#for someone who was supposed to be on vengeance mode Rhea sure took a lot of steps to ensure people would be safe

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I’m still thinking about how bonkers that “askhually Rhea knew secret passages to get into the imperial palace!” plotpoint was, how it makes a crapton of sense and how it recontextualises her 5 stars resort stay in that very same palace -

Rhea knows paths and issues forgotten to time, Hubert said the plans don’t even have them (when Supreme Leader mentions those issues had been sealed hundred of years ago?) and while Supreme Leader acknowledges the Empire and the Church worked together in the past, she seems to imply it’s odd, to her, that Rhea knows about those issues, like is she still unaware Rhea is the same Seiros who worked with Willy years ago? Or she’s just surprised Rhea’s memory is that good?

But it also reveals Rhea always knew, despite parting with the Empire 1086 years ago, how to get in and out of the castle easily, without being seen - which is 1/ sad, because if she ever heard Supreme Leader and her mystery sibs were experimented upon, she could have intervened 2/ telling about her 5 years stay in her 5 stars resort -> she knows how to get out of Enbarr unseen, so the only reason why Rhea didn’t break out of her prison in all paths bar Tru Piss is not that she didn’t know how to get out of the place, but she couldn’t (unless they used Cornelia’s magical jail, but Rhea can still turn in a giant dragon! Maybe they tickled her feet too much and she was left unable to transform?).

Still, it’d be odd for Rhea to have created those issues/access back then, if she was pretty much welcome in the imperial palace, so maybe those paths and passages weren’t meant to be used to get in the palace, but to get out of the palace - like secret escape routes in Enbarr was ever attacked ?

Coupled to the, at least, 2 forts Rhea and Willy built (Myrddin and Merceus) this makes me thing WoH!Rhea, before fighting in the war proper (or during the war) was preoccuped with protecting her homebase - the army can advance, but Adrestia must still have defences to fight against people who would attack them if the main army was defeated, or was short-circuited and the imperial palace was attacked.

So while Rhea was, per her words in VW “clinging to her desperate desire for revenge”*, she nonetheless wanted to protect and defend her human allies. Was it only because they couldn’t be used as fodder if they died? Idk, but I don’t think so.

But for a Rhea who’s still traumatized by Zanado being painted in red with blood, I’d say she would do her whatever she could to preserve Enbarr from the same fate - thus the secret passages to escape the palace if anything goes wrong and Fort Merceus not being able to hold enemies. 

*there’s at least one incoherence in her story regarding her “I wandered around gathering the scattered nabateans”, iirc Seteth and Rhea mention about how they reunited in Enbarr, but in Flayn’s story to Ignatz, she says Rhea came to them while they were living a secluded life (thus, not in Enbarr!). Or maybe Rhea met them in Rhodos, then told them she made her base in Enbarr and the “reunion” scene Cichol mentions is when he later moved out there with his family, when Rhea returned to Enbarr earlier?

we will never know lol