Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Emmanellain]

"We did consider Male Viera instead of adding an extra race, but we tried to take player feedback on adding a more beast like race as well as the strong desire to receive Viera. We did expect strong feedback on the gender lock. It was a tough decision, but we decided to do our best to meet both the player feedback and our development team’s vision. It will be very costly to add a new race or genders. So I won’t say no, but I would not like to set expectations high."

This makes me wonder, which was developed first? People keep saying Hrothgar was in development first - but this seems like it was the Viera that was built first, would make sense why they'd still be working on the Hrothgar just before the JP Fanfest.
I honestly don't care which was developed when, but there's comments going around on the forum that repeat they initially started with Hrothgar and then opted for a Viera female due to popularity, where has this rumor come from? are we getting differing answers? Cause I'm starting to get confused lmao.