A jumbled assortment of notes and comments on the history of Fodlan

[Hrothgar777]

-The wiki states that Seiros appeared roughly 40 years before the start of the Imperial Calendar. Because the wiki places Nemesis's age as 132+, the implication is that he performed the infamous deed he's most famous for prior to this. Of course, the wiki could be wrong, but as it's a collaborative effort of Fire Emblem superfans more hardcore than me, I'm assuming they found evidence to corroborate this timeline.

-Meanwhile, it's stated at least once in-game that Enbarr (the Adrestian capital) has a 1,400 year old history. The city predated the public persona of Seiros by somewhere in the ballpark of 200 years.

-Flayn/Cethleann repeatedly claims to have been born there, and I believe this is a non-fabricated detail of her biography. She claims that her mother and father met in a church in the city (a church which still stands as of 1185). If this is true and assuming that both parents were manaketes, this implies the original children of the goddess didn't merely see Sothis as a mother figure but a deity obliging their veneration, perhaps because they weren't her "children" so much as they were her "creations made in her image".

-In Three Hopes, Arval's paralogue has Cethleann not only alive but old enough to fight in the big war against Nemesis. Seteth's A support with her has this war as being the cause of the death of her mother. This "woman" wasn't a casualty of Zanado.

-The same paralogue has Seiros surprised that a mage was on Nemesis's side. Perhaps the study of magic was less developed in the north at the time, or it was a lost/unknown art prior to Seiros and her church restoring/introducing it?

-It appears Nemesis took over northern Fodlan, and the wiki describes the Ten Elites as belonging to "clans", suggesting the region was backward. The language of "clans" also explains why Seiros spared the families of the Ten Elites; they weren't just individuals but political alliances entered into first by Nemesis and then by Seiros. The church solidified its control by assimilating the pre-existing bases of local authority in the north into a new framework. Otherwise the region would've been too unruly to govern.

-Sothis gave cardinals blood and holy relics (i.e. weapons) were deposited at church facilities like Garegg Mach. Presumably her goal was to check their military power AND to have officials who could challenge claims to divinity made by secular crestholders.

-The descendants of the Ten Elites hold territories in northern and central Fodlan, not the south. Wilhelm had no crestholding allies outside of the church.

-Church history has Enbarr being made the imperial capital simply because of its association with Seiros, but it seems more likely that Wilhelm von Hresvelg was already the ruler of Enbarr. Its enduring status nearly 1,200 years later as capital and teeming metropolis suggests it was always a commercially and strategically viable location, and we can expect the ruler of such a place to have been a powerful figure in Seiros's day. Perhaps it was a rising city-state; note, however, that before Seiros it was not an empire, suggesting it hadn't even unified the south. The final wave of Enbarr's imperial expansion would've begun around the time that he allied with Seiros.

-The fact that Seiros had to hand the reins to a human ruler in the first place suggests there were too few (allied) manaketes left post-Zanado massacre to defeat Nemesis, and she needed Wilhelm's help. The relationship between the two figures was a mutually beneficial one, as neither had the resources needed to accomplish their goals alone.

-All of this added up does, furthermore, suggests the south was urban, and had a high population and advanced economy relative to the north. The except to this rule would be Zanado itself, which was north-ish.

-The fact that Nemesis was remembered as a "King of Liberation" in the areas over which he ruled, and that Seiros was effortlessly able to convince large number of humans to obey her, suggests a culture of revering manaketes, and perhaps also worshiping Sothis, already existed in the south but not really the north. Akin to how the Catholic Church helped maintained a semblance of social order during the Dark Ages, it seems likely that there was a Seiros-like regime in parts of the south before Seiros (but perhaps not after Zanado), and that this contributed to the south's higher retention of civilization. The north was either independent or under rule it considered foreign, or some combination of the two.

-This is further evidenced by dialogue in Silver Snow stating that a "massive investigation" into Nemesis followed his murder of Sothis. The investigators were looking to see who might've helped him, and this wouldn't make sense if all potential witnesses were long dead, meaning it happened shortly after. For such to be "massive" implies a government that was already in place to sink these resources into the effort, and that there was a gap between Sothis and Zanado long enough for the investigation to run its course and turn up no evidence of outside involvement.

-If humans worshiped Sothis before Seiros, it would seem her main contribution to the faith was its revival and reorganization. Presumably the manaketes filled important clerical roles, and their slaughter presented a crisis, which caused the number of faithful to wane. Rhea substituted "divine humans" in the form of manaketes, who could turn into dragons, with "divine humans" who bore crests, and the new system actually offered humans more upward mobility in the church than existed pre-Zanado.

-If there was a Seiros-like regime before Seiros but pre-Zanado, then it stands to reason manaketes were dispatched to various regions to govern it or at least its churches. But if so, this raises a question: why did Zanado serve to virtually annihilate the manakete ruling class? Were they perhaps gathered in one place for a ceremony or festival? Or were they powerless on their own and dependent on an army garrisoned at Zanado? If the latter, were the local administrators hunted down and murdered by Nemesis during his lengthy reign?

-Cichol, his wife, and his daughter lived by the ocean whereas Zanado is landlocked. Manaketes were individuals, some of whom might've preferred to live outside of their capital, and the south would've had a higher concentration of them as the region was already more amenable to their interests. This means probably a high number survived Zanado.

-But then, why are they absent at present? Is it possible most of them didn't side with Seiros, and that she herself killed them? The only surviving manaketes we see or hear about in the story are veterans of Seiros's crusade. Was evidence of all other manaketes erased from history and anyone she didn't personally know put to death to facilitate this cover-up?

-Did the other surviving manaketes perhaps have a differing religious theology to that pushed by Seiros? Is that what got them killed? Did they feel threatened by Seiros's efforts to replace them in their role as religious functionaries with humans loyal to her?

-Like many real-world religions, 12th century Fodlanites believe that Sothis will judge the soul after death and weigh its merits. But this is not an individualistic faith like, say, Protestant Christianity. Their mode of ethics ascribes to Divine Command Theory; that is, "A thing is good because God commands it", or in this case, the vice-regents of the goddess on earth. For example: Catherine, in her support with Caspar, says that she would kill children if commanded by Rhea, though to be fair she does give practical reasons to justify this mindset. Because a hierarchical distinction between sacred and mundane "humans" was essential to both the pre-Seiros and Seiros era systems, it stands to reason the pre-Seiros faithful also believed that they would be judged by their obedience to the church of their time.

-Similar to other real life non-individualistic faiths, they presumably believed the church would grant salvation to anyone who followed it, and there wasn't a culture of intense self-scrutiny regarding the question of "Will I be saved?", save perhaps among the clergy. Historically speaking, rising interest in this question was correlated with rising standards of living in premodern societies; for example, spiritual texts become more affordable among the urban middle class. In the game we don't see enough of ordinary life outside of Garegg Mach to determine what religious devotion among the average layperson is like. However we do see that books aren't treated as expensive luxury items, though arguably Garegg Mach shouldn't be seen as representative of Fodlan as a whole.

-If the pre-Seiros manaketes were believed to be divine, then perhaps humans believed they were immortal and couldn't be killed by lowly humans. The fact that Nemesis proved otherwise might've been the inciting factor in why Sothis had to erase them from the history books; such a glaring contradiction to the old dogmas would've been a perpetual thorn in her side, and also it would've been forever seen by rebellious sorts as a model to emulate in their conduct toward their crestbearing overlords.

[Jotari]

On 9/12/2023 at 4:51 AM, Hrothgar777 said:

I'm assuming they found evidence to corroborate this timeline.

As someone who has been a very active contributor to wikis, I would never assume this.