Originally Posted by
Fendred
I've seen some people confused as to why Ottis sacrifices himself to save Sphene despite her being able to hop bodies. Ottis was one of multiple volunteers to create a process for transferring both the soul and memories of a person into a new body. These are referred to as first generation endless and are separate from the system. Ottis then isolated himself for fear of scaring the princess with his new body, although that might just be a cover for some level of guilt towards not being able to save the queen. Several citizens mention that Sphene uses special gear to store her memories, so this is a common belief among her subjects.
Ottis does not appear until after Zoraal Ja demonstrates the nature of this version of Sphene. His consciousness/awareness is then suppressed by a command from Zoraal Ja before Sphene body hops back to the capital to save her people. So when he gives his all to protect Sphene, its because he genuinely believes she is a first generation endless like himself. How Zoraal Ja's command would affect Ottis who is separate from the system is the actual contradiction here.
That leaves two possibilities as to what happened to Sphene when the conservators attempted to turn her into an endless. Either they succeeded, thereby transferring BOTH soul and memories into a vessel. Or they failed, only capturing her memories. I will save us time by dismissing the later. The reason the gen one endless were not connected to the cloud was that the technology did not exist yet. That same technology is required for the current queen Sphene to function. The citizens react as though Sphene was always present and its common knowledge Sphene has "special gear" for backing up her memories. Given the limitations of the conservators at that time, Sphene must have been successfully transferred to a new vessel in both memory and soul. The tease of her crown in the ending could elude to this as well. The mystery is when did they replace that queen Sphene with the Endless Queen from the Living Memory?
There is a possibility of a fake queen Sphene or possibly her giving orders from a bed chamber where no one could see her. However, that begs the question of whether the relatively primitive technology of the conservators at the time would have been advanced enough to fool the general populace.