#norbah i hope you're proud

[iturbide]

Oh I don't doubt edelgard believes her cause is just. The thing with her is it doesnt stop with her reforms and her toppling of the church. Thats how we know her goal is conquest.

In 3 hopes she had her reforms made WHILE rhea was in power. And Even with Rhea dead and the central church dissolved she doesnt stop her war. At this point it is no longer about removing the church to make way for reforms. Because she accomplished both of those things and she's still not done.

Why isn't she done? Because thats not her ultimate goal. She wants all of fodlan under her control. Funnily enough, Claude says it too. His reason for killing rhea was because he foolishly believed that would remove edelgards reason for war. ( it doesn't).

He also said that if she doesn't stop her war, then that means her war is just blatant aggression. In their supports he calls it Conquest and edelgard doesn't deny it, she knows what this is ( shes much more honest about it in 3 hopes) and she actually tells him she wants the kingdom gone, not just the church.

villains don't need to be like "tee hee mass murder , war , conquest! Yay!" realistic villains are those who truly believe in their cause and theyll say this is for the good of all. what makes them a villain is how they will do absolutely anything to achieve their aims no matter how much blood is spilled and how much suffering it causes. No "sacrifice" is too great for Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg.

this is how they justify conquest irl no? Western imperalism 101. We say It's for a just cause. We say Its for their own good. We say our way is the superior way and they will see that (or die) . Truth is we can make up any reason for it , the end is the same and they still hate us for it. And i can't say I blame them for feeling that way lol

I was never trying to refute that Edelgard is an imperialist. She's absolutely an imperialist. There's really no getting around that. But I'm pretty alarmed by this take, because it discounts a lot of things about her and her character in favor of a read that her goals are motivated solely by selfishness.

And this is coming from someone who has an entire tag devoted to Edelgard criticism.

It bears repeating out the gate: I haven't played Three Hopes yet. I don't imagine I will for a while yet, and news on Edelgard's route has been sparse coming to my inbox, so I'm not able to speak on Scarlet Blaze in any real capacity (not that I take it as any sort of canon, myself, though that's neither here nor there). But I can speak on Three Houses, since I have played through three of the four routes in their entirety, including Edelgard's -- Verdant Wind, Silver Snow, and Crimson Flower are complete; I've stalled halfway through Azure Moon. And in the case of Three Houses, while Edelgard is definitely chasing an image of the past now lost in the form of a Fodlan united under the Imperial banner, I don't think it's fair to say that she's only after that.

The fact is, she's not wrong that the Crest System is bad and needs to be reformed. She lays the blame on the wrong target, through a combination of misinformation and only partial understanding of the larger situation (likely for a number of reasons, including the unavoidable evolution of House Hresvelg's "true" history of Fodlan passed to its heirs, potentially influence from the Agarthans in manipulating information for their own purposes), but she's not wrong about the fact that the system is toxic and something needs to be done. And that system doesn't exist only in the Empire: its influence extends throughout all of Fodlan. So she sets her sights on tearing it out wherever it's taken root.

From a character and narrative standpoint, it does actually make sense that she'd target the Church of Seiros: the faith of the land gave rise to the System, even if Seiros herself had no hand in it, and so the only way to change the system is to raze the faith of the land and bring about something new. And because the Church has footholds in the Kingdom and Leicester -- both of which also suffer from a system that overvalues Crests -- she takes her campaign across those borders. Yes, she also believes that the Church was responsible for breaking up the Empire into the Kingdom and later the Alliance, thinking that it was a means of creating artificial divisions between people to keep them in conflict and unable to turn on the Church and its inhuman arbiters -- but ultimately her goal was to free all of Fodlan from the Crest System, rather than only Adrestia.

I don't say any of this to discount that she does horrible things. Because she does. There's a reason I will never play Crimson Flower again. But to flatly vilify her rather than acknowledging her as a complex character with justifiable goals is something I can't accept. Making the situation out to be a black-and-white, good-and-evil dichotomy flattens what makes Edelgard interesting and compelling as a character in favor of presenting her as Lady Walhart but with enough sense to not broadcast her intentions. And that's not fair to her, because there's a lot more to her, her situation, and her character overall than what your message implies.