I'm sick of people pretending she did anything wrong.
Rhea has been holding back Fodlan's technological development for a thousand years, in an attempt to prevent them from developing weapons that those who slither in the dark use anyway. She is deliberately preventing any real progress being made to fix any real social issues on the continent, fractured the Empire to prevent any them from seizing power from her, and sat on her fat ass trying to bring her dead mother back from the grave so that they could have sex.
Rhea 100% needs to be overthrown. In a game full of moral ambiguities this specific point CANNOT be contested. With this in mind, Edelgard's actions become justified, even noble.
got so close to beating the game as black eagles but never finished, I want to know what happens but I know I'll never beat all three paths. can someone greentext what happens?
Edelgard is technically correct. The way she goes about accomplishing her goals is simultaneously stupid and makes her an awful person who sacrifices innocents. It's sad, because Edelgard's entire character was done way better over a decade ago in Code Geass. She is budget Lelouch, except she feels hollow as fuck because she loses nothing. Her transgressions into moral grey or moral evil to accomplish her own objectives cost her nothing, they literally don't effect her in the slightest, while destroying the lives of countless innocents. Alliances that could have been forged or conflicts forgone (as proven in the other routes, Dimitri would have been more than willing to work with her, as would Claude, as both are cool with dismantling the central church and the nobility- they just don't want to genocide to accomplish this). It just makes her feel awful, because all of the compelling aspects of this type of character are stripped away. What you are left with is an imperialist lawful evil Mary Sue.
Contrast to Lelouch, who is more or less the same character- but has to make sacrifices, uneasy alliances, betrayals, loss, has loads of dramatic tension between the "who is the masked person" and the people who know his unmasked persona. It's all such a big fuck up. Edelgard could easily have been the most compelling lord in Three Houses, but instead they made her shit, and I will never not be mad about it.
