In regards to how much of the Church bad rhetoric is supported by the Fódlan games themselves, from what i've seen of Three Houses' JP script there isn't really that much support for those arguments there outside of heavily biased sources that the audience should take with massive doses of salt like Edelgard, Dorothea or Lysithea; i'd argue that it wasn't until IS and/or KT decided to, for whatever reason, take the lolcalized church-demonizing script and fandom reaction of EN 3H to heart when making Three Hopes that they really started believing they wrote Rhea and the Church as being the hidden villains of the verse, and that JP 3H is (mostly) free of the issue of making stupid arguments just to try and criticize the Church for things it can't be reasonably blamed for.
I agree with the things you say, but about the biased sources...
Well, the games of course hammer the player with biased sources, Supreme Leader and her court, Claude, the Abyss residents -
Which is doubly funny for the Abyss residents, because their "Church BaD" is completely bonkers, given how it's the Church who offers them a crappy, and yet existing shelter.
"The Church wants us gone" Dude, if they really wanted you gone, Rhea would have deployed the knights to evacuate the Abyss as fast as she organised her expedition to put the Bishop of the Western Church to the sword.
Doubly funny bcs the Big Boss of the Abyss, Yuri, is sekritly Rhea's agent!
Of course being a secret agent, he can't tell people to use their mind and think - if the Central Church wanted them gone, why are they sheltering you all here, under Garreg Mach the most important site to them, and giving you, albeit in measly quantities, food and water? Rhea is the one who named the class "Ashen Wolves" - it would be pointless to give a name to the class of abyss resident who are considered unofficial students of the officer's academy, if she really wanted to purge the Abyss, right?
I understand in CS this was used as a red herring for Aelfie, who is akshually the one who runs the Abyss and spreads the "Church BaD Rhea BaD" sentiment because of his own agenda and opinions, but with 3 (counting the DLC) routes having biased narrators against the CoS in FE16 (out of 5) you'd have to wonder what was the point -
Was it only to sell Hresvelg Grey? To sell Billy becoming God and the "new" head of Church being a necessity so the former has to suck?
IDK.
FWIW, Nopes gave us one (1) NPC who, from the start, says something positive about the Church rebuking the biased statement everyone is throwing around, Mark the NPC, who says accusations of corruption of the Central Church and wyvern poo, since Rhea and Seteth both punish people who take bribes or commit crimes...
And yet, for one Mark, we have many lines spoken with bias against the Church, and no one bothers to correct them (the church forces you to marry ? Uh, no, I've heard the story of a woman who left her land to marry a foreign king! - Church forces you to have responsabilities through crusts : no? Almyra and Brigid have royalty, and Brigid royals want to protect their people thinking it is both their duty and something they want, and yet the Brigid royal line has no crust? Ditto for Almyra? - crusts are the reasons why nobles act like asses : No, Kleimann offed Lambert not because he was jelly Lambert had a crust, but because he wanted more lands and opposed the King's reforms?)
KT wanted their golden route, but because Supreme Leader is the main thorn to any Golden Route (tfw the person who wants to conquer neighboring lands has to work with the people who don't want to be conquered and are fighting for survival in a war the previous person started :( ) everyone has to ally against a common enemy, and it fell on the CoS (with Dimitri getting the nonsensical Zahras scene) - is it it because Nopes follows an Agarthan narrative, as opposed to FE16 having Billy stand-in for a Nabatean centred narrative?
I still find it hilarious that the Nopes writers bent Dimitri, and, arguably Clout, in bonkers versions of themselves to justify Nopes, but couldn't find a way to, uh, have Supreme Leader realise the Mole People are the biggest threat to the world and the Lizards aren't that evil to begin with, provided you don't try to kill them ; that's why Supreme Bullshit started to be something interesting, Supreme Leader targets the Mole People first, but then it became a traditional Supreme Leader route, erasing the lizards took precedence over everything - even if she knows Uncle and pals are still slithering around since she never caught him - so the second she can become Emperor, she returns to her original plan, not giving a fig about Uncle and hunting Lizards to MAGA.
Compare this to Rhea, in the very same route, at the end, who has to fight against the Empire (who's out for her head) and the Mole People - and Rhea dgaf about the Empire anymore, the biggest threat to Fodlan are the Mole People - she doesn't target/aim/attack Supreme Leader and Barney in the ending cinematic, she flies over them, to defeat the "real" enemy, Thales.
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So they didn't become void, they were "born" that way
In FaaF there are different species and kinds of higher beings (still a MASSIVE work in progress tbh, trying to figure out how these cunts work, but for now I'm thinking they're extremely rare species with far greater abilities and lifespans than a normal bug's that have a chance to ascend to true godhood (but even if they don't ascend that doesn't stop mortals from worshipping them as they're already very god-like from a normal bug's perspective)), "pale beings" being one of these kinds/mutations.
Well, there was also a different kind once, "void beings", but they all went extinct a very long time ago by the beginning of the story. Shade Lord was one, and last, of them and it lost its life in a fight with Radiance - the same fight that drove her to make her permanent residence in the dream realm out of her new-found fear of death (which backfired spectacularly ngl). Its body was buried in the Abyss, where it broke apart and decayed, or decayed as much as a non-living thing can, before it was unearthed many ages later by the pale wyrm.
Not much is known about them since they've been gone for so long, and the vessels are the only void beings remaining, but since they're not "pure" void beings it'd be foolish of anyone to assume that the ancient extinct species behaved the same way as these ones do. But they were generally greatly feared thanks to the void's freaky, dangerous properties, which partly lead to their extinction as some of the other higher beings purposefully attacked and killed them whenever they stumbled across one out of fear. Now the only thing remaining of them are the rare void sources, where their former bodies still refuse to fully die.
Shade Lord does get accidentally resurrected in the story bc of all the tomfoolery happening with its body before almost immediately getting killed again by Ghost who inherits its title and reign. Don't ask me how that works, haven't figured that out yet. Magic god shit or something idk LMAO
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