Character Death in the MSQ

honestly if an expansion doesn't have a Y'shtola fakeout death it's not a final fantasy XIV expansion, it's tradition at this point.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

Honestly didn't like Ysayle. She was a prime reason why Heavensward did little for me personally despite the popular opinion. I just kept thinking she was an idiot and kinda freaky for turning the image of a gentle saint that loved dragons to her death into that ice themed, amazonian warrior goddess, and then being shocked when Hreasvelgr, the real Shiva's lover who Ysayle knew was her lover all along, was deeply offended by how Ysayle twisted her image. I understand that Shiva, the FF summon, is designed like that in every game she's appeared, but in the context of FFXIV, it felt REALLY gross that Ysayle did that to Shiva and her legacy. She has her breakdown and when we go back to get her to help with the rebels that she abandoned post-breakdown, she's still in Hreasvelgr's home despite how unwelcome she clearly was to him. But the game just... doesn't acknowledge it and I am apparently the only person that took her story that way. "Yeah, Ysayle was a little confused but she meant well!"

She only got away with much of it because Hreasvelgr is so nice.

I genuinely don't know if the read is Estinien regretting he couldn't "fix her" (thus very much being a fridged character as she's only brought up wistfully around him) or if I'm supposed to be mad at Hydaelyn for letting Ysayle go that far off the rails after a bad Echo trip since that was the era of the story Hydaelyn seemed to be evil and not just really struggling at her job.

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This is such a strange take to me. You seem to forget that she was actually delusional. In her mind, her image of Shiva wasn't appropriative or revisionist, because she misconstrued her Echo vision in such a way that she believed she herself was literally Shiva reincarnated. She believed she was calling upon something within herself -- and she was, though not in the way she thought. Which was why she was hit so hard by the revelation when Hraesvelgr spelled it out to her.

Later, she even laments besmirching the memory of the real Shiva, humiliated by her own actions as she is. That was the textual acknowledgment, and the writers ultimately attempted to redeem her through death... to middling effect.