Yeah some people are like, extremely invested in having all of Edelgard’s efforts in CF go to waste just because it’s Edelgard doing it. It reeks of bad faith, especially since they are also completely sure that Dimitri and/or Claude are the goddess’ gift to Fodlan and they naturally succeed at everything they do and everyone in the continent loves them for it. So everyone gets to have their happily ever after credits roll, except for Edelgard because uuuuuhhhhhhh some unkown heroes rise up in a mighty resistance effort and dismantle her absolutely evil empire of, uh, social equality between nobles and commoners (which is somehow now a bad thing to want to achieve because it’s bad for their favourite aristocratic characters, I guess?) in a decade or two for the glory of Faerghus and Alliance independence.

Because apparently commoners just looooooove their feudal lords with their fancy weapons and crests that keep them safe from scary foreign threats and absolutely hate getting public education and the ability to compete for government posts, and also just love working in fields, begging in the streets/having to resort to thievery to feed their families, being illiterate and dying of hunger. Rich merchant families like Ignatz’s are the exception, and for each Dorothea or Ashe there would be hundreds of other street urchins that never get the opportunity to improve their lives at all, especially because those two only got out of poverty thanks to a chance encounter with a rich benefactor that took a shine to them. Dorothea and her talent for singing was spotted by the opera as someone who would earn them a lot of money once trained, and Ashe was a clear charity case.

And Edelgard, one of the most politically shrewd characters in Three Houses, who meticulously planned a war that would change the political face of the continent before she was in her 20s, suddenly loses all skill for politics and warfare in this vague future and just lets it happen. So do the rest her allies, despite winning the war against Rhea in record time and later on eliminating the Slitherers. Hubert, especially, doesn’t notice any political unrest and neither does his spy network, either.

I’m sorry, but this headcanon that Edelgard is so incompetent that she would completely lose political control of the unified continent to some unnamed revolutionaries that want things to go back to how they were before is just plain ridiculous. Especially because these people have pulled the “revolutionaries” out of their collective asses, since canon CF doesn’t make any mention of political unrest except for the slitherers and some nobles that were upset about losing privileges. Especially because, if anything, Edelgard should be overwhelmingly popular with the masses, since she’s making effective social changes that benefitted commoners far more than getting to fly a blue or yellow flag ever did for them.

It would be just as ridiculous for me to say that Faerghus goes to shit after Azure Moon because Dimitri randomly falls of a horse and breaks his neck 5 years after the final battle in his route. It’s his destiny. There is no way he could have prevented it. This makes narrative sense somehow (the real reason is that I, person who is making this point, personally dislike Dimitri and his ideology and I’m grasping at straws for reasons for him to fail no matter what the game says in canon) Well, that’s just as stupid as the “unnamed and unmentioned Faerghus and Alliance loyalists absolutely wreck Edelgard’s empire 20 years after CF because Edelgard and all of her allies are suddenly completely incompentent and everyone in the continent hates her for taking away the blue and yellow flags and not letting them pray” headcanon is.

Also, Edelgard is nothing if not consistent in her motivations and aims, and repeteadly puts her money where her mouth is, to the point of eventually abdicating her own position as emperor and choosing a successor unrelated by blood to herself and entirely on their own merits. As kendrixtermina says above, it’s not just the credit rolls, her dedication to a society based on a meritocracy in which there is equality of opportunity and the most deserving and competent people get the government positions shows itself all through CF. In fact, I also remember talking to NPCs that deserted to the empire from the other factions, some of them remarking that Rhea was losing her marbles and that they were glad the empire’s leadership was mentally sound. If most people saw Edelgard as an unredeemable monster in CF, her army would be bleeding deserting soldiers, not being bolstered by the deserters of the other factions.

Honestly, I don’t know why her position is this controversial, she’s one of the most politically progressive characters in Fire Emblem as a whole. Competent people getting access to education, government positions and other public and state posts regardless of birth status instead of those automatically going to a trust fund baby from a landowner family that may or may not have inherited magic powers/weaponry just because that family has held the position for generations is the better system, at least for the common people. So is getting the church out of politics and not letting them unilaterally execute “heretics” or even just criminals (like the whole thing with Lonato’s son, who was quickly executed by the church instead of letting the appropriate kingdom authorities deal with him).

And yeah, it doesn’t make sense for Edelgard to fire people who were competent but were also nobles from the old order when they hadn’t done anything wrong. Or to not hire people who were obviously competent and had repeteadly proved themselves just because they were nobles, like with Ferdinand. She purged the nobles who were corrupts, not every single person of noble birth. And even those she purged were put on house arrest expecting a trial for their crimes, with the notable exception of Hubert’s father.