#you welcomed refugees who were ousted from their home after Adrestia declared war against them

[randomnameless]

IS and KT managing to make Edelgard the biggest Mary Sue in a verse where Byleth exists is still morbidly impressive to me lol

I wouldn't say Supreme Leader is a Mary Sue - depending on what you mean by being a Mary Sue, anon.

If you're talking about the 2000s usual critic thrown at fanfiction characters... well, you have Supreme Leader's depiction in the Aeneid that could fit this trope!

But in general...

Yep, that's what makes the Fodlan series so... weird ? Empty? As consistent as a cloud?

FE16 wise, characters (bar a few ones who are generally loved !) can piss on their background/convictions/ties/preexisting character to join Billy's side because Billy is awesome. No matter how hard people try to headcanon about it, Felix will join the GD and later Claude's army in VW because Billy had a kickass rank in swordfighting : Felix will ditch his childhood friends and leave his people to fend for themselves because Billy knows how to swordfight.

Remove Billy's player avatar powers, and suddenly, some characters cannot switch sides - in return they gain a much stronger characterisation and development (the BL peeps in Nopes!).

What makes the Fodlan verse so unique isn't Billy being at the forefront of player pandering, no, Fodlan verse will hammer instead the "waifu pandering". Sure, waifu is supposed to be your avatar's luf interest and the character you will spend thousands of dollars/euros/pick your currency for - but instead of pushing player pandering to 11, Fodlan verse instead pushes waifu pandering.

Supreme Leader cannot ever be challenged, whatever she does, people will praise her later on - or if we really have to fight her, it will not be willingly but the cast will be forced by circumstances (don't ask who created them!) and lament how they couldn't "walk with her uwu".

It culminates, imo, with SS S Support Rhea wondering if the War was her fault, and no one putting the blame on the character who declared said war on premises we learn, through the game, to be wrong. It's as if Rhea wonders if being tortured for 5 years I mean, having to dance Zumba for 5 years in Enbarr's dungeons, thousands of dead people, the monastery and its people being destroyed, Faerghus falling to anarchy, Adrestian made Demonic Beasts and Supreme Leader's beliefs that nonhumans should never have powers over humans because their ears aren't round is, well, her fault.

"See, Supreme Leader did nothing wrong, Rhea herself says she was responsible for her own torture zumba session!"

And FE16 being FE16... There is no "of course not".

To preserve Supreme Leader's selling points, those games amp up to unseen before in this franchise levels of victim blaming that seriously - regardless of real life world events - made a lot of people, myself included, uncomfortable.

So while I wouldn't say Supreme Leader is a 2000s Mary Sue, the writing around her feels somehow more gratting than what a fanfiction writer could have wrote in the 2000s for fun.

I mean, people were paid to write "if people don't want to die maybe they should just let me roll over them"!

That's way worse.