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    Fire Emblem Dorothea fanart

    October 21, 2019

    Fire Emblem Dorothea fanart

    Dorothea fanart

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 10:02 AM PDT

    My husband and I are big Fire Emblem fans so when we got married this weekend, we exchanged swords instead of rings! ��⚔️��

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 06:23 AM PDT

    I was commissioned to draw a cute Edeleth picture!

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 01:47 PM PDT

    I drew the consequences of being too strong

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 08:32 AM PDT

    I drew Edelgard!!

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 05:01 PM PDT

    I drew Dimitri and Byleth!

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 10:28 AM PDT

    Fire Emblem Black Ink - Laegjarn

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 05:00 PM PDT

    Death Knight Mercie build

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 09:46 AM PDT

    Just ordered a copy of Conquest so I drew a shy grump!

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 01:20 PM PDT

    Book 'em

    Posted: 20 Oct 2019 09:44 PM PDT

    Drew my OTP

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 09:26 AM PDT

    (Inktober: Snow) Ingrid and Sylvain - she's always had Alert Stance+

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 11:11 AM PDT

    Miklan's Inheritance (Part 2)

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 12:09 AM PDT

    Flayn-o-Fish

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 06:57 PM PDT

    Goosetober 21st: So that's where those lost items went!

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 11:51 AM PDT

    Dimitri Doodle

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 01:49 AM PDT

    I made a handful of fe3h charms...!

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 08:02 AM PDT

    Good Intentions gone bad: a Rhea breakdown

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 05:29 PM PDT

    Three Houses is something of a unique game in terms of community reaction to it. Unlike every other Fire Emblem game, Three Houses offers several different perspectives on the same conflict, and leaves it to the player to decide which version of the story they like best. This has lead to some great and thought provoking discussions. It has also lead to people misunderstanding or deliberately demonizing characters that they don't agree with. Rhea/Seiros is by no means the only victim of this, and arguably isn't even the worst of it. But unlike say, Dimitri and Edelgard, there hasn't really been much of an effort to properly break her down and understand why she does what she does, and any conversations that attempt to analyze or defend her tend to get derailed and turn ugly quickly. So let's take a moment to try and understand the archbishop of the Church of Seiros, Seiros herself. And to do that, we need to start at the beginning.

    In the beginning: a story of dragons and revenge.

    Seiros is a Nabatean, Fodlan's version of dragons, having been born from the blood of Sothis, the progenitor god of the continent (that or a sufficiently powerful dragon to be viewed as such, or both. Depends how you want to read it.) At first, the tribe coexisted with the native nation of Agartha, who advanced quite impressive technology wise. Eventually however, they grew arrogant and tried to kill the Nabateans to prove that they were beyond needing gods. It went so well that they were all but driven extinct by Seiros, who razed the country to the ground. What few survivors there were fled to underground shelters, where they would spend a very long time in exile, waiting for a chance at revenge. The conflict between Agartha and the Nabateans had also caused significant damage to the continent itself (probably not helped by the fact that one side had ICBMs), and so the goddess Sothis took it upon herself to try and mend the land. This took centuries, if not longer, to fully finish and once it was done Sothis fell into a deep slumber.

    Some time later, TWSD as they were now called convinced a bandit named Nemesis that he should kill Sothis and bring her body back to them. For whatever reason, he agreed to this, and from her remains the first Crest and the first Relic was made. Emboldened by this, Nemesis brought his followers (who would become the Ten Elites) to the Red Canyon where the dragon tribe lived, and they killed every Nabatean they could get their hands on. Only five including Seiros survived to watch Nemesis establish total control over Fodlan thanks to him and his men having super weapons.

    But Seiros wasn't going to take that lying down, and with the help of the survivors of her tribe (who would become known as the Four Saints) and Wilhelm I who would go on to become the first emperor of Adrestia. Wihlelm got the name for his empire from an oracle, and that its future would be blessed by Sothis...Except, of course, it wasn't, because she was dead. This is presumably something Seiros told Wihlelm to get him on her side (alongside giving him her blood), and the lie that Nemesis' profile says he claimed to fight against (assuming he even knew about it at all and wasn't just making crap up himself. The profile does say it was a pretense after all, which is a word you usually use to indicate something someone doesn't actually believe what they're saying). We'll get into why she likely did this in a second. In the end, Seiros faced down against Nemesis personally and slew him in a fit of rage, stabbing him repeatedly yelling about her murdered mother, showing she's already not exactly in the most stable of mental states even this early on (though, one can hardly blame her in this case). So, now the war is more or less over and Fodlan is once again left in ruins. What's a dragon girl to do?

    The Church of Seiros: Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.

    Now, the church already existed in some capacity at this point, but after the war Seiros proceed to reform it in various ways. Except, what Seiros did wasn't entirely honest. In fact, a lot of what she did was just wholesale making shit up. A lot of people write her off here, and in their defense lies on such a scale are highly questionable, but let's actually break down the two primary things she lies about and why she likely did it.

    God is alive and can hear you, honest:

    Even before the end of the War of Heroes, Seiros wasn't exactly rushing to tell people god was dead and that they killed her. Or, given how there is know knowledge of Nabatea in modern Fodlan, what the hell she and the other Four Saints even were. And once the war was over, Seiros just kept on pretending that Sothis was alive and well, she was just...Away. But she would totally come back someday guys, honest. So why would she even keep the church around in the first place, let alone start coming up with creeds that were supposedly from Sothis' mouth but she never got a chance to truly say (I do feel it's worth pointing out that we don't actually know that Sothis would disagree with the church's teachings. She never indicates as such to Byleth at any point even once she has her memories back, and Seiros would know her better than anyone. Still, Sothis never exactly got a chance to confirm or deny anything, so Seiros is still lying here.)?

    There's a few reasons. The first and most obvious one is that after decades of war, the people of Fodlan needed something to believe in to keep going. They had already been worshiping the goddess up to that point, so...Why crush their hopes now? It'd be much easier to just let them keep worshiping the goddess. Dishonest, yes, but would that really be worse than causing further social discord by telling people that they were alone in the world and their prayers meant nothing? At least, that's likely how Seiros and the Saints saw it.

    However, the primary reason is that Seiros intended from day one to bring Sothis back at some point. I cannot stress the following point enough: Everything Seiros does from this point onwards is under the assumption that she could bring her mother back, and that if she did so Sothis could fix everything. So long as Sothis came back at some point, anything Seiros does to keep the continent together would be justified, because Sothis would be able to fix any damage that was caused along the way, and could return Fodlan to a golden age. No matter what lies she has to tell, no matter how many people she has to kill along the way, it will all be fine, because the goddess will return and set everything right. Her entire motive, her reason for continuing to exist in spite of her unimaginable pain, is that if she keeps going, she will find a way to resurrect Sothis and save Fodlan.

    As for why she hides the existence of Nabatea, well, consider what happened the last time humans found out about their existence. It's pretty understandable that she'd want to avert another massacre if she could. Still, said massacre did happen, which leads us to the other big lie.

    The Ten Elites did nothing wrong:

    Seiros' version of the War of Heroes is quite different from what actually happened. In her version, the Ten Elites were on her side, and Crests and Relics were gifts from the goddess, and not the literal hearts and bones of her people turned into deadly weapons. This revision of history was likely primarily fueled by a desire to have some sort of structure in this new Fodlan. Had Seiros kept to the truth behind the involvement of the Ten Elites in the war, their descendants would likely have been persecuted and eventually driven extinct. Which, while I'm sure that would have been personally satisfying to her given what they did, wasn't really a productive use of their powers. No, to her it was better to change the narrative to turn them into heroes, so that their descendants would be able to create a clear power structure. Besides, she had already given Wilhelm her blood by this point and his son still had its power, so it should last for a while, right?

    It's worth noting that odds are that there was going to be some sort of class system even without the Crests' influence. That's sort of just how humans work in general, we're drawn towards creating hierarchies in our societies. Still, in Seiros' mind, better to actually give some basis behind who's in power instead of humans just arbitrarily choosing a metric, which might lead to more conflict down the line.

    And so things went for many, many years. Seiros maintained control over the Church under various pseudonyms, trying to maintain order and bring back Sothis. And for the most part, she did this alone. Macuil came to despise humanity and went to live in the desert, Indech went on to seclude himself in a lake, and Chichol and Cethleann spent most of their time in hiding out of fear of humans trying to exploit their blood. The latter two eventually came back, but it's worth keeping in mind that for the most part Seiros was alone without what few people who could truly understand her around, which I can't imagine did much for her mental state.

    Possibly as a result of this, she would sometimes give powerful warriors her blood (and her Crest as a side effect), greatly increasing their lifespan. And of course, she spent most of her time trying to bring back Sothis in some way, as she never felt truly comfortable acting in her mother's steed leading the faithful, even if she found it necessary.

    Rhea and the modern Church: Maybe we didn't think some of this through.

    By the time the game starts, Seiros is going under the identity of Rhea and is still leading the Church. By this point, much of her earlier decisions had led to some unforeseen consequences. First and foremost, propping up Crests as a good thing and a sign of power had lead to societal stagnation. Sure, trying to create a strict power structure might have made sense at the time, but now all it was doing was creating a world obsessed with obtaining said power at all costs. This is only made worse by the bloodlines that produce crests becoming thinner and thinner, leading to some people being willing to do drastic things to obtain what little Crest power was still obtainable (including, with the help of TWSD, performing nightmarish experiments on a certain empress and her family, which would give her a less than fanatical view of the Church's teachings, to say the least).

    Now, what the modern Church has not done is deliberately inhibit technological advancement. This claim is made all the time, and it's absolutely baffling. Almyra and Dagda are both about on the same level as Fodlan, and the church has no influence over there. The reason technology is stuck in a rut is because whatever metal the Agarthians made all their tech with, and the knowledge of how to create said tech, went underground with them and hasn't surfaced except for doing experiments with Crests in recent years. And if you're one of the people who think that rediscovering Agarthium and going back to the dubstep era is an inevitably unless someone was deliberately preventing it, then your homework assignment today is to look into Damascus Steel, to see an irl example of how that's not how technology works.

    But getting back on track. Some of the Church's teachings have also resulted in an isolationist view in Fodlan, in which "hold no god above Sothis" has become "everyone but us are savages who believe in false gods". It's worth noting, however, that this doesn't seem to have been the actual intent. At the very least, characters interpret it differently (In VW, Lorenz says Claude's plan to open the border is heretical, which Claude argues against. Sure, Claude is not a believer in the first place, but everyone who is seems to accept Claude's view as a valid interpretation). Still, not much seems to have been done to prevent this viewpoint from taking root.

    So what is Rhea doing about all this? Pretty much nothing. By this point, her goal of bringing back her mother to save Fodlan has turned into a straight obsession at the expense of anything else. All she needs to do is hold on to power until that happens, and everything will be fine. Let the stupid humans do what they will until then. On the bright side, this mentality does lead her to accept non believers into her retinue like Shamir and Cyril. Heck, she frequently takes in Almyran war orphans, all of whom obviously don't believe in Sothis. Now, this is because she presumably thinks that they'd all convert at some point, considering the goddess herself will come back soon guys it's totally going to happen, but still. Rhea herself actually has little issue with people not having faith in the church.

    On the less bright side, when something does pose a legitimate threat to her, she has a bad tendency to jump straight to "burn the heretic" mode. Now, I think some people give Rhea a harder time in this regard than she deserves. Particularly in regards to the Western Church who have, let me remind you:

    Conspired to assassinate the archbishop with Christope

    Goaded Lonato into revolting once that didn't work, with a possible plan to try and assassinate Rhea again afterwards.

    Broke into the holy tomb to rob a grave goaded on by TWSD

    Seized a holy site while heavily armed, attacking the Central Church figures that came afterwards on sight.

    Tried to kill Rhea a third time once she came to deal with the bishop causing this mess.

    Let's not even ask if Edelgard, Dimitri, or Claude would turn violent against them in Rhea's shoes. Find me any lord that would just let that shit go. However, while the Western Church were no saints, Rhea was more than happy to use them as an example to people, and decided to purge everyone she could get her hands on rather than just it's leadership. It's not an entirely unreasonable approach, but it's understandable that people both in and out of universe are disturbed by how she handles it. Again, she would be rationalizing such actions to herself that such brutality is needed to make sure she could stay in control. And she needed to be in control to make sure people would accept Sothis once she came back.

    Let's check in on how that project is going, on the subject. Rhea created twelve homunculi with her blood over the years with the intent of implanting Sothis' crest into them, but every one of these attempts ended in failure. However, one of those attempts fell in love with Jeralt, a knight who Seiros had given her blood in the past. When she became pregnant as her body was failing her, Seiros implanted Sothis' crest into the unborn child (supposedly at the mother's request, but if you're less trusting we don't technically know this for certain). The mother died during childbirth, but Byleth survived and had Sothis' crest. So, mission accomplished right?

    Well, not quite. I don't think I really need to explain the rest of what happened, because anyone reading this I would hope has at least finished Part 1 by now. Let's just skip ahead to what happens to Rhea in Part 2

    The fate of the archbishop: Regret and Revenge.

    There's two versions of what happens to Rhea in Part 2. She's either captured by Edelgard, or flees to Faerghus. The former happens in most routes, so let's go over that first. Rhea is not having a good day. Despite her best efforts, and being forced to reveal her dragon form, some upstart emperor has captured her and holds her in a cell somewhere for five years. How rude. To make matters worse, her greatest attempt to bring back her mother doesn't seem to have worked the way she wanted. Sothis was in Byleth, but instead of taking over Byleth like she intended, they instead merged into a being that wasn't fully either of them. Not the goddess she wanted.

    So she sat. Alone. Little hope of rescue in sight. And as she sat, she started thinking about a lot of things. Of how she got to this point, of everything she did in the name of resurrecting Sothis, of how that failed, and what that meant for her. All the lies, all the fighting, and she still failed. And eventually she came to a sobering conclusion: it wasn't worth it. She lied to people willing to give her life for her, she killed people in the name of a dead goddess, and had nothing to show for it. And beyond that, she realises that she never actually wanted Sothis back for the sake of Fodlan. No, in the end, that was a side effect, and she was really just a miserable lonely woman who wanted her mother back. She tried to bring peace, but all it really resulted in was just a separate kind of conflict. She could have done so much different, so much better, if she had just stopped focusing on what was at its core a selfish dream and tried to fix things in the present. But she only realises this once she's in a position where she can't act on this revelation.

    It's little wonder that the Rhea Byleth and co find is a changed, broken woman. No more self justification, just a sad, old creature with centuries of sin weighing her down. And it's at this point where she finally tells the whole truth, or at least the truth from her perspective (unbiased sources don't really exist in this game). Depending on route, she either quietly leaves public life altogether, sacrifices herself to save the closest thing she had to the return of Sothis, or attempts to do the same only to go berserk in the process. Only if Byleth is truly devoted to her does she find the strength to atone for her failures.

    In CF, however, Byleth sides with Edelgard instead of Rhea. This, so far as she's concerned, is the ultimate betrayal, but more than that, is literally stealing Sothis away from her. Byleth still has the crest stone after all, and with if, Rhea's best chance at bringing back Sothis. There's a reason she specifically threatens to tear out Byleth's heart, that's literally what she wants to do to get the stone back. Unlike other routes, Rhea is not captured by Edelgard but instead flees to Faerghus along with the knights. She's once again lost in thoughts all alone, but her thoughts take her down a much darker path in this route. Instead of looking at herself and considering her own flaws, she becomes radicalized and blames everything on Edelgard and Byleth. It's mentioned that she constantly mutters to herself, and her manipulative and petty traits turn to their ugliest here. She acts cordially towards Dimitri, only to dismiss him as worthless once he dies, and sets Fhirdiad on fire purely out of spite. By the time of the final confrontation, she's little more than a feral dragon, and the BESF has no choice but to put her down.

    Parallels to Edelgard: Emperor Satan vs Dragon Jesus

    This is the part where we start getting into my personal interpretations, but it's undeniable that these two are supposed to be a foil to each other. First of all, because people are going to jump down my throat if I don't clarify this, comparing Edelgard to the devil in this case is not supposed to be a comment on her morality. However, she's fighting against an expy of the Catholic church (something that's even more explicit in the JPN version) that is run by the equivalent of its Christ figure, and her post timeskip design literally has horns and wears all red. She is very clearly supposed to the metaphor's equivalent of Satan/Lucifer/D-Dog/Whatever name you want to use.

    Both of them share more similarities than either would probably admit. The most obvious one is that both of them are willing to do some very questionable things for the sake of their view of the world. Both of them have a lot of blood on their hands, and both of them are willing to distort the truth for the sake of preventing chaos and confusion. They also both are extremely attached to Byleth, though for very different reasons. Both are willing to let the faithful of Serios continue worshiping a god that is not there (Edelgard explicitly states in supports that she has no intent to actually destroy the Serios faith, just it's power structure. We can debate on if Edelgard is aware of Sothis' current state or not, though I feel like her relations with the slithers would indicate she does, but the result either way is the same). And on a somewhat more technical level, both of them turn into monsters to serve as the final boss of some routes. There's also how they treat their allies (though that should really be in quotation marks in Edelgard's case). Edelgard actively hates those who slither and intends to have them all wiped out to a man (this also means that both of them have attempted genocide on these people which, while none of the ones we personally see are anything beyond chaotic evil, is still kind of fucked up), and while Rhea pretends to be on Dimitri's side in CF she really couldn't give less of a shit and sets his capital on fire once the man is dead on the off chance that it might get a couple of Imperial troops caught in the blaze.

    However, they naturally have very different goals. Rhea is symbolic of the status quo, wanting to maintain the current order (that she instituted in the first place) for the sake of a possible golden age that would come about if she could bring Sothis back. Edelgard wants none of that shit and intends to tear the structure the church has instituted down, and rebuild it from the ground up. More interestingly to me however, is how they themselves view themselves and their goals. Edelgard frequently questions if what she's doing is right through CF, but she never really strays from her initial views. As much as she questions herself, it never goes very deep, and her course remains steadfast. This is true in other routes as well. Rhea is much less willing to stop and consider what she's doing, but if she's forced to, she goes much deeper with it and radically changes as a person as a result, either realizing that what she's done wasn't worth it and steps down from power, or she turns into a revenge fueled monster that throws any noble qualities she did have out the window.

    Overall, both of them have positive and negative qualities and are shown in the story to have equally valid views for Fodlan's future. Neither side is really supposed to be "right" so much as different possibilities, both of whom have their path paved with thousands of bodies. It's certainly not supposed to be distilled into either Edelgard being an irredeemable, brutal tyrant or Rhea being a soulless, insane hypocrite but it seems that's how most people like to view the conflict between them, unfortunately.

    Conclusion

    I made this post I hadn't seen any real attempts to break down Rhea as a character unlike the three lords. It's understandable why, she gets the least amount of focus out of the three, and isn't even playable. But I feel like she deserves the same kind of attention, because her actions are the ones that set up the plot of the game, and she's an interesting character in her own right. She's the one who changes the most radically from route to route, for one thing, but more than that she serves as a question of when do the ends stop justifying the means. Edelgard does this as well, but in Rhea's case the ends have consisted of a millennium long lie and a rigid class system, and is what directly leads to Edelgard committing her own questionable plan, so it's more in your face about it. While in game we see cracks showing because there needs to be something happening, it does seem like most of the time since Nemesis has legitimately been peaceful. There's the rebellions of Faerghus and Leicester and the Dagda invasions, but the former probably would have happened regardless, and the latter is outside the church's control. The worst you can say about the church in those cases is that they arguably overstepped as mediators, but that's really it. But the question comes is peace worth it if it's lead to corruption amongst the older class, and was mostly based on a lie in the first place. Reasonable people have answered either way.

    I'd say what my own views on the whole thing are, but I know if I did the comments would primarily consist of people arguing with me, and I'd rather not deal with that. All I want to do is try and clarify some of the church's actions, clear up some misconceptions I've seen running around, and to try and break down a character that I feel is pretty underappreciated by the sub. Rhea is not what we would typically call a good person, but there's a consistent line of logic behind everything she does, and she's not a heartless monster (3/4ths of the time anyways). It's almost like she's a, gasp, morally grey figure like fans have been asking for several games now, and now once they got it they proceed to just call one side right and the other wrong because the alternative requires too much thinking. That goes just as much for Edelgard as it does Rhea, for the record, but I've personally seen a lot more of people flat out making shit up to justify not liking Rhea than Edelgard, hince this post. Hopefully things will get less ridiculous as time goes on, but for now I want to do what I can to help alleviate the issue.

    submitted by /u/Tgsnum5
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    [OC Fanart] Nowi! ��

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 06:18 PM PDT

    professor shamir

    Posted: 20 Oct 2019 09:33 PM PDT

    Flayn

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 07:11 AM PDT

    FE3H D21 Verdant Wind , Inktober 2019

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 10:46 AM PDT

    Dimitri wants your carrots [OC]

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 08:29 AM PDT

    The historical context of Three Houses-how each lord embodies real-life reforms

    Posted: 21 Oct 2019 02:37 AM PDT

    First, since in this post I'm talking political philosophy, even if it's medieval political philosophy, I want to emphasize that I'm going to try to be as dispassionate and objective as possible. However, this is such a cool detail, I feel like it should be brought up. In a previous post, I argued that the three main lords and Rhea all need to be viewed in the historical context of the franchise to understand what the writers were attempting to convey. However, the other thing this game does exceptionally well, particularly for a JRPG, is capture the real-life historical context of the medieval era. Rhea and the Church of Serios is, hands-down, the best writing I've seen in a JRPG about religion, and more specifically the only analogue I've ever seen accurately capture some of the real-life ideology of the medieval Catholic Church. Even more impressively, each of the three lords draws a historical parallel to a real-life European nation, and emphasizes an important piece of history and reform that leads to a modern democratic society.

    The Church of Seiros-

    I'm going to talk a bit about the Church of Serios first, and more specifically, the ideological beliefs underpinning it, and the structure of Fodlan at the beginning of the game. There has been a large amount of discussion how responsible Rhea is for the intersection of the Crest system and the aristocracy that I won't rehash here. I do want to talk about how the crest system is an analogue of the real-life idea of the "divine right of kings" that traces back to St. Augustine. St. Augustine's idea was that the secular "City of Man"-ruled over by monarchs and kings-was corrupt and governed by sinners, but was an important bulwark to protect the "City of God"-the Catholic Church. This belief was that to question the right of monarchs to rule (not their decision-making) would be to question not only their authority, but the Church's as well. In other words, the Church bestowed the right to govern upon these individuals, and to question this belief was also to question the Church's ability to delegate power. This is why the Church of Seiros places so much emphasis on not questioning the goddess' will, and "not allowing the commoners to lose faith in the nobles." This is where Dimitri's idea of the nobility protecting Fodlan as "blades", weapons that play a necessary role in the stability of Fodlan, originates from. In Catholic theology, particularly the influential St. Thomas Aquinas, rulers still had a responsibility to follow the moral law of the church when making decisions, and the failure of rulers to recognize that "the law of the Holy Ghost is above all law framed by man" invalidated their decision-making.

    So what does this mean? Well, if we look at the commandments of the Church of Seiros, they state that individuals can kill, lie, or steal, if it is in service of the "goddess' will." In other words, the preeminent authority of moral law is not in the individual societies of Fodlan, but in the Church of Seiros, where Rhea acts as an oracle for the goddess. Like the medieval Catholic Church, The Church of Seiros acts as a mediator, power-broker, and policy-maker throughout Fodlan's history. Who helps mediate the split of Adrestria and Faergus, and in these negotiations insures that they will be allowed to proselytize within Faergus' borders? Who educates the nobility of each of the three kingdoms, helping to stabilize and influence future policy? Just like how in Catholic theology, governments serve at the behest of the Catholic Church, the rulers of Fodlan serve at the behest of the Church of Seiros. Sure, just like medieval Catholicism, the Church of Seiros may not be the most temporally powerful, but Fodlan is a feudalistic society maintained by the communal ideology of the Church of Seiros that permeates every aspect of life, for good and for ill. The modern (conservative) Catholic conception of this is something called Catholic Integralism, which argues that all temporal power should be subservient to that of the Pope and argues for little to no separation between church and state (This is my guess for what likely happens in the Silver Snow ending).

    Each of the three lords is a rough parallel to both a country and a historical movement that eventually broke the political influence of feudalism and the Church in Medieval Europe. Dimitri and Faergus is a rough parallel to England and the birth of Parliament, Claude is Islamic Spain and economic trade, and Edelgard is a fusion of the Holy Roman Empire and the reforms of Napoleon-era France.

    Dimitri-

    Dimitri's route is concerned, first and foremost, with Dimitri's character arc, so his ideological beliefs on governance aren't as clearly delineated as Claude and Edelgard's. However, Lions are the traditional symbol of England, the chivalric nature of Faergus, and the cold weather leads me to believe that England was the intended parallel. Its tense relationship with the cold, inhospitable Duscar is likely a reference to Ireland, as well (with some Native American iconography thrown in). Probably the most lasting contribution England made to a modern democratic society was the conception of Parliament, the idea that the common folk could have a voice in government. Dimitri's solo ending states that he was "known for listening intently to the voices of all, and for instituting a new form of government in which the people were free to be active participants." Given the parallels with England, this almost certainly is a parliamentary system similar to those seen under Edward I, where commoners could petition the government for aid.

    I think it is important to note here that looking at the historical parallels, Dimitri's reforms are magnitudes less drastic than either Claude's or Edelgard's. This does make sense given that Dimitri believes in gradual reforms as the way to administer social change. Dimitri's ending with Annette states that his "dynasty...lasted for generations to come", indicating that power was held through bloodlines, and his other endings indicate that the king still holds the ultimate power of governance. Because the king holds absolute power, and the people seem to take on an advisory, and not legislative role, it is likely not a constitutional monarchy. England had to go through two bloody Civil Wars to determine that Parliament was the ultimate arbiter of the rights of the state, and not the king. For much of the Middle-Ages, the effectiveness of Parliament, and therefore the rights of the people, depended on the power of the current monarch. These questions will likely have to be answered down the road. However, an important first step has been taken.

    Claude-

    Claude's real-life parallel is Medieval Islamic Spain. If this sounds like I'm reaching, look at these pictures of the real-life Deridru- Cordoba, Spain. Claude himself is wearing a Middle-Eastern scarf (I believe it's Turkish? Not sure). Islamic Spain was a fascinating mixture of Middle-Eastern and European culture that really belonged to neither group completely. This probably gives a bit more context to why Claude, like Edelgard, desires drastic reform and is called the "King of Unification" in his ending. Claude's abuse is tied to the cultural bias he experiences as a man who belongs to neither Alymra nor Fodlan. However, unlike Edelgard's top-down systemic changes, his reforms are based on bottom-down cultural movement. The way that Claude facilitates this is through a strong belief in open borders and trade. Throughout Verdant Wind, you can listen to many of the merchants coming through the monastery talk about how the economic policy of the Alliance specifically benefits them. Islamic economics in the 9th through 14th centuries was much more advanced than medieval Europe, and is credited with developing early forms of mercantilism and capitalism.

    Claude, who does not believe he belongs to either country, believes in breaking down all barriers through aggressive unification (hence his admission in Crimson Flower that he planned to conquer Fodlan himself). This ideology was similar to the society in Islamic Spain, which was frankly substantially more pluralistic than Medieval Europe under Christianity. At this time, the Middle-East was experiencing a golden-age in philosophy, science and culture, and one of the biggest innovations was the idea of any individual being able to own land, one that eventually spread to Europe. This idea, along with other ideas such as mortgages, loans and welfare, would be unthinkable to a feudal society such as Medieval Europe or Fodlan where land-ownership was fully the right of the nobles. Claude's strengthening of the middle-class merchants is a huge step toward modern-day capitalism and property rights.

    Edelgard-

    With Edelgard, they weren't exactly subtle. The Adrestrian Empire is the Holy Roman Empire, whose flag.svg) is the inspiration for the Adrestrian Empire's flag. Like Adrestria, the Holy Roman Empire was a decentralized collection of fiefdoms with various nobles holding substantial power, all presided over by a figurehead Emperor. Also, the Holy Roman Empire derived its power from a strong historical tie between the Church and Empire, and the Pope was required to actually crown the Emperor (Byleth can act as a representative for the church during Edelgard's coronation). Over time, relationships between the Empire and Church became fraught with tension in both Fodlan and Europe, and just as the nobles lead the Insurrection of the Seven in Fodlan, many of the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire broke away from the Catholic Church to support the burgeoning Protestant movement for political reasons. I think many people have assumed that since they are called "Emperor" that Edelgard and her father hold much more power than they actually do, but given the historical parallel, Edelgard's coup and need to gain support from Caspar and Linhardt's fathers is much more understandable.

    However, Edelgard herself? She's strongly influenced by Napoleon, including the height thing. Edelgard, like Napoleon, was and is a very controversial figure; an aggressively secular conquerer who instituted major liberal reforms in the areas they overtook through war. I'll let the British historian Andrew Roberts summarize- "The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on—were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon." The meritocracy comparison doesn't need an explanation. I do want to point out that "religious toleration" here means an explicitly secular government, similar to Edelgard's viewpoint in her Manuela support. This also gives some context to her support with Ferdinand, as Napoleon is credited with creating much of the current modern system of education in Europe. And if that isn't enough to convince you, Napoleon even arrested the Pope.

    These historical parallels aren't one-to-one of course (for example, Edelgard freely gives up power in her solo ending, whereas Napoleon overextended himself and was eventually exiled, Claude does not appear religiously motivated at all), but I think they do give some additional interesting context to all three lords, and a better idea of the societies that they are attempting to create. I don't have a deeper analysis beyond this, but similar to this game's writing on mental illness, I wanted to call attention to the clear amount of research and care that is present in Three Houses.

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