#iirc the 'glorious' adrestian empire in the history book is an addition from the localisation team

[randomnameless]

@lochnessies I didn’t want to reblog your post since it was long but if you don’t mind me adding my 2 cts to the Empire and your Empire essay

honestly i’m so glad i’m not the only one who nerded about the empire

I’m totally on board with your assertion about Agarthans and the Empire, the agarthans are the one who are the masterminds behind everything wrong happening in Fodlan (Nemesis 1 to Nemesis 2) and how the Empire who started good ended up being the decadent place we’re told about in-game that disappears in 75% of the endings.

However, I have several nitpicks or additions to make.

From the interview, apparently, humans already got their hand on “relics” before Nemesis pulled his stunt. Nemesis wanted to most powerful weapon available, so he ended up tearing Sothis, the leader of the nabateans, apart.

In the fake Church-approved story, Nemesis was king of the Liberation because he got rid of invaders coming from the North. We actually don’t know why the guy styled himself as “King of Liberation”, he apparently wanted to get rid of “liars” in his info blurb in VW, but then in the same route, when Billy fights against Maurice, Maurice asks if Billy’s come to “liberate” him... From this, I’m assuming Maurice, a former Elite, thinks “Liberation” is some sort of euphemism for death or a merciful death, idk. Bar Edel’s story, there is no real clues in game, or even outside, that Nemesis wanted to get rid of “divine beings”. I personally think he wanted to be the strongest so if lizards had to die for this then so be it, but bar that? I have no ideas about his own, personal motivations (save for “Thales’n’pals asked me to do it and they seemed so nice so I did it”).

Wilhelm Paul Hresvelg being one of Nemesis’s men who was lured away by Seiros and her dragon bros is a take that is very prevalent in the fandom, but has no basis in the game.

The Adrestian Empire officially existed in 0 when Seiros crowned the guy, but Enbarr was chosen as its capital because it was the largest city. The War of Heroes “properly” started 3 decades later as Wilhelm wanted to unify the continent.

Lycaon I’s death heralds the end of the war, meaning Wilhelm died during the WoH. Apparently the Church of Seiros was created before the war, even before the Empire, by followers who were inspired by her miracles or something. 

But yes, there used to be a religion before the “Church of Seiros” given how Seteth met his wife in a church in Enbarr, still I cannot say for sure it was here before the first Agarthian war.

Word of God also said Seiros and her friends rewrote history because the Elites and Nemesis were too popular at that time and she wanted to “quell the flames of war and chaos” and keep balance. Kind of unrelated, but given how Marianne is treated in Modern!Fodlan because her ancestor was a (literal) monster, if Seiros revealed the truth about Gloucester, Daphnel and their friends maybe Lorenz and Ingrid would be persecuted and hated like Marianne is... 

I don’t have anything to add to the rest, but some tidbits regarding the Empire and what I could hc i mean interpret from them :

Apparently, in the jp version of Hanneman’s C support with Dorothea, Hanneman says in the beginning nobles were supposed to guide and protect people, but in Modern!Fodlan it’s now just a way to discriminate between nobles and non-nobles.

Maybe at its inception the Empire had this idea about what nobility meant, but with time, the notion became used as a tool and emptied of its original meaning, idk. 

We also have the “Feast of Decadence” novel, it is fiction (apparently?) but the author, writing this book, thought it was perfectly normal to have northeners being torn apart in the background. 

This novel is supposed to happen way after the WoH ended (the Emperor is Lycaon III and we know from Ferdie’s support with Edel (or was it in Feh??) that the Emperor in 100~ was a woman, so she couldn’t have been Lycaon II) but in this context it was normal to have slaughters during a feast celebrating the wedding of the new Emperor.

Given how Rhea has bad history with slaughters for “fun” (as far as she knows Nemesis had no reason to kill everyone in Zanado?) I am pretty sure that if she had been around for Wilhelm I’s wedding, this spectacle would never have happened. Same thing for Lycaon I, the two Emperor she’s sure to have met. Which signifies that either post-Rhea the Emperor thought it was fun to watch northeners suffer, which also adds another kind of discrimination between people from the North and those from the South or the author of this novel had a blood kink and thought it’d be a nice detail, or the author wrote this “decadent feast” to criticise the Empire.

Which ultimately leads to : During Lycaon III’s time, or shortly after, northeners being torn apart during the highest ceremonies were something that happened casually, or it was plausible enough that people from that time could believe it happened.

So combining Hanneman’s “at first nobility was supposed to be this but ended up twisted” and “people ate a lot of bread and fish in honour of Saint Cethleann it was wonderful and northerners were being torn apart and we all laughed” means that even before Ionius IX pulled his centralising policies in place, the Empire was heading down a dark path.

The Southern Church is banned in 1065, way after the Kingdom and the Alliance were recognised as independant nations. In some localised versions (the SP one I think?) it is explained they were banned because they led an insurrection.

So even before Ionius, we have the Empire growing intolerant to its own citizens, stopping being “nobles” in the first sense of the notion, and apparently their ally since creation leads an insurrection. Then, the agarthans happen and they wreck things. 

If I had to compare, I’d say Ionius IX and his extreme policies (destroying Hrym and sending Agarthans to Ordelia, a territory in the Alliance, because they helped the people from Hrym) were inevitable since due to the Empire’s decadence, but Edel getting the means and opportunities to start her war was brought by the Agarthans.

It’s as if the Empire is going downhill and you can either choose to let it disappear (SS/AM/VW where the Empire doesn’t exist anymore, it crumbled) or go with it to the bottom of the hill (CF).