It Hydaelyn sundered herself, why doesn't First Hydaelyn handle the flood of light?

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Literally look at the image in the OP.

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Ah, my eyes apparently missed that, thanks for pointing me to it.

Honestly, my best guess would be a mistranslation or perhaps even a writing error. Zodiark's body was quite literally separated, with different parts of it in different shards. Meanwhile, Hydaelyn's body on The Source seems complete and we don't see any physical evidence of Hydaelyn on other shards. For example, when Zodiark died, his dark-aspected aether on the 13th was released. If some aspect of Hydaelyn existed on the 13th, then it would have resulted in a release of light-aspected aether, which would definitely have been noticeable and of great interest to "Golbez". But we don't hear anything about that, either in actual events or speculations by the Scions, etc when discussing restoring the 13th. Similarly, the need to send the Word of the Mother to the 1st suggests that there was no Hydaelyn there, because if Hydaelyn had in some way been on the 1st it would have been more efficient to just do something herself rather than to:
1. empower an otherwise powerless person
2. transport them between shards

Much of which you said yourself in your first post...and I agree with you! ^^

So all in all, Occam's Razor suggests to me that this is simply an example of humans making mistakes rather than an actual phenomenon in the world of FF14.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

The source Hydaelyn is weak becsuse she had to shield us from Ultima. The shard versions didn't. Moreover, source Hydaelyn has endured 7 calamities and the Ascians say she gets weaker with each one which is why Matoya's crystal eye is said to be a stronger crystal if light than ours. In other words, the scions concluded Hydaelyn was stronger in previous eras because she didn't have as many calamities to endure. No calamities have befallen shards that have not yet been rejoined, so 5hos3 Hydaelyn shards should be fine.

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Again: if we assume she was sundered in a roughly similar way to Zodiark, then we can only assume that a shard's Hydaelyn is even weaker than the Source's, possibly to the point of not even having will or agency. (If, indeed, those parts of Hydaelyn are on other shards; one line is hard to take as hard-and-fast measured proof of every single supposedly-logical extension of that claim.)

Do you ask why Zodiark's dismembered arm sitting around on the Fourth wasn't good enough for the Ascians to make do with?

But if Hydi was sundered, then why does she get weaker with each calamity? You would think she grew stronger by having the reflections rejoining with her. Much like our souls did with us, other ppls souls did with them and Zodi's did with him.

Some points to consider:
- It's been 12,000 years since the Sundering.
- We know the Ascians have been active during that time, working on other reflections to try to prepare them for Calamities. We know Warriors of Light exist on other shards, and the only reason Hydaelyn calls them to action is precisely because they are needed to ward off Ascian machinations and potential small-c calamities on those reflections, not just to fight against the Calamities that occur on the Source, forcing Rejoinings. Warriors of Light have saved their world uncelebrated and unknown to us, like in the storybook of the First's first Warrior of Light, the one Elidibus modeled himself after in the Seat of Sacrifice.
- 12,000 years is a long time for any 1/14th Hydaelyn shard to be working, sometimes creating starshower illusions to wake the Echo, always bestowing the Blessing of Light, creating Crystals of Light for Warriors of Light who prove themselves worthy. We don't know how many times those shards would have been forced to expend power to intervene, the same way she did to save us from Ultima, or to revive us after Lahabrea nearly killed us.

It's very easy to understand why, twelve millennia later, the individual Hydaelyn shards might have become significantly weaker, only capable of passing out individual Blessings rather than halt an entire Flood.

EDIT: Keep in mind, the Oracle didn't even stop the Flood on her own. She was given power and aether by the Warriors of Darkness's Crystals (and ours), she was empowered by Hydaelyn, but all of Ardbert's friends also needed to sacrifice what remained of their aether to ensure Minfilia's success, while Ardbert was left behind as a ghost.

Even shortly after the Sundering, the Thirteenth's Hydaelyn wasn't strong enough to stop a Flood, though it being Darkness-aligned probably made such things even more difficult (wonder what happened to that Hydaelyn's aether after the Source Hydaelyn's death, given the state of the Void's malfunctioning Lifestream).

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

But if Hydi was sundered, then why does she get weaker with each calamity? You would think she grew stronger by having the reflections rejoining with her. Much like our souls did with us, other ppls souls did with them and Zodi's did with him.

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Definitely a point in favour of her being unsundered to begin with. I like to picture it that she isn't necessarily getting weaker but is remaining constant while the world she is interacting with grows stronger, in addition to her slowly "running out of battery".

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

But if Hydi was sundered, then why does she get weaker with each calamity? You would think she grew stronger by having the reflections rejoining with her. Much like our souls did with us, other ppls souls did with them and Zodi's did with him.

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Have you ever been hit with seven apocalypses? Being in the Aetherial Sea she was right in the mix of the aftermath of every single one, I can't imagine she's feeling very good after them.

Not to mention, as we learned far later from Hydaelyn herself, she was starving herself of additional aether the entire time--a fact that, most likely, nobody else was privvy to. Externally it probably did look like 'every Calamity makes Hydaelyn weaker', especially to the Ascians, just because they probably don't check often enough to come to the true conclusion. I forget who exactly told us 'every Calamity makes Hydaelyn weaker', but we should take into account the possibility that they just didn't have complete info.

For whatever it's worth, there was a time (Stormblood era) when the quasi-official dev. team answer to, "How do rejoinings make Zodiark stronger but Hydaelyn weaker?" was "That's a good question and we will come up with something." There were a lot of plot devices that - as I like to call it - "didn't have an exit strategy" at the time. The tidiness with which they were cleaned up varies from case to case.

For example, Elidibus (back in the days when his response to Lahabrea's death was little more than, "Well, that's annoying and inconvenient and more work for me.") said that being rejoined 7 times had resulted in the souls of the Source's becoming "weak and wan" (English) or "on the verge of inhuman" (Japanese) or "degraded and more spiritual" (French). In retrospect all of them should probably be ninja-edited to, "drawing ever-closer to regaining their true form" or whatever...but they remain for now.

Lines about Hydaelyn getting weaker as a result of rejoinings are from the same era. Another interesting facet of it is that Hydaelyn has been gifting crystals of Light to Her chosen before every Calamity and crystals that survive from previous eras show that they also get weaker each time.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I forget who exactly told us 'every Calamity makes Hydaelyn weaker', but we should take into account the possibility that they just didn't have complete info.

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Some were Hydaelyn Herself so we're stuck working around that. When Hydaelyn referred to Her increasing weakness, it was usually explicitly contrasted with Zodiark's increasing strength or having suffered a calamity so I think the other option is still pretty workable as an explanation.

Zodiark was consistently said to be stronger than Hydaelyn prior to and during their battle. The Unending Codex highlights that Zodiark was "unable to resist" after being fragmented, perhaps lending support to the "maybe she may have sundered Her energy but perhaps didn't create 14 copies of own Her soul/will" interpretation. And from the very start every act of direct intervention on Hydaelyn's part cost her dearly. Projecting a shield into the Praetorium put Her on life support. It's plausible that between empowering Her champions, trying to recover after / work around the Calamities, and being subjected to the increasing presence of Zodiark's Darkness, She suffered a net loss of available resources in spite of whatever the rejoinings gave back to Her.

I'm not surprised if she didn't even survive the flooding. She'd only be 1/14th of her power. The entire planet is in status, her share wouldn't be necessary to maintain the zodiaek shard's prison anymore

I've been playing FFXIV for three years. And in that time I've learned that you can't trust the English localization. It's best to find that dialog in Japanese and double check what the characters are saying before making theories.
As far as I know, she didn't sunder herself

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Some were Hydaelyn Herself so we're stuck working around that. When Hydaelyn referred to Her increasing weakness, it was usually explicitly contrasted with Zodiark's increasing strength or having suffered a calamity so I think the other option is still pretty workable as an explanation.

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That's a fair point, although I'd also point out that Hydaelyn was also the type to lie via creative selection of presented facts. Of course, that was always basically their attempt to paper over 'we changed our mind/came up with something better later', but it does still mean that a lot of info with her as a source does come with an asterisk; the fact this part also fits in that basket honestly changes very little.

My closest-to-the-letter interpretation would be to combine this with the fact she got famously weakened after the Praetorium, and land on where you mostly do; she just kept stepping in to try to prevent Calamities, and it kept not working. Of course that'd rhetorically math out to 'every Calamity makes her weaker and him stronger', even if that isn't literally true.