Is 'Hydaelyn' a misnomer based on a misconception?

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Originally Posted by Lauront

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Thats something I've been pondering. What purpose was Hydaelyn summoned for anyways? If it was just to defeat Zodiark then she should've dissapeared afterwards, no? Did she also get directives to guard against his return? If so, she wasn't set up very well, considering her semi-hand-off methods and apparent weakness. I'm also starting to lean on the side that summoning such primals came with unexpected aspects, some of which we're still experiencing the consequences of.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

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Something possibly worth pointing out is, that the alternative you are arguing for, may be worse in effect than the original theory.

You imply, that all political situations a WoL takes place in are Ascian made. That would imply that most of the major issues in the world are caused and solved by larger powers, manipulating the mortal races semi-directly (in the case of Ascians) or indirectly (blessing of light).

Not saying this is incorrect, just that it some ways worse, and possibly still reason enough to hate both sides. Fighting determinism is a common enough theme in jrpgs afterall.

Edit incoming

See I haven\\\\\\'t trusted Hydelyn since the whole taking Minifilia and essentially coercing her into giving up her body to become her voice. Say what you will but Minifilia would\\\\\\'ve followed whatever Hydelyn would say especially at the time when things were going very wrong and also haven\\\\\\'t heard her for quite a while.

But this has been the only time in the history of the game that Hydelyn was proactive.

Every other time she has always been reactive, any influence/power she gave to someone was after the Asians have gotten involved and usually close to a calamity at that.

Ramza\\\\\\'s lot well best beat up all those auracite addicts that came about after Ultima gained sentience through worship (while never stated to be ascians but summoning sentience into a being that could provide power akin to Simon\\\\\\'s is very very questionable that they wouldn\\\\\\'t have had a hand in it, auracite was used for 13th shard and how did the auracite get there either to the 13th or the other way round as the only other place it has been found is the 13th shard - I take the whole Ultima the High Seraph classed as an otherworldly being which is vague to be like middy or like voidsent as a failed ascian ploy as it fits their mo just didn\\\\\\'t cause a calamity due to being sealed before it could)

Tensen had Kirin pony to contend with.

Zodiac Braves after the war of the magi started.

Us after garlemald had started making its move onto Eorzea and primals started popping up.
She was content with Garlemald taking the whole of Islbard and Othard but only gave power after they started coming to Eorzea where she probably asked middy to stop them due to dalamud having done its thing to Bozja Citadel.

There are two things that those that do not believe history is in the hands of man need to answer.

1. Why hasn\\\\\\'t Hydelyn tempered every soul or everyone especially at the height of her power (her programming would still have self preservation and making sure everyone knows who you are to provide you with energy is pretty up there)
2. Show me a time when she gave the blessing of light to someone when nothing wrong was going on like legit she just gave her power just cus she could.


Even Vayne Solidor champion for "Bringing history back into the hands of man" was a manipulated puppet of Venar, Venar turned its back on the gods but still was a god itself with very godlike powers, Ashe and co were the ones who actually put history in the hands of man when they slew Vayne but they left the other gods in Giruvegan alive so what is to say they won\\\\\\'t just wait out an era or two before manipulating a new puppet using Giruvegan power source as a means of power. So is history really in the hands of man at the end, sort of not really.

Part 1 as phone >_<

Part 2

I dislike that Hydelyn and Zodiark are primals it cheapens them cheapens the ascians cheapens us as the already shallow character that we are in canonical story.

But to see if history is in the hands of man with Hydelyn still around would require 2 things.
1. No ascians
2. All current blessing of light/echo users and those that know of her to die without passing on knowledge(which requires Sharlayan to be completely destroyed right down to everyone who has ever set foot there).

The 2nd point can only ever be theorised so not able to concretely put this down as down to personal interpretation. It is a literal no side can be correct so both sides have to accept that it is someone\\\\'s take on it.

With regards to the High Seraph, although it'd be unwise to rule out some manner of Ascian involvement, we have already seen that the First has some very similar features to the Source, including apparently the major races, much of the architecture, potentially the languages, etc... and this is in spite of having much thinner aether and different passage of time between the shards. So, the development of auracite coinciding across worlds does not really strike me as hard to believe as naturally occurring since it is just a mineral that can contain aether in the end. Urianger is even able to manufacture white auracite on the First, so it is really just a question of technical knowledge.

The High Seraph's ability to wield Ultima, a spell which requires dense aetheric concentration, is why it does sound plausible to believe that it originated from some other world, be it a star or some "dimension" we've yet to fully understand, given that even the Source does not contain dense enough aether to allow for the spell's execution without some extrinsic aid like the Heart of Sabik, even for a potent being like Lahabrea... nevermind the aetherically thinner Reflections. Lastly, if Primal-like beings can be created on the Source, there is no reason why similar processes could not yield similar outcomes on other worlds, and in its case it was reverence and fear of its destructive ability which led to it gaining sentience. I think it would be a bit trite on SE's part to try reduce everything to Ascian inervention - in the end, when they're gone, they are going to need other things to pick up the slack as antagonists, and whatever the High Seraph was might provide the starting point for one future threat. And who knows, perhaps they learnt of Ultima through studying such a being?

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Originally Posted by Lauront

For Hydaelyn not to have tempered her summoners, even a little, would require she is somehow an exception to the rule.

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An important point to make, is that "the rule" could well have been written by the Ascians themselves. All the primals summoned by Beastmen, with the possible exception of Suzano (who, notably, is never shown to have tempered anyone) were done so under Ascian tutelage. Since it's in their best interests for Beastmen to be belligerent, they could well have baked-in the Tempering aspect ON PURPOSE, not because it was an unavoidable side-effect of Tempering. I've speculated in the past, as well, that even Zodiark, the original Primal, could have been deliberately given this ability, in order to help curb the uncontrolled Creation magic.

Hydaelyn, created to oppose Zodiark, may well have been created with this aspect ABSENT, because it did not suit the needs of her summoners.

Regardless of whether Hydaelyn can temper (and, if she can, whether she ever chooses to do so), I think it's pretty safe to assume that the writers are NEVER going to step up and say that the player character was tempered all along. They are, for the most part, very dedicated to allowing the player to choose their own narrative for their characters, and out-and-out saying "Oh, everything you've done has been because your soul has been enslaved by Hydaelyn" would stand pretty starkly against that!

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Any and all scenarios where a Warrior of Light has cut someone down based on political of ideological differences would count. Many side quests revolve around just that. For history to truly be in the hands of man it needs to work out as intended, both in terms of the 'good' and the 'bad' - though the game itself repeatedly shows both to be a matter of perspective, further complicating matters. Eorzea also receives a disproportionate amount of attention and investment compared to other nations - further disallowing its history to advance in a way that isn't influenced by the Warrior of Light.

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Originally Posted by Elladie

I guess the whole Steppe section in SB is an example of what Theo is talking about. We drag the Xaela into the war to serve our own ends (well Hien's ends) and we use our capabilities as the WoL to do so by winning the Nadaam and becoming Khagan. No Ascians involved in that as far as I remember

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None of the instances in which the WoL has acted on a political basis have invoked the power of Hydaelyn. Those were all personal choices made by the WoL, using only the WoL's natural strength. The whole point of Midgardsormr's test was to show that the WoL's strength does NOT flow from Hydaelyn; it is their own. All Hydaelyn does is provide a shield against explicitly supernatural threats, such as the Eye of Sabik, Primal Tempering, or Ascian tricks.

Any political action the WoL takes is not the will of Hydaelyn, and use none of her blessings. The most she could be blamed for is giving the WoL tools that allowed them to survive NON-political threats, when their death could have stopped them from interfering with political matters later on.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

Her summoners determined, somehow, an irreducible minimum of aether that would be necessary to leave in the Lifestream (for each shard?) for the cycle of rebirth, allowing her to draw the rest to function. She is still drawing aether above that amount, leading the great bulk of souls to become ever more diluted even with each subsequent Rejoining reinforcing the Source as a whole, moving Lahabrea to call her a parasite and Elidibus to comment on this in their big ARR meeting. Once Zodiark ceases to be a threat, in whatever capacity, let's posit that it is time to allow that aether to flow back into the Lifestream and reinforce the souls once more. How would her Primal directive, "programmed" into her by her summoners, respond to this, particularly if above a certain threshold she would deem it "too much" as reinforced the mass of the souls emerging from it?

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Well, we do know that Primals are capable of choosing to remove themselves, if they determine that they themselves are harmful to the directives they are trying to follow. Alexander proved that. I'd imagine that Hydaelyn, if she so determined the state of things, would either leave, or arrange for herself to be removed.

If not for Hydaelyn's intervention, the Warrior of Light would have perished on a number of occasions - and although an argument can be made for that being a necessity for the sake of the world's survival, it still means that the Warrior of Light's strength is not natural. To say nothing of the fact that he's now an entire soul's worth stronger than everybody else on the Source due to merging with Ardbert. Furthermore, the Echo provides insight and information that would not otherwise be easily discovered/known - which, again, has affected the course of history on a number of occasions.

As such, the course of history is not in the hands of man. It's dictated indirectly - and sometimes directly - by outside forces. Perhaps it will change in the future - though that remains to be seen. As for Hydaelyn, since she isn't actually a deity then the people deserve to know the truth of her nature instead of being led astray. Then they can have the choice to decide if they wish to hold her in high regard or not. Though I suspect that like many other inconvenient truths the masses will be spared from such knowledge 'for their own good'.

I suppose we'll see. There's much we don't know about tempering - it does make sense that it could be used to ensure misuse of Creation magicks did not take place, but at the same time it also makes sense as an unforeseen, unintended side-effect which the Primal may or may not exploit, depending on its nature.

The one thing that would strike me as odd if it were built into Zodiark to temper by design, in order to prevent Creation magick misuse, is why the Convocation would temper itself in the process, too, when such concerns would be unlikely to apply to them and they were the summoners. Maybe it's the only way they could build in such a feature and make use of it e.g. through the final stage of sacrifice, so they accepted the risk, but at the same time it does seem consistent with the whole thing taking them by surprise or being an acceptable price for saving the world if they did suspect it could happen.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

They are, for the most part, very dedicated to allowing the player to choose their own narrative for their characters, and out-and-out saying "Oh, everything you've done has been because your soul has been enslaved by Hydaelyn" would stand pretty starkly against that!

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Since when? There are no meaningful choices available to the WoL in the MSQ.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

Something possibly worth pointing out is, that the alternative you are arguing for, may be worse in effect than the original theory.

You imply, that all political situations a WoL takes place in are Ascian made. That would imply that most of the major issues in the world are caused and solved by larger powers, manipulating the mortal races semi-directly (in the case of Ascians) or indirectly (blessing of light).

Not saying this is incorrect, just that it some ways worse, and possibly still reason enough to hate both sides. Fighting determinism is a common enough theme in jrpgs afterall.

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As it pertains to the Garlean Empire, an Ascian proxy? Yes.

As it pertains to Ishgard under Thordan VII's rule? Yes. However, for a brief time afterwards (between the defeat of King Thordan and Nidhogg) we are dealing with a purely man-made crisis, and presumably solve it without Hydaelyn's assistance (hence the need to use Hraesvelgr's Eye to go toe to toe with Nidhogg).

Not all political situations the Warrior of Light deals with are engineered by the Ascians (the Monetarist coup in Ul'dah comes to mind), either.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

If not for Hydaelyn's intervention, the Warrior of Light would have perished on a number of occasions - and although an argument can be made for that being a necessity for the sake of the world's survival, it still means that the Warrior of Light's strength is not natural. To say nothing of the fact that he's now an entire soul's worth stronger than everybody else on the Source due to merging with Ardbert. Furthermore, the Echo provides insight and information that would not otherwise be easily discovered/known - which, again, has affected the course of history on a number of occasions.

As such, the course of history is not in the hands of man. It's dictated indirectly - and sometimes directly - by outside forces. Perhaps it will change in the future - though that remains to be seen. As for Hydaelyn, since she isn't actually a deity then the people deserve to know the truth of her nature instead of being led astray. Then they can have the choice to decide if they wish to hold her in high regard or not. Though I suspect that like many other inconvenient truths the masses will be spared from such knowledge 'for their own good'.

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Any time Hydaelyn acts it is in response to Ascian machination. There are thousands of years of history where, to the best of our knowledge, she has remained dormant and content to leave the races of man to their own devices. It is only when the Ascians begin acting in earnest that she empowers champions to act against them. The ones really trying to "take the reins of history from the hands of man" are the Ascians; case and point: Hydaelyn does nothing for the entirety of the Sixth Astral Era until an Ascian proxy comes knocking.

Refusing to allow Hydaelyn to act, directly or through a proxy, will lead to the end of man. Not the world, just the races of man. Compromising that principle for a few years once every few millennia is preferable to the alternative, would you not agree?

I agree that people deserve to know the truth about Hydaelyn, but we also need the other side of the story. Regardless of how much free will he had, Emet-Selch's account of how things happened was no doubt colored by his tempering by Zodiark.