Lore Book Revelations

[Cilia]

Yes, the localization team messed up.

It's not so much that they messed up as the Japanese version was deliberately ambiguous. My knowledge of Japanese is nowhere near extensive, but I do know it does not have strict gendered pronouns. There are Japanese pronouns that it's unusual for members of a certain sex to use, but there isn't a strict dichotomy like in English (ironically enough, English is one of the most gender-neutral languages in the world, but I digress). Nael was mistranslated as a male because that was how "he" was written in Japanese... only for there to be a surprise when she is unmasked. Since the English version had to use strict "he" back in 1.x, they had to come up with a reason for why Nael is female in the Binding Coil.

... which really doesn't account for why the lyrics to "Rise of the White Raven" mention Nael being male, or why they didn't just do something like with the lore book and explain that she impersonated her dead brother and took his place as legatus. It's a case of the right hand not talking to the left, and I'm pretty sure they've gotten a lot better about it (I read somewhere they write the scripts almost simultaneously now to avoid those kinds of issues), but I digress.

Well, I mean, light is perfection - clean and sterile. Darkness is inperfection - chaotic and messy. So, of course, that's how it would be.

Tell that to the people who kept asking "What would a voidsent from a Light-drowned world be like?"

[Eloah]

snip

While i can offer specifics, i can say that pronouns in Japanese are rarely used and when they are they show more of the characters personality more than their sex. My guess would be she used the term Ore for herself, which while traditionally male denotes a sense of power, aligning with Nael/Eula personality.

[Balipu]

While i can offer specifics, i can say that pronouns in Japanese are rarely used and when they are they show more of the characters personality more than their sex. My guess would be she used the term Ore for herself, which while traditionally male denotes a sense of power, aligning with Nael/Eula personality.

And she mostly likely wanted everyone to think she is a he cause Nael was a guy and her taking up the armor was a secret.

[Cilia]

Except that it would have its own voidsent. The whole reason the Warriors of Darkness came to our world to cause a rejoining of theirs was that it would leave their people in a state of unlife/undeath. They'd be twisted into light-oriented voidsent.

What we've been told, and what I've seen detailed in the lore book (I don't have my own), a Flood of Light does not twist as a Flood of Darkness does. It erases. All aether is drained, leaving nothingness in its wake. Not a twisted, compressed singularity sparsely inhabited by deathless beings as the Flood of Darkness does. Nothingness. The voidsent we're familiar with are deathless because they're foreign to our lifestream and they have none of their own, but in order to exist they must still have some aether (it's the basic building block of all matter in XIV and we do fight voidsent on their home turf in the World of Darkness). There is no aether in a "Light" void, meaning nothing can exist in it, and it erases everything it touches.

The Warriors of Darkness' goal was to force a rejoining, letting what little remained of the First be reintegrated with the Source so its people could live on in a manner of speaking. The book doesn't imply "Arbert" killed the other Warriors of Darkness, but that he killed his friends and family to ensure they would be metaphorically reborn once the rejoining went through instead of being erased altogether.

While i can offer specifics, i can say that pronouns in Japanese are rarely used and when they are they show more of the characters personality more than their sex. My guess would be she used the term Ore for herself, which while traditionally male denotes a sense of power, aligning with Nael/Eula personality.

That was my guess as well, but thanks to the lack of voice work in 1.x and how English has strict gendered pronouns, they mistranslated to keep it a surprise or just weren't told. Prounouns are used plenty, but rather than strictly defining someone as male or female they denote how one thinks of oneself and the people one is addressing. "Nael" referring to herself as "ore" makes perfect sense because she wanted to impersonate her dead brother and assume authority, and "ore" is just about the most masculine pronoun there is in Japanese.

The question is "Why did they come up with the gender bender angle for Nael in the Coil in EN?" instead of just saying everyone mistook her for a male thanks to the armor. That's the part that really confuses me.

... but this is just me trying to sound smarter than I actually am, and a major digression from the topic at hand...