Sharlayan origins and the Endwalker Trailer

[Cilia]

In terms of the staff, yes. But the parallelism is basically spelled out in the story itself.

The original issue raised was people chopping off the top half of Exarch's staff and recoloring it so it vaguely resembled Zodiark's XII incarnation; this was taken as evidence he was aligned with or would align with the Dark, but that never happened. Bringing up Emet-Selch's status as a parallel (though I think the literary term foil would be more appropriate, as they have many similarities that only serve to highlight their differences) is a non-sequitur.

Maybe. Back in Heavensward she said that she would go to the First to absorb the Light and save the world, but in Shadowbringers we learn that she merely sent Minfilia and forestalled the Flood. And the fact that she seems to demonstrate some amount of futuresight in regards to Ardbert renders the entire situation somewhat questionable. But, that's just an aside. It's true that people presumed a turn against Hydaelyn on the basis of "Light = Hydaelyn", but ultimately Shadowbringers was about combating the Light and WoL was saved by Darkness in the end. Note that nowhere in the section I'm responding to there was Hydaelyn mentioned, it was merely talking about the relation to Darkness.

The original issue presented, at the time of Shadowbringers' pre-release, was that the First was suffering from an imbalance toward Light brought on by the Flood; back then people conflated Light with Hydaelyn, thus believing we would turn our backs on her and join with the Ascians / Zodiark to restore the balance (or otherwise go around kicking puppies and taking candy from babies), thus revealing Hydaelyn was actually the evil one (or at least in the wrong). That never happened; the "Warrior of Darkness" was just a nom de guerre we picked up, we never turned our backs on Hydaelyn, and we never joined with the forces of Darkness (e.g. the Ascians) as so many believed we would (to the point there were many complaints about the "Warrior of Darkness" nom de guerre being false advertising). The PC remained the morally upright Warrior of Light, just by another name.

It is also very doubtful the events of Shadowbringers were plotted by Hydaelyn as well; remember Exarch G'raha literally broke the timeline by traveling back from the future where Emet-Selch successfully completed the Eighth Rejoining. The best one could argue is that she left Ardbert's soul around as a contingency.

What? Do you mean to say that you took that quote to suggest he's talking about still fixing that conflict now, in the modern day? It seemed to me very clearly to be his reminiscence of how he felt all the way back then, which he is recalling because his memories were finally restored. And the "But you are not here to see it" struck me as referencing his fellow Convocation members who had been lost, as he was clutching their crystals, not the opposing Hydaelyn faction.

Not necessarily, but looking at the whole speech and the context in which he gives it is key. Elidibus originally summoned himself from within Zodiark not to trigger Rejoinings and restore the world to the pre-Sundering / Final Days state, but to mend the rift in Amaurotine society created by Zodiark's advent. That's what he's reminiscing on there, as well as acknowledging that it was an impossible task.

His final lines ("The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it.") is, like the other languages, mourning how he is the last one left - and perhaps admittance that, despite the new world(s) being imperfect, they are still beautiful.

So when the developers literally go as far as to explicitly state that there is no good or evil between the two sides yet there is still the insistence that she is more morally righteous, obviously there will be a reaction in the opposite direction.

People have their own views on right and wrong. Everyone does. The devs saying "there is no right and wrong in the situation" doesn't mean people aren't going to apply their personal morality to it. I'm sure you do as well, so the line comes across as very sanctimonious.

I've found much the same. A lot of them, when you're resistant to the 'but the Ascians are/were good people' line, will eventually try to go for the 'if you were in that position you'd do the same thing' well. Which apparently works very well for a lot of them, but is personally a total miss for me; if I put myself into the view of someone who actually is living and seeing those final decisions that were eventually cut short by the Sundering*, I don't see it as a conundrum: I'm jumping into the Hydaelyn Hole, no question. I see the Hydaelyn position as the unquestionable right one compared to unsustainable angle of constant sacrifices to Zodiark.

This is apparently the worst possible answer to these people, because they've so obviously already decided that Hydaelyn is an irredeemable objective evil that siding with her is actually worse than siding with the guys who would go on to cause fourteen planet-wide genocides.

*And as an unrelated point, it's statistically extremely unlikely that the people posing this hypothetical would have been alive to make it to that point in the Ancient world; at that point half the population had been sacrificed to Zodiark twice, so reasonably speaking only 25% of the population is living to make that call between the two. ...even less, actually, given we can reason the End of Days themselves probably had a bodycount.

For me the issue isn't the sacrifices - well, the willing ones, anyway. My problem is that deciding the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's power(s) sets an absolutely horrible precedent that, well, the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's powers, turns the Ancients from the world's stewards into its virtual gods, and will ultimately lead the world down a path of stagnation. Nothing would ever really change, because the Ancients could (and probably would?) just feed Zodiark to maintain their supremacy over the world.

I... can't agree with that vision of the world. And while Hydaelyn breaking the world, and in so doing all but annihilating Amaurotine civilization and rendering people far more mortal than before, was a pretty awful thing to do, I have to argue people being able to choose their own futures rather than being livestock for an artificial god is worth the price that was paid.

... and again, that's without getting into Hydaelyn / Venat's side of the story, and after Shadowbringers took pains to make omnicidal sorcerers from the distant past sympathetic, one would hope that cross-section would withhold judgment until hearing hers instead of branding her as the one in the wrong (despite also crowing that there is no intended right or wrong). Let alone the sundering being an accident is very plausible.

[Vyrerus]

Sundering was a necessary evil

The thing about the Sundering is that it eliminated the people.
That is to say, when all of the people were sundered, they eventually died and lived lives without memories of their past. Who they actually were never got to make a choice for the future. The people of the current era only have a limited scope with which to view the future, even.

As far as the sacrifices to Zodiark go, as I recall, it was life that existed thanks to Zodiark in the first place, and it was not elaborated upon whether it was sentient or not. If they were to sacrifice thousands of literal cattle, trees, bugs, etc. then there's no real issue with it, imo. Or are you saying that you live an austere life, that doesn't put mankind above the rest of the Earth?

Also, I'd bear in mind that they chose to still display those sorcerers as believing in positions that the audience would still find morally reprehensible(moral relativism), at large, knowing that no small part would ever believe them completely, anyway. What the Ascians have been doing is eliminating one set of lives, out of a possibly endless number of lives, in order to try and make the world and its people whole again. And they know it's not ideal, but they hadn't found another way.

It's funny to me that Team Hydaelyn's stance is essentially, "The new life has the right to live and make its own choices, but the Ancients don't." To give Hydaelyn a pass is to denigrate all of the lives she destroyed.

If you've ever seen Star Trek Enterprise's episode, "Similitude." It's basically like saying they should have just continuously made clones of Trip, rather than save his life with the first clone's parts.

It's a morally ambiguous situation for us, outside of the game world, because in our own world souls aren't proven to exist. Even applying our own morals to the dilemma has to account for the fact that ethics in FFXIV's world are different because of this.

With tangible, discernable souls we have to see the Sundering with that in mind. The closest analogue we can make, honestly, is comparing it to other fictional settings or by venturing off into the absurd.
Imagine if you will, if you got Sundered, but only the body you can know, now. Your hands go to Europe. Your feet go to South America. Your Torso in North America. Your head in Asia. Your arms in Australia. Your legs, Africa. Your heart, Antarctica.

Someone close to you sees this happen to you, so they seek to put you back together. Only... they're met with intense resistance every time they find a piece of you. The pieces now have lives of their own, and they'll be damned if they belong to anybody, particularly the old self they no longer know.

It's a goofy thought piece, but that's essentially what Hydaelyn did to her own people. Even having her side of the story won't change what she did. For crying out loud, she started a civil war.

It will probably make us feel bad for her, but that's a running theme with the Ancients by this point.

[Cleretic]

For me the issue isn't the sacrifices - well, the willing ones, anyway. My problem is that deciding the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's power(s) sets an absolutely horrible precedent that, well, the rest of the world's life exists as livestock to cull for fueling Zodiark's powers, turns the Ancients from the world's stewards into its virtual gods, and will ultimately lead the world down a path of stagnation. Nothing would ever really change, because the Ancients could (and probably would?) just feed Zodiark to maintain their supremacy over the world.

I... can't agree with that vision of the world. And while Hydaelyn breaking the world, and in so doing all but annihilating Amaurotine civilization and rendering people far more mortal than before, was a pretty awful thing to do, I have to argue people being able to choose their own futures rather than being livestock for an artificial god is worth the price that was paid.

... and again, that's without getting into Hydaelyn / Venat's side of the story, and after Shadowbringers took pains to make omnicidal sorcerers from the distant past sympathetic, one would hope that cross-section would withhold judgment until hearing hers instead of branding her as the one in the wrong (despite also crowing that there is no intended right or wrong). Let alone the sundering being an accident is very plausible.

Yeah, I'm very much of the same perspective; I don't think it's right to throw all life that isn't like me into a meat grinder for my own benefit. But there's two angles against it that Venat's crew seem to simultaneously hold; that it's not ethical (according to Hythlodaeus), and that it's not sustainable (according to the Anamnesis meeting). These are of course by no means mutually exclusive--Venat's crew are basically present-day environmentalists, who you'll also hear believe and speak to the same things--but they're generally arguments you don't make simultaneously, since they appeal to different people with different mindsets.

...honestly, the entire 'Zodiark vs. Hydaelyn' conflict has some very clear parallels to modern arguments about climate change. Which is probably why I feel the way I do about it all: why I find that moral question so easy (because I've already made it), why if anything I was even more anti-Ascian after Shadowbringers, and why ultimately I'm more concerned than anything about where that story might be going in Endwalker. Conceptually I respect the angle of 'nobody is pure good or pure evil' that they've said is driving them lately, but I worry that angle might be leading us down to a story basically saying 'what if Captain Planet was the real bad guy', and I can't think of a single story the world needs less right now than that.

[filkry]

The thing about the Sundering is that it eliminated the people.
That is to say, when all of the people were sundered, they eventually died and lived lives without memories of their past. Who they actually were never got to make a choice for the future. The people of the current era only have a limited scope with which to view the future, even.

I've been curious about this lately.

We know that all the shards, immediately post-sundering, had the same physical world makeup, continents, seas, etc. We also know that each shard had a fragment of each Amaurotine's soul. Do we know the fragment-people, immediately after the calamity, lost their memories? Based on our knowledge of the era preceding the First Calamity (as a sort of high era of splendor), it seems to stand to reason to me that the fragment-amaurotines remembered their lives, at least enough to maintain and live in the machinery of their unsundered society. They would have lost the power of creation, but those initial fragment-people I suspect knew who they were and what they had lost.

[Veloran]

The original issue raised was people chopping off the top half of Exarch's staff and recoloring it so it vaguely resembled Zodiark's XII incarnation; this was taken as evidence he was aligned with or would align with the Dark, but that never happened. Bringing up Emet-Selch's status as a parallel (though I think the literary term foil would be more appropriate, as they have many similarities that only serve to highlight their differences) is a non-sequitur.

I'm saying that although the given reasoning and specific imagined scenario was wrong, people were partially correct on the direction of the story and the Exarch relating to the Ascians. It was simply metaphorical rather than literal.

The original issue presented, at the time of Shadowbringers' pre-release, was that the First was suffering from an imbalance toward Light brought on by the Flood; back then people conflated Light with Hydaelyn, thus believing we would turn our backs on her and join with the Ascians / Zodiark to restore the balance (or otherwise go around kicking puppies and taking candy from babies), thus revealing Hydaelyn was actually the evil one (or at least in the wrong). That never happened; the "Warrior of Darkness" was just a nom de guerre we picked up, we never turned our backs on Hydaelyn, and we never joined with the forces of Darkness (e.g. the Ascians) as so many believed we would (to the point there were many complaints about the "Warrior of Darkness" nom de guerre being false advertising). The PC remained the morally upright Warrior of Light, just by another name.

Again, it is true that with Shadowbringers people were not aware of how the story would actually play out, but it is still the case that ShB led us further away from Hydaelyn and closer to the Ascians than anything that came before, even having Emet-Selch journey along with the party for most of the expansion. This was absolutely a major departure from how the Ascians had been dealt with in every previous interaction with them, and the reveal of Hydaelyn's true nature as a primal defacto renders everyone's trust in her as being questionable beyond anything beforehand. And as I've mentioned before, at the end of 5.0 WoL is saved from the corrupting influence of the Light by Darkness, it may not be what people anticipated from the trailer alone but it's not as though the story was a 180* from that direction.

It is also very doubtful the events of Shadowbringers were plotted by Hydaelyn as well; remember Exarch G'raha literally broke the timeline by traveling back from the future where Emet-Selch successfully completed the Eighth Rejoining. The best one could argue is that she left Ardbert's soul around as a contingency.

It's made very clear that she explicitly left Ardbert around for the sake of WoL, which she could not have possibly known without the power to foresee everything that was going to come to pass. Futuresight is a known power of the Echo, it isn't unreasonable to think that this was within Venat's ability. Not to mention, as I noted previously, Minfilia stalling the Light isn't at all what Word Minfilia said Hydaelyn would do, which was to go and absorb the Light and save the world, not just stop it.

People have their own views on right and wrong. Everyone does. The devs saying "there is no right and wrong in the situation" doesn't mean people aren't going to apply their personal morality to it. I'm sure you do as well, so the line comes across as very sanctimonious.

How is it in one moment you can say that it's perfectly reasonable for people to apply their personal morality to the situation, yet just a few posts ago you were lambasting people for thinking Hydaelyn was an "irredeemable monster" without taking the message of the story into account to consider her perspective? So which is it, should you apply your own morality or should you consider the developer's messaging first and foremost? I'm not saying that either perspective is wrong here, I'm just saying that I'm not sure where you're coming from.

I... can't agree with that vision of the world.

I can't agree with that vision being much more than unfounded. As Vyrerus points out, there is a deficiency of evidence to support some of those assumptions, like the nature of the life to be sacrificed or the notion that they would keep doing it forever. It comes off as the Venat faction basically arguing from fear.

I've been curious about this lately.

We know that all the shards, immediately post-sundering, had the same physical world makeup, continents, seas, etc. We also know that each shard had a fragment of each Amaurotine's soul. Do we know the fragment-people, immediately after the calamity, lost their memories? Based on our knowledge of the era preceding the First Calamity (as a sort of high era of splendor), it seems to stand to reason to me that the fragment-amaurotines remembered their lives, at least enough to maintain and live in the machinery of their unsundered society. They would have lost the power of creation, but those initial fragment-people I suspect knew who they were and what they had lost.

Based on how it's described and what we see, I doubt that's the case. If it didn't simply kill everybody outright from the impact of the event, or from the simple fact that people who were already thousands of years old couldn't survive the dramatic shortening of their lifespans, we're also told outright that the sundering also divided people's minds and intelligence and that nobody could recall more than slight snippets.

[symbiote129]

On the Endwalker full trailer, why do we hear the Shadowbringers motif exactly when Y'Shtola is entering the Studium, the governing body of Sharlayan? SPECIFICALLY the part that talks about the relation between WoL and Emet-Selch (one brings shadow, one brings the light, two-toned echoes tumbling through time...)

Dunno if I'm reading too much into this but... what if this was a subtle hint of something? Of Sharlayan also having Ascian hands in their origins, perhaps...? It wouldn't be too far-off, seeing them as secret-keepers like they are. What do you guys think?

There is another thing that reinforces that sort of thinking that Amaurot is related to Sharlayan. That would be the real names of the Ascians that we know of.

• Emet-Selch - his real name is Hades
• Lohgrif - her real name is Gaia
• Mithron - his real name is Artemis

All of them bearing names of ancient Greek's gods and also sort of parallels with the idea that the time when Amaurot prospered or still in existence before the Sundering was the Age of Gods.

Sharlayan is said to be inspired by ancient Greek's architecture. If that isn't a connection bearing merit, I don't know what would be needed to convince people that Ascians/Ancients has a connection to the existence of Sharlayan.

[EaraGrace]

The thing about the Sundering is that it eliminated the people.
That is to say, when all of the people were sundered, they eventually died and lived lives without memories of their past. Who they actually were never got to make a choice for the future. The people of the current era only have a limited scope with which to view the future, even.

Except we have no evidence that doing so completely removed people’s memories. The mural in Qitana Ravel, the references to Azem in the Azim Steppe suggest otherwise. I think it’s rather more likely that Amaurot passed into myth. Remember, nothing remains from the early Astral Eras.

As far as the sacrifices to Zodiark go, as I recall, it was life that existed thanks to Zodiark in the first place, and it was not elaborated upon whether it was sentient or not. If they were to sacrifice thousands of literal cattle, trees, bugs, etc. then there's no real issue with it, imo. Or are you saying that you live an austere life, that doesn't put mankind above the rest of the Earth?

They were obviously sentient enough to have souls, otherwise they couldn’t replace those in Zodiark.

Also, I'd bear in mind that they chose to still display those sorcerers as believing in positions that the audience would still find morally reprehensible(moral relativism), at large, knowing that no small part would ever believe them completely, anyway. What the Ascians have been doing is eliminating one set of lives, out of a possibly endless number of lives, in order to try and make the world and its people whole again. And they know it's not ideal, but they hadn't found another way.

At the cost of billions of lives they dont even recognized as real.

It's funny to me that Team Hydaelyn's stance is essentially, "The new life has the right to live and make its own choices, but the Ancients don't." To give Hydaelyn a pass is to denigrate all of the lives she destroyed.

The Ancients don’t have the right to take others lives for their own benefit, point blank.

[Vyrerus]

The Ancients don’t have the right to take others lives for their own benefit, point blank.

Hydaelyn is an Ancient. She did not have the right to take the lives of her fellow Ancients, point blank(and she did).

Someone clones you against your will. Your clone is only going to live for 10 years. Your clone knocks you unconscious, and then takes up residence in your home to live as you. Do you have the right to take back what is yours? According to you, no.

Also, there is no, "obviously they were sentient" for the life the Convocation wanted to use for their plan. It wasn't specified, and all they need to do is give Zodiark enough aether. For all you know, Team Hydaelyn may have been fighting to protect ten trillion termites and some forests.

As far as the evidence of memory loss goes... it stands to reason that since the Sundering didn't destroy the planet, it didn't destroy structures. Since the Echo is still to be had, it is possible that the first generation Sundered had Echo visions to form a fragmented idea about what had happened from coming in contact with their structures. Maybe in addition to damaged 1/14th of their initial memory capacity.

But we do have evidence, all kinds in fact, that there was large scale memory loss. One of Hydaelyn's lines at the end of ARR even highlights it, "The Darkness has fled before the unclosed brilliance of thy spirit. Yet, it lingereth still beyond the sight of men, in forgotten corners of the world." Like it's cool that enough folks stayed strong in the Echo, and managed to maintain a semblance of the Ancients' History, but you're acting like it's indexed in an easily accessible library... instead of, you know, scattered around multiple worlds in dank, dark caves. Caves shared by malformed beasts ready to kill without hesitation.

I get that people don't want to like the Ascians. I myself was happy to put Emet-selch to the sword, and did not bat an eye when my WoL killed him. However, I wish people would actually engage with the theoretical ethics on display, instead of getting tribal about it. XIV's writing team presented it the way they did, because going too deep would lose people's interest, but there really is no moral relativism. All Ancients' who were Sundered either lost their memories on that day, or some short(by Ancients' standards) years later through dying of old age. The right to their very soul was taken away from them by Hydaelyn, and if you really want to get into body counts, then know that Hydaelyn caused the deaths of every single lifeform of every single shard and the Source by the immense reduction in their lifespan (basically akin to worldwide radiation poisoning, really). So she's got double the body count of the Ascians, multiplied by the number of generations that have died since.

To put it into real world terms, our average human life expectancy is 78 years. To have it reduced to 1/14th would mean we live for a little more than 5 and a half(39 in dog years, oh boy!). In setting, of course, it's a reduction from 1400ish~immortal to 100ish~usually less. Even being nice, that means that Hydaelyn's body count is (Ascian's Body Count x 2) x (120ish~more). With a heavy lean on the more, because the Sundering also made every lifeform's bodies less resilient to disease and damage of all kinds. Also making them less intelligent, causing reversion and degradation of society.

Hilariously, this also means that every time a Rejoining succeeded, less lives would be lost over time due to root cause: Hydaelyn. It also means that when a Rejoining occurred, it could literally be argued that all the Ascians did was speed up one cycle of death while also ending it(the cycle). The souls get sent back to the Source, as the Lifestream of the Rejoined shard joins with it, enriching the lives of everyone Source side who lives through it, but also all of the future lives of their descendants. And it's for everyone on the planet. While some of the past calamities were described to be worldwide, it seemed to me that the one that involved Bahamut only ravaged Eorzea, but still succeeded in Rejoining the 7th.

Basically, if the Ascians were going to succeed in total, they would only ever match the first wave of deaths caused by Hydaelyn, while giving future generations better odds at living, living longer, and living better. Giving them stronger selves to contend with extraterrestrials as well (since that's been in this setting several times).

Our own power to contest them actually stems from them succeeding as many times as they have. In a twist of dramatic irony, not only are we succeeding due to our past self being one, but we are succeeding because the Ascians have also succeeded. Not only does this make them the lesser of two evils, but it also makes them the actual underdogs in the scenario, since every iteration of WoLs is stronger after each Rejoining.

--------------------------


Tirade aside, my point is, Hydaelyn does not get a pass. However tragic they spell her out to be in the coming days.

This is all due to a civil war started by Team Hydaelyn, due to their disdain for what their leadership wanted for their world after that same leadership had saved it.

Fun Fact: Team Hydaelyn has never saved the world in FFXIV. Friday, that might change. I'm sure we'll feel sorrow when Hydaelyn finally stops being vague and lying to us. When her side of the Ancients' tragic tale comes into the Light at last.

But in the same way that knowing the Ascians' side of their tale doesn't absolve them completely of their crimes, neither will hers.

[Cleretic]

Fun Fact: Team Hydaelyn has never saved the world in FFXIV.

...no? Very no, actually. This is abundantly untrue. 'Team Hydaelyn' has actually saved the world several times, and to say they haven't is either insane goalpost-moving or blatant ignorance of fact. Their main problem is that they've confirmably failed six and a bit times over the ages.

On-screen, I'm very happy to credit 'Team Hydaelyn' with averting Calamities wrought by the Ultima Weapon, by King Thordan (on both ends), and by Hades (on the other side from usual), as well as giving partial credit for Dalamud. And that's only when Hydaelyn herself influences the fight; if you want to say 'Team Hydaelyn saves' only require Hydaelyn-aligned people stopping potential Calamities without influence from The Big Lady, we can chalk up Alexander, Eureka, and potentially the Crystal Tower. And if you wanted to notch up Shinryu too, you wouldn't be entirely unfounded in doing so.

And there's also an uncountable factor: you don't know how many Calamities that previous people with the Blessing of Light stopped. Since there's no evidence Hydaelyn started picking people recently, and we know of heroes in ages past, it's only natural to assume there were 'Team Hydaelyn' people in previous eras.

It's incalculable how many times Team Hydaelyn have saved the world. The problem is that over the thousands of years of trying, the Ascians have beaten them a handful of times, and not only are those failures very countable, but she's only got so many chances.

We know she smashed the Ancient world, but personally, I very much doubt that it was intentional, because nothing we've seen has ever suggested a desire to. And personally, I suspect some Zodiarkian shenanigans; if someone turns up wanting to punch you in the snout to stop you doing whatever you want, you're gonna resist.

[Veloran]

...no? Very no, actually. This is abundantly untrue. 'Team Hydaelyn' has actually saved the world several times,

It's not a team effort when someone never even shows up for the huddle. The only credit I can give Hydaelyn was shielding WoL against Ultima at the end of 2.0 and then blasting Lahabrea, and ultimately his design was to weaken Hydaelyn rather than cause a Calamity so by expending all that power she arguably did what he wanted anyway. Aside from that her best showing was sending Minfilia to the First, and it's debatable how much of that was by her own power. Every other instance of WoL saving the world was down to WoL themselves, and as people are so fond of pointing out in relation to the tempering argument WoL would always be doing that with or without Hydaelyn's blessing. And as an aside most of what you reference on this front weren't shaped up to be Calamities.

And there's also an uncountable factor: you don't know how many Calamities that previous people with the Blessing of Light stopped. Since there's no evidence Hydaelyn started picking people recently, and we know of heroes in ages past, it's only natural to assume there were 'Team Hydaelyn' people in previous eras.

The issue is we have no evidence for previous Warriors of Light ever stopping any Calamities. Historically they're known to appear on the eve of an Umbral Era, which implicitly suggests that they have a very low success rate. Even the instances where we know they've done heroic things, such as with Tenzen or Ramza, we neither know if those situations would have developed into Calamities (as Ascian involvement looks to have been zero), nor to what degree Hydaelyn was even involved.

We know she smashed the Ancient world, but personally, I very much doubt that it was intentional, because nothing we've seen has ever suggested a desire to.

Maybe it was an accident, but as it is there is surely more evidence that it wasn't. Not to mention she's shown a very strong motivation to keep the cosmic dynamics as they are now, what with the great dimensional barrier and the Warriors of Light and everything. And as Vyrerus pointed out, if you look at what this state of being is responsible for and conclude that it is unjust, then Hydaelyn is responsible for perpetuating no small amount of suffering herself.