The wasted narrative potential of the Church of Seiros' weakness.
The church of Seiros is rather infamous, as it is the organization overseeing the main Faith of Fódlan, akin to the Catholic Church in medieval Europe, including for the small territoires.
The Church is seen by the Fandom and by many in-universe as truly powerful, controlling the Land through the devotion of the people, with a goal of ruling all of Fódlan as puppet masters at best.
That however is factually false.
The Church of Seiros is not some all-powerful organization, and isn't even unified.
Rhea refuse to use her power to dictate policies of the nations, in fact, she many times is too meek, though it make sense.
The Eastern Church are weaponless and puppets of the lords of Leicester, the Southern Church was destroyed, and Faerghus is divided between the western and Central church, with the Western Church and it's aligned lords being traitors to both the Crown and central Church, and puppets of the Agarthans.
Furthermore, the ideology of the Church, that promote the restraint from abusing Crests, is utterly ignored whenever convenient.
And just look what happened with the Central Church being invaded! Many lords of Leicester and Faerghus swore themselves to Edelgard, and even in Adrestia, Edie didn't seem to face opposition.
Though that last point is a bit horseshit, I'm French, and our own first revolution caused a Civil War with the Vendée region's commoners being the most famous for fighting to defend Crown, lords and Faith, it also show how Hresvelg propaganda against the Church, Hresvelg, not merely Edelgard, destroyed the ability of the Church to call to aid anyone south of Garreg Mach, or even East of it.
The matter really is a wasted opportunity narratively, because the Church being all powerful is something done often in fiction, but beside the actively treacherous and xenophobic Western Church, none of the Churches is really doing manipulation, and the western Church's plots are guided by the Agarthans anyway.
I think there's a lot of possible stories from a Church-centric POV about how the Faith's weakness and scapegoat status, and the fact that so few care for it in favor of treating the organization as the genderbend Catholic Church on steroids is disappointing.
I've seen the comparison with the schrodinger cat being done with the Church and Rhea, the idea being that they're blamed whenever they "overstep", ignoring how their actions are usually justified, but at the same time blamed when they stay out of shits.
If anyone do know stories which exploit this potential, do tell.
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Y’all ever think about the fact that Rhea just has weed on her
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