The Greystone Bastard (naming lore query)

[CyberForte]

You're missing the point (and running on one quote that doesn't exist in-game for your argument). While we are given support, we're still just following orders. Nobody really cares what we want.

Ilberd's comments on how we're just a tool during "Keeping the Flame Alive," combined with many of the things Fray says during the DRK 30-50 line, really hit close to home. Nobody really cares what we want - not the city-states, not the Scions, not even Hydaelyn Herself - only what we can do for them.

Even if we're provided support, we're still just a tool. (But this is really off-topic...)

I really have to agree with Tenkuu here--I think you're seeing undertones that aren't there, possibly because of your personal perception of the situation as a player rather than a character. Ilberd is a delusional fool trying to bring you down to his level with whatever twisted rhetoric he happens to have on hand. The fact that he was naive enough to actually believe Lolorito would help him in the long run speaks volumes about just how perceptive he actually is(n't), and the fact that he saw Raubahn's success as something that needed to be torn down suggests he has a serious complex about trying to defame anyone who was actually successful. We've been significantly more successful than him, both as an adventurer and an enemy of the Empire, so of course he wants to try and pull us down.

Also, let's consider that he's the man who gave Eline that big speech about how he sold his sword but he would never turn on his allies--only to turn around and do just that. And even if you still want to take him seriously, I would personally interpret his "you" as a collective--accusing the Scions in general of being pawns of the city-states. Unless I'm badly mis-remembering the quote, it was the city states he accused of of being pawns of. And if we're sticking with the chess metaphor, then my personal answer to that is that if we were once a pawn, we've long-since become the pawn who crossed the board and became a Queen. Just because we're still following doesn't mean we don't agree, on the whole, with what we're doing. Maybe I was too quick to say you're entirely wrong, because a lot of this is open to interpretation based on your character. Obviously, the actual interpersonal relations with the Scions depend on that beyond what we see in the existing cutscenes. and dialog.

Speaking as a Dark Knight main, though, I feel you're reaching to associate the sense of being used that was presented in those quests as being caused by the Scions. No, it was very clearly building on the backlash of being betrayed in Ul'dah--a sense of being betrayed by the people we helped, as presented in the Lv 45 quest with the merchant who asked you to retrieve his goods, then turned around and tried to accuse you of having ruined them. It was the sense of ingratitude for what you'd done, not the fact that you had to do it--never mind that the flavor of quest being attacked was much more in line with sidequests than the main quest. Aside from the questgiver in the Lv 40 being afraid of you for "Frey's" outburst, there was no real negative consequence of saving the people there who actually needed to be saved.

Similarly, in the Lv 50, the knights who asked your help--like the Scions--proved to be good people who were willing to pull their own weight in dealing with the problem, and the accusation of Heresy wasn't actually a consequence of having helped them in any way. While your character might have personally felt backlash against the Scions, the quests themselves do not, as far as I can see, actually suggest that this should be the case for everyone.

Indeed, for me personally, the strongest argument against your claims is not the fact that the Scions gladly risked themselves to let us escape, but Minfilia's "you are my pillar of strength" scene. Given I had already felt very close to her before it, that scene--to me--cemented the sense of having a very close relationship with her, along with the rest of the Scions. Also note that the first thing she says when saved in 2.0 story, even before thanks, is that we shouldn't have risked ourselves to save her. That certainly isn't the way I'd expect someone to react to being saved by someone they saw only as a tool.

Edit: I do feel the need to add that Alphinaud is the exception here--but I never quite thought of him as one of the Scions. In 2.x quests, it's much easier to make the argument that he saw us as a tool, but that has a lot to do with his particular character, being a precocious son of the very elitist Sharlayan nobility. Alphinaud in 2.x saw himself as being much more important than he was, looking down on his sister and her views and seeing us as little more than a useful tool. But even that started to change over time, and in HW it's definitely almost entirely a thing of the past. But projecting Alphinaud's attitude onto the rest of the Scions doesn't strike me as a appropriate.

And back on topic--maybe for others, the fact that he didn't ask much of is was why they liked Haurchefant, but that wasn't a huge aspect of it to me. And where it was, it was not in contrast to the Scions and our other allies, but rather the fact that he was much, much, much more reasonable in his dealings with us than anyone in Coerthas had been. I certainly appreciated his enthusiasm in the scene where he'd actually had to be restrained from coming to help us fight, but us that really any different from, say, Thancred's frustration over not having arrived for Ifrit sooner? And according to Edmont, he saw us as hope personified--very similar to Y'shtola's sentiment of us being the beacon of hope toward which all men are drawn. At least for me personally, much of what made Haurchefant so deeply likable was his similarity to our (at that time missing) friends in willingness to help and support us unconditionally from 2.55-3.0.