having her peoples corpses being abused and such, I can hardly blame her (Edelgard and Rhea are very similar) but its also completely wrong to say that Rhea is doing this whole church thing for herself or her gain, she is waiting for her mother, an actual kind and benevolent goddess to come and take over from her, she is keeping the world safe as best she can till Sothis comes back, it is her mission and she would never want to dissapoint her mother, she is doing what she is doing always at least partially for the survival if not betterment of Fodlan and its people, that realistically all that anyone can do, what Edelgard is also claiming to want and starts a war over. its always easy to say, this and that could have been done better, but that is with hindisht, without the emotions and out of the moment, anyone can claim they could do better but regardless it was Edelgard, not Rhea who caused the war, it was Edelgard who proclaimed it and there were other options, she just didnt see them because of who she is and what situation she was in, much like Rhea. And as always, we are forgetting she wasnt the only one setting up that system, her friend the first emperror was there with her, this was clearly agreed upon because they didnt think of anything better or didnt have any better options at the time, we simply do not have the full picture and even at the time, especially after such a bloody war, trying to do away with the crests would be immensely dangerous and unpopular, she is only one person even if she is powerful and ancient, she cant overrule the human factor. The biggest crime, if it is, is the ressurection thing, but even that is easily disputable to me. As you say, we cant be sure either way, but we do know Sothis, even without her memories she is kind, if bratty and helps out and with her memories she sacrifices her very self to save Byleth, she would have never forcefully possessed him and given that nothing happened when Byleth sat on the throne the transformation was likely already complete because of what happened previously, Rheas reaction can easily be attributed to the fact that simply nothing happened, as she could have expected the very same thing that has happened upon the throne in Byleths mind, his sort of ascend. Love this video btw :) second time watching, second time commenting a wall of text :D And dont get me wrong on this, while I love Rhea, its not as tho I hate Edelgard, as I said they are very similar characters in just about all aspects, its partially why I do not like people propagating her war as if it somehow solves her issues. Edelgard was the one who started the war but ultimately the ones at fault are TWSITD and those who willingly follow them, Edelgard needed help, friends and confidants who could teach her to look outside of her limited point of view, who could help heal her wounds and carry her burdens, she says she considered every possible angle before doing this, but really, what angles did she have to consider when she is looking through such a narrow point of view... even at the very end she couldnt accept DImitri's hand, because its either her way, or nothing, there is no compromise, because there was never any other way to her and THAT isnt her fault... its the fault of the morons like Hubert who just do shit while the damaged 17 year old girl plans to take over the world.
I mean to be honest, I think she had to go at Dimitri like that. I think she felt that if she didn’t go out fighting, then she would have given up on anything. I think her death was the only way she saw it ending for her if she didn’t win.
@@goroadachi9489 Well that just shows how flawed her thinking is and how the ideals she was sacrificing so much for are not in actuality what made her fight. Point is that she actually still could achieve at the very least portion of what she wanted to, or atone for the deaths of the many a commoner that she supposedly wanted to help because Dimitri himself is a revolutionary leader, but because of her limited point of view and understanding of it, because of her messiah complex she cant even do that. She threw the world into chaos because she thought its the only option to improve it, when she never even saw any other option to begin with due to her upbringing and how essentially alone and broken of a person she is.
@@KaiSaeren I think she should have suffered if she lived. I think she would rather die trying to win than suffer a defeat. Her mental state would only deteriorate from there. So I think it was right for her to force Dimitri to kill her.
I played Edlgard's "Whack-A- Dragon" route first and, though I was inclined to understand and sympathize with her, it was all too relevant and apparent that her view was jaded and the way she was going about things was... wrong. As protag, to know that I sided with the woman that allowed the villains that killed my father along with a litany of other dastardly deeds (but mostly pricking my pops) left such a rancid taste in my mouth that I didn't even consider marrying her in the end, though she was the obvious choice. If there was one thing she was honest with, it was her feelings and they're all that kept me around. I softened up in light of her since as I've almost completed all routes, but even then I knew that my scope of view was too narrow to appropriately scrutinize Rhea or any others for that matter. In conclusion: I'm no dummy and you done good work here. @bookfire191
That's what I'm saying! Like, how you gonna kill my pops and then ask me to join you? It doesn't even come up in a meaningful way. Like, isn't Byleth a *little* upset about that. I married her bc I'm a completionist and have to marry everyone in order to feel satisfied (a process that's taking a long time since you can't get married until the end of the game).
Lol you said how most people who start Edelgard usually hate Rhea, I started Crimson Flower (with no knowledge that Rhea was even in the game until she was introduced) and by the end, I was like "ok NOW which route is Rhea in." I really like her character, not that Edlegard is bad, but I prefer Rhea.
@@smollnano nah CF is event dependent that's a 2 parter but you can do it on any Black Eagles house run, ng+ or not. With minimal spoilers, there's a week you need to run around the monastery and talk to someone and make a choice, the game alerts you that this can lead to a different end. A similar pop up appears later to cement the choice to get CF.
I guess Rhea did even less wrong than we thought since the DLC makes it pretty clear that the potential vessels for Sothis weren't harmed and were allowed to live their own lives. In addition, it was Byleth's mom (one of the potential vessels who was like a daughter to Rhea) who asked Rhea to implant the crest onto the stillborn Byleth
I don't think Rhea saw her like a daughter though, more like a close friend/confidant. In Cindered Shadows she says that Sitri looked up to her as a mother figure, but Rhea herself never says "and I loved her like a daughter", she just says she cared a lot about her and wanted her to have a good future. Sorta like she saw Jeralt I'd say. I think most people would rather think that Rhea would've gone and implanted the crest stone into Byleth without Sitri asking, but again, Sitri was clearly someone she really appreciated, and the game never shows or says that Rhea would do something like that without consent (unless, of course, we're talking about her Crimson Flower portrayal, where she's clearly not thinking straight. People seriously need to look past it sometimes).
...and she walked all over that wish years later, by trying to sacrifice Byleth. Great job, Rhea! It was also *really* convenient for Rhea to place the heart inside Byleth, spared her the whole trouble of making another artificial human from scratch
@@skyscavenger7732 What "consent"? Sitri and those who came before her, couldn't have given consent, it was the entire reason for their creation. Rhea just went and did it. She was playing god/Dr. Frankenstein
@@goroadachi9489 Rhea needed another body anyway, Byleths mother was dying and had failed to resurrect Sothis. She calls all her former experiments, including Sitri "Failures" to Byleths face, during the confrontation in the holy tomb
