3. In Blue Lions route, she commands the king-in-waiting to take up arms against a nobleman from his own country. That strongly implies that she has significant sway over even the royalty of Fodlan.
In Alois/Shamir’s paralogue, the Knights of Seiros are sent to defend Derdriu, the capital of the Alliance, which clearly shows how much stronger the Church is militarily than the Alliance.
During the war, he even brings a foreign military into Fodlan in order to achieve his goal, calling into question his reputation in the fandom as the one who seeks peaceful solutions.This comes off as pretty damn noble, though. In CF, it's defensively; in VW, it's still mostly defensively from the standpoint that a war already started and we gotta finish it. In both, it's supposed to be a bit of a proof to the Alliance that Almyra needn't be their enemy. I do agree it'd be interesting to see what the writers think Claude's plan for reform / conquest / alliance was if Edelgard tripped off the Goddess Tower and died or something before things heated up. Certainly I can see a scenario where he brought in Almyra to conquer the continent himself which would definitely dampen his sneaky first cred, but maybe not.
Another common pro-Rhea argument I’ve seen primarily comes from VW’s final scenes, where Rhea/Seiros reveals that her family was brutally slaughtered by the Nemesis and the 10 Elites 1000 years ago, and how she holds this long-standing sorrow in her heart about it, not to mention a distrust of humanity. To be honest, I feel that while this may explain her actions, it does not excuse them, nor in any way influences whether a revolution against her regime is justified or not. She can have legitimate grievances against humanity and still be an unfit ruler.I know I brought this one up. I don't think there's any contradiction here! I think this bit of history is legitimately pro-Rhea and makes her sympathetic, and I also agree that she's still an unfit ruler. It just changes the color of how we fill in the blanks for things we don't know. For example, for insane tyrants like Garon or Ashnard, we can safely assume that nothing about their rule was any good, even the parts we aren't explicitly told about. Rhea, I'm a lot more willing to assume that many of the decisions she made were non-controversial, or general good-government maintain the peace stuff. It's unclear how long Rhea actually ruled, but she definitely ruled the past ~100 years and during the war against Nemesis. It suggests to me at least that she was somebody who was genuinely trying to do the right thing by her people and for her human allies, but grew impatient with dissent. She's trying to do right, but is shitty at it in precisely the way powerful politicians are in real life - they think they're perfect, they think anyone opposing them must be a villain, they don't listen to the counselors saying "are you sure this is a good idea." This makes her a very compelling and sympathetic villain! Both potentially redeemable, and potentially psychotic. In the same way that to the extent Edelgard herself as a villain - and she has those accents at times - is also a compelling and sympathetic villain, 'cuz she's right. Seiros stood up against Nemesis, Edelgard stood up against Seiros, the great chain of hero to villain continues onward, etc. per Dorothea & Edelgard's support, as you noted.
Also, re Edelgard teaming up with the Molemen: Ehhhh not gonna go as far as Fudo on this one, the Molemen for better or for worse are officially Pure Evil and letting them be in charge of anything will just lead to trouble. More specifically, even if you don't think they're that bad, they explicitly murder Byleth's dad for no particularly good reason, and clearly also want to murder Byleth as well, so in-character you-as-Byleth have pretty good reason to be pissed at Edelgard for teaming up with them in a way that isn't true about say Faerghus, who isn't explicitly trying to murder the player avatar. It's definitely a serious downside. Which makes Edelgard interesting! But definitely villainous in this aspect, it's one of her bad sides.
This comes off as pretty damn noble, though. In CF, it's defensively; in VW, it's still mostly defensively from the standpoint that a war already started and we gotta finish it.
There's a term in fandom communities about Watsonian approaches & Doyelist approaches to fiction. (A rare time where TVTropes is in fact an authoritative source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist ). I'd argue that these two plot points should be looked at more from a Doyelist, real life perspective to see what's going on. (If there's some silly pop culture reference in a Working Designs game, this isn't a sign that people on the moon took knowledge of 90s memes with them into space within the logic of the game, it's a sign the game writers were having a bit of fun.) I'm not sure we should put too much weight on this.
To switch things up a bit: you didn't include in your questions for why you support Edelgard her actions in Chapter 11 of the Black Eagles route, where she and her soldiers will potentially fight and kill you & your characters. And I agree it's not a useful line of complaint to bring up, because the reason is obvious: budget. IntSys clearly ran out of time & money in making the game, and they didn't want to make two versions of C11 similar to the two versions of C12, so eh screw it C11 happens as if you're on Silver Snow no matter what. That said, if taken really seriously, then C11 if I thought it was an intentional plot point would essentially tank any Edelgard sympathy: even if I agree with someone entirely, I don't want to work with them after they tried to murder me and my friends!
I think the above two issues are the same kind of thing. Why can Rhea order Dimitri around to fight Miklan, rather than using Gilbert & church troops? Because narratively the player needs an excuse to find out the Horrible Truth behind crests and more about the screwed-up way nobility treats the crestless. Why is there a paralogue mission in Derdriu against pirates? Because IntSys already made the Derdriu map for Crimson Flower C14, and making 3H maps was more expensive than the old sprite-based maps, so they wanted to reuse it and found some excuse to do so. The real-life explanation hangs too heavily over these maps to take too much in-universe knowledge from them.
(Hubert's paralogue is another example that needs the Doyelist treatment - it makes absolutely no damn sense in-universe, none, please send your army to help our boys in trouble who sent word a few days ago, but you can do it whenever you like, wait a month if you want, no hurry to contain the rampaiging beasts, the mages will always be 30 seconds away from death when you show up. But it's good gameplay and a good excuse to learn a bit about Lord Arundel. Nobody minds Ramza's weird knack for arriving just as NPCs are about to be attacked.)
I know I brought this one up. I don't think there's any contradiction here! I think this bit of history is legitimately pro-Rhea and makes her sympathetic, and I also agree that she's still an unfit ruler. It just changes the color of how we fill in the blanks for things we don't know. For example, for insane tyrants like Garon or Ashnard, we can safely assume that nothing about their rule was any good, even the parts we aren't explicitly told about. Rhea, I'm a lot more willing to assume that many of the decisions she made were non-controversial, or general good-government maintain the peace stuff. It's unclear how long Rhea actually ruled, but she definitely ruled the past ~100 years and during the war against Nemesis. It suggests to me at least that she was somebody who was genuinely trying to do the right thing by her people and for her human allies, but grew impatient with dissent. She's trying to do right, but is shitty at it in precisely the way powerful politicians are in real life - they think they're perfect, they think anyone opposing them must be a villain, they don't listen to the counselors saying "are you sure this is a good idea." This makes her a very compelling and sympathetic villain! Both potentially redeemable, and potentially psychotic. In the same way that to the extent Edelgard herself as a villain - and she has those accents at times - is also a compelling and sympathetic villain, 'cuz she's right. Seiros stood up against Nemesis, Edelgard stood up against Seiros, the great chain of hero to villain continues onward, etc. per Dorothea & Edelgard's support, as you noted.
Basically a matter of setting expectations and standards. That gets a bit into what exactly the time period we should assume for 3H is.. I think CK mentioned that it feels like a bit of a mix of several time periods. Basically, Rhea might be okay for the 1500s, but by the time of the French Revolution, she's guillotine bait. Somewhere in the middle (1750s?), she's in-between. Like... Henry VIII is, objectively speaking, a horrible psychopath who murdered his wives, treated others like shit, executed advisors for the crime of being right, was an egomaniac, etc. But he was also a "Great" king who was revered in English history for a long time: somebody who won wars, who was a player on the world stage, who stood up to the Church (so he could crown himself mini-Pope of his own kingdom), an intellectual, a warrior-king. We would consider a person like that all-bad by today's standards (hahaha, so I would have said in 2015, okay, let's call that "should consider such a person all-bad"), but by the standards of the era, they might count as someone borderline with both good & bad. Or Ivan the Terrible in Russia in the 1500s, who like Edelgard conquered a bunch of shit, sacked & executed the useless Russian nobility, freed Russia from tribute, etc., but also probably executed random people who got in his way and had a generally volatile personality. If you're in some grimdark psuedo-realistic world, Rhea comes off better strictly due to dint of low expectations.
(related note: I like Claude a lot, but I do think the fandom is a bit soft on him. Precisely because Edelgard and Dimitri are so obviously morally complex, I think some players who crave someone more morally pure gravitate to him as "the nice one" and exaggerate his niceness because that's what they want to see. There's a lot about him that isn't that nice!
On Rhea "teaching the students a lesson," and educating the nobility more generally: Yep, it's a well-done piece of character work! Establishes crystal-clear that as the mouthpiece for the Goddess, defying her is defying the Goddess. Entirely agree that a lot of the Church's influence, if not direct rule, is surely due to educating the would-be rulers, similar to scions of the Indian elite being educated in Britain or the like during the early 1900s. So I don't think there's any disagreement there. I meant more specifically the implications of Rhea flexing to order *Dimitri*, or really any of the other would-be leaders, to take out the trash with Miklan, which I agree seem to be above and beyond "headmaster of the school" authority. To go back to real-world analogues - the Pope can sort of order (Catholic) leaders around, on some things, but not everything. That's the impression I get 3H was trying to paint of the scope of Rhea's authority: very influential, but not directly their superior, more like an equal. The Miklan deal is probably the most extreme thing Rhea orders the kids around on, and implies she might be even more powerful than that. I'm hesitant to use it to think that the writers meant to imply that due to the narrative need to tell Miklan's story, though.
On CF C11: Eh, I already agree it's not relevant for the politics of the game (more relevant for Byleth's personal motivations if taken seriously at all) and also agree that some form of map skip would be nice for CF, but there's lots of Fire Emblem maps where Lord Blackskull orders his dread troops to attack and dismember the heroes, but actually everybody stands still and waits for Our Heroes to engage them. Don't think we can read too much in from the gameplay there. Which thankfully doesn't matter because I don't think we can read much from this chapter regardless, of course.
Edelgard listening to advisers: Yep, she definitely does that, even if she feels she can't show her softer side to non-Byleth (/Hubert?) people. Didn't mean to imply otherwise. To the extent that Edelgard might be similar, it would be to what happens after Crimson Flower if the writers felt sufficiently cynical, but they didn't give us some post-ending narrative of "Edelgard became paranoid and fearful toward her old age, ordering any old ally who voiced doubts exiled," so we can assume that didn't happen.
What is SnowFire's view anyway?!: I'm somebody who thinks the French Revolution was just, if that helps! I'm someone eternally frustrated with just how often the kings and princesses and nobles are "good" in fiction, while it's the prime minister / advisor / commoner moved up who's "bad" in fiction. I think 3H is a huge step in the right direction here, although it's a little muddled since basically all of the noble PCs are sympathetic. Even Lorenz is ultimately not a bad person, and he's the closest the game gets.
In response to your questions, though, for the "do conditions necessitate upheaval" - Absolutely throw Fodlan's existing order in the trash, the conditions DO necessitate upheaval. I don't see how anybody can play the game and not come to that conclusion! The main issue with Edelgard - and this comes down to how much we-the-player should "trust" Edelgard's judgment - is was it necessary to attack the church (and thus the Kingdom / Alliance)? She clearly thinks it was, and she's not presented as a fool. That said, from a more abstract perspective, it'd be interesting to wonder what would have happened if Edelgard had simply kicked the Church out of Imperial territory and set to cleaning its own house first - make her reforms in just one state, rather than conquest first then reforms. It's possible (likely?) that the Church would have rallied the Kingdom & Alliance to attack, but would this have gone anywhere? Hard to say. For real history, the nobility of various European nations DID attack the new French Republic, but also made a total incompetent shitshow of it, for example. For an example of "reform in one country" still being exciting and violent - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristero_War is an interesting read, the secularist Mexican government vs. an over-powerful Catholic Church, was a bit of a prelude to the Spanish Civil War. (Of course, the other complicating factor here is that the Church really is working against Satanists and their pals, but that good aspect of the Church just makes it a great and complex setting.)
Now, if you're Edelgard, you really couldn't give less of a shit about the motive Rhea had for doing this shitty thing, just stop doing it! But I do think Rhea is rather.. distant from such questions. As noted, she's perfectly capable of being warm and compassionate on an individual level (Cyril, etc.), but she treats the mass of humanity with some disinterest as long as they aren't opposing her or spouting heresy. So I'm not sure she really has any long-term goals here for Fodlan society. Just stick the car's shift in neutral and keep doing what really matters, which is crazy science experiments to revive Sothis, and don't let anybody know about how the Children of the Goddess work. (Again, let me state that "disinterest" is a terrible thing for a government! So she's still being a bad leader even if she isn't pushing the aristocratic system particularly hard, or thinks it's a great way to run things. She thinks it's a useful lie and has moved on to more important things.)
Seteth is generally quite amiable toward his female colleagues and generally treats women with respect… except his daughter, who he treats in an extraordinarily overbearing and unreasonable way. He spends almost all of his comment box items and his conversations with Byleth during instruct time pearl-clutching about his daughter wanting to have sex or go on a date or whatever, and he will do whatever he can to PROTECT HIS BABY FROM HARM, even though god, didn’t she fight in a war? Isn’t she kind of a badass canonically? Why are you treating your daughter like some creepy promise ring dad from the South? stop it.
They fabricate this image of Edelgard, this wicked woman who wants to BECOME A FALSE GODDESS, who has deceived the poor soldiers into fighting for her, who does not represent anyone but her own deranged self.
Edelgard however is closer to Petra if anything. It's never made precisely clear how willing her alliance of convenience with the Dubstep Molemen is, but her C+ support with Byleth and what we're told about the Insurrection of the Seven makes it utterly clear that no one had ever intended her to be anything but a puppet emperor (and as for the Church of Seiros itself, well, that's for another topic), but while Petra stoically endures her position, Edelgard's response is to flip the script and take control of the production; if the world would cast her as the devil, then the devil will be the hero. However, while we can discuss the PCs and their actions in terms of opera and other forms of performance arts, the world is not a stage and at the end of the day Edelgard is not as stoic as she forces herself to be. The bit about dispensing with remorse and what not isn't an admission of callousness, it's wanting the curtain to come down already so she can stop forcing herself to act out the part she was forced into to begin with, it's about wanting the bloody farce that the whole of Fodlan was forced to take part in by relics stewing in their own resentment who should've been booed off the stage a millenium ago to just end already so people can see a different show, preferably something happier and less gory.
Interesting thoughts re: VW/AM's themes. I think I just fundamentally disagree with Azure Moon's theme because I think that the function of a ruler is to make hard decisions. VW ultimately trainwrecks at the end so I'm not really 100% what its message is ultimately, since the end is just punching a zombie in the face, which I'm not even sure what the thematic point is.
I don't think it is xenophobic to want a extremely small, powerful minority to get the fuck out and stop ruling.
Luther's support rating scale
5 – Excellent support, delves into important things about both characters, all three parts are interesting, usually ends in a satisfying way.
4. – Great support with significance to one or both characters, consistent positive trajectory throughout the support chain. Good comedy supports will go here as well.
3. Decent support with some character work or interesting backstory for one or both parties, but not quite as exciting as 4 or 5. Decent comedy supports go here.
2. A bog standard support. I probably forgot it and had to look it up.
1. This world is imperfect…