Let Them Eat Cake or why having an immortal, out-of-touch ruling class is an inevitable cause of conflict
Spoilers for all routes, but especially Silver Snow/ Verdant Wind.
In my previous essay about the politics of Three Houses in the first post in this topic, I talked about the ways in which Rhea wields both hard and soft power, and how that causes most of the major conflict in the game. Much like the European medieval papacy, Rhea exerts a lot of soft control over the continent, and is able to protect her own power and enforce her will using a combination of her army and her pull with the various nobles of the Kingdom and the Alliance.
But does Rhea have the best interests of the average citizen of Fodlan at heart? I would say that she is chiefly concerned with a) reviving her dead mother, which has been her primary goal for the last thousand years and b) concentrating power. The needs of the nations that she influences and the people who rely on her guidance are notably NOT part of her priority list. If the purpose of having political power is to use it to promote the greater good, Rhea clearly is not doing that, since she is chiefly interested in her own power. You can argue that her desire to revive her mother represents what her version of the ‘greater good’ entails; she believes that her mother can fix the world’s problems, and that her quest to revive mommy is therefore acting in the interests of the greater good. I would, however, counter propose that if it hasn’t worked for a thousand years, it should probably not be your go-to plan for solving world problems.
Due to the backstory of the game, where the humans betrayed the Nabateans and Nemesis crafted their bones into weapons, the remaining members of their ancient race have complicated feelings on humanity. Both Indech and Macuil have chosen to largely distance themselves from both humanity and from Seiros. Cichol and Cethleann also lived a life of seclusion (with Cethleann in draconic sleep mode) until 16 years before the present. Seiros, meanwhile, has been living in the world of humans and running the affairs of the Church of Seiros, which has its hands in every pie in the country through its military force and its soft power to crown rulers and declare war on countries, implicitly believing that the church’s will should be obeyed.
I’ve never really liked Seteth (Cichol) or Flayn (Cethleann) from a morality perspective all that much, although they seem to be reasonably popular characters whom people often describe in endearing terms. Flayn is a ‘sweet girl’. Seteth is a ‘nice DILF’. So why am I not comfortable with them? I feel as if they come off as an out-of-touch elite class of people, people who don’t really care much for the lives of the common man, and don’t seem to be able to grapple with the problems that people face in their society.
We see in Part 1 that Rhea and her coterie is very capable of stamping out people who disagree with her. When Lonato raises a rebellion or when the Western Church does not obey her will, she stamps them out. She seems to have very little interest in understanding the mechanisms that cause these people to be angry, but rather, she wants them to die because they oppose her. And that’s what happens, over and over, in Part 1.
But it’s not just Rhea. In Seteth and Flayn’s paralogue, we see that Seteth and Flayn have decided that getting people from a different sect away from Seteth’s wife/Flayn’s mother’s grave is worth sectarian violence, even to the point that you are NOT ALLOWED TO LET THE ENEMIES ESCAPE. They, uh, could have made the battle just end when you killed the bosses, but instead chose to make it kill all enemies with an extra escape mission. At the end, Seteth and Flayn are satisfied that you have eliminated the enemies from her grave.
As all conversations about Three Houses tend to arc toward Edelgard’s action, I am going to discuss the reactions of the three ‘lords’ of the other routes to her.
I’ve played all of the routes, and in Azure Moon and Verdant Wind, we see Dimitri and Claude grapple with their feelings on her actions. Dimitri doesn’t really understand how she could feel so strongly about the Church of Seiros that she would start a war even though people are suffering, and Claude, while he understands more clearly her issues with Fodlan society as a whole, does not approve of her methods. (I wonder what his plan for deposing Rhea was that was non-violent… but we never get the chance to see that.)
Meanwhile, in Silver Snow, we have Seteth and Flayn as your protagonists, who seem to be utterly incapable of comprehending why people would not be satisfied with the permanent rule of their benevolent race of dragons, even as Rhea fabricates history and controls information through book burning, suppression of technology, and general tyranny and abuse of power.
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. There is never an acknowledgement of the negligence and abuse of power from the Church of Seiros that leads to this revolution, never a question of Rhea’s rule being anything but stellar, and never a curiosity of why, perhaps, a counsel of an dragon race represented by seven people on the entire planet should be the arbiter of life on the entire continent?
One thing I noticed about both Seteth and Flayn is how they commented on the tragedy of fighting in sacred places (the tomb of Flayn’s mother, Enbarr, Garreg Mach) over the people who fight and die in war, and it is consistent with a conservative ideology, which holds tradition and order as the highest priority, rather than people. Also, Flayn, after the first battle in Enbarr, comments that “the lives of Rhea and everyone here [in the party] are more important than all else!” which shows that she is willing to bring mere mortals into her circle of people important enough to value their lives, at least as long as they work to reestablish the natural order of the world where dragons rule
Dark Holy Elf already discussed the scene with Byleth and Edelgard after Enbarr, but I am going to discuss the scene afterwards, where Hubert leaves a letter for the party to go to Shambala to hunt down those who slither in the dark. The framing of this scene is interesting because in Verdant Wind, Claude talks about how Hubert is a better person than Claude ever thought he was in life because he sent this letter to save humanity, but Seteth, Flayn, and Byleth collectively in SS basically have no acknowledgement at all of Hubert’s motivation, despite the fact that Hubert is actually Byleth’s student in SS and not VW!
(Incidentally, I think it’s a bit funny that the Nabateans, despite in theory knowing about the slitherers for a long time, have no fucking idea where they are or anything about them. Meanwhile, some 24 year old human man has meticulously gathered information about this threat to Rhea/humanity, way more than Rhea or her toadies do! This fits with my general theory that Rhea is a terrible mastermind and basically just drunk at the wheel while managing to maintain power mostly through sheer will rather than any competence.)
At the end of Silver Snow, there is a counsel of Rhea, Seteth, Flayn, and Byleth, all Nabateans or imbued with the power of a goddess, talking about who deserves to be the next ruler of the continent (spoilers, it’s one of them). This is very solid and made me feel like I made the right decision at every point in my journey! Just kidding, I wanted to delete my save and play Crimson Flower another ten times.
But you might say, but Luther, isn’t Seteth and Flayn acting like 18th century French aristocrats in line with the general feeling that the ruling class of the church is out of touch with humans? Isn’t that a good thing in the context of character development? I feel like I should agree, but having seen the common portrayals of these characters as nice and well-meaning as opposed to privileged and out of touch makes me generally uncomfortable with them, even though they seem to represent what they were ‘intended’ to represent?
I’m sure it won’t surprise you that I think eternal theocratic rule by an elite class of out-of-touch people of privilege is a pretty terrible endgame. It makes everything that happened completely pointless AND further solidifies the church’s iron rule on the continent, transforming their soft power to complete, absolute authority. Fan-fucking-tastic.
So let them eat cake, bitches. While I start up another Crimson Flower file.
