We have one image to work with, and it's of a severely uncomfortable Minfilia being chained (and absorbed!) by the mothercrystal. Nobody's arguing that Hydaelyn is going to turn villain, or that the Ascians are somehow magically good in all this. You're getting way too hung up on extremes of "absolute good" and "absolute evil" to see anything that might lie in-between.

Quote Originally Posted by Belhi View Post
Hydaelyn is supposed to be the physical form of source of Aether, and therefore lifeforce, for the world. That's why as she gets weaker Aetheric levels start to drop one would assume.
She's the anthropomorphic personification of a force of nature, something that by all rights shouldn't have any sort of personality. We've fought those before. They're called primals. The Lifestream in FFVII wasn't some great benevolent entity, it was an apathetic omnipresence with a completely incomprehensible will in service to itself alone. Aerith cast Holy to ask it for help (and the cost she payed was incidental and tragic, not a necessity), and it did, but only after we proved it was to our mutual benefit.

Quote Originally Posted by Belhi View Post
I think the thing here is this isn't about Hydaelyn doing an evil by possessing Minfilia. If Hydaelyn is our king piece in the war between the Ascians and us (and this is very much a war), then what we could be seeing here is Minfilia sacrificing herself at least in a way. What exactly is Hydaelyn's options here? If this is necessary and she doesn't then falls then what? We lose? That's not a noble or kind thing to do. That's sacrificing everyone and throwing away everyone else's sacrifices for the sake of pride and idealism.
You're jumping to some serious extremes there without even realizing it. To pull an in-series example, Yuna could have done as her father did, and turned one of her Guardians into her Final Aeon to defeat Sin. It would have worked. Sin's rampage would end and millions would have experienced ten years of peace at the cost of a mere two lives. But the Final Summoning wasn't addressing the root of the problem, merely cloaking itself in a "necessity" that was too great to allow itself to be questioned, built up ever further as more and more was sacrificed. By your logic, it would have been better for Yuna to die there than to put the whole of Spira at risk for a chance to end that cycle of guilt for good. (Yeah, I use FFX a lot, but only because it's an A+ treatise on the relationship between self-worth and sacrifice.)

Quote Originally Posted by Belhi View Post
We have twice in HW been saved by the sacrifices of others. They lost their lives to save ours. Are we bad people because of that?
No, but we aren't exactly drawing a line in the sand and saying "no more," either. We simply accept the necessity of sacrifice and move on, ad nauseam. Rather than argue this out further, since you seem pretty entrenched in the "sacrifice is beautiful, and we should sacrifice more to keep our sacrifices form being in vain!" camp that I can't even at this point, I'm just going to quote Soul Sacrifice Delta and be done. "A world that demands sacrifice isn't worth saving."

We're fresh pieces in an endless war between light and dark that we know next to nothing about, and our loyalty is driven by stakes we perceive as too high to question. Signs suggest we're about to start questioning, and that's a good thing for us and the world (anthropomorphic mothercrystal optional).