Emet-Selch, The Brother Hypothesis

[Gothicshark]

Part 2:

5. Emet-selch's true name is Hades. ...

Actually that's backwards, Hades is his empowered by a god name. The name of his Element. While Emet-selch is his true name.

Reference FF12 for the names of each of them



You will see that the FF12 Espers and the Ascians have a lot of overlap. However there are only 11 ascians and Espers that share names and everything really. However a strong point can be made that Altima is probable a respelling of Ultima, and Elidibus the heart of Zodiark counts as Zodiark. Azem left the 14 and never was a part of the god summoning, so they do not have an Element/God granted power name.

6. lyrics from Endwalkers theme trailer

Are just that, they relate to the story, and it relates to all the characters.

7. I reckon that Emet-selch's hatred of heroes

More like a hatred of wasted effort, he actually respects the PC WOL.

[Gothicshark]

Human heads on Elezen bodies, sure. (Though some are Hyuran instead.) But they're not necessarily max sliders at all – they can still be set to whatever height they want the model to be. As I linked earlier, Emet's model is set at zero height.

And by "all named Garleans" I think you mean Zenos and Varis, because plenty of the Elezen- and Hyuran-sized ones have names.

True, although the Max Slider Garleans are basic mobs, and generally they are all the same, and helmeted. The only reason you can tell they are Garlean and not Elezen is that the helmets have no Ear extensions, and are made with the forehead eye.

Also I will fix Human to read Hyuran, I am dyslexic and spelling that word always makes my head hurt. But I can copy and paste your typing to fix it.

[Ardox]

Emet-selch is the name of it's office. All ancients take the name of their office while serving on the Convocation of 14. Hades is Emet-selch true name.

[Adeacia]

Emet-selch is the name of it's office. All ancients take the name of their office while serving on the Convocation of 14. Hades is Emet-selch true name.

This here. It's expressly said that Emet-Selch is a title. Don't forget before the final battle he says "Let us cast aside titles and pretense." Then he says his real name since he cast his title aside.

[Katie_Kitty]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out Emet and Azem were actual brothers. In fact, I played around in my head with the idea of Venat being Azem's actual mother in the old days and thus Hydaelyn by extension feels the same way about whatever creature Azem's soul reincarnates into.

Just not convinced it's *true*, although I'm open to the idea of it.

[Enkidoh]

Actually that's backwards, Hades is his empowered by a god name. The name of his Element. While Emet-selch is his true name.

That is completely wrong, Emet-Selch was the name of his position on the Convocation of Fourteen, Hades was his real name, and given he had an uncanny affinity to the 'Underworld' and the cycle of life, (what the Lifestream was called back in Ancient times), his real name was appropriate (we know of two other Ascians whose real Ancient names were also figures from Greek mythology - Loghriff and Mitron's real names are Gaia and Artemis respectively, although SE have stated in the past that is not necessarily true for all of the former Convocation members to have real names taken from the Greek pantheon.).

And to further stir the pot Emet and Azem's 'mutual friend' Hythlodeaus may be a Greek word, but it's not from Greek mythology, it's actually taken from Thomas Moore's Utopia (like the name 'Amaurot' and it's various place names are also from this book), where his name literally means speaker of nonsense. Make of that what you will.

However a strong point can be made that Altima is probable a respelling of Ultima,

It is, and it was deliberate for meta reasons. 'Altima' was how Ultima was originally translated as in the original PS1 version of FF Tactics and SE clearly named the Ascian this way to avoid confusion with the Ultima Weapon, which was of course ARR's final boss, due to being fairly recently fought at the time Altima the Ascian was first shown (the only time she was shown to be honest). And of course, it's just another fanservice reference to the history of the FF series that FFXIV is a celebration of.

Elidibus the heart of Zodiark counts as Zodiark.

Again, for the same reason as Altima, this is a reference to FF Tactics, where Elidibus was a legendary human wizard who was the final boss of the optional dungeon 'Midlight's Deep' (also called the Deep Dungeon in the PS1 original), who held the secret 13th Zodiac Stone 'Serpentarius' (referencing the constellation Ophiuchus). During the fight Elidibus had Zodiark as a summon spell, the ultimate summon spell in fact, that the player could actually learn blue magic style if main protagonist Ramza happened to be SMN at the time. So Elidibus here in FFXIV being Zodiark's heart is a wry refrence to that.

[Rannie]

Yeah... I don't actually buy the whole brother's or siblings bit. They most likely were as close as brothers or brother and sister but not biologically related. Inheritance doesn't necessarily go just by if one is related to some one. We as a species whole can say we inherit the earth. Also it never looked like he was looking away when he was saying those thing to the PC he looked angry and to me seemed like he was narrowing his eyes in said anger.

I mean he even gets giddy when he watches the PC start to break down from the strain of the aether and tells us to rise up in madness and kill everyone to take back the "Land that was once ours".

[Vyrerus]

Yeah... I don't actually buy the whole brother's or siblings bit. They most likely were as close as brothers or brother and sister but not biologically related. Inheritance doesn't necessarily go just by if one is related to some one. We as a species whole can say we inherit the earth. Also it never looked like he was looking away when he was saying those thing to the PC he looked angry and to me seemed like he was narrowing his eyes in said anger.

I mean he even gets giddy when he watches the PC start to break down from the strain of the aether and tells us to rise up in madness and kill everyone to take back the "Land that was once ours".

He specifically looks away when he says, "My world will have no need for heroes." It's a sideways, downwards glance that only last for the duration of that one line. I should have clarified better, I suppose.

[Rannie]

He specifically looks away when he says, "My world will have no need for heroes." It's a sideways, downwards glance that only last for the duration of that one line. I should have clarified better, I suppose.

No I know which line you're exactly talking about it still doesn't look like he's looking away to me just more narrowing his eyes plus there is more anger in his voice in that moment than regret or anything.

[Vyrerus]

If it is such an "easy allusion", why has nobody raised it in two years? Why didn't you raise it in your first post?

In any case I don't know enough of the Tempest to debate it.





Catering to common races for glamour design is a very different thing to pinning an important plot point hint to the relative heights of characters who may not have the desired height difference at all.

Doubly so when there is a very simple practical reason: Emet is a Garlean and is the height of a normal Garlean.

If fact, he's not even a tall Garlean. His character model base is a zero-height Elezen. They're not trying to make him as physically imposing as possible.

Nice to know that I'm nobody. :P I've raised it a few times, when the subject of Emet-selch's relation to the WoL or when topics on the Tempest come up.

You kind of answer your own question though. Not very many people who play FFXIV are actually versed in any of Shakespeare's works, let alone specifically The Tempest. I myself am only passingly familiar, and only really thanks to the movie, "Forbidden Planet." Which actually runs more closely to being the plot lift for Amaurot, but at the time the movie was released, they wanted to draw comparisons to Shakespeare and claimed to lift their own plot template from The Tempest. Which is true, in a cursory sense.

To save you some time, if you haven't already bothered looking, Antonio is Prospero's brother, but he kind of gets lumped in with the other nobleman in the play that "stole" Prospero's station as Duke. The play itself focuses more on Prospero and a romance that he sets up between someone else's daughter and another man in the play.

As for catering to what's common, I'm not sure why your perceive a difference. Canonically, or at least promotionally, the story is written with the assumption that the WoL is the Midlander we see in the cutscenes and the trailers. He's only like a head taller the Alphinaud, and an ilm or two shorter than Thancred... at least if my memory serves from trailer watching. I don't look up exact character slider details but midlander max height is 5'11.6, and I don't think that he is.

And the point with Emet-selch isn't to make him large and imposing. It's to make you look up at him, while he looks down on you. A zero height elezen is still 6'4.5 nearly 6'5. It dwarfs over half the races and genders by that fact alone, as well as some of the taller races if they're also set to lower than 50 or at 0(though these are admittedly barely). Most people do not play races who get over 5'8. Those who do are outliers, and there will always be outliers in the MMO playerbase. Also many who do wish they could make their characters shorter, as they are playing for facial aesthetic or racial aesthetic rather than the height.

There are shorter Garleans, so his height was a design choice, even if it was the easy route of using an Elezen frame. Likely shorter than most standard Garlean frames due to his custom robe/jacket making his back appear to be bent by age(despite being clones in physical youth).

If you ever play a male Roe or any race that is significantly taller than midlanders or the medium to short range of characters, then you'll notice that not every cutscene actually gets a good angle on your character, and sometimes your character completely blocks other NPCs that are supposed to be within the scene frame. It happens occasionally, even with Highlander men, usually due to armor choices. They don't plan around individuals, just the majority.