Thordan's 12 Knights are not Primals

[Nalien]

Well techinically we cant be sure how much of what we actually fought was an extension of Alexanders actual body.

I guess one could argue we battled Alexanderp indirectly, and have yet to finish the job... IDK, the question seems wrong to me, how many Primals have we encountered seems better, since we've encountered Alexanderp for certain. I wouldn't say we've battled him, rather battled inside him. Meanwhile, while we've seen statues, we've not actually encountered the Warring Triad at all. Unless you want to count the Singularity Reactor as an extension of them, but then surely that means we've battled them in the same way we've battled Alexanderp?

Even shutting down the core in Gordias, which one could argue was a direct assault on Alexanderp, was not done by us, it was done by Scar-McGee. We battled through Alexanderp, to let Mide battle Alexanderp, but we haven't actually battled him ourselves... Everything we battled was no different than running through The Vault IMO... The Vault was us battling Thordans minions, likewise Gordias was us battling Alexanderps minions.

Heck, if we take the lore on the Enigma Codex into account, it's fairly reasonable to argue that Alexanderp hasn't even been summoned properly yet... Would we count it as a battle with Ifrit, if the Amalj'aa only managed to summon his arm? I don't think so...

Ysayle's Echo is implied to be the reason why she was able to become Shiva and yet stay in control of herself and maintain her identity. Thordan, on the other hand, seemed to undergo a pretty radical change in goals and personality after his transformation (unless those goals and personality were always there, and he simply stopped hiding them). That implies to me that Primal Thordan is an example of what happens to someone who becomes a Primal WITHOUT the Echo to protect them. They essentially Temper themselves and become lost in the identity of the Primal they summoned.

Not sure I agree... He very much seemed to just drop the act when he summoned Thordan, I don't think he was Tempered, he seemed to retain far to much of his own identity for that. The fact that the Heavensward were already Thordan-enhanced before we event met them also implies he should have been Tempered all along. Then there is his actual fight, which did not feel like a Primal, it felt like an old man playing at being a Primal. A fair part of his attacks instead came from Nidhoggs Eye, even... Then after you survive Ultimate End? He starts flailing about hopelessly, very much like I'd expect Thordan VII to, not Thordan... Were he Tempered I do not think he would have fallen into a blind panic like that.

As for Ysayle/Shiva, one could argue that despite the Echo (or because of it?), she was effectively Tempered. She actually thought she was Saint Shiva reborn. Thordan VII seemed to very much know what he was doing, and when we defeated him he seemed very much himself, meanwhile Ysayle took a long time to realize she wasn't actually Shiva...