The Church Of Seiros Needs To Die 

This all started because a first map brigand got a lucky crit on god.

Dimitri stans: "No, your waifus and husbando are the biggest war criminals!" Claude stans: "No, your waifus and husbando are the biggest war criminals!" Edelgard stans: "No your waifu and husbandos are the biggest war criminals!" Rhea stans: "Damn straight my waifu is the biggest war criminal!" Yuri stans: "Mine's just a regular criminal."

How dare you call them lizards. They are robot alien lizards that came from the sky with their magic technology gravitational force shifter device.

This game really amuses me by instead of giving reasons why you should join each side it gives reasons why you shouldn’t.

Rhea is what happens when you leave the Lord alone to clean up after the story.

A few things: The Church’s co-opting of Nemesis’ narrative was not that he fell to dark gods, but that he SLEW dark gods, but was corrupted by his absolute power. These dark gods are the Nabateans he massacred. Nemesis had been around for so long that the narrative around the Nabateans being evil had been so engrained it was impossible to remove, so she reworked it. While we can’t be sure with the 4 Apostles, we can be somewhat sure with Aubin’s nature. Aubin was able to GIVE yuri his crest, so either he was an ex agarthan who was familiar with the secrets of crest transplanting or he was a Nabatean who could give his blood to grant it to someone else (this second one means Yuri is gonna live for centuries btw, so we get a semi-immortal sewer twink) Some dialogue from hopes heavily implies that it’s not just crest blood House von Hresvelg inherited from Seiros, but genes too: Rhea: “I care not if we shared blood countless generations ago-I will not permit anyone to defile Mother's resting place.” (Japanese and Translation I got; だからこそ、容赦はできません。たとえ血を分けた遠い遠い裔であっても..... That's why we cannot tolerate it. Even if they are distant descendants with shared blood.) let me know if you can get a better translation. Edelgard also says: “By the covenant between the red blood and the white sword that crowns the double-headed eagle...” when signing that pact with Claude. Covenants tend to be a term to refer to an agreement (typically of religious nature) yes, but it also has a tendency to refer to Marriage. There is also a great deal of narrative symbolism in Seiros being married to Wilhelm. It represents the bringing of religious doctrine as a power in politics, a marriage of the secular state and the spiritual organization, which sees Fodlan being made into its current state, where the church meddles with political affairs and the nobles meddle with religious affairs, for the two have been joined together, married. Also, in the shadow library, there is a banned book which has an actor playing emperor Wilhelm and an actor playing Seiros kissing each other. It could be Seiros and Wilhelm were lovers, making Lycaon I their son and Edelgard Seiros’ distant descendant. (Fun thing about that play, it mentions that it has northern swordsmen dueling for Emperor Lycaon III’s entertainment. In the Japanese translation, the term they use is Northern Gladiators. This probably gives us a massive hint as to why faerghus revolted, their people were literally being used for blood sport for the entertainment of the Imperial Nobility. Perhaps Lycaon III WAS the emperor that King Loog slew in the other Battle of Tailteann) nemesis didn’t bring the elites with him to Zanado. Based on the text in the shadow library, the elites didn’t know why Seiros hated them, and where Nemesis got the crest blood was a mystery to them. Nemesis could have brought his own bandit group with him, but he probably mostly leaned on the indomitable power of the crest of flames and sword of the creator along with some agarthan mages From what we can tell, Sothis believes she outright destroyed all agarthans. Non agarthan Humans as we know them on Fodlan and the lands outside of it are her recreation of the species (we can tell due to the lack of knowledge of the war between Sothis and the agarthans in outside cultures, who would most certainly have carried on myths of it, but since they don’t it’s highly likely that they were created by Sothis too. Is it kinda dumb on some level? Yes. But is it what’s likely canon? Probably. But at least it’s better than the one theory I heard that posits Fodlan is IRL earth’s distant future. With Fodlan being a shattered Europe (western Adrestia is northern France, the Brigid archipelago is a shattered Iberia, Duscur is Denmark, Deirdriu is Konigsburg/Gdańsk, the Peninsula Enbarr is on is Italy, etc) Many of the Nabateans we know of seem to have been created after the war with the agarthans, however, it is possible the Old Gods the Perdition book in the Shadow Library is in reference to an older form of the Nabateans (with Sothis remaking them after the war with them, like she did with humanity). These older Nabatean were likely wiped out by the Agarthans and used to create a form of immortality via crest stones. We know Agarthans havé crest stones in them because Solon rips a crest stone from Kronya’s chest in the forest in houses. we know they’re immortal because Thales was alive for the War of Heroes. The crest stones are also likely how they body snatch: they put their own soul in the stone, then stick the stone in a body, like with Rhea did to byleth. But here, they’re more informed on its mechanics, so they manage to outright possess the body (either that or the soul is removed from the body and the crest stone doesn’t need to fight another soul for control) Furthermore, we see in the stuff with Arval that agarthan tech litters Zaharas (that void dimension). From what I’ve analyzed, Zaharas is some sort of afterlife or a place where souls exist. We see that Sothis’ throne is IN zaharas when Solon throws byleth in there and Arval/Epminedes also exists in Zaharas. This leads me to believe that the Agarthans basically cracked the code for immortality by creating crest stones for themselves and gaining access to Zaharas. There, with access to that realm, they probably gained a bunch of power, and disturbed Sothis, as from what we see of the forbidden spell of Zaharas, it requires a crest stone to be destroyed in order to open it, meaning they were sacrificing people on the regular to go to and from Zaharas. Honestly though, there are so many other possibilities that I could go on for hours, so I’ll add them later when I have the time.

What i like about how 3H handles the evil church trope is that never was created to do any evil thing but is in the nature of every institution to become a problem when íts original values dont alaing any more with the modern values

8:30 "Almost everyone has had issues in their lives due to the church/crest system." "Lysithea" "Caspar" Those two are bad examples. Lysithea wasn't really the fault of the church/crest-*SYSTEM*. Her family was on the wrong side of an insurrection, and she got experimented on by Agarthans. Caspar doesn't mention his lack of a crest, merely that he's a second-son.

But Rhea’s hips don’t lie 😢

I’ll never get old of ur unique nicknames for TWSITD or as I like to abbreviated: twisted

Of all the characters in 3H Rhea was probably the least horrible person and yet she was the cause of a lot of what happens. She was honestly a good person and wanted what was best for everyone, but she was so scared of letting people make mistakes that like a mother who hovers over her child she never let the continent grow. It made her dangerous not because she was actively trying to hurt people, but because she couldn't imagine them thinking for themselves; she was scared of another Nemesis rising up.

Edelgard's burner account

On the perspective of who started the war between the nabateans and Agarthans, the Nabateans perspective seems more likely since the church has been neutral through Fodlan and usually ends up meditating and the few Nabateans still alive are not ruling in secret, they are just sleeping in desolate places. The Agarthans on the other hand have been nothing but awful and are directly the one responsible for most of the conflicts in Fodlan.

If may have missed a support convo, or dialogue from the main story, or even both, but I sort of believe Rhea fabricating Nemesis and the Elites as the heroes that went astray, was something she would’ve changed/admitted the truth to, yet never came to it and as Dimitri put it simply, should the people’s belief be taken away from them, in this case shattered, it wouldn’t be worth the risk. And a lot of players forget, that Rhea for literally a thousand years, has praised the man who slaughtered her people and mother and made sure that lie practically goes on for eternity and most likely will never out the truth. That takes some serious, selfless guts

Plus the fear that not preserving the status quo will lead another Zanado and “War of Heroes” probably doesn’t help Rhea’s questionable mental state. If there is one thing Edelgard is 100% wrong about, it’s the idea that Rhea and the Nabateans lack humanity. It’s their humanity that is, like so much else, their greatest strength and flaw.

i dont like that in rpgs churches always turn shit. even happens when the organisation itself is fine that some background shenanigans are happening to benefit said zealot lunatic.

I’m not gonna lie, I’d probably trust Rhea more if she stopped dropping phrases like “This mission should prove useful in demonstrating to the students how foolish it would be to ever turn their blades on the Church” and “We must punish any sinner who may inflict harm upon believers, even if those sinners are civilians”. Like, between that, Jeralt’s caginess around her, and her doctrines about Crests and Relics, you can’t tell me that 3H wasn’t deliberately trying to get the player to be suspicious of the Church of Seiros.

I always saw Rhea as like a grim outcome of Tiki. The youngest(though succeeded by Nowi/Flaynn), divine by blood, incredibly powerful, left all on her own in the world of man, her Mar Mar/Wilhem long dead and Bantu/Seteth is nowhere to offer counsel, what's a sad little divine dragon to do? I might be misremembering but wasn't one of the first things Tiki did when awoken was ask for her mother? 10 out of 10 times i side with the church, and I'll do it again too.

Regarding Rhea's true name. It seems the names given by Sothis are the names of the dragon forms. So her real name is The Immaculate One. And thus both Seiros and Rhea are identities she assumed to blend in with humans.

Edelgard speech bubble

Three houses has great writing and is so complex. Seiros can easily be the protagonist or the antagonist of the story. Just like the playable lords, except she’s not really playable. Seiros is very interesting because yes you can blame her for a lot that happens but a lot of it isn’t directly her fault and is more indirect. Like I’m pretty sure the wars and stuff would happen regardless of if she was in charge. And also the crests weren’t her invention really and it’s not her fault that crests make people turn into power hungry tyrants or that they are in fact helpful to have in battle. It’s just the nature of humans in this feudalistic setting.

I think the idea of Rhea not knowing Sothis when she was still awake really explains a lot of her behavior and I'm surprised I didn’t consider that before

To be fair to the children, Rhea has had 1100 more years to pile on those war crimes

"Strong in her faith, Rhea is. But also is her torment about the past" -Yoda

I love your humor in this series I was waiting for you to talk about it but it didn't come up. And that's everyone's feelings towards the goddess and how Rhea's plans don't really agree with like half the population's view of her. Rhea's central motivation is doing everything in her power to bring her mother back. The way she handled the Tragedy of Duscur is emblematic of her "sweep it under the rug" policy of ruling but that's only because she considers herself the interm authority of the Church. When Sothis returns, none of what she does matters because Sothis is going to put everything right again. But even if Rhea succeeded, how many people would've been cool with that? Lorenz mentions in chapter 2(?) monastery dialogue that most nobility worship the goddess out of obligation, not devotion. And the way nobles react to Crests illustrates that. Everyone has read the Book of Seiros and, therefore, the verse that criticizes the use of Crests to establish nobility. They do the Rite of Rebirth every year, hoping the goddess will finally return when they've been devoted enough. But the nobility does not let that stop them from being noble, in spite of also claiming to be devout. Disregarding Rhea's tacit endorsement of nobility, the leaders of Fodlan are not really invested in the goddess despite what they say. Not really. Edelgard believes Sothis to be a false goddess. Dimitri believes the goddess to be disinterested in people and only tolerates her because the people of Faerghus are invested in her. What if Rhea's weird plan to manufacture the goddess actually worked? Would the people of Fodlan be accepting of her? We know half would welcome her with open arms like Mercedes, Marianne, and Ignatz but what about others like most of the Empire or Dimitri or Claude? Rhea seems to believe that this is what's best for Fodlan, but does everyone else?

Local Blue Lion speaking: It's been very cool to hear your takes on all of the different factions within Fodlan. I especially appreciate you covering details from Hopes as well. I haven't seen many videos covering it in detail alongside Houses like you have. With all the different, thought-provoking ideas Houses/Hopes offers, and the varying perspectives/interpretations of those ideas that come from each player, I'm honestly not sure if I'm ever going to stop thinking about Fodlan.

Always glad to see analysis from someone who took the time to understand all 4 routes. I really do like how 3H gave side we could join very human motivation and flaws. It's also refreshing to see a church organization truly have noble intentions but gets corrupted and distorted overtime though human flaws rather then be secretly evil from the get co.

Found Edelgard's youtube channel

Some comments on the church of Seiros: The church has a lot of eastern philosophy that is lost on western fans who blindly view it as the catholic church. But we can't just ignore the Japanese/eastern roots just because we are all inherently biased against real world catholicism. That's also imposing our western world view where the Japanese devs did not intend for it. Those devs aren't western and they're not catholic, and a church in fiction isn't always about catholicism either. a few examples of how 3H has eastern philosophy and inspiration: - Byleth's personal class, the enlightened one is Buddhist - the magic lance: the arrow of Indra is Buddhist named - four saints of Seiros represent the Four Gods with Rhea as the Yellow Dragon - Shamballa is a mythical place from Tibetan Buddhist myth, and Agartha has connections too - in 3 Hopes, Shez personal class is Asura Rhea as a character works as a great red herring in white clouds. She seems very sus and that's intentionally. She's meant to be the red herring on purpose. Silver snow was the original written route in 3H and Rhea as the red herring works perfectly for a route where your own lord is secretly going to betray you.

Epic reference in the wild was not on my bingo card. Mr. Jalapeño should be proud he's started a movement.

I should note that we don't know whether Flayn's mother was human or Nabatean. That question actually has bigger lore-implications for whether the Nabateans could replenish their numbers.

I wasn't expecting an EPIC reference in a Fire Emblem video, but I'm glad it was there

I love Cherami Leigh's voice work, so I was locked into Rhea's route from the beginning. Yeah, she's a mess, but she's a hot mess. That can also turn into a dragon.

You gonna cover the cult of dubstep too?

I literally discovered you today with the Leicester video, I watched the whole series and lo and behold I saw just now that you posted a new part of this series.

Silver Snow S rank Rhea is the best ending. God Emperors is clearly the most fun choice.

One JRPG series that seems to (mostly) avoid the Evil Church trope is the Dragon Quest/Warrior series. While there are certainly evil (or at least humanly fallible) individual priests, and even the angels can be jerkasses, the religion itself is usually on the side of the good guys, with god themself willing to actively aid the heroes in some cases. The few cases where the churches turn evil are when they have been hijacked by the BBEGs pretending to be the good-guy-god, and the only time I can remember off the top of my head when the main god was an asshole, there was another more benevolent deity to stop him from wiping out humanity because he deemed them unworthy.

I can't consider anything hopes says about the church of seiros in good faith because that game badmouths the church and nabateans endlessly yet refuses to explore their side of the story in-depth. Claude doesn't even try to check the accuracy of Edelgard's accusations and sounds like a second hubert because of it. Rhea was underutilized in houses; in hopes she's treated even worse narrative wise.

Ah yes, more houses/hopes analysis. We eating good tonight bois. Not enough good Fodlan lore videos out there, especially ones that account for three hopes! Thanks for the good work on this!

You single handedly changed my mind about Rhea, good job!

All of Serios/Rhea's flaws become apparent when you realise that while she had a Mother... She does not have a father. Some real fatherlessness behaviour.

This type of storytelling kind of makes me want to do the old, “Wipe my memory and read again.” Play, take notes with reactions, Collect an ending, notes/react, wipe, repeat. Every few endings, I reflect and look at my own lore and how easy it is for me to fall to propaganda and hate, or overcome it through compassion or pure spite. Also which waifu is for lifeu? No better way to find out than to go in blind 15 times and see who I picked the most!

Sir take this subscription. I have been saying these points for ages. Also as this is my first video of yours that i an watching, i really enjoy that outro

I just started Three Houses on a whim because my old roommate bought it on my switch when it came out, before he had his own. I've already sank 100 hours into it since last week... then I stumbled across some of your vids and now I get some great fresh content about a 5 year old game. Thanks for giving me some feeling of being there when it came out by stoking my hype about it haha.

ah yes, 3h where everyone is varying levels of suck and you just go with who sucks the least in your eyes.

someone did an anaysis on Nemesis' song: God Shattering Star, and found that it gives a very intersting acount of events from Nemesis pov. " This is basically Nemesis' war song, a call to arms for his soldiers. As a general note, while this isn't as archaic as the Spirit Dais, it's still using older speech. There's a bunch of things I want to touch on, but I guess the easiest place to start is with "artifacts". Those are probably what end up becoming the Heroes' Relics, but they can't be called by that name in the song - they're not the Heroes just yet. If you're wondering why it's bolded, it's because it's written in katakana, which is used very rarely in the dialogue in this game. It's typically used for loan words like the names of people and places, but it's also used extensively at the end of Verdant Wind for Nemesis, in order to communicate a robotic speech pattern. Here, it's probably calling attention to how otherworldly or foreign these artifacts are. edit: It has occurred to me that "artifacts" is probably singular, since Nemesis' skill is "Heaven's Fall"; he might just be talking about the Sword of the Creator instead of the relics in general. I also want to comment on the grammatical pattern "x called y". This usage can imply that y is like a misnomer for x. As in, they're called gods, but they're actually beasts. Or this is called a rebellion or treason, but it's actually a battle or struggle. Relatedly, I find the fact that Nemesis literally calls this a "counterattack" interesting. According to the Nintendo Dream interview, Nabateans were scattered around Fodlan ruling as gods in their dragon forms. While Zanado itself might've been peaceful, like both Sothis and Rhea claim, it seems like their overall rule might not have been. Possibly supporting that idea is the "embodiment of fury" line. I'm pretty sure this is a reference to his namesake, the Greek goddess Nemesis. One of her epithets, "Erinys" means fury; you might recognize the plural of this, Erinyes, as "the Furies", the Greek deities of vengeance. Funnily enough, her other epithet, a goddess that she's often conflated with, is "Adrestia" - "she who cannot be escaped", the goddess of revolt, just retribution and sublime balance between good and evil. Anyway, going back to Nemesis herself, she is the goddess that enacts retribution against those who succumb to hubris, or arrogance before the gods. Now, why exactly would Nabateans have hubris...? Maybe because they weren't actually gods themselves, but were acting the part. I'll also point out that "powerful like a lion" is probably a nod to how Nemesis was the original king of Faerghus. You can trace most of its customs back to him, like living for strength, or kings introducing themselves for a fair fight. However, despite him calling Fodlan the motherland, I think it's possible that Nemesis actually originated from "the desert where stars fall", since he calls himself a star. Claude has his paralogue set in a desert, where Macuil has taken up residence - it's located in Sreng, to the north of Faerghus. Relatedly, in the Traveler's Journal, Issue 2, it's called a wasteland. The word "wasteland" in these lyrics can also be translated as "wilderness", but I think given this context, the former is the better choice, especially since they share a kanji (荒涼 - "desolate" vs. 荒野 - "wasteland; wilderness; desert"). Anyway, moving on to the more miscellaneous things, the "shatter" in "god shattering star" is actually "to slaughter; to vanquish" in the more literal sense. Not sure if there was a reason they went for "shatter" when that's a pretty abstract way of describing it, but I figured I'd point out the discrepancy. I think the line about not looking back on the corpses of your comrades is also interesting when you have Nemesis' friend greeting in Fire Emblem Heroes: [Friend]ハ、 ウヌヲ好マシク思ッテオルヨウダガ、 捨テ置ケ…馴レ合イナド、クダラヌワ。 [Friend] seems to view you favorably, but leave them alone... Cozying up to each other, how foolish. I think the morning sun dyeing the Oghma Mountains is probably another instance of the "dawn" motif, and I guess the wind is just overtly namedropping Verdant Wind. My intuition says that we should cross-reference these with the narration that appears for each month, but I said I'd keep this post brief(???) so I'll leave that for someone else to explore." www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemThreeHouses/comments/lu9h1r/translated_lyrics_for_the_spirit_dais_and_god/ Dev interveiw: nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-interview-part-2-byleth-dimitri-eyepatch/3/

Excellent breakdown, Hearth.

Loved all of the videos on Fodlan's factions thus far. Will you be covering the Agarthan faction? (or Those who slither in the dank, as you called them)

Yeah no, Seteth sweep.

I wonder if you are going to make a video on the TWISTD. I saw that you made videos on all the other major factions.

Faint Rave music in the background "We still still RAVE!"

There’s a lot I could say about Rhea and the church. From I can understand to some extent why Rhea did what she did and why the church is what it is to you guys are stupid and not necessarily evil but definitely bad guys. The Fodlen games in general I think have wasted potential with moral grayness. There is some and I think to an extent it’s done well but they could’ve done so much more with it. The church is the best example of this. They could’ve had it be a good organization that actually tried to help make the people’s lives better, but because of the circumstances of crests and relic weapons existing, and TWS existing its way too cautious and holds onto a system that while very flawed has led to relative stability. Add to that humans not being perfect and this corruption happens. The things about the tenets of the faith being basically the Ten Commandments with the added lines of “this stuff is ok to do if it’s against those who aren’t apart of the church” and I realized this game won’t do something remanded or interesting with it. Probably because if they did make the church more sympathetic then more people would feel bad about siding with Edelgard and we can’t have that. I’m just sick of the “religion, church, &/or deity(ies) are corrupt and bad” troupe. It’s tired and overused. Granted Japan seems to handle the troupe FAR better than any western dev i’ve seen.

I wonder what would be the best place to be born in this god forsaken land. My take, probably a remote village far enough that political squabbles won't affect me, and hopefully, lucky enough that the slitherers won't stick their noses

0:04 A lot of it is Final Fantasy being anti-religion (anarchist in general?) and Japnese often being against religion. There's a history in Japan of the Shinto or Buddhist bodies and the state undermining each other.

Clyde is my favorite character in the game and I don’t appreciate your statement about him. That said I would appreciate it. If his route explored his Almyren heritage more.

Going off your very end point, I'm actually making a DnD campaign for my friends set after the Azure Moon ending of Three Houses. Since TWISTD are never immediately defeated they will actually bring back Nemesis for the party to have to deal with during another war

Loved the random epic reference pfff

EPIC THE MUSICAL MENTIONED

Haha I really enjoyed the video, wish it had been out back when i played this game. It was so good, 10/10

In the events of 3H, Byleth… Crimson Flower: Achieves victory for the Adestrian Empire and dismantles the Church of Seiros Verdant Wind: Reforms the Church of Seiros while she serves as adviser for the Leicester Alliance. Silver Snow: Rebrands the Church of Seiros and does away with a ton of the old teachings … Azure Moon: Does absolutely nothing about the church. I guess we can see which route is the worst :)))))))) (Disclaimer: this is satire and should be treated as such.)

Those who slither in the dark more like those who stumble in the dark

I am a bit more sympathetic toward edelgard than most are. Many see her as a war criminal however seeing the darkness she had to go through she is somewhat justified in are views. imagine if you will you grew up in a noble house, you are sudden removed from your home to the kingdom where your mother married the king but was not allowed to say anything about where you was from, your uncle drags you back home, your mother is killed, you get wrapped up in experiments that will shorten your lifespan by creepy guys in black cloaks, all the while the church does nothing at all. Someone that has gone through that would be far easier to trick with some half truths and tbh some what far more believable than others. The church was in fact evil under rhea who only truly cared for her mother and the rest of the people she could care less about probably because in her mind humans are what took her mother away in the first place. Despite founding the empire it was the first place she rejected first with advocating for the kingdom's separation and later a separation of the kingdom into the leister alliance. To those in the kingdom especially to edelgard this is clear betrayal taking more and more from the empire which was supposed to be great monument of the church's stand toward evil. In the end unless you are playing edelgard's route she will suffer blamed for murders like dimitri's dad and many other things all the while she just wanted peace and to free the world from what she saw as the injustice of the church in fact that is the point. The only two lords that notice the injustice was claude and edelgard with edelgard taking the reins of removing the church from power to free others from the injustice of the crest system that Rhea needs to keep Fodlen in check. She could of done a better job at it but her heart was at least in the right place.

"No Telescopes?" What?

Virgins TWISTD and Church of Seiros vs Chads NATO and the Warsaw Pact

*Sees title* Ah, shit. Here we go again.

Why I choose Edelgard.

Didnt know that i wasnt subscribed, fixed that

To be fair to Rhea she’s a criminal with a lot of motive, and did a surprisingly good, almost reasonable job despite her severe baggage for the last thousand years.

I don't like Rhea as a character at all. But you better believe I am going to battle for her. I am a mommy dragon pope simp.

Wait I thought flayns mom was a human

I mean it's because it's how it has been historically.

Hehe alien blood aids go brrrr

from what I can remember, Sothis gave her life for what she believed in, even if it resulted in her passing, and that she wished not to be revived, Rhea on the other hand, who was like a total mommy's girl, chose to go against her mother's wishes, by going through all those experiments of hers, all because she wanted to cling to her mother once more.

Traveler jumpscare

Based epic the musical enjoyer.

We know it’s you edelgard.

My question is does Sothis even have any power? They talk about praying to the goddess and the goddess watching over but has she ever actually done anything?

Guess I've seen too many such groups as I though it was one I know. Not at all as it turns out as I've never played Fire Emblem.

Wait is Epimenides even canon? Or is it just that his appearance in Three Hopes is non canon.

Now do the Mole people next

Fire emblem 3 Houses/Hopes is probably the only FE game without a traditional happy ending despite what the games try to tell you.

Mangas, animes etc the church is almost always the bad guys, if not their morally ambiguous. I've noticed it even in Korean comics. Look the first couple times that was pretty cool but now it's a trope that is getting boring.

The entire world of Fòdlan is trash. Yeah… I’d figured as much.

Rhea is the ultimate example of “but she’s hot”

This really encapsulates something I’ve felt about Three Houses for a long time. ALL the endings are bad endings. (Spoilers) Silver Snow leaves the country in complete dissarray. Claude soft lets the church continue as I understood it. So does Dimitri who doesn’t even stop Those Who Suck In The Dark Souls Games. And Edelgard is also a horrible leader who is willing to repeat Rhea’s mistakes if pushed into a corner. You can play one ending and walk away with narrative catharsis but each ending ruins/invalidates the other 3. For a game that wants you to play it multiple time I really think making players LESS satisfied the more they play it was a really bad call. You’re literally better off playing the game exactly once if you want any sense of closure of satisfaction. Otherwise the endings quickly become “the world is screwed in a different way! Hooray!” Then Three Hopes was designed with the express purpose of having endings WORSE than the original so that’s pointless. Really all this leaves such a sour taste in my mouth of Fodlon and Three Houses. It’s like they made it unsatisfying on purpose.

I don't think you can sayrhea does hate cyril, how else can you explain a woman who runs a school not teaching a boy to read.

I'm just happy that each route has better development when you side with said route vs when you're opposing it. Dimitri's PTSD haunts him to the extreme post time skip, and he spirals into essentially a walking zombie. A soulless monster driven by grief and rage, but otherwise a broken husk of a man. Siding with him brings him back to center and helps him find peace and move on. Same with Edelgard. She doesn't go crazy per say, but her ambitions drive her to a breaking point of her own. I personally agree with her much more. Is she completely right? No. But the oppressive class system of the Church is worse. So even if the best I can do is choose the lesser of two evils, well, I'm at least doing that. Claud's route was my first pick actually when I first bought the game. At the time, I was fond of what seemed like a distanced 3rd party stance on the World affairs. But in hindsight, his route was the worst because it's not memorable at all. I don't remember how it plays out at all. Whether that supports my point or not, who knows. But if i can't even remember that route, then it must not have been that great.

Hold on, TheHearthGuy, are you suggesting that the head of the all-powerful church in a JRPG is evil?

you were kind if cooking with this one ngl

Edelgard did do something wrong her campaign is too short

Algorithm. The Traveler

remember when that banned book in abyss casually dropped the info that the knights of seiros acted as death squads in duscur

Byleth has Little To No Reason Siding With Edelgard..Her Goal is Decent. But Short Sided and Methods Are Evil.. Having Good intentions Does Not Make You Good Person. Being Nice Does Make You Good Person...She Did Not Kill Jeralt Directly..But Her Silence Did. She was Not Responsible For The Agthenas Kidnapping Flayn and using her Blood Experimenting on The Students and Turning Into Demonic Beast, and What Happeded To Remure Village..But Guess What? She Did Nothing and Stayed Silent..Her Silence and Working With The Argathneas Did More Harm in The Long Run. She Knew Kronya Was disguised as Monica. Her Silence Indirectly got Jeralt Murdered. She Did Nothing To Prove That She was Worthy of Earning Byleth Trust..For Example if Edelgard Saved Jeralt From Kronya Then That Would Change everything and Byleth anf Jeralt Would Have Small Reason To be Greatful To Edelgard and Try Convince Rhea To Spare Edelgard..

Rhea meant well for most of the time, but her decisions came to the big detrimant of most people of Fodlan which forced Edelgard (and Claude) to act. Also, I think Zanado lied in the Red Canyon.

Rhea, the paragon of Women's Wrongs. Truly, a reminder that "X did nothing wrong" is not nearly as fun as admitting your fav has, in fact, done so many things wrong.

Oh yes the same church that sends a class of students to a campaign against a certain Kingdom lord. One of those classes has that lord's adopted son in it.

No Rhea is the light and Edelgard the Darkness! Edelgard is literally Desaix from Shadow of Valentina! Both her and Desaix assasinate children(Desaix the royal children and Edelgard using bandit attacks) both of them also play a hand in the demise of protagonist family(Desaix and royal children again and Edelgard with Jeralt) both of them have sketchy henchmen(Desaix have Slayde and Edelgard have Hubert) both of them work with shady murderous cult(Desaix with Duma faithful and Edelgard with Agatean) both want to overthrow the gods both started bloody wars that claims at least thousands of innocent lives also Desaix class is Baron and Edelgard class is emperor,See the similar? Why should I fear a goddess too busy sleeping to leave her temple? The age of worrying about what the gods think of us has come to a end. Fodlans needs a strong will to set it back on course-MY will Empress Edelgard

No, it should be governed by Byleth so that order can be restored.

I sort of disagree. I mean I nobles doing arranged marriages is just normal thing and it's fair trade off for being rich and live in comfort and Fodlan mantaining peace for centuries, while our own cannot keep peacful even one. Rhea is definitely did many many many many and many questionable deeds and she need therapy, like one every day of week, but saying that she did bad job keeping Fodlan from imploding is wrong. Fodlan is good place to live.

This is why I don't like three hopes. It's It's good game and I do like the gameplay but it had so much more potential. They could've answered our questions but made more and now that the Fódlan series is done we won't get any definitive answers. 😢 I want to go back to Garreg Mach Nintendo I don't like engage take me back to Fódlan