The Warrior of Light is not tempered by Hydaelyn.

[Floortank]

The Warrior of Light is the exception to many a rule, to be fair. Tempering may also abide by different laws when it comes to beings that operate on a higher scale of power and circumstances to anything we've dealt with so far.

In short? Let's wait and see. It's only a little under two weeks to go until we get some major lore revelations to chew on and I don't believe we should be clinging to absolutes.

Tempering in every case we've ever seen means loss of free will and utter slavery. The tempered are in utter thrall to the one that has tempered them.

If you're positing that the WOL has free will, then they're not tempered, as that's the only defining feature of tempering.

[ObsidianFire]

There's also the flip-side to this which is that both the Ascians and the WoL and some other Scions (Krile, Minfilia, Arevald) have the Echo. And that Zenos and Fordola have an artificial Echo. And yet none of those people are tempered to Hydaelyn. The Ascians in particular would be an odd case as they work for Zodiark.

And it is the Echo that prevents people from being tempered. Having the Blessing of Light is not what protects the WoL from being tempered by other primals. Midgardsormr blocks the Blessing of Light temporarily and we still can't be tempered by primals. We still have the Echo just fine.

In addition... Hydaelyn doesn't seem to worry at all about being worshiped by anyone. Which is usually the main reason why primals temper people since that is how they gather aether unto themselves. Now it might be that Hydaelyn gets aether another way, but that still makes her out to be a really weird primal who mostly just wants to leave the world alone.

[FallenWings]

Better kill the crystal mom that has protected us on several occasions and simply asked us to protect the world all because an ascian told us they're "elder primals". Tempered or not I fail to see anything Hydaelyn has ever done that is purely malicious. I mean, she goes and tries to stop a flood of light which is because of her own WoLs winning too hard?

I swear people just get so caught up with being edgey due to the theme of the expansion and forget even the most basic events and lore knowledge we have acquired so far.

But ofcourse SE can very well just write a betrayal story to validate it. I just feel it'll be a copout since that seems to be the only way a story is told these days.

[Iscah]

Tempering in every case we've ever seen means loss of free will and utter slavery. The tempered are in utter thrall to the one that has tempered them.

If you're positing that the WOL has free will, then they're not tempered, as that's the only defining feature of tempering.

Loss of free will is the only defining characteristic as far as we currently know. And we're (possibly) about to know a whole lot more.

Even then, it's debatable and the degree of free will varies. Our first sighting of the soldiers tempered by Ifrit showed them rendered into mindless worshippers. But we've seen others like the Ananta, who have retained the ability to at least seem to think and act 'normally' and be undetectable to others around them. They may still be free to act independently in any matters not related to what their god wants or doesn't want them to do.

[Hezzlocks]

In addition... Hydaelyn doesn't seem to worry at all about being worshiped by anyone. Which is usually the main reason why primals temper people since that is how they gather aether unto themselves. Now it might be that Hydaelyn gets aether another way, but that still makes her out to be a really weird primal who mostly just wants to leave the world alone.

I agree with everything else you said but there is a possible explanation for this.

Primals need 2 things to exist. Some form of worship, and aether. Worship comes in many forms. We've seen it as direct worship like with the ARR tribes, as lingering wants and desires such as with Illberds sacrifice at the wall, and through worship stored in a relic as seen with Susano and Tsukuyomi. For Hydaelin and Zodiark, it would be direct worship. The Ascians worship Zodiark as the one true god, and just about everyone in Eorzea believes in and has faith in the Mother Crystal, Hydaelin. This is likely enough to satisfy that criteria, so Hydaelin has no need of tempering or converting worshippers as she has plenty of them as is.

As for Aether, Primals gather that from their surroundings. Much of it is from crystal offerings from their worshippers, but they also drain it from the land itself, which is exactly what makes them so dangerous and necessitates the removal of them. Where is Hydaelin located, though? Quite likely in the Sea of Aether itself. What need does she have for crystals when she is literally swimming in Aether?

[The_Last_Dragoon]

I have a theory that Hydaelyn is the main source of aether for the planet (hence the namesake), and us slaying primals is stopping them from expending her stores of aether. When considering the actions of the Ascians, it's easy to assume that when her stores of aether are gone, Hydaelyn will transform into Zodiark and would assumedly begin consuming and storing aether. Of course, there's a good chance that the appearance of Zodiark would cause magic to become impossible, in addition to the fact that it could very well threaten to end all life on the planet.

On that note, you technically don't have a choice in the game whether or not to go against the requests or words of Hydaelyn. So it's entirely possible that you're tempered, but I would also argue that Midgardsormr severed the tempering when he hit you with the beam of light (it might be part of his deal with Hydaelyn so that the WoL wouldn't be bound to Zodiark when the eventual shift happens).

[Rocl]

just about everyone in Eorzea believes in and has faith in the Mother Crystal, Hydaelin. This is likely enough to satisfy that criteria, so Hydaelin has no need of tempering or converting worshippers as she has plenty of them as is

Unless, they've gone back on this—this has been definitively shot down by the Lore team. One of my biggest gripes going from 1.0 -> 2.0 was how seemingly everyone suddenly accepted the idea that there was a giant crystal within the planet guiding us and granting us superpowers. Thankfully, someone out there somewhere heard my incessant mewling and brought it up in an interview:
https://gamerescape.com/2018/12/01/f...with-koji-fox/

GE: How did the belief in the Mothercrystal spread so quickly? Everyone’s all about the Twelve and then we disappear for five years and get back to everyone saying, “May you ever walk in the light of the Crystal!”

Koji: It’s all Scion propaganda. They’re passing out leaflets or something. (laughs) They want to push the whole Mothercrystal thing and get that out there.

When it comes down to it, there are tens of thousands of people in this world and most don’t know about Mothercrystals, just like most people don’t know that the planet is called Hydaelyn. There are no TVs, there are no science books, close to half of the people are illiterate. A lot of people are still living pre-technology…ish. I mean, there are water clocks and chronometers and people see how things are powered with aether. But, for the most part, people live in shacks or in these towns where they don’t know what’s going on.

The people you come into contact with seem to know this stuff. We’re not letting you talk to the rest of the people that have nothing to say. In a super open-world game we’d have people walking around town like, “I like farming because I need to support my family,” but we need to condense it down. Even the cities themselves are – in theory – way bigger, but we need to condense them down.

We give it a sense of being huge, but we can only add the people that are going to give you the information that you’re going to need for the game. We have to ignore the rest, but they’re there. So when the XIIth legion comes and (laughing) it’s like ten guys, is that a cohort? No, no, there are people there, but it’s condensed.

Essentially, the idea is we hear so much about Hydaelyn, the Mothercrystal because we associate with those who are in the know; the Circle of Knowing likely figured it out (or always knew! because they tell us to search for the One who granted us the Echo in 1.0) and told the Path of the Twelve. In the intervening years of the Seventh Umbral Era, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn formed and informed only the higher echelons of the city-states. The majority of Eorzea, and very likely the majority of Hydaelyn doesn't know of the Mothercrystal's existence.

Curiosity drove me to catalog the belief in the Mothercrystal/Hydaelyn further in the EN localization (because I really can't be bothered to do the other three honestly):

NPCs who specifically wish us/others "May you walk in the light of the Crystal" or some such (from greatest to least):
Minfilia
Kan-E-Senna
Naoki Yoshida
Urianger (his first utterance of this phrase is actually in the middle of when he's working with the Warriors of Darkness, lol)
Merlwyb
Y'shtola
All Three Grand Company Leaders At Once
Raubahn
Momodi
Miounne
Cid (to Noctis)

So basically, the only subscribers to this seems to be the Grand Company Leaders, the Scions, and the Scions' contacts in the city-states (the Adventurer's Guild innkeeps—I wouldn't be surprised if I missed Baderon because he used a few apostrophes.)

The usage of the term Mothercrystal follows the same pattern with one notable exception: A-Towa-Cant in the lv50 white mage quest. He's pretty much a literal ghost at that point though, so it feels pretty obvious he might know about the whole will of the star being manifest as a giant crystal in the middle of the planet.

And now usage of Hydaelyn! I didn't keep track of number of utterances here because there were a lot, but rather whether they meant the crystal/Mother or the planet. If they used it in both meanings, I kept them in the Mother/crystal/goddess barrel because they're obviously "in the know."

Planetary Hydaelyns:
Medrod (porter from Haukke unlock quest)
A broom (in reference to Gubal being the greatest repository of knowledge)
Cid (in reference to Midgardsormr/Shinryu conflation, and Alexander siphoning aether—could be argued either way, but seemed to be this one)
Jannequinard (various; including Hydaelyn isn't flat)
Mace (another astrologian, no mention of planetary goddess)
Levava (as above)
Erik (describing aether as vital to Hydaelyn, and Silvertear being the center of it)
Sylphie ("where on Hydaelyn can someone be")
Staelwyrn (about Serpent Reavers abducting people off the face of the planet)
Mikoto (I included her, because she doesn't seem to talk about the Mother Hydaelyn until after we get some information on the previous auracite bearers/Ramza/etc)

Mother Goddess Hydaelyns:
Naoki Yoshida
Ascians (Unnamed Haukke, Lahabrea, Altima)
Scions (Minfilia, Krile, Thancred, Y'shtola, Urianger)
Dragons (Tiamat, Midgardsormr, Hraesvelgr)
Grand Company Leaders (Kan E-Senna, Merlwyb, Raubahn)
Warriors of Light (Orran, Alma, Rama, Delita)
Hydaelyn
Honorary Mention: Louisoix

It's very possible I've missed some (I didn't find either of the twins!), my comb wasn't that fine-toothed (I didn't go through voiced cutscenes), but I think it's enough evidence to help support the claim in the interview and my point—the number of people who know "the Land is alive, so believe" is vastly outnumbered by those ignorant of it. Not everyone is aware that Hydaelyn is what she is, a giant crystal afloat in the aetherial sea—any revelation we get that points this way feels very... retconny (and that interview was recent!) Arguments for generic belief in a mother/gaia goddess and earth being the font of life etc I feel are separate.

[Eyvind]

There is a subset of this fandom that very, very desperately wants Hydaelyn to be evil. They've been practically crowing since the most recent trailer, with a "We knew it all along." I think the whole "Warrior of Light is Tempered" is just a part of that.

I disagree strongly with those who want her to be evil. I think it would be disastrously bad writing on a level of grade-Z Fantasy and fanfiction to have Hydaelyn suddenly revealed as the big bad (or one of two). When one side actively commits genocide, obliterates whole worlds, starts wars, collapses civilizations; and your other side is actively working to prevent these things at great cost to itself, then saying "they're just two sides of the same coin" implies you don't actually understand what any of those things actually mean, and they're just words on a page to you. It also makes me wonder what writers who write plots like that think about the real-world analogues of such actions (comparisons are inevitable).

"Two sides of the same coin" works for sin eaters and voidsent where the actions are identical and differences are cosmetic, but when one side commits atrocities and the other works to prevent it, you can never really have "two sides of the same coin."

Anyone who enters a dedicated lore forum for Final Fantasy XIV undoubtedly has their own theories on 1) if it's true, and 2) what it means, but I take it as a given that Hydaelyn isn't evil, and tempering is a pretty inexcusably evil act. It would not fit with anything else we know of her, and would make for a terrible protagonist who is just a puppet on strings unable to question their actions.

[Hezzlocks]

Curiosity drove me to catalog the belief in the Mothercrystal/Hydaelyn further in the EN localization (because I really can't be bothered to do the other three honestly):

Interesting findings. I feel like you did miss some, but based on your findings it does seem like the majority are unaware. As far as I can see this means there are three possible explanations to this.

1. "Worship", in quotations as worshipping isn't exactly the right word, of the planet itself is enough to fulfill that criteria for the mother crystal. Based on the other methods of fulfilling this criteria, shown by Ilberd and the Kojin relics, the definition of worship is quite loose, so this remains a possibility, though it would be a new revelation to be sure.

2. As the eldest and most powerful of primals, the rules have changed for Hydaelyn and Zodiark. They might have started as primals worshipped worldwide way back in the first eras, but evolved over time and became less reliant, maybe even into proper full fledged gods, no longer primals. We need way more information and from a more reliable and trustworthy source to truly consider this, though.

3. Occams razor. Solus lied to us, or if not lie, is just flat out wrong, and they aren't primals at all.

Honestly, all 3 are possible. The third is the simplest answer, and under ordinary circumstances the most logical and likely to be true... but since when has Final Fantasy been simple?

[Floortank]

Loss of free will is the only defining characteristic as far as we currently know. And we're (possibly) about to know a whole lot more.

Even then, it's debatable and the degree of free will varies. Our first sighting of the soldiers tempered by Ifrit showed them rendered into mindless worshippers. But we've seen others like the Ananta, who have retained the ability to at least seem to think and act 'normally' and be undetectable to others around them. They may still be free to act independently in any matters not related to what their god wants or doesn't want them to do.

The Ananta were completely without free will, they were just able to plan and execute a scheme at their primal's behest. But that's not even the real issue.

The defining trait of tempering isn't even loss of free will in a generalized sense; it's that you are forced to worship and obey the primal.

Hydaelyn told Ajora to betray her and unleash a calamitous monster she went to great pains to seal away? No.

Ifrit's guys were fawning and craven in their adoration but that doesn't mean he burned away their brains. We've seen the tempered execute schemes and sabotage in the past. That's why the Alliance executes the Tempered. They're not just zombie-like thralls you can spot at a hundred yalms. They're actually dangerous.