#but no man power! Yeah Leif didn't have any too

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I know it’s a general consensus that CF did Edel dirty when the reason why the Empire was in a stalemate during the 5 years gap was because “Sensei is missing :’( “

But can we also talk about Seteth - who has to wait for Judith (or Rodrigue) to give him the “Rhea was caught by Imperial soldiers maybe you should start looking in the Empire to find her” despite everything in the game pointing at the obvious “the empire caught her”?

In SS, when he finds Rhea he’s all :

Seteth: Rhea... I am overjoyed that you are unharmed. I could not stand losing another of our kind.

Well, as overjoyed as static models can be.

Seteth loves his daughter and (loves?) cares about his sister, because he doesn’t want to lose another Nabatean. But the flimsy “i’ve been looking everywhere for 5 years to find her but our church spies couldn’t find her” kind of sucks.

Like, not that complicated but :

Dubious people steal Flayn’s blood knowing she’s part lizard --> Dubious people work with/for the Flame Emperor

Dubious people experiment on humans using crest stones to turn them into monsters --> they work with/for the Flame Emperor

The douchebag who captured Flayn because she has lizard blood and helped Solon’s science project in Remire works for/with the Flame Emperor

Same Douchebag helped zealots to steal Sothis’ bones and/or pillage Rhea’s tomb --> something something Flame Emperor

Flame Emperor is revealed to be Edelgard --> something fishy is happening in the Empire

Edelgard becomes Emperor and declares war on the Church

Edelgard uses Beasts, Emile, and regular Imperial Soldiers in the Battle of Garreg Mach

Rhea turns in her alternate form to fend off invaders and buy time for the church people to escape

Rhea goes missing

Where could she be? Where should we start looking?

She was totally chilling in Dagda?

If only the answer was not “the imperial palace”!

Like, this is the number 1 location anyone would suppose she’d be kept in! Or Enbarr/getting intel from the Empire should be the first priority!

But no, Seteth needs Judith, 5 years later, to know where Rhea is or that “Rhea was dragged off by Imperial soldiers” and maybe it’s time to storm Enbarr?

Wow, dude. So yep, Macuil was the strategist.

If this is not a contrived as fuck reason not to have sent a stealth squad to infiltrate the castle, rescue Rhea before Billy wakes up, I don’t know what it is.

I know Seteth and the remaining Church peeps don’t have the manpower to tackle on Edel and her Army head-on.

But, idk, Leif didn’t have manpower to rescue Nanna and Mareeta in FE5 and yet he still tried. Or how Roy rescued Lilina without the army he has at the end of FE6, before going against Zephiel.

We could had a Billy-less route, or even Gaiden if you still want Billy to be important to the greater plot, where Seteth, Flayn, Catherine, Shamir, Alois, and, idk, Cyril infiltrate the palace, discover a secret lopto temple and after crossing a fow room with craptons of warp tiles find Rhea’s cell, but they can’t force it, they need Sothis’ power to do so so they vow to return with the professor and then the game resumes.

(you could even get a glimpse at the 11 deadlords in the sleeping pods, each one guarding a room, and the Nemesis one is positioned just in front of Rhea’s cell but their sprite is a bit green-ish)

We could even had the Church stealth squad receive help from Manu and her Mittelfrank friends showing that not everyone in the Empire was “make Adrestia Great Again and Down with Religion!” instead of telling us through a NPC. (make Manu have a pass white magic spell, idk, something echoing her “talent and beauty isn’t enough to be a diva” and her alternate Assassin!Manu we see in AM if she wasn’t recruited)

Idk, anything but “well i tried to look for you in Remire, Rhodos and even Zanado but I totally didn’t think the guys who attacked us and know about our secret could have caught you! sry”

“Adrestia also invaded Briggid, you know? I’ve spent 3 years looking for you there”

But of course, if the only source of intel were the local church branches, knowing how Adrestia ejected its own a few centuries earlier wasn’t helping!