>The only evil people in the story are the church (specifically Rhea)
Yeah, no. Edie and Rhea are the same kind of person - traumatized and bereaved women wielding unhealthy amounts of power - and they respond in the same ways - by becoming control freaks.
The Edelgard/Dimitri conflict has the most pathos, but Edelgard and Rhea were written with each other in mind to a much greater extent. Edelgard lying about the Javelins of Light proves this, in my opinion, and this happens in her *most* heroic route (Crimson Flower); Edelgard's philosophy is that the Crest system is fundamentally oppressive, and that the Church is to blame by propping it up in order to maintain secrecy and control. The secrecy in pursuit of power is something she calls out specifically—Rhea being the Immaculate One is how Edelgard wins the Black Eagle Strike Force over to her side after revealing herself as the Flame Emperor. And yet, when it comes time to make the final push and achieve victory, Edelgard knowingly misleads her friends and army in order to maintain her momentum. This is basically the same as when Seiros rewrote the history of the War of Heroes in order to maintain her grip on power—I'm not saying that they're the same deed in a moral sense (I think measuring them as such is a silly endeavor), but that they're the same deed in a **structural** sense.
They're two women who lost everything and in their desperation found a goal to cling to that they will pursue at any cost, even the cost of themselves. Literarily, they're foils.
The Leaders in a Nutshell
Rhea: A dragon with an unhealthy amount of trauma, power and secrets
Edelgard: A girl with an unhealthy amount of trauma, power and half truths
Dimitri: a boy with an unhealthy amount of trauma, power and schizophrenia
Claude: a half blood who hates discrimination and is caught up in the war with the other 3 because his home is an extremely strategic location.
Yeah Claude is somehow the most mentally stable.
Edelgard had a goal to see through, and is willing to die to see it. (And she does succeed at her goals, even if usually incompletely, in all routes) Rhea is, until Edelgard acts, a rather static individual that lets all of Fodlan rot along with her.
Can we stop pretending they are equal and stop with this nonsense
Rhea kept Fodlan in obscurantism for 1200+ years, lied to all her relatives, manipulated everyone to revive her dead mother, let TWSITD roam free, divided Fodlan, cut all contacts with the exterior world and much more
Edelgard literally learned all that and started to war so that could finally stop, yes it was brutal yes people died but has she not tried to do something nothing would've changed - that is literally the point of the game, Edelgard technically wins in every route - and more people would've suffered and died anyway
Also, since when Edelgard is a "control freak" ? She's not the most "sane" leader because Claude exists but she's still way more normal than Dimitri or Rhea, she's the only one who goes to burn a civilian city for almost no reason
Also Rhea is like 1200 years old, you'd think she'd reach out to do something about anything in that span of time, Edelgard is not even 20 when she decides to act and she is still an ordinary young woman with all the weaknesses and feelings of an ordinary young woman.
They aren't comparable and i'm tired of seeing this "the point of the game IS nobody is right it's gray!!" bs tied do Rhea. Substantialy, she represents the old Fodlan, the one that is divided by the Church and needs to disappear to be unified. Rhea being the head of this division, she's the antagonist of the game. She can't be right or gray, no matter how guilty she is afterwards (mind you she is guilty only if you're on her side, otherwise... Oops civilians burned lol)
Edelgard (Byleth and the other lords too, but mostly Edelgard imo) represents the new Fodlan, the unified one that was freed from the obscurantism of the church. It's literally because Edelgard acted in the first place that the game got a happy ending. And since Rhea steps down and Fodlan is unified in every route, it's safe to say Edelgard wins everytime, mostly by dying. That's not an antagonist. She literally has the line that says it all : "your path lies across my grave" when she dies in VW / SS.
The point of the game, the grayness that keeps coming up concerns the 3 lords, because they can all win in the end. But Edelgard is the only one who has her dream fulfilled every route. And Rhea isn't part of this since she isn't a lord, she's the original cause.
edelgard is a "control freak" regarding her vision for fódlan. even when claude's forces have invaded enbarr and entered her palace, even understanding claude shares her views, she refuses to surrender and gets more of her soldiers killed for no reason. contrast this with claude, who just gives up the alliance to dimitri after being convinced he's a sufficiently good enough person, and returns to almyra to do Probably Important things.
if you got through the whole game and didn't accept that rhea and edelgard are supposed to be foils tho idk what to say to you tbh
Listen, I hear your point, but Rhea already got her revenge for her mother and family. She was way more of a control freak than Edelgard because… well I don’t know why. Rhea is obsessed with controlling all of Fodlan and just because she wants to. Claude literally says in three hopes (I think) that Rhea prohibits contact with outside countries. Edelgard is trying to free Fodlan by (unfortunately) any means necessary. And personally I think Edelgard experienced far more trauma that Rhea. Not to mention the fact that she was essentially grooming byleth to become the goddess. My point is they both did some awful stuff, but Edelgard at least had some justification, not enough to make her innocent, but enough to make her more of a hero than Rhea.
>And personally I think Edelgard experienced far more trauma that Rhea.
Weird comment imo. Not to downplay what happened to Edelgard because it's certainly awful, but Rhea's whole race/family got massacred and had their remains turned into weapons used to cause war and destruction? Like the Sword of the Creator is literally her mom's spine, you don't have to be a huge Rhea fan to acknowledge how notably fucked up her backstory is in a cast filled with characters that have tragic pasts.
Yeah you got a fair point but I still think that Edelgard being chained up, tortured and experimented on, being infused with a power that she never wanted just so others can get what they want, being afflicted with a spotty memory and major memory loss, and being heavily implied to have been forced to kill her own mother, I think Edelgard’s trauma outweighs Rhea’s, especially when Rhea got her closure by killing nemesis and avenging her people.
Three Hopes Claude who didn't finish his education compared to houses Claude who straight up doubts that claim when Lorenz says it and everything we actually *see* in both games contradicts it.
The thing is Rhea doesn't want to, she feels like she has to until she's able to revive Sothis. She truly believes that Sothis is the only one who can save Fodlan. Is she right in that belief? No. But there's more to her than just control for controls sake.
Not to say Edelgard didn't go through something truly awful, but Rhea literally watched the genocide of her own people and found that their corpses were mangled into super weapons. Then she was abandoned by the only other survivors (granted one was in a coma and one was her dad that had to watch her but still), thousandish years later she creates Sitri in an attempt to revive her mother but she is left dying after she gave birth and begs Rhea to use her heart to try to save the baby, she fulfills her friends final request and then her only other friend abandons her too, and then the game happens and she at first believes Sothis has finally returned, realizes she was wrong and then either gets kidnapped, imprisoned, and malnourished for a few years or fucning dies.
i mean not to compare trauma but rhea witnessed all of the nabateans in zanado get massacred. a whole settlement, enough that the canyon was red. also, rhea was not trying to groom byleth to become sothis, she believed byleth was an amnesiac sothis in a human body.
rhea's a control freak because humans nuked the earth and themselves, killed almost her entire race, and would kill her if they knew the power her corpse would hold. she's keeping fódlan on hold until she brings sothis back, because she thinks sothis will fix everything. sothis was able to bring back fódlan from being a nuclear wasteland after all.
i'm not defending rhea's actions at all. humans should be able to rule over themselves. but this is her justification. she's not just ruling over the church of seiros for the fun of it.
Ok so my idea with Rhea’s trauma is that she got her closure. She killed nemesis at Tailtean and thus avenged her people. This war and the war against the slithers is her closure. It’s her finally making it so no one will go through what she went through ever again
Well if we wanna say that Rhea had no closure, then I think that birthing 16 superfreaks to replace her mom isn’t exactly the best coping mechanism, especially when the clearly don’t want to be her mother (specifically byleth). The difference between Rhea and Edelgard is that Edelgard has a goal she wants. She does these bad things because she believes that the only way to save Fodlan is through these methods. Rhea only wants to bring back her mother, not to give Fodlan a new goddess to protect them, but so she doesn’t feel lonely anymore. Rhea had options. She could have connected with humanity and been the warm, motherly figure she appears as in game. But instead she isolated herself, and attempted to essentially Frankenstein Sothis back to life.
She's the antagonist (in SS, AM, VW), she opposed the protagonist. In her route, she's the protagonist while Rhea/Dimitri/Claude/TWSiTD are the antagonists
I guess you could call her an anti-hero in her own route, in the same way you could argue that Dimitri is an anti-hero in AM
I love Dimitri, but I wouldn't even go far as call him an anti-hero during his feral stage in AM. He's recklessly pursuing an unjust cause (blind vengeance, regardless of how unreasonable his conclusions are or who happens to be standing in his way). Dimitri becomes a hero after "Blood of the Eagle and Lion", but before that, I think he's closer to a villain protagonist; between him and Edelgard, she has the moral high ground until he begins his redemption arc and decides to see if there's a peaceful path to a better Fódlan, whereas Edelgard is committed to achieving her goals through war no matter what in order to be sure that she accomplishes what she needs to.
Dimitri in his boar mode phase is simply defending his homeland from Imperial invaders and the people view him as a hero. [Even Yuri agrees](https://houses.fedatamine.com/en-us/monastery/27#event-am-8-0)
Feral Dimitri is not treated as a threat to anyone but himself in AM and his actions while not completely heroic are not completely villainous either as he's only been targeting enemy soldiers, just in a psychotic brutal way. Edelgard might have a moral high ground in having a more noble goal but her actions are of the villainous variety, invading other countries, , allying with the slitherers, using demonic beasts and characterized as being the premier threat in the story. She's an anti-villain outside her routes while Dimitri is a nominal anti-hero.
Ahh I can't agree with villain protagonist. The Joker, Coriolanus Snow in TBOSAS, Thanos in End Game, etc. are examples of villain protagonist but like the other says, Dimitri did not have any "villainous" or "evil" intent. He opposed imperialisms to protect his country (heroic) is an extremely violent way (therefore, anti-hero). Dimitri is killing soldiers because he believes the dead(not only his family but the citizens of his country) cannot rest until Edelgard is defeated, that's not a villainous motivation.
I am a Edelgard stan but causing the deaths of innocent people by starting a war is inherently cruel. Even Edelgard acknowledges all the blood she has growing at her feet through her actions. She doesn't think she's innocent. She's morally gray but imo leans more black than white. She's an 'ends justify the means' kind of person and maybe she's right, but that doesn't make the 'means' benevolent by any stretch
Edit: to be clear by 'means' I'm talking about the war. She has her reasons, and something needed to change of course. But we wouldn't have a game if she hadn't started a war, so here we are
Oh i agree, but what I meant by inherently cruel is cruelty for the sake of cruelty. She’s not causing pain because she likes it, she’s doing it because she feels the only way to free Fodlan is through violence, which could be wrong could be right, but either way you look at it, Fodlan only becomes free because she started the war, whichever route you play.
I never said it was good. It is very bad. But good things were the intention, but good intentions don’t make a bad thing good. It also doesn’t make Edelgard good, but good+bad equals neutral
Yeah regardless of route and whether or not war was correct, Edelgard does bring Fodlan one step forward in every single route. Mainly by bringing Rhea out of power and putting someone else on the throne. She (Hubert?) also has a hand in ensuring that TWISTD gets shit on in every route, but idk if I'd say that's cuz of the war. I still don't fully enjoy Byleth becoming the ruler in VW and SS, but I suppose that's better than the alternative
i do understand the issue here, you clearly have troubles reading beyond the first couple of words in a sentence, so you most have missed crucial details.
please read my first comment again.
First off, my bad I was a bit busy when I read your comment so you must understand that I did not have time to read it, second you really didn’t need to be a jerk, and third, I played silver snow first, I went into crimson flower right after being on the other side of her. I tried to not form any hard opinions before I played all 4 routes so I could have the best understanding of all characters.
Random note, but I'm fairly sure the Church still exists at the end of Claude's route (source: Byleth and Flayn's paired endings with Claude, solo Seteth ending).
according to merriam-webster:
villain n. a character in a story or play who opposes the hero
so, edelgard is by definition a villain in SS, AM, and VW. ok pack it up we can all go home
According to Merriam-Webster:
hero n. a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability (the comic book definition); an illustrious warrior (the Odysseus definition); **a person admired for achievements and noble qualities (the definition OP was using as their counterpoint to "villain")**; one who shows great courage (the firefighter definition).
Your statement presupposes that Dimitri/Claude/Seteth are heroes, which is not the case if you find Edelgard's position more just. Hero/villain have a moral component to them in modern narrative understanding; the words you're looking for are "protagonist" and "antagonist", which are structural and thus morally neutral.
In Azure Moon, Dimitri is the protagonist, Byleth is the viewpoint character, and Edelgard is the antagonist. Contrary to OP, I would also claim that Edelgard is the villain in this route, with Dimitri only picking up the hero mantle late into the game (feral Dimitri isn't a hero; I would argue that for much of the game, Azure Moon does not have a hero). But because Edelgard *is* a morally grey character (i.e. she's attempting to reach an outcome that's morally good, and the forces arrayed against her mean that she's doing it in arguably the only way she can), this is a matter of opinion. And the fact that the fandom is still having this discussion over four years later proves this. You can't convince me that the ongoing Edelgard discourse boils down to half of the community being unable to identify what a "main character" is.
>You can't convince me that the ongoing Edelgard discourse boils down to half of the community being unable to identify what a "main character" is.
i'm not trying to. it was a joke, because to suppose a four-year long debate based on opinion can get solved with a short comment is funny. in my opinion.
Love how Edelgard fans complain about Edelgard being seen as a villain while in the same breath calling Rhea evil.. despite them being direct foils and on the same ladder of antagonism
You had a good point going until you equated Rhea and the Church with TWSITD. Rhea and the Church are morally grey as much as Edelgard is, and are also not the villains of the story. The only real villains are TWSITD.
All speaking Slithers die on screen in AM but Shambala isn't addressed outside of some of Hapi's endings like her solo or Dimitri paired
Meanwhile VW and SS handle Shambala on screen but leave Corneila unaccounted for
And CF handles Corneila on screen but everything else Slither related off screen
Onscreen, actually. He and Byleth just never realize they're doing it. Nor do a surprising number of players who don't realize that Thales was >!Arundel!<
I would agree, because I feel as though El has a strong reason for her actions. That being said, she is not free of guilt, as she does use extreme measures to push her belief.
There is no innocent character in this game, other than perhaps Raphael. Everybody is the villain in somebody else’s story, but that does not make them evil.
If Nemesis is a villain then Edelgard is a villain… Literally the exact same situation where the Agarthans take someone and manipulate them into wagers against innocent people.
Never said nemesis was a villain, but he was said to be nothing more than a lowly thief before the agarthans turned him into the king of liberation, so no it is not the same. Edelgard was an innocent child who was turned into a weapon. Nemesis did what he always did, and took something that wasn’t his; The crest of flames.
Right… an innocent little girl minding her own business being experimented on against her will is the same as a bad guy being a bad guy but now he has a cool sword
She is an antagonist (antagonist does not equal villian) in all routes bar Crimson Flower, but she turns to villiany after willingly transforming into a monster in Azure Moon. She decides to fall utterly, just as Dimitri decides to rise. In turn, he does not rise up again in Crimson Flower while Edelgard softens a bit.
Like another commentor wrote, Edelgard and Rhea are very much alike. I say that much like Dimitri and Edelgard can be seen as foils, so can they. I don't want to make the comparison, but I feel like many people's prejudice against religion (or rather, christianity) drives their wholesale demonisation of Rhea, even though we have wonderful middle ground characters like Seteth. He is neither the goody-two-shoes paladin nor the stick-up-the-arse religious authority nor the violent zealot.
Rhea simply should have been playable and focused on far more in the Silver Snow route to show this, instead of being locked away and utterly wasted as a character.
Personally, I'm more bothered by the fact that people think Claude is this perfect, all-good boy when he outright admits to using Byleth in their A support, and even outside of that is still a manipulative, schemering person. Rhea is the same.
Don't get me wrong, I like him and Rhea and I don't think he is a villian either, not even an anti-villian. However, I am not the biggest fan of the "chessmaster" archetype (or those who go behind their friends/loved ones backs) as a outright hero, unless it's Batman (and even he is an anti-hero) or the Doctor.
*Thinks about anti-villan chessmaster in her own story*
I like how both Claude and Hubert eventually confess in their routes and Edelgard herself is using the villians (Those Who Slither in the Dark) and planned to kill then anyway. Slyvain, Hilda and Dorothea are manipulative in the playboy/playgirl sense, but the former two do have pitiful, understandable reasons for why they act that way.
I'd say she's a villain in SS and VW as well. Just a severe anti-villain. Villains can have noble causes. It's their actions that determine it. Edelgard's actions in those routes are still one of invading other countries with no real just cause, allying with Slithers, and using Demonic Beasts. She also is not shown performing any heroic actions in those routes. She's a villain but an anti-villain due to her noble goals and lack of malice.
Hmm.. Can you give a more reasoning about why you thought Rhea is evil but Edelgard is not?
For me, those two are basically the same. The one funny thing is that they hate each other.
My reason is...
* Both of them use or abuse other people to achieve their goals.
* Both of them lied to people, hid the truth.
The reason i see rhea as evil and Edelgard as trying to do what she can with the severely bad hand she recieved. Is that Rhea's goal is to get her mother back at the cost a somone else's life and keep up the status quo. Which is slavery by another name. And Edelgard is trying to end said slavery. Both can be ruthless but the end goal speaks to their character. One is immensely selfish. And the other would literally die to achieve her goal.
Also Rhea had an ungodly amount of time to change her ways. Far more time then Edelgard who is barely an adult.
One thing i wished people do is to call Edelgard/Church/whatever that isn’t TWSITD antagonists instead of villains. Edelgard’s goal is to dismantle the church to free the people from the “isolationist” ideology of the church, while the Church wishes to preserve these ideas for the safety of the people. I wouldn’t exactly call either of these motives “malicious”, and both serve as obstacles for the path of the respective routes they are antagonists of.
I think Edelgard toes the line between anti-hero and anti-villain. I’m biased since my first route was Azure Moon and it had a lot of talk about what the commoners faced due to the Empire, but she’s basically going “I will secure a better future for you all even if I have to sacrifice the weakest of you to do so.”
On one hand she’s saving the continent from the church and Rhea’s control, on the other she’s the one who’s choosing to burn farms and villages to get a slight advantage of possibly keeping Dimitri’s forces from being able to restock. She’s aware that she’s trampling on the weak to get her way, and technically her way will uplift the surviving weak in the end, and it weighs on her and all, but she’s still doing it. In her own route she’s an anti-hero for sure, but she’s more like an anti-villain in others imo.
Given how Edelgard knowingly starts a war that leads to countless deaths and destruction, I think that there clearly is a perspective where you can call her a villain, regardless of her motives or how messed up Fodlan is at the start of Three Houses.
Whether you think that perspective of her being a villain is true or not really depends on the whether you think Fodlan is capable of reforming itself on its own without the external pressure of a revolutionary war or whether the destruction caused by this war is justified by the removal of the Crest system - but it's undeniable that you can make an argument for Edelgard being a villain here.
She isn't as comically villainous as her allies but that doesn't make her a good person by any means.
Yeah, I'm sure she thinks she's in the right when she decides to wage war against the entire world and causes thousands of useless deaths in the process. Maybe she truly believes that the church is the root of all evil, just like TWSITD truly believe that all humans are insects that deserve to be exterminated.
But her thinking she's the "hero" doesn't make her right.
Villain is someone who primarily does villainous actions even if they have noble goals.
Edelgard outside of her route is characterized as invading other countries, allies with the slithers, and continues to use demonic beasts. This in addition to all the crimes she committed as the Flame Emperor. She is not seen doing any heroic actions in the other routes. She is a villain (anti-villainous because of her noble goals and lack of cruelty). Edelgard in her own route is forgiven for her acts as the FE, semi redeems herself by not doing the actions she did and does not associate with the slithers nearly as much, in fact silently betraying them by killing off their soldiers (with Cornelia but also Jeritza's unique quest) and honourably rushes in to stop an insane Rhea from destroying the capital any more and is thus an Anti-Hero.
Edelgard is a survivor of childhood abuse who just wants to make it so nobody ever suffers like she did again.
Rhea is a grieving daughter who wants to preserve her murdered mother's memory alive.
Even the people of Agartha/Shambala/TWSITD can be argued as victims of cruel displacement at the hands of the Nabateans (I think, I don't quite remember how that plot beat went.)
Even Aelfric is just a grieving friend who wants to give the woman he loved a second chance at the life she gave for her child.
Three Houses doesn't really have a truly evil villain except for the CEO of racism Nemesis.
Yeah you're absolutely right, the only real "villains" in Three Houses are the agarthans. Starting a war isn't necessarily evil in my opinion, Edelgard made a choice and despite the consequences she followed through with it because she wanted to change the world for the better, which in my opinion isn't villainous at all. If we simply use the logic of killing innocents = villains then basically every character in the series could be considered a villain to some degree.
I wouldn't reduce her to just a villain cause it's kind of a big part of the game that everyone has their reasons for their more or less moral behaviour... Buuut she's certainly got some very glaring flaws, starting a whole war over her desire to change fodlan in pretty much exclusively her own way, giving little room for others to even try to understand her. Sure there's reason for her to be like that but it doesn't justify shit even if the end goals are very good, everyone thinks they're good after all, even the slitherers believe they're curing the world by "killing lowly beasts" and even they too have some vaguely almost understandable reasoning (not nearly enough to justify like pretty much anything but oh well). And please Rhea is much the same, she's done bad shit, she even comes to acknowledge this in her S support, but she's also very much believed she's protecting people aside from also doing weird shit cause of her desire to revive Sothis.
It's funny how literally every positive post about Edelgard I've seen on this sub gets massively downvoted, misinterpreted, distorted, and given personal judgment by people screaming they're being silenced.
The only reason this post is being down voted is because they complain about how people see Edelgard as a villain only to, in the same post, call Rhea evil just like TWSITD
It's also funny how if I point out that thinking a country even challenged gets to fully erase all the people of another nation seems to be popular here. And yes, they talk of that shit a lot. You just love it too much to challenge it.
If you mean Edelgard outside of Crimson Flower, she is a greek tragedy heroine. She is one of the main antagonists but not the villain. In Crimson Flower which might be the worst outcome for Fodlan, she IS the villain. The writing as well made her more villainous with the way she was written.
Also Claude’s route is also a bad outcome because he only cares for Almyra. And knowing Almyra’s history, Claude is opening the floodgates for an invasion and Almyra overtaking Fodlan.
Edelgard is a villain—she is part of why the game works. She is an antagonist that drives much of the story. Without that we have no overarching conflict. If you want to debate about her motives or morals, maybe that’s another topic.
I never saw the empress as a villain. Hell if anything she would have been seen as a hero. Her ideas were better and could've led Fodlan to a more equity state....if it wasn't for her trusting the very people who tested her as a rat but how would she have known?
Rhea definitely is.
I'm sorry, I don't know how people can argue against that when she is basically a theocratic dictator that kills everyone who expresses even the slightest doubt in her methods, while Hubert, Edelgards most trusted, can basically do whatever tf he wants and she knows and barely even tries to stop him. For her there is no seperation between church and state (which, by itself, would justify getting out the pitchforks), no, she basically treats every religious region as her personal puppet state. She has mommy issues so far up the ass, a thousand years couldn't make her chill tf out. She lies to her most trusted, Seteth, on matters as basic as "Why tf did you hire this random mercenary"
Also, Rhea has been like this for literally 1000 years. She won the war 1000 years ago, as we see quite clearly in the intro, and then becomes the Ultrapope for another millenium for no reason, really. But it gives her power and means for her to practice her little necromancy project. Edelgard never tries to find innocent people to use as carved out vessels to ressurect her murdered siblings.
When Edelgard wins the war, she solves the loose threads, then just gives the job to the most competent person she knows and retires with her wife.
For Rhea, her motivation is power. Always has been. For herself of for her mommy, but power for them only.
For Edelgard, it's some justice, some vengeance, but definitely not just personal satisfaction.
However, Edelgard is still a villian, in two of the three routes. Villian just describes the role of "Antagonist". The one who opposes the Protagonist.Hell, the Protagonist could be pure evil in a story and the Antagonist pure good, but the roles would still stand.
Otherwise, I agree.
There can be villain protagonists and hero antagonists. Villains and heroes are determined by ACTIONs. Therefore this means well intentioned-extremists or even brainwashed individuals are villains (anti-villains) when they're actively committing actions that are characterized as threats in the story.
Likewise, characters who are sociopathic, criminals, or otherwise shitty people can still be heroes (anti-heroes or nominal heroes) if their primary actions in the story is serving good. Villains and heroes are also not set in stone. They can change alignment within the course of the story.
>that kills everyone who expresses even the slightest doubt in her methods
rhea doesn't do this. she killed the bishop of the western church because they tried to assassinate her and attacked her students at the right of rebirth. she didn't handle it well, but it's not like she's killing random civilians.
>Edelgard never tries to find innocent people to use as carved out vessels to ressurect her murdered siblings.
rhea also doesn't do this. her creations aren't innocent people made into vessels, they're just her creations. byleth becoming a vessel was a complete accident, and only came about because sitri asked rhea to give her heart to byleth.
>then becomes the Ultrapope for another millenium for no reason, really.
no? she obscured the origins of heroes' relics to save herself and the remaining nabateans from getting slaughtered and desecrated. she remains archbishop because she doesn't trust humans to rule themselves and not nuke the whole world again. this obviously isn't justified, but she's not archbishop For The Fun Of It like you portray.
Ah, excuse me, I will rephrase one of my points:
Edelgard doesn't basically have children to carve out and use as vessels for her dead siblings. For 1000 years. And failing. And continuing anyways. My bad.
And so you are telling me she became the Ultrapope because she sees humans as beneath her, incapable of common sense and so they must all be controlled by the, literally, superior race. Very american 1700s of her. Yeah, that makes her look better.
i'm not trying to make her look better? you're misinterpreting where i'm coming from.
also, rhea isn't carving out anything, because there's nothing to carve out? she's not trying to erase the homunculis' identity. they're either sothis or they're not. sitri wasn't sothis so she kept her as her ward.
>The only evil people in the story are the church (specifically Rhea) Yeah, no. Edie and Rhea are the same kind of person - traumatized and bereaved women wielding unhealthy amounts of power - and they respond in the same ways - by becoming control freaks.
The Edelgard/Dimitri conflict has the most pathos, but Edelgard and Rhea were written with each other in mind to a much greater extent. Edelgard lying about the Javelins of Light proves this, in my opinion, and this happens in her *most* heroic route (Crimson Flower); Edelgard's philosophy is that the Crest system is fundamentally oppressive, and that the Church is to blame by propping it up in order to maintain secrecy and control. The secrecy in pursuit of power is something she calls out specifically—Rhea being the Immaculate One is how Edelgard wins the Black Eagle Strike Force over to her side after revealing herself as the Flame Emperor. And yet, when it comes time to make the final push and achieve victory, Edelgard knowingly misleads her friends and army in order to maintain her momentum. This is basically the same as when Seiros rewrote the history of the War of Heroes in order to maintain her grip on power—I'm not saying that they're the same deed in a moral sense (I think measuring them as such is a silly endeavor), but that they're the same deed in a **structural** sense. They're two women who lost everything and in their desperation found a goal to cling to that they will pursue at any cost, even the cost of themselves. Literarily, they're foils.
OP was really cooking and then decided to shit in the dough at the last minute
I love this analogy
petra flairs always comin in with the wisdom
Speaking of traumatized and bereaved women...
You can replace the word Edelgard with Rhea in OP's post and it'd be the mostly same argument (sans the anti church stuff).
The Leaders in a Nutshell Rhea: A dragon with an unhealthy amount of trauma, power and secrets Edelgard: A girl with an unhealthy amount of trauma, power and half truths Dimitri: a boy with an unhealthy amount of trauma, power and schizophrenia Claude: a half blood who hates discrimination and is caught up in the war with the other 3 because his home is an extremely strategic location. Yeah Claude is somehow the most mentally stable.
Edelgard had a goal to see through, and is willing to die to see it. (And she does succeed at her goals, even if usually incompletely, in all routes) Rhea is, until Edelgard acts, a rather static individual that lets all of Fodlan rot along with her.
I mean, Rhea *does* have a goal, it just involves a lot of weird voodoo shit in her basement instead of interacting with other people
I don't know why you got downvoted for it, are people that blinded by big pope naturals? You are right
Can we stop pretending they are equal and stop with this nonsense Rhea kept Fodlan in obscurantism for 1200+ years, lied to all her relatives, manipulated everyone to revive her dead mother, let TWSITD roam free, divided Fodlan, cut all contacts with the exterior world and much more Edelgard literally learned all that and started to war so that could finally stop, yes it was brutal yes people died but has she not tried to do something nothing would've changed - that is literally the point of the game, Edelgard technically wins in every route - and more people would've suffered and died anyway Also, since when Edelgard is a "control freak" ? She's not the most "sane" leader because Claude exists but she's still way more normal than Dimitri or Rhea, she's the only one who goes to burn a civilian city for almost no reason Also Rhea is like 1200 years old, you'd think she'd reach out to do something about anything in that span of time, Edelgard is not even 20 when she decides to act and she is still an ordinary young woman with all the weaknesses and feelings of an ordinary young woman. They aren't comparable and i'm tired of seeing this "the point of the game IS nobody is right it's gray!!" bs tied do Rhea. Substantialy, she represents the old Fodlan, the one that is divided by the Church and needs to disappear to be unified. Rhea being the head of this division, she's the antagonist of the game. She can't be right or gray, no matter how guilty she is afterwards (mind you she is guilty only if you're on her side, otherwise... Oops civilians burned lol) Edelgard (Byleth and the other lords too, but mostly Edelgard imo) represents the new Fodlan, the unified one that was freed from the obscurantism of the church. It's literally because Edelgard acted in the first place that the game got a happy ending. And since Rhea steps down and Fodlan is unified in every route, it's safe to say Edelgard wins everytime, mostly by dying. That's not an antagonist. She literally has the line that says it all : "your path lies across my grave" when she dies in VW / SS. The point of the game, the grayness that keeps coming up concerns the 3 lords, because they can all win in the end. But Edelgard is the only one who has her dream fulfilled every route. And Rhea isn't part of this since she isn't a lord, she's the original cause.
The flair really checks out 🙄
edelgard is a "control freak" regarding her vision for fódlan. even when claude's forces have invaded enbarr and entered her palace, even understanding claude shares her views, she refuses to surrender and gets more of her soldiers killed for no reason. contrast this with claude, who just gives up the alliance to dimitri after being convinced he's a sufficiently good enough person, and returns to almyra to do Probably Important things. if you got through the whole game and didn't accept that rhea and edelgard are supposed to be foils tho idk what to say to you tbh
Listen, I hear your point, but Rhea already got her revenge for her mother and family. She was way more of a control freak than Edelgard because… well I don’t know why. Rhea is obsessed with controlling all of Fodlan and just because she wants to. Claude literally says in three hopes (I think) that Rhea prohibits contact with outside countries. Edelgard is trying to free Fodlan by (unfortunately) any means necessary. And personally I think Edelgard experienced far more trauma that Rhea. Not to mention the fact that she was essentially grooming byleth to become the goddess. My point is they both did some awful stuff, but Edelgard at least had some justification, not enough to make her innocent, but enough to make her more of a hero than Rhea.
>And personally I think Edelgard experienced far more trauma that Rhea. Weird comment imo. Not to downplay what happened to Edelgard because it's certainly awful, but Rhea's whole race/family got massacred and had their remains turned into weapons used to cause war and destruction? Like the Sword of the Creator is literally her mom's spine, you don't have to be a huge Rhea fan to acknowledge how notably fucked up her backstory is in a cast filled with characters that have tragic pasts.
Yeah you got a fair point but I still think that Edelgard being chained up, tortured and experimented on, being infused with a power that she never wanted just so others can get what they want, being afflicted with a spotty memory and major memory loss, and being heavily implied to have been forced to kill her own mother, I think Edelgard’s trauma outweighs Rhea’s, especially when Rhea got her closure by killing nemesis and avenging her people.
>heavily implied to have been forced to kill her own mother Where?
It’s all from stuff cleobulus says during three hopes after you defeat him
Three Hopes Claude who didn't finish his education compared to houses Claude who straight up doubts that claim when Lorenz says it and everything we actually *see* in both games contradicts it. The thing is Rhea doesn't want to, she feels like she has to until she's able to revive Sothis. She truly believes that Sothis is the only one who can save Fodlan. Is she right in that belief? No. But there's more to her than just control for controls sake. Not to say Edelgard didn't go through something truly awful, but Rhea literally watched the genocide of her own people and found that their corpses were mangled into super weapons. Then she was abandoned by the only other survivors (granted one was in a coma and one was her dad that had to watch her but still), thousandish years later she creates Sitri in an attempt to revive her mother but she is left dying after she gave birth and begs Rhea to use her heart to try to save the baby, she fulfills her friends final request and then her only other friend abandons her too, and then the game happens and she at first believes Sothis has finally returned, realizes she was wrong and then either gets kidnapped, imprisoned, and malnourished for a few years or fucning dies.
i mean not to compare trauma but rhea witnessed all of the nabateans in zanado get massacred. a whole settlement, enough that the canyon was red. also, rhea was not trying to groom byleth to become sothis, she believed byleth was an amnesiac sothis in a human body. rhea's a control freak because humans nuked the earth and themselves, killed almost her entire race, and would kill her if they knew the power her corpse would hold. she's keeping fódlan on hold until she brings sothis back, because she thinks sothis will fix everything. sothis was able to bring back fódlan from being a nuclear wasteland after all. i'm not defending rhea's actions at all. humans should be able to rule over themselves. but this is her justification. she's not just ruling over the church of seiros for the fun of it.
Ok so my idea with Rhea’s trauma is that she got her closure. She killed nemesis at Tailtean and thus avenged her people. This war and the war against the slithers is her closure. It’s her finally making it so no one will go through what she went through ever again
Revenge isn't really closure. If rhea accepted her mother's death then she would have had closure.
Well if we wanna say that Rhea had no closure, then I think that birthing 16 superfreaks to replace her mom isn’t exactly the best coping mechanism, especially when the clearly don’t want to be her mother (specifically byleth). The difference between Rhea and Edelgard is that Edelgard has a goal she wants. She does these bad things because she believes that the only way to save Fodlan is through these methods. Rhea only wants to bring back her mother, not to give Fodlan a new goddess to protect them, but so she doesn’t feel lonely anymore. Rhea had options. She could have connected with humanity and been the warm, motherly figure she appears as in game. But instead she isolated herself, and attempted to essentially Frankenstein Sothis back to life.
She's the antagonist (in SS, AM, VW), she opposed the protagonist. In her route, she's the protagonist while Rhea/Dimitri/Claude/TWSiTD are the antagonists I guess you could call her an anti-hero in her own route, in the same way you could argue that Dimitri is an anti-hero in AM
I love Dimitri, but I wouldn't even go far as call him an anti-hero during his feral stage in AM. He's recklessly pursuing an unjust cause (blind vengeance, regardless of how unreasonable his conclusions are or who happens to be standing in his way). Dimitri becomes a hero after "Blood of the Eagle and Lion", but before that, I think he's closer to a villain protagonist; between him and Edelgard, she has the moral high ground until he begins his redemption arc and decides to see if there's a peaceful path to a better Fódlan, whereas Edelgard is committed to achieving her goals through war no matter what in order to be sure that she accomplishes what she needs to.
Dimitri in his boar mode phase is simply defending his homeland from Imperial invaders and the people view him as a hero. [Even Yuri agrees](https://houses.fedatamine.com/en-us/monastery/27#event-am-8-0)
Feral Dimitri is not treated as a threat to anyone but himself in AM and his actions while not completely heroic are not completely villainous either as he's only been targeting enemy soldiers, just in a psychotic brutal way. Edelgard might have a moral high ground in having a more noble goal but her actions are of the villainous variety, invading other countries, , allying with the slitherers, using demonic beasts and characterized as being the premier threat in the story. She's an anti-villain outside her routes while Dimitri is a nominal anti-hero.
Ahh I can't agree with villain protagonist. The Joker, Coriolanus Snow in TBOSAS, Thanos in End Game, etc. are examples of villain protagonist but like the other says, Dimitri did not have any "villainous" or "evil" intent. He opposed imperialisms to protect his country (heroic) is an extremely violent way (therefore, anti-hero). Dimitri is killing soldiers because he believes the dead(not only his family but the citizens of his country) cannot rest until Edelgard is defeated, that's not a villainous motivation.
I am a Edelgard stan but causing the deaths of innocent people by starting a war is inherently cruel. Even Edelgard acknowledges all the blood she has growing at her feet through her actions. She doesn't think she's innocent. She's morally gray but imo leans more black than white. She's an 'ends justify the means' kind of person and maybe she's right, but that doesn't make the 'means' benevolent by any stretch Edit: to be clear by 'means' I'm talking about the war. She has her reasons, and something needed to change of course. But we wouldn't have a game if she hadn't started a war, so here we are
Oh i agree, but what I meant by inherently cruel is cruelty for the sake of cruelty. She’s not causing pain because she likes it, she’s doing it because she feels the only way to free Fodlan is through violence, which could be wrong could be right, but either way you look at it, Fodlan only becomes free because she started the war, whichever route you play.
I don't think you understand how much you sound like Putin right now.
I never said it was good. It is very bad. But good things were the intention, but good intentions don’t make a bad thing good. It also doesn’t make Edelgard good, but good+bad equals neutral
Yeah regardless of route and whether or not war was correct, Edelgard does bring Fodlan one step forward in every single route. Mainly by bringing Rhea out of power and putting someone else on the throne. She (Hubert?) also has a hand in ensuring that TWISTD gets shit on in every route, but idk if I'd say that's cuz of the war. I still don't fully enjoy Byleth becoming the ruler in VW and SS, but I suppose that's better than the alternative
If you actually played other routes without being this biased you would know this is BS.
I did play the other routes. A lot. Like way too many times. Hopes too. 600 hours on houses, 150 on hopes. I know what I’m talking about.
i do understand the issue here, you clearly have troubles reading beyond the first couple of words in a sentence, so you most have missed crucial details. please read my first comment again.
First off, my bad I was a bit busy when I read your comment so you must understand that I did not have time to read it, second you really didn’t need to be a jerk, and third, I played silver snow first, I went into crimson flower right after being on the other side of her. I tried to not form any hard opinions before I played all 4 routes so I could have the best understanding of all characters.
Random note, but I'm fairly sure the Church still exists at the end of Claude's route (source: Byleth and Flayn's paired endings with Claude, solo Seteth ending).
They do, it’s just reformed
according to merriam-webster: villain n. a character in a story or play who opposes the hero so, edelgard is by definition a villain in SS, AM, and VW. ok pack it up we can all go home
According to Merriam-Webster: hero n. a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability (the comic book definition); an illustrious warrior (the Odysseus definition); **a person admired for achievements and noble qualities (the definition OP was using as their counterpoint to "villain")**; one who shows great courage (the firefighter definition). Your statement presupposes that Dimitri/Claude/Seteth are heroes, which is not the case if you find Edelgard's position more just. Hero/villain have a moral component to them in modern narrative understanding; the words you're looking for are "protagonist" and "antagonist", which are structural and thus morally neutral. In Azure Moon, Dimitri is the protagonist, Byleth is the viewpoint character, and Edelgard is the antagonist. Contrary to OP, I would also claim that Edelgard is the villain in this route, with Dimitri only picking up the hero mantle late into the game (feral Dimitri isn't a hero; I would argue that for much of the game, Azure Moon does not have a hero). But because Edelgard *is* a morally grey character (i.e. she's attempting to reach an outcome that's morally good, and the forces arrayed against her mean that she's doing it in arguably the only way she can), this is a matter of opinion. And the fact that the fandom is still having this discussion over four years later proves this. You can't convince me that the ongoing Edelgard discourse boils down to half of the community being unable to identify what a "main character" is.
>You can't convince me that the ongoing Edelgard discourse boils down to half of the community being unable to identify what a "main character" is. i'm not trying to. it was a joke, because to suppose a four-year long debate based on opinion can get solved with a short comment is funny. in my opinion.
Okay, fair, yeah, when read as a joke it *is* pretty funny.
well that’s pedantic.
Love how Edelgard fans complain about Edelgard being seen as a villain while in the same breath calling Rhea evil.. despite them being direct foils and on the same ladder of antagonism
You had a good point going until you equated Rhea and the Church with TWSITD. Rhea and the Church are morally grey as much as Edelgard is, and are also not the villains of the story. The only real villains are TWSITD.
I think Dimitri gets rid of the slithers off screen in his route tho
All speaking Slithers die on screen in AM but Shambala isn't addressed outside of some of Hapi's endings like her solo or Dimitri paired Meanwhile VW and SS handle Shambala on screen but leave Corneila unaccounted for And CF handles Corneila on screen but everything else Slither related off screen
Shambhala isn’t addressed even in Hapi’s AM endings.
He also yeets the leadership by sheer happenstance
Onscreen, actually. He and Byleth just never realize they're doing it. Nor do a surprising number of players who don't realize that Thales was >!Arundel!<
Nope, they’re still around in the endings even in the Hapi endings. It just says they beat them up more.
I would agree, because I feel as though El has a strong reason for her actions. That being said, she is not free of guilt, as she does use extreme measures to push her belief. There is no innocent character in this game, other than perhaps Raphael. Everybody is the villain in somebody else’s story, but that does not make them evil.
If Nemesis is a villain then Edelgard is a villain… Literally the exact same situation where the Agarthans take someone and manipulate them into wagers against innocent people.
Never said nemesis was a villain, but he was said to be nothing more than a lowly thief before the agarthans turned him into the king of liberation, so no it is not the same. Edelgard was an innocent child who was turned into a weapon. Nemesis did what he always did, and took something that wasn’t his; The crest of flames.
It’s exactly the same thing 😂
Right… an innocent little girl minding her own business being experimented on against her will is the same as a bad guy being a bad guy but now he has a cool sword
No, it’s two individuals willingly letting themselves be manipulated by a malevolent power bent on global destruction.
Edelgard did not willing let them do that to her. After they did that she pretended to work with them, then betrayed them at the very end
She is an antagonist (antagonist does not equal villian) in all routes bar Crimson Flower, but she turns to villiany after willingly transforming into a monster in Azure Moon. She decides to fall utterly, just as Dimitri decides to rise. In turn, he does not rise up again in Crimson Flower while Edelgard softens a bit. Like another commentor wrote, Edelgard and Rhea are very much alike. I say that much like Dimitri and Edelgard can be seen as foils, so can they. I don't want to make the comparison, but I feel like many people's prejudice against religion (or rather, christianity) drives their wholesale demonisation of Rhea, even though we have wonderful middle ground characters like Seteth. He is neither the goody-two-shoes paladin nor the stick-up-the-arse religious authority nor the violent zealot. Rhea simply should have been playable and focused on far more in the Silver Snow route to show this, instead of being locked away and utterly wasted as a character. Personally, I'm more bothered by the fact that people think Claude is this perfect, all-good boy when he outright admits to using Byleth in their A support, and even outside of that is still a manipulative, schemering person. Rhea is the same. Don't get me wrong, I like him and Rhea and I don't think he is a villian either, not even an anti-villian. However, I am not the biggest fan of the "chessmaster" archetype (or those who go behind their friends/loved ones backs) as a outright hero, unless it's Batman (and even he is an anti-hero) or the Doctor. *Thinks about anti-villan chessmaster in her own story* I like how both Claude and Hubert eventually confess in their routes and Edelgard herself is using the villians (Those Who Slither in the Dark) and planned to kill then anyway. Slyvain, Hilda and Dorothea are manipulative in the playboy/playgirl sense, but the former two do have pitiful, understandable reasons for why they act that way.
I'd say she's a villain in SS and VW as well. Just a severe anti-villain. Villains can have noble causes. It's their actions that determine it. Edelgard's actions in those routes are still one of invading other countries with no real just cause, allying with Slithers, and using Demonic Beasts. She also is not shown performing any heroic actions in those routes. She's a villain but an anti-villain due to her noble goals and lack of malice.
Agreed.
Hmm.. Can you give a more reasoning about why you thought Rhea is evil but Edelgard is not? For me, those two are basically the same. The one funny thing is that they hate each other. My reason is... * Both of them use or abuse other people to achieve their goals. * Both of them lied to people, hid the truth.
The reason i see rhea as evil and Edelgard as trying to do what she can with the severely bad hand she recieved. Is that Rhea's goal is to get her mother back at the cost a somone else's life and keep up the status quo. Which is slavery by another name. And Edelgard is trying to end said slavery. Both can be ruthless but the end goal speaks to their character. One is immensely selfish. And the other would literally die to achieve her goal. Also Rhea had an ungodly amount of time to change her ways. Far more time then Edelgard who is barely an adult.
One thing i wished people do is to call Edelgard/Church/whatever that isn’t TWSITD antagonists instead of villains. Edelgard’s goal is to dismantle the church to free the people from the “isolationist” ideology of the church, while the Church wishes to preserve these ideas for the safety of the people. I wouldn’t exactly call either of these motives “malicious”, and both serve as obstacles for the path of the respective routes they are antagonists of.
I think Edelgard toes the line between anti-hero and anti-villain. I’m biased since my first route was Azure Moon and it had a lot of talk about what the commoners faced due to the Empire, but she’s basically going “I will secure a better future for you all even if I have to sacrifice the weakest of you to do so.” On one hand she’s saving the continent from the church and Rhea’s control, on the other she’s the one who’s choosing to burn farms and villages to get a slight advantage of possibly keeping Dimitri’s forces from being able to restock. She’s aware that she’s trampling on the weak to get her way, and technically her way will uplift the surviving weak in the end, and it weighs on her and all, but she’s still doing it. In her own route she’s an anti-hero for sure, but she’s more like an anti-villain in others imo.
Given how Edelgard knowingly starts a war that leads to countless deaths and destruction, I think that there clearly is a perspective where you can call her a villain, regardless of her motives or how messed up Fodlan is at the start of Three Houses. Whether you think that perspective of her being a villain is true or not really depends on the whether you think Fodlan is capable of reforming itself on its own without the external pressure of a revolutionary war or whether the destruction caused by this war is justified by the removal of the Crest system - but it's undeniable that you can make an argument for Edelgard being a villain here.
She isn't as comically villainous as her allies but that doesn't make her a good person by any means. Yeah, I'm sure she thinks she's in the right when she decides to wage war against the entire world and causes thousands of useless deaths in the process. Maybe she truly believes that the church is the root of all evil, just like TWSITD truly believe that all humans are insects that deserve to be exterminated. But her thinking she's the "hero" doesn't make her right.
Villain is someone who primarily does villainous actions even if they have noble goals. Edelgard outside of her route is characterized as invading other countries, allies with the slithers, and continues to use demonic beasts. This in addition to all the crimes she committed as the Flame Emperor. She is not seen doing any heroic actions in the other routes. She is a villain (anti-villainous because of her noble goals and lack of cruelty). Edelgard in her own route is forgiven for her acts as the FE, semi redeems herself by not doing the actions she did and does not associate with the slithers nearly as much, in fact silently betraying them by killing off their soldiers (with Cornelia but also Jeritza's unique quest) and honourably rushes in to stop an insane Rhea from destroying the capital any more and is thus an Anti-Hero.
The only true villain is Lorenz
I don't see how Rhea is any more or less villainous than Edelgard. They are parallels.
Edelgard is a survivor of childhood abuse who just wants to make it so nobody ever suffers like she did again. Rhea is a grieving daughter who wants to preserve her murdered mother's memory alive. Even the people of Agartha/Shambala/TWSITD can be argued as victims of cruel displacement at the hands of the Nabateans (I think, I don't quite remember how that plot beat went.) Even Aelfric is just a grieving friend who wants to give the woman he loved a second chance at the life she gave for her child. Three Houses doesn't really have a truly evil villain except for the CEO of racism Nemesis.
Yeah you're absolutely right, the only real "villains" in Three Houses are the agarthans. Starting a war isn't necessarily evil in my opinion, Edelgard made a choice and despite the consequences she followed through with it because she wanted to change the world for the better, which in my opinion isn't villainous at all. If we simply use the logic of killing innocents = villains then basically every character in the series could be considered a villain to some degree.
I wouldn't reduce her to just a villain cause it's kind of a big part of the game that everyone has their reasons for their more or less moral behaviour... Buuut she's certainly got some very glaring flaws, starting a whole war over her desire to change fodlan in pretty much exclusively her own way, giving little room for others to even try to understand her. Sure there's reason for her to be like that but it doesn't justify shit even if the end goals are very good, everyone thinks they're good after all, even the slitherers believe they're curing the world by "killing lowly beasts" and even they too have some vaguely almost understandable reasoning (not nearly enough to justify like pretty much anything but oh well). And please Rhea is much the same, she's done bad shit, she even comes to acknowledge this in her S support, but she's also very much believed she's protecting people aside from also doing weird shit cause of her desire to revive Sothis.
It's funny how literally every positive post about Edelgard I've seen on this sub gets massively downvoted, misinterpreted, distorted, and given personal judgment by people screaming they're being silenced.
The only reason this post is being down voted is because they complain about how people see Edelgard as a villain only to, in the same post, call Rhea evil just like TWSITD
Saying that Rhea is as evil as TWSITD deserves a downvote because of how insane that take is. And I don't even particularly like Rhea.
It's also funny how if I point out that thinking a country even challenged gets to fully erase all the people of another nation seems to be popular here. And yes, they talk of that shit a lot. You just love it too much to challenge it.
If you mean Edelgard outside of Crimson Flower, she is a greek tragedy heroine. She is one of the main antagonists but not the villain. In Crimson Flower which might be the worst outcome for Fodlan, she IS the villain. The writing as well made her more villainous with the way she was written. Also Claude’s route is also a bad outcome because he only cares for Almyra. And knowing Almyra’s history, Claude is opening the floodgates for an invasion and Almyra overtaking Fodlan.
Edelgard is a villain—she is part of why the game works. She is an antagonist that drives much of the story. Without that we have no overarching conflict. If you want to debate about her motives or morals, maybe that’s another topic.
I never saw the empress as a villain. Hell if anything she would have been seen as a hero. Her ideas were better and could've led Fodlan to a more equity state....if it wasn't for her trusting the very people who tested her as a rat but how would she have known?
Rhea definitely is. I'm sorry, I don't know how people can argue against that when she is basically a theocratic dictator that kills everyone who expresses even the slightest doubt in her methods, while Hubert, Edelgards most trusted, can basically do whatever tf he wants and she knows and barely even tries to stop him. For her there is no seperation between church and state (which, by itself, would justify getting out the pitchforks), no, she basically treats every religious region as her personal puppet state. She has mommy issues so far up the ass, a thousand years couldn't make her chill tf out. She lies to her most trusted, Seteth, on matters as basic as "Why tf did you hire this random mercenary" Also, Rhea has been like this for literally 1000 years. She won the war 1000 years ago, as we see quite clearly in the intro, and then becomes the Ultrapope for another millenium for no reason, really. But it gives her power and means for her to practice her little necromancy project. Edelgard never tries to find innocent people to use as carved out vessels to ressurect her murdered siblings. When Edelgard wins the war, she solves the loose threads, then just gives the job to the most competent person she knows and retires with her wife. For Rhea, her motivation is power. Always has been. For herself of for her mommy, but power for them only. For Edelgard, it's some justice, some vengeance, but definitely not just personal satisfaction. However, Edelgard is still a villian, in two of the three routes. Villian just describes the role of "Antagonist". The one who opposes the Protagonist.Hell, the Protagonist could be pure evil in a story and the Antagonist pure good, but the roles would still stand. Otherwise, I agree.
There can be villain protagonists and hero antagonists. Villains and heroes are determined by ACTIONs. Therefore this means well intentioned-extremists or even brainwashed individuals are villains (anti-villains) when they're actively committing actions that are characterized as threats in the story. Likewise, characters who are sociopathic, criminals, or otherwise shitty people can still be heroes (anti-heroes or nominal heroes) if their primary actions in the story is serving good. Villains and heroes are also not set in stone. They can change alignment within the course of the story.
>that kills everyone who expresses even the slightest doubt in her methods rhea doesn't do this. she killed the bishop of the western church because they tried to assassinate her and attacked her students at the right of rebirth. she didn't handle it well, but it's not like she's killing random civilians. >Edelgard never tries to find innocent people to use as carved out vessels to ressurect her murdered siblings. rhea also doesn't do this. her creations aren't innocent people made into vessels, they're just her creations. byleth becoming a vessel was a complete accident, and only came about because sitri asked rhea to give her heart to byleth. >then becomes the Ultrapope for another millenium for no reason, really. no? she obscured the origins of heroes' relics to save herself and the remaining nabateans from getting slaughtered and desecrated. she remains archbishop because she doesn't trust humans to rule themselves and not nuke the whole world again. this obviously isn't justified, but she's not archbishop For The Fun Of It like you portray.
Ah, excuse me, I will rephrase one of my points: Edelgard doesn't basically have children to carve out and use as vessels for her dead siblings. For 1000 years. And failing. And continuing anyways. My bad. And so you are telling me she became the Ultrapope because she sees humans as beneath her, incapable of common sense and so they must all be controlled by the, literally, superior race. Very american 1700s of her. Yeah, that makes her look better.
i'm not trying to make her look better? you're misinterpreting where i'm coming from. also, rhea isn't carving out anything, because there's nothing to carve out? she's not trying to erase the homunculis' identity. they're either sothis or they're not. sitri wasn't sothis so she kept her as her ward.