So, in this YouTube video, YouTuber Meg Sullivan posited several theories (pre-Direct) about the story of Fortune's Weave, and one of those theories was that the evil Nabatean lady we have seen was married to an Agarthan. I wanted to give credit to her for sparking this theory in my mind, though my theory goes off in a different direction than hers.
So, right now, I am theorizing that the Nabatean woman we see holding a baby and summoning the forces of the Underworld was married to an Agarthan, and the baby she's holding was their child. Her style of dress screams 'Agarthan,' and I think it would explain the apparent blending of two very different peoples we see with her.
Sothis, upon finding this out, would have been very, very angry. A lot of us have already speculated that this Nabatean woman was 'the Darkest Dark' Sothis referred to in the second trailer, as it matches the naming/nicknaming scheme she has for her children. I think she banished this woman, her daughter, to the Underworld for the crime of marrying an enemy, and either killed the baby outright, or sent the baby to the Underworld with its mother, knowing that it wouldn't be able to survive in a place like the Underworld. I do not believe that Sothis is above infanticide, not after she drowned an entire continent. And considering that, in my theory, this baby is in fact the demon god Balor, she may have seen into the chlid's future and decided to eliminate it before it could become a threat to her rule and the world she had created.
It might be slightly wishful thinking. In Three Houses, we had Rhea, who as far as she could be called a villain at all, was this wonderfully nuanced, complicated villain. The best Fire Emblemâs ever done, in my opinion. But on the other hand, we had the flat, cartoonishly evil Agarthans, the biggest drag on Three Housesâ storytelling, bar none. Any attempt 3H could have made to tell a story about the cycle of revenge between the Nabateans and the Agarthans, and the second generation of humanity doing the bulk of the fighting, suffering, and dying for them in their proxy wars was poisoned by the refusal to give the Agarthans any real nuance, let alone afford any narrative sympathy.
I have greater hopes for Fortuneâs Weave. Itâs not escaped my notice that the kingdom of Saramis belongs to the same archetype as Plegia from Awakening. FW now tells us that this archetype, which in past games has been portrayed as almost monolithically evil, is worthy of exploration and narrative sympathy. They could do the same for the Agarthans, for a Nabatean whose sympathies may have lied with them.
It would also serve as a neat mirror to 3H. So much of the plot of 3H was driven by the lengths one woman would go to to resurrect her murdered mother, and now, this game could show us the lengths one woman would go to to resurrect her murdered child. How much of the world sheâs willing to burn down to do it.
And it would give the theme of motherhood actual weight in these two games. Iâve brought up before that the theme of motherhood and mother-child relationships is weirdly underexplored in 3H, for all that the relationship between a woman and her mother being the foundation of so much of the plot. Mothers are almost entirely absent from the game, with the only truly significant one being Anselma, and Bernadetta, Mercedes, and Emileâs mothers being distant runners up. Weâve already had hints of the mother-child relationship being given greater weight here. Iâd like to see it play out, as portrayed by a truly complex, interesting villain.
