slotumn

Electiontwt guy Claude von Riegan who is shitposting about election maps and party seats in some glup shitto district he has zero personal connections to × Lysithea who lives in the glup shitto district and is like "you're literally Derdrian (insult) mind your own fucking business, don't you have to go work overtime to pay rent to pay for your tiny ass cubicle"

Geopol guy Claude von Riegan who writes a thread on how the Leicester Alliance should carefully handle the current diplomatic crisis with Adrestian Empire × Lysithea whose tweets are right below that thread where she's screaming about nuking Enbarr while calling Adrestians slurs

this is right before the First Mach War and Dietrich + Fabio being there have something to do with it, likely through Agarthan connections, Fabio probably an Agarthan because come on (probably Western Church if they exist at this point)

again First Mach War lead to the Empire attempting an entire counter-invasion on Dagda after fending off the initial invasion and this seemingly led to them being overextended and weak enough for Loog to successfully rebel

and Loog apparently had weapons that looked/worked like Relics but they already killed most Nabateans in Fódlan while Dagda still has them so where do you think they got more

you can guess why Kingdom broke away at that point (opportunism) but there's zero context on why Dagda did a massive invasion across the sea when that's not exactly easy or cheap, we may get the context for that here

also the First Mach War ~ War of Eagle and Lion period is probably almost as important for the world's context as War of Heroes, because that's approximately when the Empire began declining + Fódlan had first major military encounter with foreign forces so it would explain a lot about their collective psychosis and dysfunction

Possibility that I don't expect to be real but would be hilarious if it was

Fabio isn't even an Agarthan he just looks like that

Okay so it's going to take me a bit to microanalyze everything because I just saw trailer due to schedule shit but a few ones that stuck out right away

Theodora's Kingdom of Saramis clearly named after Semiramis

appears to use different calendar, "Seftim" sounds like it's based on Hebrew/Semitic languages

generally fells very antiquity Near Eastern and Mediterranean; Fódlan had a few Greek sounding territory names (Charon, Phlegethon, etc) but ones in Dagda overwhelmingly Greek/Roman sounding

ostrich looking mounts appear to be based on Arabian ostrich

protag is named Eshmael, combined with above more Abrahamic traditions references coming??? Binding of Isaac (Biblical)/Binding of Ishmael (Quranic), with difference being that Ishmael was willing to be sacrificed

I even see a place called "Mosa," Moses/Musa...

my theory of Dagda being fantasy Americas dead but all of above + coffee from Dagda implies the whole South Arabia/Ethiopia type of place existing somewhere in here

Based completely on vibes and nothing concrete I feel like where Byleth was Buddha (Maitreya) motif, I think Eshmael is Messiah/Mahdi/Saosyant motif or a play on it at least

Eshmael clothes also obviously look very Arval-ish too and I included Saosyant there partially because obviously geographically Zoroastrianism was neighbors with Abrahamic religious traditions and exchanged influences, but also because Epimenides' class in FEW3H was Avesta(!) (also idk if relevant but "I" in names of other languages tend to become "E" in Persian, "I"smail becomes "E"smail)

One thing that stands out to me in comparison to 3H is that Fódlan, for a place based off of medieval~early modern Europe with a religion that takes aesthetics from Catholicism, there are surprisingly little actual deep cut irl Abrahamic religion references (leans more Buddhism imo), meanwhile here we have a protag named Eshmael which is interesting

Devs just didn't think about it/go into it much

More compelling Watsonian hypothesis on why Church of Seiros doesn't do much of that shit

Founders knew the goddess is physically dead and her metaphysical status is kind of uncertain

If the founders of a religion know the deity is dead, then it's difficult to bake in rituals and ceremonies for practice that are meaningful because they presume a deity exists and is watching + hence doing those reinforce that the deity exists and is watching in daily life for followers

So instead you get a UN-esque organization pretending that they also deal in metaphysical stuff about the goddess, but the honest answer to "is the goddess watching" would actually be "we're not fully sure and our archbishop is working on it in the basement"

That's why students can just hand over Relics (which are supposedly holy objects) to Byleth or wield them on battlefield like a regular strong secular weapons, without any kind of religious ritual/ceremony involved somewhere

Imagine if Romans at Constantinople saw the papacy crowning some Frankish dude "Roman emperor" and his lands "Roman Empire" while they were still there, and after a few centuries of crashing out internally, the latest emperor in Constantinople decides the best way to get their shit together and solve both internal and external problems is declaring war on the papacy and saying that stuff over in the west (gestures in the general direction of Caronglian/HRE lands and the Vatican) is illegitimate

(But the process by which some Frankish dude was declared a sovereign was much faster and a thousand times more humiliating than in irl history so they're even less normal about this)

Similarly, the value of Central Church to Kingdom ironically hinges on the Central Church not being a institution of Faerghan origins and having been the Empire's original partner. If the Faerghans make their own church and crown the king through that, it's just circlejerk, but if the Central Church of "we claim direct continuity from the same saint who allied with Wilhelm of Adrestia to stab your ancestors a thousand times" Seiros is forced to concede that their king is a legitimate sovereign and even forms a partnership with them, that's the Real Shit™

This is why the Kingdom, or at least the eastern royalists, can't (on a political level, setting aside the practical reasons) just severe connection to Central Church and set up their own Northern Church on a political level; caesaropapism doesn't quite have the same sauce in Faerghus that it does in Adrestia.

Speaking of caesaropapism, considering the generally premodern state of Fódlan, you don't/can't really have separation of church and state as we know it; but aside from the Kingdom, even the Empire under Edelgard very much does not have separation of church and state either. The revived Southern Church is (effectively or literally) under imperial ministry and command, with Count Varley being made a bishop. That's pretty caesaropapist and the motivations/incentives behind it is pretty similar to irl examples too.

And Adrestian secularization (in the modern sense) is probably going to be difficult/messy no matter what given their history, but getting rid of the Central Church and using Southern Church to fill in the "Saint Seiros' legacy and our founding partner" role doesn't necessarily guarantee less religion entanglement in politics; it could just result in a different form of religion entanglement in politics. Regardless of Edelgard's personal wish for church/religion to have less influence in society, the structural consequences of reviving the Southern Church in that manner will probably outlast her rule.

This is a "limits of the era" thing, because does the move make political sense, yes, does it remove immediate internal resistance/roadblock to legitimately necessary reforms, yes, would any Adrestian emperor eventually have ended up somewhere similar even if they didn't have her beliefs, also yes. (I'll write a separate post on the Empire and the matter of why they're particularly sensitive to status of ecclesiastical authority relative to secular state authority)

But will Edelgard be remembered as separation of church and state icon by later modern secularists in-universe, uh...... debatable.