#fe catherine

This is correct. The Church has a standing army and a school used to train child soldiers. It punishes criminals with execution more often than not. And it actively warps major events to make people see them in a certain light.

Yes, Rhea chose to keep the peace rather than openly hating humanity. That's not exactly a kindness when she 1) makes sure most people are reliant on the church for basic needs 2) restricts access to education based on who she can control (nobles vs. commoners) 3) bans advances in technology like the printing press so she can more easily prohibit the spread of knowledge and 4) creates clones and experiments on babies.

I understand she is traumatized. I understand she is in pain and trying to protect her people from another slaughter. But the simple fact is she's not even doing that well, because she's refused to heal. Everything she does against the Agarthans is basically whack-a-mole, and she only ever punishes who they manipulated.

Hubert found TWSD in 10 years! She's had centuries! I can't even say he's healed from his trauma to make that happen, but at least he directed it to something practical that got results. So no one would suffer like he had.

But Rhea? She's content to punish and oppress humanity for being manipulated by the Agarthans. Meanwhile, TWSD experiments on children too and the Church does nothing. When Lysithea and Edelgard are the sole survivors of murky circumstances, one would think that the Church would get involved. Even for aid. But no. They had their chance to make this right, and they chose to turn a blind eye.

I cannot rightly believe that she really cares about human beings when she treats the people most loyal to her so horribly. Even Seteth! She's telling Catherine to burn down a city with people inside in the Black Eagles route, she's never once tried to get anyone to teach Cyril to read and write (Seteth was the only one interested in doing that for him), and she hid all of her atrocities from Seteth because she knew that what she was doing was wrong.