Quote Originally Posted by Veloran View Post
Frankly, I would not say that any incarnation of Hydaelyn has expressed humbleness all that much. Regret maybe. But whether Hydaelyn herself, Venat, or Minfilia as the Word, every time it's a full belief in the cause, no matter the consequences, and her servants must serve and her enemies must die. Of course you can say "well, she had good reasons", but I can hardly say it's ever in the realm of humility.
Where did Hydaelyn, in any incarnation, ever say her servants must serve?

The most I can remember is Hydaelyn going "this set of events must happen, and at this point in time you are the best suited for achieving it". And most of the time, Hydaelyn's servants do her bidding, not because they're forced to, but because they happen to be in situations (quite often Ascian-orchestrated) where their options are either to follow Hydaelyn's bidding, or literally die.

There are two exceptions I can think of, neither of which are addressed to us. The first is Minfilia's sacrifice, which I accept because it's what Minfilia herself decided to do. It would be quite hypocritical to go "oh but her beliefs were misguided and that makes it not okay", and then turn around and go "yes, the Ascians believe in this flawed thing, but that's still okay". Minfilia decided to sacrifice herself for the sake of Hydaelyn, whom she believed in. Papalymo decided to sacrifice himself for the sake of Louisoix's dream, which he believed in. It may or may not have been a mistake to do so, but those were decisions they made, and we all live with the consequences of that.

The second is Hydaelyn directly intervening with Midgardsormr, when Midgardsormr was about to blast us into little aetherical particles. We don't actually see the conversation, but based on context, I think it's safe to say that it went along the lines of Hydaelyn going "no, Midgardsormr, this mortal is my Champion, and I forbid you from killing them". And Midgardsormr went "okay, fine, you're the boss". That's the one time I can think of where Hydaelyn actually orders us to do something.

And Hydaelyn's enemies dying often has very little to do with her intervention. I can think of one instance where this happens, and that's based on the enemy in question speculating that it is Hydaelyn's blessing protecting us. Which I would say is probably one of the more subtle interventions, since Hydaelyn's Blessing was protecting us from certain death, which allowed us to live long enough to kill that enemy at the end of 5.0.

The other time Hydaelyn's Blessing intervenes, it's specifically to not kill the enemy. Hydaelyn's Blessing allows us to survive Ultima and to disable the Ultima Weapon, and also to exorcise Lahabrea from Thancred, without killing Thancred. Which Lahabrea was taunting us to do, so if anyone wants us to kill our enemies, it's the Ascians.