Thinking about Elidibus

[GoldStarz]

The general structure of that is:

1. Elidibus is a normal Ancient.
2. End of Days happens, he steps up to become the heart of Zodiark (and isn't even the first choice, but that's not important). Elidibus becomes that heart, part of a primal.
3. Elidibus gets lonely/needy/sees people need help/whatever, and descends as Elidibus again, whose form is also a primal.
4. Hydaelyn hits Zodiark with a leg drop from the top rope. Elidibus remains one of the few intact Ancients afterwards, his consciousness down with them instead of up in Zodiark, but Zodiark's body isn't doing much so it's inconsequential.
5. Elidibus, Lahabrea and Emet-Selch make the crystals of the Convocation, and elevate the rest of them as the Ascians.
6. Elidibus starts fading, because he's powered by literal hero worship since that's what Zodiark was made to be. At this point either the Source or at least one shard is in a roughly medieval-era age of heroism, and he possesses a guy that looks like the FFI WoL, and plays hero to both feed himself and manipulate the world.
7. All Known History goes here.
8. A Realm Reborn starts and we show Elidibus that he's a chump-tier hero no matter how many times he's worn the mask for sustenance reasons, and is equally chump-tier at picking good hosts or pawns.

5 and 6 could be the other way around, it's unclear, but also not important right now. So to answer your question, Elidibus has been a primal since the End of Days, but has been 'the primal Elidibus' since an unclear amount of time after that.

And chances are, the primal Elidibus was... well, the person Elidibus' idea of the person Elidibus rather than anyone else's, with some broken bits because primals have different needs. So he's mostly accurate, but not completely, in the same way that if you drew a self-portrait of yourself, you'd probably get a few things wrong.

I would argue that the first part of 6 happens as soon as or even before 3. And as for your last paragraph, I feel like that's pretty irrefutably wrong. The whole reason that Emet is basically "btw if I die, you can kill Elidibus" is because he's become so unrecognizably warped. Almost everything we know about OG!Elidibus (that he's excitable, pure-hearted, has a strong sense of justice, idolizes the other Convocation members) is not present in the current version and in some cases actually mirrored like where he completely dismisses Emet's final sentiments as being proof that he was already a failure. This is all what the line: “The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it," is meant to represent; 'Elidibus' is physically present, but Elidibus has been gone since the day he was sacrificed to create Zodiark.