Quote Originally Posted by daltonjl View Post
Why Lyse
It's kind of funny, because a lot of the points in your post still apply to Lyse, as Lyse. My take on it is that they did it to further separate her from Papalymo, and also try to give Papalymo's sacrifice more weight. Basically, he was watching over Lyse, and giving her the appearance of a Sharlayan Archon. By removing those marks from Lyse... if she'd actually been Yda, it was established that Yda actually did earn Archonship. Then Square would have had to explain why she didn't have them in the Stormblood trailer, but let's forget that for a moment. This would mean that for Yda to be believable as a Member of The Circle of Knowing, she wouldn't need aetherology explanations, and should technically have been nearly as learned as Y'shtola or at the very least, Thancred. The real Yda is supposed to be older than Lyse as well, old enough to spirit her away to Sharlayan.

If it were still Yda, she'd be older, likely mid 30s. Lyse is 25. She was 5 when she fled her homeland, meaning her feeling like an outsider makes perfect sense. If you were born somewhere, and only lived there until you were 5, then you wouldn't exactly have many memories there, nor an incredibly strong attachment to the place. Any attachment you did feel would be based off of older family or family friends who informed your views as you were raised, to give you a bias.

As for your point about, "could have saved Papalymo." No, you should replay the story. That was a sacrifice he was willing to make, and Thancred takes her by force to the airship. If the WoL tries to stand by and stop/save him, he blows them into the airship with magic. What Papalymo did was suicide by sealing spell.

Ultimately, the decision for this is admittedly arbitrary, but it was done to distance her from Papalymo and the Scions to try to make it more believable when she gives up being a Scion. To more clearly evince that she is an Ala Mhigan. That she's lost her whole family to the Garleans. That's why she fights with them in mind. Obviously it fell flat, because nobody liked it. I think the main reason being, she'd been Yda since 1.0, so for a lot of people, the reveal came off as, "Explain away the trailer." But I think it's one of the few times they had the plan for the character all along, because it fits fairly nicely with all the previous scenes with the character, where she is notably less learned than the other scions, unwilling to show her face, and only really excels at fighting.