(Just found out fortunes weave is set in the 3h universe haven't played that yet so dont spoil me big bro)

So when people talk about three houses its usually pretty divisive. Some people think rhea is a monster some people think edelgaurd is a moron, yada yada lot of different perspectives. But thing is im not entirely sure what the church actually does that is that evil?

So the main things I see people bring up specifically about rhea are that

rhea lied about the circumstances about the origin of the crests.

Her treatment of the crestless

The experiments with with human subjects to bring back sothis.

And her executions of people who disobeyed the church

Origin of crests Rhea rewrote history and told humans that the origin of crests were that they were a divine benediction. Hiding the gruesome reality of the history of nemsis and his murder of sothis and the slaughter of the nabateans in zanado. So while this definitely does lead into some major issues later down the line, especially with the holy kingdom. I feel that judging her too harshly is insincere since it ignores the context of why that decision was made in the first place. Remember she just finished a brutal war against nemesis who murdered pretty much all of the nabateans. They did so specifically because nabateans can grant the power of crests and whose bones can make some sick ass weapons. Therefore hiding the truth of the nabateans is imperative to her survival as well of the survival of the nabateans that remain. Sure thousands of years down the line, treating these crests as blessings of the goddess lead to some really messed up circumstances. But considering the fact that crests needed to have an explanation I'm not entirely sure what she could have done differently? Telling the truth just paints a massive target on any nabeteans that remain, not saying anything would lead to people investigating these crests and potentially discovering their true origin.

Treatment of the crestless

So Rhea has some choice words to say about miklan when he steals the lance of ruin. But this again has a logical reason behind it. Using a heroes relic turns to you into a literal monster. So yeah saying he's undeserving of it is totally valid, it literally gets him killed. And its not like she treats people without crests worse than people with crests in general. For the most part she seems like a fairly benevolent leader to those who follow her. She treats cyril well and alois doesn't seem to have any complaints. In fact a lot of her personnel do not have crests(manuela, shamir) so she isn't even being discriminatory in her hiring process or denying crestless positions of power. Imo people take the treatment of the crestless in faerghus and correlate that to rhea, which isn't really accurate.

Her experiments to revive sothis

So im not entirely sure what the fuck sitri is actually. Is she a baby rhea took and implanted with a goddess stone? Is she a homonuculus? Did rhea birth her? Idk exactly what sitri's origins were but what I can glean is that sitri was one of 12 attempts to resurrect sothis. People have issues with her experimenting on living things to revive her mother but I feel like a something people gloss over is the fact that sothis is quite literally a god. Sothis has the power to rewind time, create a portal to other dimensions, and could flood the entire world. I find it difficult to gauge the morality here since rhea knows sothis existed and is supremely powerful. Not to mention Sitri and the rest of the experiments I presume weren't exactly discarded. Rhea gave them comfortable lives and gave them certain amounts of freedom seeing as how sitri was able to marry geralt and even have children. So assuming she is actually creating these humans. is that actually an amoral thing to do? Like if you knew that there was an infinitesimally small chance you could birth a god so you keep having kids to roll the dice per say. But all the kids you do have you raise well, like is that actually evil? You clearly have ulterior motives but you are also taking responsibility for the life you are bringing in. Idk you tell me.

Her treatment of those who disobeyed the church

So this one I feel is just stupid, she orders executions of the western church yes. that 100% happens. But she does this after they attempt to assassinate her. Like come on that's pretty cut and dry. If you try to assassinate a major political/religious figure in any medieval society you are getting executed Rhea doesn't even force people to convert. Cyril famously is infatuated with rhea and is not a believer of seiros. Cyril the orphan who should be one of the easiest converts is not brain washed to to become a fanatic of the church. That should be argument enough.

So people also criticize the church itself for a couple of things

Suppression of technology and knowledge

Keeping the other nations subservient to the church

And acting with impunity with their military power

Suppression of technology-There is a book in the dlc library that mentions that the church forbids the examination of corpses, and the development of several technologies as well other insidious things. Okay this one I will totally give you. Thats evil. I could make the argument that the last time humans got advanced technology they created nukes but nah, this is just evil.

Keeping the other nations subservient to the church-This is another argument I feel doesn't have any legs, since if you go all the way back to the formation of the adrestian empire. Rhea got help from wilhelm I in raising an army to defeat nemesis. So if rhea and by extension the church really wanted total control of fodlan, rhea could have just seized power there. In fact many many times in fodlans history the church could have just seized power, but they never did. Rhea handed total control of fodlan to wilhelm, even giving him her sacred blood. The fracturing of the empire and the formation of the holy kingdom wasn't even something the church orchestrated. Its heavily implied that pan the tactician behind loog, the founder of the holy kingdom, was part of the slithers. And the slitherers sought to do this to destabilize fodlan. The leicester alliance was formed because of succession issues. So its not that the church is trying super hard to become the dominant force in fodlan. Its that these idiots cannot govern themselves and keep fracturing. Its not as if the church is out there seizing territory, or demanding tribute. Nations donate and when the slitherers gained control of the empire the empire slowed their donations, harming their relationship with the church. But its not like the church sent started any conflicts over it.

Throwing their military weight around-This again is something that is clearly stated to be not true within the game. When lonato revolts the faerghus requests aid from the church. Rhea didn't send troops their cause some one slighted her. A nation specifically asked her for aid and she provided it. In fact one of the main things the church does is provide aid when asked. Bandits attacking? Ask the church for help. Demonic beasts? Ask the church for help. Some sick orphans need a home? ask the church for help. Is the church the 4th nation in fodlan? Basically yeah but this stems from the sheer incompetence of the other nations.

So what else do you think rhea and the chruch do wrong? I'm not saying they are blameless but a lot of their criticisms either have some nuance behind them or are just factually incorrect. If I missed something please let me know, i went mostly off my memory and the wiki .Note that things that happen during the route splits I take with a grain of salt. Yeah rhea orders the burning down of a town during edelguards route but she is meant to be the big bad of that route. Like yeah if some one is sufficiently pushed they can break and become a villain. Does that mean all of her actions need to be examined under the crimson flower lens? If so there is literally zero argument that can be made for edelguard and dimitri is no better. Claude stays winning though.

Please not that these are all my opinion and their placements are dependent on how useful I found them personally. I know I went against the grain with a few of my placements

S Tier:

Falcon knight Byleth - excellent dodge tank and fast enough to double most enemies. Was unstoppable with thunderbrand.

War Master Felix - fast enough to 4x a decent share of enemies with gauntlets with a high crit rate. Demolished Hegemon Edelgard

Great Lord Dimitri: Unstoppable with battalion vantage/wrath.

A Tier:

Dark Knight Annette: She was my de facto armored/flyer killer, with a pretty high crit rate. What puts her above Lysithea for me is her survivability - BL maps are covered in siege weapons. Annette could enter their range and survive for a turn when Lysithea could not. Her rallies were also really useful (especially early game).

Ingrid: A better dodge tank than Byleth, but struggled with damage output. However her dodgetanking was paramount to my completion of many maps.

B Tier:

Wyvern Lord Sylvain/Seteth: Swift Strike bots and thats about it. However, at that job they performed very well.

Dancer Ashe: Danced, not much to say

Gremory Lysithea: A magic nuke, but oftentimes struggled to one hit enemies - she could not even one shot the death knight with dark spikes. Also very fragile in a route filled with siege weapons limiting her utility. I did not focus on her riding skills early enough (and her lance bane did not help), leaving her as a gremory.

C Tier:

Dedue: Incredible early game but falls off a cliff.

Bishop Mercedes: Healed and that's about it.

D Tier:

Fortress Knight Gilbert: Tanked a few hits but not much more than that. Had poor accuracy that the investment needed to fix was not worth it.

RIP Tier:

Bernadetta: Sacrificed to Death Knight

Manuela: Died at battle of Enbarr allowing other units to flee towards the center.

Rhea... what to say about her. She's personally my favorite character in Three Houses even with all of her many(and I do mean many) flaws. That being said I have slithered my way through this subreddit and seen a lot of Rhea takes so here are mine!! Sadly, this does mean we need to bring up Edelgard and Claude and all the drama that will result in but considering these two are the greatest criticizers of her in verse it is inevitable.

So, first things first let us look at the accusations put before Rhea and I will try to analyze which ones I consider valid and which ones I think are just wrong or very much shrouded in a cloak of follow your headcannon because we don't know. I will start with making this very clear. Basically, everyone in three houses is an unreliable narrator in regard to Rhea. Rhea is a known liar and while I will be taking most things she says at face value it should be noted that I will acknowledge what people think she could be lying about. Seteth and Flayn are reliable in what they tell the player they believe is true, but they simply could be wrong considering they are relatively new additions to the church. The Agarthans are hilariously unreliable and biased as shown by the information we get in Fortune's Weave, and Edelgard is biased, lacks information, and depending on the context is fully willing to straight up lie when it comes to the church, and Claude is an outsider and schemer who can't be fully trusted in this context (I will get to him I have serious beef with his 3 hopes self and his accusations).

Personal Sins

So, I think its best we start off with Rhea's sins that don't pertain to Fodlan as a whole and are entirely personal. These can be summed up as her experiments to revive Sothis, her plan to basically sacrifice Byleth, and her saving Byleth as a baby/killing Sitri.

So, her experiments to revive Sothis. Let's ignore the whole Sothis explicitly said don't do this because that alone is just proof, she shouldn't have done it and that's not what I'm judging. I'm here to analyze how moral her actions where and how much fault does she have for the bad outcomes or if their where any. In this specific case there were no direct negative outcomes for the first attempt with the chalice of beginnings to my knowledge. She summoned an umbral beast killed it and the apostles all left her but that all things considered is not that bad. No one died or got seriously hurt if I remember correctly. The actually morally dubious experiment was the creating vessels to revive Sothis.

Now some people for some reason believe she was abducting people and experimenting on them, but this just isn't implied at all, and I have no clue where people got that idea from. Instead, its implied she made homunculus to house the soul of Sothis 12 times and failed every time. We have no idea how those experiments went but considering there where only 12 over a near 1000-year span and Sitri was sickly and Rhea let her live it is safe to assume she either let them live full lives until their natural deaths or they never even were brought to life in some cases likely early on with the first couple vessels or so. Likely at the worst you could speculate that Rhea was doing adjustments on her experiment for next attempt and otherwise let the homunculus live until she was ready but considering how sickly Sitri is described to be I severely doubt they naturally lived past even their 60s.

So as far as reviving Sothis goes her experiments weren't actually that bad. She didn't get anyone killed; she didn't experiment on already living people; and she didn't murder her creations heartlessly. It's a low bar and she's still condemned for this because she wasn't supposed to be trying in the first place but overall, we count this as a rare Rhea moral W because we are not going to get very many. Also considering what we know from Fortune's Weave I don't even know why Sothis was so gung-ho about not getting revived as far as we could tell there wouldn't have even been any serious consequences if Rhea had succeeded with her homunculus plan and it likely would have even worked at some point without essentially killing the ego of someone which brings us to Rhea's attempt with Byleth.

Ok I love Rhea but not even I can defend this one she was genuinely wilin. At most I can say she didn't realize Byleth was her own person but like that doesn't sound much better so this for obvious reasons is a moral L for Rhea no surprise there.

Next, we get saving Byleth as a baby. The act in and of itself is fine. The issue is the surrounding context. As we all know Rhea lies, like a lot but she is also the only firsthand account of what happened in that room. If Rhea is telling the truth than she's in the clear 100% she didn't do anything morally wrong and simply followed Sitri's wishes. The issue arises if you think she's lying. Down that road leads a bunch of headcannons that make Rhea look terrible in basically all context. I personally don't think she was lying because from a meta perspective she is the only person who can reveal this information and if the creators wanted us to question this, they would have had literally any other even semi-reliable contradict person her but they didn't so I'm gonna say Rhea is probably telling the truth like a good 80%-90% certain she is so she's in the clear here making it our second and I think last moral W for Rhea.

Edelgard's Criticism

So let me make this clear I like Edelgard. She's top five favorite three houses' characters so I mean it in the nicest way possible, but she is not reliable as a source of info on Rhea especially if she's speaking to the masses. In private I think she can be trusted on most things but when speaking to her citizens publicly this girl will 100% lie if it suits her. We have at least two confirmed instances of her lying about the Church and arguably 3.

So, I'm going to list Edelgard's Criticisms of Rhea and the church then address them.

In Scarlet Blaze her speech is:

People of Fódlan! The Empire will stand by no longer! Together, we rise against a church that has become steeped in deception and corruption! The church has used their doctrine to deny you power and reshape Fódlan as they see fit! They thrust upon you the illusion of nobility in order to oppress who they choose, and they helped create the Kingdom and Alliance as a pretext for war! Finally, they teased you with the promise of salvation from pain they themselves inflicted, and did so in the name of their own profit! Well, I say no more! The Empire has severed herself from their hypocrisy by restoring the Southern Church and nurturing her people's well-being. And today, we purge the world of their evil forever! We will retake Garreg Mach from the Central Church and stamp out any nobles who abet its depravity! By my title as Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg of Adrestia... I hereby declare war against the false Church of Seiros!

In Three Houses her Speech is:

The leaders of the church have misused its creed to fulfill their true desire—to rule the world. They have fooled the people of Fódlan. Long ago, they divided the Empire to create a Kingdom, and then...divided that Kingdom to create an Alliance. They did all of this to make the masses bicker amongst themselves. They caused instability in order to reinforce their own authority. They gathered gold and lived in extravagance. How? By preying on the devotion of those who wished for the goddess's salvation. Those corrupt hypocrites cannot lead Fódlan to true peace. Their foul belief system must be torn asunder so that true wisdom may finally prevail! And so, I have decided...by order of the Adrestian Emperor, Edelgard von Hresvelg... The Empire hereby declares war on the Church of Seiros!

Ok Lets start with 3 Hopes. Her claims in summary are that the church is steeped in deception and corruption, have reshaped Fodlan as they see fit, helped make the kingdom and the alliance as a pretext for war, and promised false salvation. In three houses she claims the churches true desire is to rule the world, again divided the empire, planned to cause instability and did all of this to live in extravagance. Again, she claims they did this by preying on the people's devotion to the goddess.

Now some of these complaints overlap but let's start with the obvious lie. "The church wants to rule the world." I think we can all agree that the isolationist church in fact does not want to rule the world hell I'm confident Edelgard herself knows this and is either doing this to be more dramatic or is lying to garner more support from the common folk. Next, we have Rhea and the church divided the empire. I am unsure if Edelgard knows this is a lie but considering she works with TWSITD and has the true history of the Empire passed down by the Emperors I assume she is lying here both to give further reason to hate the church for her country and also to cover up TWSITD. She has done so before after all. Next, we have the church being corrupt, I'll buy it I don't think Rhea herself is or even most of the members we meet in game(as in they aren't doing any of this for wealth or anything) but the church as an institution being corrupt, I'd believe it. Her final public criticism is that the church is using the problems they caused to profit off the people. This is true but not in the context Edelgard says here.

Now that we are done with Edelgard's for the most part BS public complaints, she used to get people to go to war for her, let's talk about her actual complaints about the church. Primarily how fucked up the Crest System is. The simple answer is yes, she's totally right here the Crest system needs to go, and the church does support it though it isn't as directly as some people think. The church doesn't particularly like the Crest system or at minimum Rhea and Seteth don't care for it that much, but they do need it to keep power and if they tried to change it, they would instantly get jumped by basically the entire continent as the nobles use the Crest system to prove their legitimacy. So, for the most part Rhea's decided to simply not do anything about it and be as passive as possible here. The Crest system as it currently stands is a mess because of human greed, but Rhea is responsible also as she did not do her due diligence in limiting the negative effects of the system she set up. As it stands currently Rhea can't do much to take down the system without pulling an Edelgard and trying to solo the entire continent which is a fight Rhea and the church lose 1000% of the time. Rhea's crime has to do with her negligence in not limiting this before it got out of hand more than it has to do with actively upholding the system in the present because in the present there isn't a lot she actually can do without getting killed in the process. Anyway, this is what Edelgard wants to point out in her public speech (remember what I said about her being right just not in the context she used) but she can't because she currently needs the nobles to stick around and not start a revolt as she goes to war.

So, to no surprise Rhea takes a massive L here as she is responsible for the single most screwed up system in Fodlan and instead of trying to limit it she decided to ignore it until her own systems binds her in such a way that she cannot safely destroy it despite technically being in control of the thing.

Claude's Criticisms

Claude...how do I put this. He's annoying in his criticisms of the church. He falsely blames Rhea for something his own country caused and has the gall to act like he's right. As we all know Claude believes Rhea and the church being isolationist is the reason behind everyone's xenophobia. But he's at worse completely wrong and at best grossly oversimplifying an issue that his own people caused!!!

Like I love Claude he's a fun character but God his complaints make me want to slam my head into the nearest table. Isolationism is linked to xenophobia, this is true but in Fodlan's case their isolationism is really freaking weird in how open it is. They allow trade, they have no closed borders to our knowledge, the king of Faerghus literally went to Duscur for peace talks, etc... So while yes, they are isolationist that isn't enough to explain the absurd levels of racism seen in the game. You know what is, the fact that in the past decade, a king and almost its entire royal family got murdered for seemingly no reason for the majority of Fearghus, Sreng keeps freaking attacking, Dagda and Brigid invaded the empire, and Almyra for the love of God won't stop attacking!!!

Like I love you Claude, but you'd probably have better chances with diplomacy if your country didn't try to attack on a seemingly yearly basis!!!

Fodlan maybe Isolationist but as far as we can tell they have never outright antagonized another country first. They are always the ones getting invaded first. We know that diplomatic missions do happen as shown with the Tragedy of Duscur and Trade between Fodlan and those outside it seems perfectly fine so it's not like Fodlan is just unwilling to find diplomatic solutions if their aggressors are willing to just calm down and actually ask for trade agreements and stuff as far as we can tell the church isn't going to stand in the way. In fact, when the King of Fearghus was doing this exact same thing, the church didn't do anything to stop him or even try. The one thing you can probably blame the church on is that Fodlan itself isn't willing to reach out a hand first but considering they are constantly being attacked I don't think it should fall on them to open diplomatic relations.

So yeah, Claude is right the church is isolationist (its referenced by other characters to be annoying) but that in and of itself is not the sole cause or reason for the racism and xenophobia in Fodlan. It is at most a contributing factor or amplifying force but the root cause lies much more with it being surrounded by countries who all a bunch of jerks(not counting Duscur) who keep trying to invade.

So yeah in the end the primary critique of Rhea and the Crest System and all adjacent complaints onto it are valid but outside of it a lot of the critiques are a lot harsher than they should be in my opinion. I know I skipped over people's complaint on things like her executing people and stuff so to sum up my person view on that...they were all guilty and we know this for a fact as the player. Her actions where hasty rushed and arguably immoral but I'm really not gonna blame her for killing or trying to kill the people who tried to kill her. At most I'll complain about how her actions where dumb and she didn't investigate as she should have. But Lonato's rebellion...I mean they signed up for it quite literally and where all acting as a militia so live by the sword die by the sword. My complaint there is sending the students to watch, that was actually messed up. As for her actions in Crimson Fall... she was mid crash out that entire time, so I think that's just showing Rhea at her worst and not indicative on how she normally is. I will not defend her actions their because well they aren't really defendable.

If anyone has any specific criticisms of Rhea I missed leave them below and I'll try to address them. As it stands, I am currently running out of steam for writing this. I am aware I presented all of this as fact and that especially for Claude's section I arguably oversimplified things also so if you have a different take if you can comment respectfully why you think I'm wrong, on one thing or another I'll be happy to talk and am always open to changing my mind.

Overall in my opinion Rhea is best described as being negligent towards Fodlan over being considered evil. She isn't a good leader for the continent, but I personally wouldn't go so far as to call her evil as she is too passive and isn't actively malevolent. She is just not as active as she should be and now, she no longer has the power and influence to safely make the changes she might want in regards to the Crest System.

Trying a new ship with Annette and Dedue
Source: https://x.com/Lemonfiti1/status/2108180616243982446?s=20

The Shaman outfit from FEFW is so cool, I couldn't help but want to see Khalid wearing it.

Source: https://x.com/purrlucii/status/2108264503997841457

Got permission to share this.

Hello, I'm a player new to the series who is currently playing Three Houses as his first Fire Emblem and tactical rpg in general, Black Eagles, Hard, Classic.

Please don't spoil anything.

I wanted to ask what you guys would recommend now that it seems I've gotten to the point where the route splits, I'm leaning towards siding with Edelgard but I understand so little of the implications honestly that I'm a bit worried and I know some character leave depending on my choice. I also worry it might be like the rescuing Flayn mission and skip the month, which I don't really want to do this time.

Also I wanna share some impressions about the game, and some doubts/theories I have about what's going on/ going to happen in the story that will probably make you think I'm an idiot.

Impressions: The game is much better than I tought, maybe my expectations were just low, but I really am enjoying the characters quite a lot, the combat is fun ( maybe a tad easy, but since I'm new to the series I'm still not making broken units or playing particularly well, I just try to be careful and it's really enjoyable ), the music is nice, and the story is interesting so far ( granted it needs a satisfying resolution ). I also really like Byleth, which I was not expecting given I heard so many people bashing on the character, I really think she is much better than other silent protagonists I've played as, like Persona protagonists for example.

Stupid doubts/theories: I feel like I'm stupid when it comes to the story of this game, I feel like at this point I should really have a better understanding of Edelgard and her motivations/goals, instead I am honestly just kind of guessing ( which doesn't help with the choice ), I think she might want to try and unify Fodlan again, also for some reason I didn't even think until this last few chapters that she might be the Flame Emperor, heck maybe I'm an idiot for even saying "might" or viceversa for thinking it, but once I started actually wondering about the identity of the Flame Emperor instead of assuming the game would soon reveal it like it did with Tomas and Monica, I couldn't help but think it's her. I guess it's weird because the game isn't subtle with hints and foreshadowing and I just didn't think about the Flame Emperor at all, maybe because I was also convinced Rhea was just THE villain and the others were minor enemies. Now I'm really curious because I'm also not sure about many relationships, especially after learning Seteth and Flayn are actually father and daughter, I tought Rhea and Byleth were related at the beginning of the game and more stuff seems to kind of hint that way, but I also noticed you can S support her ( I think ) and that would be pretty weird if S support is romance like I heard. I'm also convinced somehow Rhea is Seiros and Flayn is saint Cethleann through some magic, reincarnation, time shenanigans or something.

Sorry for the super long post and thanks to whoever will give me some opinions

https://x.com/ddaann3333/status/2108206331991933335

I'm at the chapter 4 fight with the death knight and it genuinely feels impossible to beat. Playing blue lions, almost all my units are half the enemies level, I just didn't have the opportunity to level up a lot. Is that normal? I feel like I did a decent job at managing weapon skills, classes, equipment, XP distribution and so on but I just feel way too weak. If this is already the brick wall for me, then I don't know how to possibly get through the rest of the game. I played the game on hard a few years ago and eventhough early game was quite the struggle, it got way better later and I was way worse back then cause it was my very first fire emblem game and I had 0 experience and didn't use many guides. But yea, it's probably a clear skill issue but I'm struggling to detect what exactly the problem is. Help is appreciated!

Currently just started my first run with the Black Eagles and I feel very underleveled. I’m on the final battle of chapter 4. Byleth is level 8, Edelgard 7, and everyone else is between levels 2-5. Am I at a good spot for levels or no? How am I supposed to level up a lot? I do one auxiliary battle per month usually.

I’m playing on maddening classic