#and maybe mentioned once in the nindream interview. but ive dealt with less before!! iwill talk about rhea and will not be stopped!!))

[aurheatum]

rhea and identity. part 1: what’s in a name

Alright,  because I’m constantly thinking about her and why not! Here’s part one in a series about Rhea and her view of her identity and selfhood: focusing on her name and aliases throughout the years. 

spoilers for the entirety of three houses below :) 

As a preview part two and three will be on her role as a mother and then her role as a child in the story and psychologically. Both will probably be quite a bit longer than this one as here I’m covering stuff I’ve mostly talked about before, but good to have it in one place with citations, so let’s go!

An interesting tendency I’ve seen in fandom is to place Rhea’s role as Rhea, herself, the archbishop and Rhea as Seiros, the warrior and avenger, as diametrically opposed to one another. This makes a lot of sense as Crimson Flower - the one route where Rhea literally has any agency at all in part two of the game - itself uses this in both story and gameplay. Here when we meet Rhea on the battlefield at Taltean she is in the unique “Saint” class and her dialogue prior to being fought makes it quite clear that she has “become Seiros”.

Field of Revenge

Church soldier: Lady Rhea….

Rhea: Call me Seiros now.

Rhea: I am no longer the archbishop, but rather a warrior.

(later on in the final map Catherine also ends up correcting her speech and referring to her as “Lady Seiros”)

But hm. I wonder what difference in the CF route split led her to take on this persona? Could it have something to do with the fact she has once again come face to face with a human using Agarthan technology to infiltrate / sack her family’s tomb in aid of another who’s literally wielding her mom aka god as a weapon of war?

The one thing fandom overlooks is that from the few scant sources we have in canon Seiros is just as much a falsified identity as the current Rhea is, if not more so. You can see in the official FE3h character design breakdown that there is a note pointing to Seiros’s hair that has been translated as “her hair is dyed, but only the tips show another color” (source post for that here).

It is difficult to see in book scans available but thankfully her Fire Emblem Heroes art makes it even clearer that the light blond we see on Seiros isn’t her true coloring. Compare to the in game Saint model.

(slightly related: back when FEH seiros came out there was some fan pondering on whether nabatean hair darkens as the person gets older and i just think that’s really neat)

All of the references to her in The History of Fódlan and other church doctrine describe her as a saint and messenger of the goddess, but never otherworldly or inhuman. This combined with Rhea’s claim in VW that she “called herself Seiros” seems to make it clear that this was a role she took on after the Red Canyon Massacre had happened, most likely to hide her origin as the one survivor there and protect the other remaining Nabateans of the land from further scrutiny.

I actually think its quite creative that fandom has decided to use Seiros as shorthand for Rhea before she started playing at human, but I also think it is very haunting and deliberate that we do not know Rhea’s real name. Most likely not even Seteth or his brothers know it seeing as Rhea being the one surviving Nabatean from Zanado must mean they all met some time after the Red Canyon Massacre took place and most likely right around when Rhea became Seiros.

The only person who could possibly know Rhea’s true name is Sothis, and I think that’s important. I also think it is important to note that everything we know of the Seiros identity was created due to the trauma of Zanado’s destruction as it is pertinent to understanding why she falls back on it when she interprets events as repeating in Crimson Flower.