Emet-Selch Is Not That Tragic

[Brinne]

they killed themselves and hoped to find a solution. This solution was bad and of course we did everything to stop it. (And they were our enemies in that regards) But unlike Emet who keeps with his plans they took ours and tried to save their world without endangering ours. And they suffered for it too, especially Ardbert..and on top of that they never saw us as lesser beings and they regret their actions. These are the differences between these characters. The nuance that a lot of people want.

Wait, what are you saying? Alphinaud recaps outright with, I quote, "you would doom our world to save yours?" And it's later clarified that they know that causing a calamity, tormenting and slaughtering untold amounts of people, wouldn't even save their world, just merge their souls with our Lifestream so that their people would at least still 'exist', even if they were dead.

Ardbert and the others were completely onboard with massacreing the unrelated innocents of the Source to preserve some vague fragment of their world. They go around intentionally driving the beast tribes to despair and desperation with the goal of forcing them to summon more and more Primals. Ga Bu's parents were murdered directly because of this, and Ga Bu went insane. Urianger suggests to Ardbert that he go murder us to speed up the Calamity and Ardbert agrees readily. Renda Rae laughs and gloats and taunts about almost murdering Alisaie!

They never say they regret their actions. When we confront them, and beat them down in the duty, they have a heroic rallying cry among themselves about how they cannot stop, will not stop, for the sake of the people that they left behind. (Sound familiar?) The only relent when Hydaelyn agrees to intervene and save their world in a way that doesn't necessitate a Calamity. Without that miracle, they would have never stopped.

Ardbert is the same as Emet. Heck, you could argue that Ardbert was more extreme than Emet, because Emet was legitimately considering and trying to find a justification for stopping. (Clearly, my WoL should have looked utterly disgusted and said "you're proud of killing innocent people, trying to kill millions more, and destroying Ga Bu's life?" in the Shadowbringers scene where Ardbert smiles and says he can finally feel proud of himself for his role in helping preserve the First!) But unlike Ardbert, Emet never had the benefit of a Hydaelyn ex Machina bailing him out of his impossible situation.