#the analyzer

Somehow, Fantasy Invader's analysis of Engage manages to be even more sad than his analysis of 3H. So let's dive into more of it :)

Also, Céline is my favorite characters from Engage, so Fantasy Invader is kinda stepping into my lane by talking about her.

One of the things about Celine is how despite her cute appearance she is quite ruthless.

Oh yes, that took me by surprise too. I was sure she'd just be the third rendition of Lissa and Elise, but she went her entire joining chapter without bringing up her tea quirk, unlike... every single other character in Engage to that point, who make their gimmicks immediately known...

Thank god Céline was way more interesting than that! Its plot is pretty vapid and zero-effort, but some of the characters were at least way better than anything Fates or Awakening squirted out.

This is rather curious to me, as the Houses devs said something to the same effect about Edelgard. Namely how her being the game's would-be conqueror and stuff was meant to take players by surprise, and how this gave the character depth.

Oh boy. No, you fucking idiot, the dichotomy when it came to Edelgard was her endearing moments and her strong will. Not her physical cuteness and her ruthlessness.

I don't expect Fantasy Invader to read my blogs and learn why he's wrong (he has asks off and immediately blocks anyone who tries to engage with him without response, so he's pretty clearly arrogantly confident in his delusions of intelligence), but I do expect him to occasionally recheck his assertions. I always double-check myself. But then, I'm not burdened by such unearned confidence as Fantasy Invader.

It also doesn't help that alternate-timeline Celine advocates conquest herself, and in the final map of the DLC talks about how great it is she's free from her responsibilities (and can crush her opponents) while equipped with Emblem Edelgard.

Yes, alternate Céline, who was murdered and risen by a rogue dragon who is then given headpats and forgiven for all the things because uwu Nel cawed fow him :'3

Also, I like how they only acknowledge it's Emblem Edelgard, also starring Dimitri and Claude, when they can use it to attack Edelgard, roflmao.

Lastly, given that Fell Fogado and Fell Ivy, the most openly villainous and wretched of the Fell Royals, respectively had Tiki and Soren, does that say something about them? Dragons bad actually? Mixed race people abuse their siblings? It's funny how reliably self-defeating Fantasy Invader's arguments are because they always stop the second he thinks he has a win so he doesn't get to the parts where they don't fit his narrative.

That last one sticks out a bit, since Edelgard had a similar event in FEH where she talked with Lissa about how awful it is that she has responsibilities thrust upon her simply for being born a noble.

I don't play Heroes and I don't know where I'd begin to look to double-check this, but I'm just going to assume FI is wrong about something. I'm certainly not going to take his word for it.

Hubert and Monica's support also talks about how this is part of Edelgard's plan.

I believe he's referring to:

It's amazing how "you'll be free to live the life you choose and remain at the side of the woman you love" got twisted into, "Edelgard just wants to free everyone of icky responsibilities!"

Just as Edelgard wants to enable commoners to rise up and enjoy the benefits once afforded solely to the nobility, she also wants to allow those who don't want to be noble to live ordinary lives.

Three Houses is full of people who, despite being born into nobility, don't want to live ordinary noble lives. Bernadetta, Caspar, Marianne, Linhardt, and Lysithea are examples of this. There's no inconsistency here: Edelgard's motive is to allow people to live the kinds of lives they want.

Not a huge surprise that an Edelgard detractor is against a person's right to self-determination. FI believes Fodlan needs Byleth to become a Nabatean and rule them compassionately.

This is a core piece of morality to the franchise since the beginning with Marth's “I'm a prince before I'm a son or brother” line at the end of the first game.

The difference there is Marth chooses to shoulder that kind of responsibility. Most Fire Emblem lords do, Edelgard included. While she only wants an ordinary life, she still dedicates herself to a cause that will surely consume most of her life.

The whole concept of Oudou, whereas Edelgard is supposed to represent Hadou.

Hadou means self-determination? Well damn, Hadou is pretty based then!

And we know Celine protects the people. She wiped out bandits who were preying on villagers without mercy... Edelgard, on the other hand, is willing to sacrifice as many people as it takes in service to her ideals

I have a feeling Céline herself would disagree with the idea that she would not sacrifice some of her people to protect the rest.

ideals she shares with the bandit Nemesis.

It's funny how Fantasy Invader insists Edelgard is following Nemesis's ideals when Nemesis's ideals of warrior pride is most-reflected in Faerghus's warrior/knighthood culture.

She's guided belief that she's going to make a better future by doing so. Celine helps support her brother Alfred, whose upgraded class is Avenir. Avenir is french for Future, ergo Celine is fighting for the future by supporting Alfred.

Ironic, considering Alfred usually dies young, implicitly leaving Céline to succeed him. This is further hinted at that Céline, not Alfred, is linked to Celica, the national Emblem of Firene, much as Diamant, Ivy, and Timerra are linked to the Emblems of Brodia, Elusia, and Solm. So really, I think she's the future here.

In addition, Alfred is a blonde who has a talent for lances, horseback riding and will die at a young age due to his illness.

We're going somewhere stupid. Very, very stupid. You know where this is going, I mocked it myself ages ago.

Edelgard's step brother Dimitri

Dimitri didn't learn Edelgard was his step-sister until after she returned to Fodlan, and Edelgard never even learned it at all. Their friendship during their younger days is what was important to them, not that their parents were married. So, I'm sorry, but you're reaching mightily trying to portray these two as siblings the way Céline and Alfred are.

is blonde, specializes in lances, has a hidden talent for horseback riding, is mentioned to die to illness before his partner and is stronger than Alfred could ever dream of. Coincidence?

Yes, it actually is a coincidence. I can say that with very little margin for error, because Dimitri and Alfred are so distinct in terms of design outside the most basic traits that it's insane.

Just look at their designs!

Alfred's dressed in blue, white, and gold, wears very fancy and impractical clothing for the battlefield, has a very friendly and confident air about him, is boundlessly optimistic, and lives for the moment and the living.

Dimitri wears blue and black, dresses very practically and militarily, is insecure, guarded, lives for the dead, and dwells in the past.

The only true comparison between them is their hair color and weapon of choice, so you might as well argue Camus and Clive fit into this too, somehow. Hell, Clive's a brother, too, so I think we really need to dig deep into the relationship between Edelgard, Céline, and Claire, while we're at it. Oh! Claire and Celine both have blonde hair and a refined disposition!

Lastly, Dimitri is never shown riding a horse unless the player puts him on one. He's always shown on foot in anything related to the lore. Hell, we see Claude ride a horse one more time than we do Dimitri.

This is so typical of Fantasy Invader's style of analysis, he ALWAYS does this. He focuses hard on what supports his arguments and just totally ignores the parts that don't. Motivated reasoning is the name of the game with him.

Celine's personal class is Vidame.

In the localized version. In the JP version it was the French word for "flower", which fits her nicely.

Now, Vidame was actually a type of French noble associated with the Church. In order to protect the Church's, uhh, earthly interests they would perform acts that weren't considered appropriate for the Church to be involved in. This usually meant violence, even in the event of it being an act of justice or to protect others. So Celine's class does have a religious tint to it, a link to her family's connection to the Divine Dragons...and honestly fits her really well.

That said, the localized name isn't exactly bad, but the thing is Celine isn't motivated by her religiosity. Much like... nearly everyone in Engage aside from Ivy, Mauvier, Pandreo, and Panette, religiosity is just a small thing they do to facilitate the worship of Alear. Because Engage isn't really interested in the deeper meaning of faith, it just wants the player to feel like a god.

But then look at the Empire, founded with the support of the early Church that formed around Seiros.

For the sake of killing Nemesis. That's why the Empire exists. Not so Rhea could guide the lost sheep.

One of the original ideals for the nobility, according to Hanneman, was that they protect their people but that has fallen to the wayside as nobles instead used their positions for their own power.

And, again, Fantasy Invader thinks Edelgard twisted things to not be that way, when the reality is she's trying to drag it back to fulfill the role it was intended to fulfill and failed to fulfill.

This is partially why the Empire is supposed to represent hadou, the other is Edelgard ruling through military power.

Celine's class is closer to what the emperor should have been.

Hmm. I wonder how silly Edelgard would look wearing the upside-down teacup dress.

Edelgard's route is named Safflower/Crimson Flower, Firene is the land of flowers.

But wait, Alfred is the prince of flowers (he references them far more then Celine does) and earlier on Fantasy Invader was trying to compare him to Dimitri, whose route is not named after flowers.

Amazing how flimsy FI's arguments are.

Houses banks on tea-time, to the point of selling teas IRL, Celine is a tea expert.

Tea is a big thing in Firene in general. It gets brought up most with Céline, but it's mentioned frequently in most of the Firenian characters' supports.

I don't see why Edelgard detractors think tea-time is such a big deal in Houses, it's honestly generally a waste except on birthdays when it doesn't cost you explore points.

I've talked before about Hortensia's connection to Emblem Byleth, how her story parallels Silver Snow and how defecting from the Empire is supposed to be the right thing rather than continuing it's decline by fighting for it.

Yup, that was pretty bad.

Elusia is also the Kingdom of Knowledge, whereas the Empire's original meritocracy was, in addition to protecting the people, supposed to be about valuing knowledge.

The Empire was not a meritocracy. Ever. Aristocracies and meritocracies are antithetical.

But when you look at Celine, it just seems to be that they intentionally made a character that was supposed to be like Edelgard

So, in spite of my joke that Céline is "yellow Edelgard", they share little in common aside from being short young women who are willing to take extreme measures to protect people. Céline most notably lacks Edelgard's sense of class-conscience (that her solution to banditry in Firene is to kill the bandits rather than resolve the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to banditry is pretty telling), mostly because Engage has very little of substance to say on the matter of social conflict between the nobility and the commoners. The solution, much as it is in Azure Moon, is just to place the "right nobles" in charge.

I mean hell, even in gameplay they differ. Céline is a squishy mage with some capacity to fight on the front lines (though she only seems meant to fight fellow mages) and use staves, while Edelgard is a pure bruiser.

And no, it's very unlikely Céline was written to compare her to Edelgard. The two games were created at the same time, the Edelgard DLC Bracelet was pretty clearly a late addition, and Fell Céline isn't even especially bad compared to the rest. She comes across as not as bad as Fell Ivy, Fogado, or Alcryst. If she was meant as an apology for Edelgard, she'd be more openly villainous, as Ivy and Fogado are, not motivated by desperation.

Granted, considering how Fogado is supposed to be just like Celine in the service to his sister, and how Houses likes to say Claude is similar to Edelgard initially, I guess we have all three lords having their Engage counterparts.

Ah, yes, Fogado is a brown guy who acts friendly and Claude is also a brown guy who acts friendly! Perfect counterparts!

You know, for a character who doesn’t do anything that could be called bad and isn’t even forced to be on Edelgard’s side like Hubert is, Edelgard Critical sure does focus inordinately upon Dorothea (when they aren’t focusing on Edelgard). Curious how they have such an issue with an assertive woman who knows what she wants and is willing to use her sexual power to get ahead in a world that would otherwise close its doors to her, isn’t it?

I mean really, what does Dorothea do that offends them so much aside from disliking the status quo of Fodlan? She’s not even that fond of Edelgard’s methods to getting her reforms through, just the ends.

So, when Three Hopes came along and started ripping anti-Edelgard talking points to shreds, her detractors picked up a line from Hubert and Shez’s C support (remember that? The Analyzer is involved in this one, surprise surprise) where Hubert remarks,

Hubert: Dorothea is a famed former songstress, well esteemed in the upper echelons of society. Your situation is vastly different.

This is taken as evidence that Dorothea is “quasi-noble" and thus not a commoner anymore. We’ll ignore that a big to-do is made about her being the only true commoner (Petra only counts by Fodlan standards) in the Black Eagles.

The purpose behind this attack is twofold, although usually it’s just an excuse for Edelgard Critical to engage in their favorite pastime: talking about how female characters who don’t like the state of things in Fodlan are dumb stupid girls who are dumb and wrong and misinformed and ignorant.

More sinisterly, this “quasi-noble” point is weaponized to take Dorothea’s status as the voice of the peasantry among the Black Eagles away from her;

So first off, saying that Raphael or Ignatz are more a commoner than Dorothea just exposes a load of ignorance. They’re both merchant class. Ignatz’s parents pay his way into the academy no problem, while Raphael gets in through selling off his parents’ old business assets. Dorothea was implied to have been forced to provide sexual favors to aristocrats to enter the academy.

Raphael manages to run a successful inn despite not... being the brightest guy around... (Sorry Raphael, I love you T_T). Ignatz’s family has a private military force and directly does business with House Riegan (as did Raphael’s before his parents died). In reality, the only character lower in class than Dorothea would be Leonie, who is the purest example of a peasant among the 24 students.

Anyways, let’s review Dorothea’s history;

So she was 9-10 years old when she was found by Manuela, 12-13 when she became a well-known diva, and 18 when the game began. The 3 years she spent before becoming famous, while almost certainly more comfortable than her time as an urchin, were most likely still a very meager existence filled with a lot of work and training.

Then, she finally becomes a songstress for the last 5 years of her life before coming to Garreg Mach, and the entire point of the Dorothea/Manuela support is to demonstrate that life as an opera star isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, and it’s heavily implied both were required to sell themselves sexually as part of their careers. I’m not at all anti-sex work, but Dorothea clearly doesn’t look back fondly on that part of it.

In summation, Dorothea is NOT a noble.

She was not granted opportunities just by the virtue of her birth. Over half her life was spent in abject poverty and misery, and the rest was spent in grueling work, including selling her own body.

Aside from her extreme fortune of having crossed paths with Manuela, everything Dorothea gained in life, she worked for. She wasn’t given the same opportunities to stand above the rest that Ferdinand, Linhardt, or Caspar did, but she pulled herself up there regardless. Disregarding her as a “quasi-noble” who doesn’t know hunger anymore and thus is out of touch with the peasant class due to having spent 5/18′s of her life in moderate comfort is a fucking insult.

No shade to Linhardt, but someone like him (IE, lazy) could only be at Garreg Mach because he’s a nobleman. Dorothea and Leonie are portrayed as extremely hard-working because it's inconceivable they would be there if they weren't.

Anyways, now for this nonsense that she’s a “quasi-noble” because the nobility have accepted her. That’s not her being a noblewoman herself, that’s being One of the Good Ones.

And coincidentally, Dorothea addresses this in two of her Houses supports, and she hates it.

Kudos to Allegra Clark for her incredible voice-acting in this support in particular. The contempt, bitterness, and anger are raw and palpable.

All the “acceptance” and “esteem” from the nobility is due to her beauty and voice. Much as she loves singing, being a songstress is not who Dorothea truly is. It’s all fake, all meaningless, and once she grows old the nobility will prove just how empty their acceptance really is.

Back to more Analyzer ;D

This is a claim he and Edelgard Critical in general makes pretty often. I searched through interviews myself (I had to because Analyzer never posts his sources for anything...) and the closest I found was:

And this doesn’t really mean what the Analyzer seems to think it means. Silver Snow was written first as the primary means to explore the world, but to say that just because one of the routes where you fight Edelgard was made before the others that it then means that’s the story the developers intended to represent the entire story is fallacious thinking.

The story buildup throughout White Clouds spends nearly all its time expressing why Fodlan is in a pretty shitty state and it all comes down to the Church of Seiros’s failures and Rhea’s lies. Fodlan being reunified and Rhea losing power, no matter which route she does it in, is always treated as a good thing.

Even Rhea agrees at the end of SS!

The worst Three Houses ever says of Edelgard in the routes where you fight her is that she had the right of it that Fodlan needs to change, but that her methods were too extreme. Claude and Dimitri only ever criticize her methods, not her intentions. The game never calls her a stupid little ignorant warmonger as the Analyzer does.

Yup, we all knew it was coming! LoStNiRvAnA!!! The very definition of somebody who knows nothing about Buddhism trying to analyze Buddhist symbolism. That line of argument was debunked years ago but EdelCrit isn’t exactly known for updating their talking points.

Now there’s a pretty meme, exquisite!

I assume the Analyzer is referring to this:

But as usual he never explains what he’s talking about. There’s various other designs, but they all seem to follow the same pattern.

And obviously the Silver Snow flag is:

I... don’t need to explain how the two flags look almost nothing alike, I hope?

Now if you want actual symbolism, the ending mural for Silver Snow is pretty clearly based off a painting of Pope Gregory returning the seat of the papacy from Versailles to Rome:

But obviously the Church of Seiros has nothing to do with Catholicism because not many Japanese people follow Catholicism today :)

Oh, shoot. Yeah, that’s a good one, can’t really argue with -

Sothis! Get off the throne, you gremlin, you’re ruining the symbolism!

As I said above, the lost Nirvana claim is outright nonsense, especially considering Sothis is still with Byleth, as revealed in their S support in Crimson Flower:

It’s only in Crimson Flower that Sothis is attached not to a crude object snaring Byleth’s heart, but to Byleth’s very soul. If anything, Byleth’s continued attachment to Sothis - the source of their supposed enlightenment - is only reinforced in Crimson Flower.

The point about Byleth getting called out comes from the Japanese version of Dimitri’s battle quote with Byleth at Tailltean;

Dimitri: Teacher. Why Edelgard…? You chose the path of the beast 

“Path of the beast” being a Buddhist term meaning Byleth is on the path to a lesser level in the cycle of reincarnation. So what is this? It’s the desperate ramblings of Byleth’s enemy, swearing that Byleth is damned and walking the road to hell. No different from Rhea’s constant shrieking of religion-laden threats at both Byleth and Edelgard.

And we already know from the scene in which he’s executed that, although Dimitri mostly speaks well and has both eyes, in reality he’s got more than one foot on the path to devolving into the boar at the end of Crimson Flower:

So he’s not exactly a great source from which to draw arguments.

The Analyzer then goes on to say that the devs called Edelgard a villain in one of the interviews, and I’ve hit that particular point more than enough times by now, I feel.

So what’d we learn today?

Uhh, the Analyzer is shit at analyzing Buddhist symbolism.

So something I saw but didn’t really comment on in yesterday’s post was Fewix’s (if anyone’s curious why I keep calling Emblemxeno that, it’s because his Reddit handle is just Felix’s name but spelled all cutesy and I think that’s kinda funny. The only reason I even know Emblemxeno and Fewix are the same person is because his reddit has links to his tumblr right on the front page) efforts to portray the Empire as the real sexists in Fodlan.

This is part of a trend of repurposing arguments from our side that I’ve seen out of Edelgard Critical. A really cute example of this is the Analyzer using the Byleth is a Bodhisattva in Crimson Flower argument (a Bodhisattva is a being that has achieved enlightenment but chooses to remain in the earthly realm to help others achieve enlightenment as well. It’s a refutation of the idiotic “Byleth loses nirvana in CF” claim) to say that ackshually, Byleth’s only REALLY a Bodhisattva in Azure Moon! You know, the route where Byleth embraces their divinity and becomes the archbishop.

Yeah, are you starting to see why my nickname for him is more an insult than anything else?

But I digress. Edelgard Critical is trying to steal our arguments because they haven’t had a cogent new one in about two years.

Technically Mercie wasn’t thrown out but instead ran away, but that’s quibbling. Fewix actually neglected to mention Hanneman’s sister. Also the first point is amusing because Fire Emblem’s long had a trouble spot with not allowing women to inherit positions of authority on their own (even in recent times, with Hinoka being implied to be third in line for the Hoshidan throne behind her younger brother Takumi, and Camilla passing the throne of Nohr to her younger brother Leo) and yet it’s not our side that has to flee to series tradition when stating our case. And it’s not even true given whether or not Edelgard will inherit the Adrestian throne is never in question. Fewix seems to be blowing up the solitary case of Bernadetta to encompass all of the Empire (and Bernadetta does keep her house anyways, so...).

So yeah, you can certainly find some cases of Adrestia’s conduct being shitty in the past. And yet this isn’t the winning argument Fewix thinks it is because, unlike with Faerghus, excuses are never made for Adrestia’s past, the player is never asked to ignore their misdeeds, and Edelgard fixes their problems.

Dorothea’s mysterious father? Never treated as anything but a scumbag who kicked out her mother and condemned Dorothea to her miserable early life (and it’s real cute seeing Edelcrit suddenly becoming Dorothea stans when it suits them).

Bernadetta’s father? Treated as nothing more than a figure of scorn and contempt. He’s put under house arrest by Edelgard in Houses and given a gilded cage in Hopes that he spends almost three years occupying in a state of perpetual mortal terror. Hopes even doubles-down on this, by stating clearly that keeping Yuri from assassinating Bernie when they were younger was not an act of love and Bernie doesn’t forgive him because of it.

Baron Bartels? An unambiguous monster who abused Mercedes and her mother and created the Death Knight, leading to his unmourned death.

Petra’s treatment and the treatment of Brigid? An injustice Edelgard is working to correct, with Three Hopes going much further into detail on it.

See where I’m going with this? Every Adrestian crime is treated as a crime, every Adrestian abuser is treated as an abuser. Edelgard is working to correct the system that enabled these injustices. The Adrestia that did these things is not her Adrestia.

Now how about Faerghus?

The Faerghan Lords and soldiers that committed the genocide of the people of Duscur? Largely ignored in Three Houses, because Azure Moon is only interested in Duscur insofar as it can serve as window dressing for Dimitri’s personal tragedy, around which all of Faerghus and all of Azure Moon revolves. For fuck’s sake, in Three Houses you even help racist Faerghan jackboots suppress a justified Duscurian rebellion, and if you don’t join in on this crackdown you’re punished by losing Dedue.

The conquest of half of Sreng by Faeghus? What conquest? Three Houses doesn’t give a fuck (because it’s got jack all to do with Dimitri), and Three Hopes just makes Faerghus look even worse!

Matthias Gautier, who joined with King Lambert to beat around the people of Sreng until Macuil knocked the invaders back in their place, and then kept a Srengese prince prisoner for years and in modern times only disparagingly refers to him as an ungrateful “prisoner”? Treated as a troubled man and a bit of an dishonorable schemer, but still a good man at his core.

Dimitri never takes measures to correct the cultural norms that enable Faerghus’s worst behavior because they’re never treated as a problem to be corrected. That’s why Faerghus stans have to defend, ignore, or sidestep Faerghus’s misdeeds. The crimes the Adrestia of the past committed are indeed crimes that Edelgard is working to fix.

Don’t worry, we won’t be dealing with Fantasy Invader for long this time :p

No, Shez is heavily implied to be an Agarthan vessel for Arval that somehow didn’t take properly. Essentially they’re the would-be Volkhard to Arval’s Thales. Shez isn’t even amnesiac: Arval is!

Nope, but Edelgard’s haters here really want this one to be true since it somehow means Byleth is an ill-fit for Crimson Flower. I’ve seen them try to argue Edelgard should kill Byleth at the end to fulfill her supposed anti-Nabatean racism.

It paid off with the death of their leader??? That’s a pretty weird missing steps plan, I must say.

Right, because daytime is good in Three Houses and daytime is bad in Three Hopes. Why? Because they tried to argue before Hopes came out that Crimson Flower being the only route that ends at night means it’s a bad ending for Fodlan, so when Scarlet Blaze became the only route that ends during broad daylight, Fantasy Invader and his ilk had to rapidly move the goalposts.

How did the Agarthans lose any harder in Azure Gleam than they did in Scarlet Blaze? They lost commanders just the same. Is it because Rhea’s still alive in Azure Gleam? It’s so strange how FI thinks killing her was Thales’s only goal.

Oh, and about Claude’s route ending at dawn, and Dimitri’s at night:

No, and no again.

No.

...No.

So A, villains are not necessarily evil, nor are they necessarily wrong. But Edelcrits do enjoy their black and white thinking.

And B, if the devs ever did just outright say they envisioned Edelgard as an evil villain, it wouldn’t mean she actually is one, it would only mean that the devs are as bad at writing as Edelcrits have spent nearly four years screaming they are. They did not write an evil individual when they wrote Edelgard, nor did they write someone who was wrong in that Fodlan needed to change, whatever her detractors like to scream.

Who wants more Fantasy Invader?

... Well I don’t either, but he is a darkly amusing source of content to debunk.

Next we’re diving into a... fever dream where FI tries to convince everyone Edelgard’s a stupid, stupid little girl who was lied to and tricked.

Because Edelcrits don’t even respect that Edelgard is aware of what she’s trying to do unless they convince themselves she’s just trying to take over Fodlan.

Sadly, I’ve long forgotten what he was replying to. Judging from usual trends, probably something RandomNameless said.

Anyways, Aegir was working with the Agarthans, so that’s a distinction without a difference.

Fascinating how, when it’s time to deny Edelgard’s agency and portray her as a stupid little girl in over her head, they actually listen to what Thales said during that cutscene in White Clouds, but when it’s time to blame her for Duscur or justify Dimitri’s irrational assertion that she did Duscur, they just take it at face value when he says Duscur was done for her. In actuality, the Agarthans did Duscur for themselves.

First off, Aymr has nothing to do with the secret history unless you’re Fantasy Invader and you think “Devil Arcana! Devil means EVIL!”

Secondly, if Aymr represents the Agarthans having control over Edelgard in SB (you know, the route where she betrays them and kills them...), why do you get it in the story branch where Byleth - Sothis’s avatar - doesn’t die? Wouldn’t it be the other way around?

This’ll come up later (FI has a lot to say about Claude and GW in future posts) but FI does actually just cut to the quick and says the player getting Blutgang in GW is further “proof” of it being a bad route. So yes, Marianne’s Crest is a sign of corruption and she was right to hate herself. And naturally, this story branch gets the Blue Lions the “good” item, because if FI didn’t have double standards he wouldn’t have any.

No. I’ve touched on this subject before, but knowing the secret history (for god’s sake, stop it with the “sekrit”, you sound like a petulant child who realizes he’s already lost the argument and is resorting to being petty) is not what motivated Edelgard to go to war.

Secondly, here’s the full quote where Edelgard tells what she’s learned:

Edelgard: Professor... Do you know the true story behind the legend? The Relics were created by the hands of mankind. Seiros collected them after killing the 10 Elites. Seiros manipulated the people of the world and defeated the all-powerful King Nemesis.

This is all true.

Rhea created the Empire to get revenge on Nemesis. She admits to deceiving her followers herself:

Choice 1: I thought he was corrupted by his power?

Choice 2: Why would she do that?

Edelgard: That's the history the Church of Seiros maintains. However, it was little more than a simple dispute. The church maintains the false history that he was corrupted and turned evil.

Completely true. Nemesis was not corrupted by “evil gods”.

However, it was little more than a simple dispute.

In this, Edelgard’s mistaken: it was far more than a “simple dispute”. However, if you want to blame someone for Edelgard’s misunderstanding, blame Rhea. Neither Nemesis nor the Ten Elites had any clue why she was fighting them until the end.

As I’ve said before, the importance of this scene is NOT what Edelgard knows, but what she doesn’t know, the implication behind her not knowing it is that even Wilhelm didn’t know Rhea’s motives for wanting to fight Nemesis.

Should the one leading the people of the world be someone with humanity or a creature that can merely masquerade as a human at will? In the end, Seiros was victorious. The Immaculate One and her family then took control of Fódlan. I know this because that knowledge is passed down from emperor to emperor. And that is the because the first emperor is the human who cooperated with Seiros, allowing humanity to be controlled in secret.

This seems to be why Fantasy Invader thinks the secret history is why Edelgard fights Rhea, but it isn’t. She fights her out of an understanding that the Church of Seiros is the cornerstone of Fodlan’s horrific system of Crests and aristocracy.

It’s more of this recurring trend from Edelcrits where they want to de-legitimize anyone’s reasons for fighting Rhea. Edelgard wants to fight her because she was lied to, the Western Church want to fight her because they’re racist, and Claude at first doesn’t like her because he’s ignorant and needs enlightening by the white dragon pope (we’ll get to that...)

Jesus christ “her simp”. How fucking old is Fantasy Invader? 16? Am I justified to call Dedue a simp now? Probably not. I actually hold myself to standards.

And yeah, FI still thinks Hubert is an Agarthan.

And “Jeritza the serial killer”. How come when Dimitri falls to his violent psychosis he’s given infinite sympathy and chances to redeem himself, but when Jeritza becomes desperately mentally unwell he’s a “serial killer”. They’ve accused me of ableism just to do it themselves.

Ah well, good opportunity to shill a pretty old post of mine that got big last year.

But now to cycle back to the “willing to turn a blind eye” portion.

Fantasy Invader never sources anything he says (which means I then have to research what the fuck he’s even talking about), but I believe he’s referring to Edelgard’s B support with Hubert in Hopes.

To open, Hubert’s lamenting that Rhea escaped into the Kingdom because they didn’t surround Garreg Mach and tear it apart when they had the chance. Edelgard admonishes him;

Hubert, that idea came from Lord Arundel... That is to say, Thales. And it’s an impractical idea at that - one based on unreliable experimental assets that had never been tested in battle.

That’s really it. We don’t know how much she knows of the nature of the “assets” or how they were even going to be made. Given how alarmed she is at the sight of Remire, it’s very unlikely she was aware of the full scope of the devastation the Agarthans planned to cause.

She never said Nemesis was the hero. She doesn’t make any moral statement on Nemesis at all, just that he wasn’t corrupted by evil gods - which he wasn’t.

She can see with her eyes that Rhea has enormous influence over Fodlan, and that she was a cruel beast to screamed her intent to murder Byleth in an exceedingly violent way the moment Byleth turned on her - funny how Edelcrits never seem to notice Edelgard only calls Rhea a “cruel beast” on the route where she behaves with extreme violence.

Something to recall about Edelgard is that she’s a very dramatic person; she tends to make grandiose statement that fall short of her actual intent. See her saying she would “obliterate” Rhea, just to then offer her terms of surrender.

And lastly, she probably doesn’t believe the legends that her family claims descent from Seiros - and she’d be right to, given we know House Hresvelg has its Crest of Seiros through blood transfusion, not from Rhea boinking Wilhelm.

Also, fucking “Willy”...

No, she’s not descended from Rhea. When Rhea says she “shared blood”, she means that quite literally, not in the usual metaphorical sense. Unless you want to propose that Flayn had kids with Linhardt’s ancestors, you creep.

So what FI is talking about on the second point comes from the original Japanese reading of Edelgard’s A support with Byleth in Houses.

Now in this regard I have to rely on machine translation, sadly, but;

I'm relieved that even though you're so far from humans, you still have a human side. 

Well, in the same way, I may have drifted away from ordinary people a little. 

In much the same way Céline uses “human” when talking to Alear,

Edelgard’s not saying she and Byleth aren’t literally human, just that they’ve grown apart from ordinary people.

(Unless you want to accuse Céline of being racist against dragons, which would be a pretty hard sell, I have to say).

The Divine Dragon in Engage and the Nabateans in Houses and Hopes occupy a similar space; they’re treated like gods, not another species. In this regard, “human” means not the species but the trait of being approachable and limited. Mortal, not divine, which is the crux of Byleth’s dichotomy.

Additionally, Edelgard, who is human but has grown detached due to her experiences and trauma, is comparing her experiences to Byleth’s. How on earth is Edelgard being metaphorically distant from her fellow man comparable to Byleth supposedly literally not being human?

Maybe Fantasy Invader thinks Edelgard is applying the “one drop of blood rule” to herself. Yuck.

Oh, and Byleth’s not half-Nabatean. Jeralt was human, Sitri was neither.

She’s creating a world for the Agarthans by... killing the Agarthans.

Again, Fantasy Invader seems to think Thales’s plan was:

1. Kill Rhea.

2. Spend the next thousand years binging Netflix at my pad in Shambhala.

Nah, he kinda wanted to take over the surface, too, and he fails at that in Crimson Flower.

Edelgard isn’t achieving the Agarthans’ goals for them if she completes step 3 of their plan and then turns on them and kills them with steps 4 through 6 still in progress.

Fantasy Invader is exhausting to deal with sometimes, lol. It’s all half-formed gish-gallops with him, it reminds me of the angry ranting car vlogs Logicked debunks on You Tube.

Twice the things, double the wrong!

Ahh, yes, that was a bad one.

Nope, Constance uses Agarthan magic techniques to help maintain true peace in the Empire. Not their technology.

And no, it really isn’t a real possibility.

So because Edelgard thinks Claude isn’t suited to entrust Fodlan to, it means nobody else is? That’s a leap!

Really, it’s more of a no-headcanon.

Also fantastic how even Edelgard retiring and handing off the reins of power is treated as sus by her haters now. Do they get suspicious when she eats her breakfast, too? FESS UP, EDELGARD, DO YOU EAT NABATEAN EGGS WITH YOUR TOAST? FROM WHENCE CAME THE BAAAAAAAACON?

This headcanon of his rests purely on the shifting sand of... uhh... “Well, she probably did that!”

Fantastic.

And he’s still beating this bizarre “Edelgard wants to be seen as a god!” shtick.

Yeah, Rhea gets pretty mad when people muscle in on her false religion turf. See her getting mad that Claude reformed the Alliance into the Federation in GW (she immediately tries to pull Lords away from the Federation before Claude even begins his alliance with Edelgard).

That said, wanting to kill Varley is based and redpilled, but it does represent Rhea taking pretty extreme measures to maintain her control over a sovereign state.

Almost like... almost like Rhea has power and wants to keep it.

We get our word that the Southern Church is pretty sus tho from Gilbert and Gautier. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take their word for much. Not only are both... uhh... scum, they have a political bias to paint the SC as poorly as possible.

Also, Edelgard isn’t a Social Darwinist...

Also also, I don’t think Edelgard restores the Southern Church post-CF. At least I don’t recall it.

The Church of Seiros doesn’t meaningfully preach that. Explain the state of Fodlan otherwise.

Man, Edelgard sure is weird, getting her church to preach things she doesn’t believe in.

Fantasy Invader’s gone from “they’re probably doing this” to “they’re doing this for sure and here’s the details” remarkably fast.

Uhh, I don’t have to actually refute any of this, right? He’s not providing evidence in the first place, he’s just guessing, lol.

Ah, this classic.

You don’t know that, lol.

Reminder that Fantasy Invader thinks Edelgard is giving the Adrestian Nobles more power.

Edelgard’s corrupting the people, or is Edelgard herself corrupt? Neither is true, nor is she oppressing the people.

Remember that Fantasy Invader is asserting every step of this without evidence. This all based on the premise that Varley is probably doing all this.

Wait a minute, Fantasy Invader. Are... are you suggesting... are you implying that, in certain circumstances, it’s okay to interfere with the politics of a sovereign territory? Like if you think the people in power over that territory are abusing their power?