Question pertaining to the afterlife in FFXIV

[Alleo]

Bear in mind, that while Grenoldt, Mowen, and the Traveling Merchant at the beginning of ShB MSQ might have a suspiciously strong resemblance to their counterparts on the Source, they have not been confirmed to be split souls, either in-game or out. It is only fan speculation, and should not be presented as fact.

Reincarnation is still canon even if its open if those souls are shards or not simply because we know that we once were an Ancient. Of course the rest could just be other souls but how high is the chance that some other kind of souls look exactly like the source counterparts (minus the hair for Gerolt) and are even similar in what they do? (I dont remember Yoshidas interview either but I doubt he would have told us the truth in that anyway) I also would not count us looking differnt from Ardbert as a way to show it being proof. We are special from the rest so we simply could be one of the few where it does not count. Or (and which is what I found more plausible) they had the game restriction and simply could not give us a similar looking Ardbert thanks to all of us looking different. In the end the face that SE uses for the WoL is looking just like Ardbert. Heck people even confused these two in trailers all the time. And even the lore book states the WoL as male.

I really have a hard time seeing how only a few souls are allowed to reincarnate. (But I am not a fan of such a thing anyway) Yes after the calamity not many survived but we have to remember that before this the whole world was full of immortal Ancient beings. Amaurot was just one of the many cities in that world. And a lot of those people died before Zodiark was even summoned so those souls should be there to reincarnate too. (And seeing the scale of just Amaurot we probably already had millions living in that city alone) Why should Zodiark also (seeing how the ancient that summoned him cherished the underworld and their way of life) change the whole system of rebirth?

Anyways most of our discussion cant be based in facts because even the characters in the story are basing stuff only on things they get to know. Yoshida even warned us in one interview to not take what Emet says as the one and only truth since we are missing Hydealyns view on this.

But at least for me the hints ingame just means that the scholars were wrong and that we know learn more and more about the livestream and that maybe all reincarnate.

I think we do need to consider the difference between "soul" and "mind" (for lack of better words). It seems to me that while the soul may be able to survive and reincarnate, the mind is what gets dissolved in the Life Stream after they die.
So the Ascians we captured with auracite, their souls may have survived, but their minds - containing all their memories and knowledge - would have been destroyed.
Normally the soul and mind would be tightly attached to each other, so Sharlayan scholars and the like may not have noticed that there are two different parts.
The soul, I think, would contain the basic core of personality - so a reincarnated person would be similar but not identical in personality to the previous person having the soul.

Interesting points. And the recent patch does point towards something like that with them not using white araucite because they might not be able to transport mind and soul togehter. Which is also a way to show how we are similar to the 14th (and how Ardbert is similar to us) but because of the memories we created our mind might be different thus we are our own person.