(ShB Spoilers) Didn't Hydaelyn, uh...

[RopeDrink]

Hythlo did say that this divided their race so it seems that there were more than a handful of them against it. So if they had just accepted it and looked forward to the future and not be stuck in the past then no split would have started. So in a way you could say that they started the "war" between those two crystals.

There is only mention of a divide in belief, as showcased on the murals and explained in dialogue. There is no mention of any kind of conflict between those two groups that I'm aware of, hence I'm saying it's unfair to regard one side or the other as guilty of instigating such a thing. As said, I do not recall any mention anywhere that one side went against the other openly, only that both sides had a very firm believe that conflicted with the other - one that wanted to sacrifice new life to bring back what was lost, and another that wished to preserve the new life and leave what was lost behind.

As mentioned by Hythlo, this was rendered null-and-void when Hyde split them all.

[Lurina]

Though Emet-Slech's description of how the sundering worked did not present any conclusion that the person hit by the sundering was actually killed or even considered dead, merely made lesser.

Could you elaborate on this a bit? Emet-Selch explicitly states that the Sundering resulted in everyone losing more or less all their memories of their previous lives, while of course their souls (and possibly bodies?) were also maimed/transformed in the process. Both this and the rejoining are basically processes where the identity of the victim is lost, but the spiritual essence is retained, though changed. I wouldn't dispute that the rejoining is also murder, but what leads you to conceptualize one as death, but not the other?

[Deusteele]

You're not wrong, but not right either. You're defining murder in black and white terms as "the killing or ending of another life". That's not murder, that's killing. It's nowhere near that simple. Murder is "premeditated taking of another's life".

While Hydaelyn did end the life of those living on the Original Plane, we have no proof at this point if the sundering was intentional or not. That's the million dollar question.

[Alleo]

As such, the typical reaction is very predictable. "You want to murderize bazillions of lives? You must be one of those evil, filthy Ascians!"

Emet already mentioned how he feels about it. Having known what we were and seeing what we are, it's easy to see why he doesn't really consider such an act murder seeing as he wants to put everything back the way it was. It's understandable, but again, the characters (and most of the players) would still react typically. It's ending too much life in the present, thus it's bad, no questions asked. You must be stopped.

So what would your reaction be if in real life someone comes and says that the past was better and he wants his people back and thus all of us have to die? How would that not be evil?

The sacrifice at the start was done willingly to save the future. This is not about something being done willingly. Heck I am quite sure that even Varis would not be on this side if he had known the whole truth..the truth that only those sacrificed eons ago would have had a place to life. Even if people went like: Oh my lifes and those of my children and all that I love are not worth living because we are not complete anymore, lets all die; the Ascians never planned to let the fully complete souls live at the end. This is not a descision about giving others in the future their power back, this is about everyone now and in the future being death so that those that are death for such a long time can rise again..and its not even known if they would or if Zodiark is just not using them to get more power..

So who would even go and say: Yes lets sacrifice everyone so that maybe with a small chance those people who willingly sacrificed themselves (and that got their power used) will come back..and lets not forget how devasted the source world will be too after so many calamities.

I do believe that there is a big difference between splitting someone up and maybe ereasing all the memories of that time from their minds but otherwise keep them alive on a functionally shard and outright murdering every single thing on those shards and countless of lifes on the sourse (+ the source ongoing destruction throught those acts) to sacrifice the rest of it for a chance of getting those back that went out willingly.

Emet is also tempered and even in the past, when everyone was still whole, he was completely fine with killing new lifes. And as he said, even if people are whole again (thus they should at least then count as people to him) he still plans on killing them all again. One might understand his feelings and anguish but nothing of that plan screams good to me. And I am sure that a lot of those that choose to go to guarantee a future for the new lifes would be horrified by that.

[LineageRazor]

The days prior to the Sundering were ones of monstrous act after monstrous act being performed under circumstances where pretty much every conceivable course of action was a bad one. Summoning Zodiark and the methods for doing so were unconscionable, and yet at the same time I can't really fault the Council for doing so (at least, at our current understanding of the situation).

The best you can say about the Sundering was that it was slightly less bad than the planned murders would have been, and that's IF you agree that memory erasure does not constitute murder. (If you do consider amnesia to be murder, then it's actually worse, since all the planned murder victims were murdered anyway, and everyone else save three were murdered as well.) I'm torn on whether it is or not, and it largely depends on how much of the individual's personality was left intact. In either case, I'd say the Sundering was still a terrible act - but just one more in a long line of terrible, yet arguably necessary acts.

I don't hold Hydaelyn responsible, though - and this is because I no longer really regard Hydaelyn as an entity in her own right. She's a construct, built to do what her summoners created her for. Whether they intended for her to do what she did or not, she believed it was necessary to accomplish her creators' desires. The ones at fault are her summoners, and every one of them is now Sundered (unless it turns out that, in a twist, Elidibus is one of the folks who advocated her Summoning, and has since had a change of heart).

I do feel that Hydaelyn is a benign, benevolent entity NOW, with free agency for existing life as a high priority on her agenda (superseded only, perhaps, by ensuring that efforts of the Ascians to return things to the way they were are thwarted). But what she did with the Sundering could be construed as being as bad morally as what the Ascians are trying to do to reverse it.

On the other hand, from the Exarch's point of view, isn't that basically exactly he did? In his time, the Warrior of Light was dead, and he chose to sacrifice the people who, to him, were currently alive, to bring us back. And we were happy to support him in that after we found out.

This, interestingly, was basically the plot of the Wings of the Goddess expansion for FFXI. The world was doomed to a bitter stalemate in the war against the Shadowlord. The Goddess of Vana'diel, Altana, couldn't stand the suffering, and so influenced things so that an extraordinarily unlikely timeline, one in which the Shadowlord was slain, became the TRUE timeline. However, the original timeline still existed, and the "heroes" within it (closer to embittered anti-heroes, forced to make sacrifice after sacrifice for generations just to keep the Shadowlord at bay) couldn't bear the idea that all their hard work and suffering had been for nothing. Worse, an entity called Atomos existed, whose entire purpose was to devour superfluous timelines, and it was possible that theirs would be on the menu. They became determined to take their rightful place in the timeline, Altana be damned, and used time travel to set what went right wrong again.

I personally thought it was fantastic to see a plotline seriously address the question of what happens to the original timeline when you muck about with time. WotG wasn't my favorite FFXI expansion, but I loved the story nonetheless.

In the case of the Exarch, though, there was no stalemate. what they were facing was the gradual end of days. If it was an ongoing struggle for survival, it was one they were LOSING. It's certainly possible that the survivors decided that their own lives were less important than ensuring a timeline was created where none of that happened in the first place. Not too unlike the voluntary sacrifices by the Ancients to bring Zodiark about to save them!

[Edax]

...Kind of murder billions of people?

In the setting of Final Fantasy XIV, and especially in Shadowbringers, a distinction is drawn between the soul and identity, with personhood, and subsequently right to life, invested in the latter as well as the former. As far as we know, no souls are technically destroyed during a rejoining; rather, they are simply reconnected to their corresponding fragment in the Source... But the narrative still presents this as the death of all of that shard's inhabitants. Likewise, despite Ryne being a reincarnation of Minfilia, her whole arc is about her being a distinct person in her own right regardless, with Thancred coming to accept the original's "death" despite her continued existence.

During the post-Qitana Ravel cutscene, Emet-Selch mentions that the Sundering resulted in everyone losing most of their memories prior to the event, leaving only fleeting fragments. In other words, they lost their identities and unique selves as a result.

So by the narratives own internal logic, wasn't Hydaelyn's act of splitting the world just as awful as the rejoining? I've been surprised by how little I've seen this commented on in discussions about the conclusion to the story.

It seems like Hydaelyn's act was more akin to meiosis then murder. An act of reproduction, instead of death. The Sundering caused more life to exist, which makes it somewhat antithetical to the concept of murder.

[Brightamethyst]

People keep saying murder, but murder is an intentional act. Do we have any reason to think the Sundering was actually planned? IIRC there's nothing to imply that Hydaelyn intentionally broke the universe. I've been working under the assumption that it was an unintended side effect.

[FaerieAura]

Ultimately, I get the idea that the option was "all life serves Zodiark forever as His thrall" vs. "mortal life has a chance to thrive on its own, create its own worlds, and live under its own rules." Ultimately, it depends on what you consider 'living' to be. I am currently operating under the assumption that the cost of living under a world where Zodiark ruled was too high, and therefore Hydaelyn's actions and creation were morally justified. A life where one is in perpetual servitude to a god that demands ever-increasing sacrifice and supplication isn't really 'living'. If Zodiark eventually had control over the whole lifecycle of the star, it's possible that the lifecycle could have eventually stagnated into darkness entirely, leaving just an endless expanse of chaos.

"In one fleeting moment from the land doth life flow
Yet in one fleeting moment for anew it doth grow
In the same fleeting moment thou must live, die, and know"

[LineageRazor]

People keep saying murder, but murder is an intentional act. Do we have any reason to think the Sundering was actually planned? IIRC there's nothing to imply that Hydaelyn intentionally broke the universe. I've been working under the assumption that it was an unintended side effect.

Right now, all we know is that the star was Sundered after Hydaelyn defeated Zodiark. It's still up in the air as to why it happened. Some possibilities that have been discussed in the past:
1. Sealing Zodiark unintentionally Sundered the star
2. Keeping Zodiark sealed away required Sundering him (and the star wound up Sundering along with him, since he was the will of the star)
3. Sundering the star was necessary to prevent the use of Creation - necessary, since Zodiark was no longer around to keep tight control over people

There could be other possibilities, as well, but it's notable that 2 and 3 are deliberate.

I, personally, think that it was a deliberate act. The Calamity was a problem, and the folks who summoned Hydaelyn KNEW that Zodiark was solving it, even if it wasn't the solution they wanted. Just sealing Zodiark away wouldn't be enough - another solution to the original problem was needed, and Sundering satisfied that need.

I, further, theorize that the Sundering was presented at the Council of Fourteen as a potential solution to their problem, but was dismissed with a majority vote of thirteen to one. They chose mass sacrifice and eternal enslavement over the idea of surrendering their identity and immortality. The Dissenter left the Council, rallied allies, and went ahead with the Sundering plan anyway, when it was discovered what a monster the Thirteen had unleashed in Zodiark.

[Daralii]

Could you elaborate on this a bit? Emet-Selch explicitly states that the Sundering resulted in everyone losing more or less all their memories of their previous lives, while of course their souls (and possibly bodies?) were also maimed/transformed in the process. Both this and the rejoining are basically processes where the identity of the victim is lost, but the spiritual essence is retained, though changed. I wouldn't dispute that the rejoining is also murder, but what leads you to conceptualize one as death, but not the other?

Depending on how many people on any given shard are actually the reincarnations of sundered souls, the destruction of that world could kill billions. Meanwhile, the Calamities that trigger one(with the exception of the 7th, which was mitigated), cause enough damage on the Source to end civilizations. Can you imagine how many lives were claimed in the Calamity of Water or Calamity of Ice?