Zodiark: Good or evil? thoughts

[MistakeNot]

With Endwalker approaching I have been thinking a lot about Hydealyn and Zodiark. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Hydealyn isnt as benevolant as she first appears. Which got me thinking about Zodiark and I realised that aside from what we have been told, weve seen no actual evidence that Zodiark is "Evil" if anything, what we have seen in 5.3 would suggest that he isnt.

Is an hurricane evil? Is an earthquake evil? No, but they certainly can be dangerous and kill many.
Same with the primals - including Hydaelyn and Zodiark. They don't really have free will, which means they can't make moral choices as such and therefore can't be considered "good" or "evil" in the conventional sense.
They are more like forces of nature, Dangerous, but can be useful if your goals happen to align with theirs.

[Anvaire]

Is an hurricane evil? Is an earthquake evil? No, but they certainly can be dangerous and kill many.
Same with the primals - including Hydaelyn and Zodiark. They don't really have free will, which means they can't make moral choices as such and therefore can't be considered "good" or "evil" in the conventional sense.
They are more like forces of nature, Dangerous, but can be useful if your goals happen to align with theirs.

You say this and quite often people draw a line that Hydealyn = Good and Zodiark = evil. For me i think its neither and that the story will be nuanced and complicated. I do think though, there has been a lot of time spent narratively speaking to paint Zodiark as an evil entity that must be stopped, or an entity that is bad if he wakes up. It will be interesting to see things from his perspective which is what i hope we see eventually.

There are certainly things about Hydealyn that i find are a bit sketchy and grey and the most prominent is where she aetherically ate minfilia because she was too weak, yet was sat in the middle of the aetherial sea. So for me either our understanding of how aether works is wrong, or there is something missing there. Of course it could be that she refused to absorb the aether for reasons, but if that is the case she chose to sacrifice minfilia instead, which opens up an even bigger can of worms to consider.

[EaraGrace]

You say this and quite often people draw a line that Hydealyn = Good and Zodiark = evil. For me i think its neither and that the story will be nuanced and complicated. I do think though, there has been a lot of time spent narratively speaking to paint Zodiark as an evil entity that must be stopped, or an entity that is bad if he wakes up. It will be interesting to see things from his perspective which is what i hope we see eventually.

There are certainly things about Hydealyn that i find are a bit sketchy and grey and the most prominent is where she aetherically ate minfilia because she was too weak, yet was sat in the middle of the aetherial sea. So for me either our understanding of how aether works is wrong, or there is something missing there. Of course it could be that she refused to absorb the aether for reasons, but if that is the case she chose to sacrifice minfilia instead, which opens up an even bigger can of worms to consider.

Given the fact that the aetherial sea is made up of, at least in part, the aether that constitutes souls, perhaps her hesitance is rooted in the fear that absorbing said ether is akin to destroying souls? Hydaelyn was capable of pulling specific souls out of the sea, so of all beings she should know what she was centered in.

Then there’s also the unknown of if a being disrupts or changes the flow in the sea, what would happen to the aetherial balance elsewhere.

Perhaps, in comparison to these other options, having a willing voice was a way to avoid doing that. It’s important to consider that whatever the impact, Hydaelyn refused to do so for some time, as her weakness was a long running trend that reached its peak in Heavensward (and maybe still continues)


Nothing solid, just theories.