Disappointed in one Endwalker Aspect [SPOILERS]

[EaraGrace]

I know right? Lahabrea was the coolest guy.

Ignoring of course the repeated genocides to bring his friends back. Say what you will of the Sundering, but at least it wasn’t for her benefit but for the benefit of all life.

[Cilia]

Ignoring of course the repeated genocides to bring his friends back. Say what you will of the Sundering, but at least it wasn’t for her benefit but for the benefit of all life.

Between Elidibus needing to correct him for whose sake he was acting in the final cutscene of A Realm Reborn and Ere Our Curtain Falls having Emet-Selch remarking on how much he'd changed, it's implied Lahabrea wasn't onboard for the sake of restoring the Ancients' world anymore.

[Slatersev]

Between Elidibus needing to correct him for whose sake he was acting in the final cutscene of A Realm Reborn and Ere Our Curtain Falls having Emet-Selch remarking on how much he'd changed, it's implied Lahabrea wasn't onboard for the sake of restoring the Ancients' world anymore.

I wonder if that will ever be brought back up in any form. Feels like it was quietly dropped more then anything.

[Vyrerus]

I fail to see

She did not save everyone's lives. She was given her Hydaelyn powers by her followers' lives, and then she killed the entire ancient world. She only saved our present-future.

For the survivor cannibalism analogy, look at it like this: When someone is forced to eat another human, it comes from desperation (usually). The Sundering came from supposed desperation, and it used the lives of everything from the Ancient world to make the new life that you value more than the old. That's cannibalization.

Real live people who've survived desperate situations by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of others do generally go on to have good lives and do good things afterwards. The fact that they intend to and do good afterwards doesn't make what they did right. Neither does the sympathy of the public, who generally place the blame on the dire situation.

As for her giving her own life... she didn't do that. She challenged us to a trial by combat and lost. If we had lost, then she would have commanded the exodus. She wanted us to win, but supposedly fought with intent to kill. It wasn't self sacrifice. It was, "Prove you're better saviors than me."

We don't know her, not really. We know her mission. It's our mission, and we made it hers via time paradox.

[Vyrerus]

Ignoring of course the repeated genocides to bring his friends back. Say what you will of the Sundering, but at least it wasn’t for her benefit but for the benefit of all life.

Hydaelyn's genocide count stands at 14 x 120 worldwide lifetimes(providing generous 100 year lives for everything living) via the Sundering. The Sundering didn't benefit all life. It benefitted our present-future, and the unknown regions of the universe by proximity. (The entity trying to kill our planet just happens to want to and be able to kill all planets, but the story presents none that are still living so it is an unknown).

Everything it benefitted was unknown to her at the time she did it, save for what was described to her by a time traveler. She would go on to eventually know the life that it benefitted, years afterwards, but only after the Sundering destroyed everything she knew and was raised by.

[Cleretic]

Hydaelyn's genocide count stands at 14 x 120 worldwide lifetimes(providing generous 100 year lives for everything living) via the Sundering.

I hate that I've had to pull this out multiple times: The actual definition of genocide is not 'killing an entire population'. That is a common misconception.

If you really want to argue her to be guilty of genocide, here's the definition of genocide, as per the United Nations:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

When talking about Hydaelyn, I think the main thing here is 'intent to destroy'. Her intent was not destruction; on the contrary, her intent was continued life, it just so happens that death is an inevitability. Charging her for the deaths of sundered people is akin to charging a mother with murder because her child eventually died. On top of that... I'm not sure which of those five methods you'd even charge Hydaelyn with; she didn't kill the sundered, she didn't seriously harm, she didn't deliberately cause the concept of death (as you might remember, all Ancients do die, just only by choice), and she definitely didn't prevent births or transfer children.

If you believe that being sundered is akin to death, then you could instead have a case that the act of sundering caused a genocide of the Ancients. But that comes to a question of 'is that death', which is more of a philosophical discussion.


And while unrelated, the actual reason I've had to bookmark this page: the Ascians are indeed guilty of fourteen different genocides, through willing intent to destroy a people, by being guilty of methods 1 and 3. You could potentially rack the count up even higher by counting destroyed nations separately, but I don't because that makes for a difficult tally (how many nations existed on the Third?). Not a part of the current conversation, but I've had to do the work and it's probably helpful to get an idea of what is and is not a genocide.

[OhNooo]

I'm not sure which of those five methods you'd even charge Hydaelyn with; she didn't kill the sundered, she didn't seriously harm...

I would argue that she did cause serious mental/emotional/psychological harm with the sundering even if she didn't intend to. I'm of the opinion that it is a sort of death since all they were as a person - their personality etc was wiped out and replaced. I also believe that the sundering did bring about things like disease which caused them to suffer when their way shorter life spans came to an end. I do agree that it's partly about intent but then for me it's about, did she realize what would happen to everyone once she sundered them as far as all the suffering? Did she not realize it would be as bad as it ended up once it was finally done? Or did she know the full implications and did it anyway because she was willing to pay that price?

[RyuDragnier]

As for her giving her own life... she didn't do that. She challenged us to a trial by combat and lost. If we had lost, then she would have commanded the exodus. She wanted us to win, but supposedly fought with intent to kill. It wasn't self sacrifice. It was, "Prove you're better saviors than me."

I wouldn't put the line in those words. I'd say more of a, "If you cannot defeat me, then you have no hope of defeating Meteion."

[Ayche]

This has come up and has been remarked upon. It's more that said premises are considered to be irrelevant or side considerations by some of us, particularly to the sundering. If their world is less than perfect (but in relative terms I find them to be quite remarkable beings compared both to RL humans and the sundered), should they not strive to regain what they lost, even if that exact thing cannot be regained? After their star had nearly been desiccated and most of their people sacrificed to staunch it? As if many of the sundered would not desire and act towards the precise same thing? Note that the dispute between Venat and her faction and the remaining ancients was less to do with any of their imperfections, real or imagined, but more to do with the attitude she thought they should have to suffering, based on context she had and which they were not given and thus lacked.



Yes, much as ideology focused on discarding the past (except when it comes to using it caricatures of it to ideologically browbeat opponents), fixating on "brighter tomorrows", destroying all opposition to withering away the status quo and ushering in their own new glorious revolution, thriving on crises as pretexts for doing so, has very bad echoes to certain movements.

Considering the Final Days ended up being a self-inflicted problem in the end, we can surmise that if this case, then eventually some other future problem would had destroyed their civilization. Now there is no real way to debate this, this is question of outlook at this point, there is no evidence for it really.

In same matter, in our real world could we actually ever go back 3 years? 10 years? 20 years? No, because usually the conditions that created benefits in the past were built on conditions that no longer apply or were inherently temporary. Great Recession of 2007-2009 was result of insane shadowbanking (and so many other factors), which probably gave us before its crash great prosperity and happiness. Hell, it is not really controversial to say that our current modern world is unsustainable and will crash in one way or another in the future, and there is no going back to a world where we just had not used the carbon.

In FFXIV they deal with fantastical elements like aether and dynamis and souls and stuff, but they are still forced to deal with the same basic moral principle that you reap what you sow. They created a society that created a Hermes who then doomed them all, same way we humankind might had doomed ourselves to a slow death by the invention of combustion engine. Give another timespan and some other amaurotine would had created a different crisis with same results. I wager the Pandaemonium raid series explores that possibility.

[Lauront]

I wouldn't put too much weight on Elidibus correcting Lahabrea. The wording differs in other versions, e.g. in French:

Elidibus : Ton plan semble parfait, mais la résurrection de Zordiarche passe avant tout.
= “Your plan seems perfect, but the resurrection of Zodiark comes before everything else.”

Lahabrea : Tu n'as nul besoin de me le rappeler.
= “You don’t need to remind me.”

Meanwhile, here is Lahabrea's dialogue from the ARF:

Through the Joining, the world shall become whole again.
Then all shall be as once it was─as it should ever have remained.

Yes, clearly not committed to restoring the star as it was.

Considering the Final Days ended up being a self-inflicted problem in the end, we can surmise that if this case, then eventually some other future problem would had destroyed their civilization. Now there is no real way to debate this, this is question of outlook at this point, there is no evidence for it really.

Yes, much as some thing can eventually destroy any civilisation. The Dragonstar simply existed and was visited upon by the Omicrons who decided to conquer it then realised it wasn't worth their while and later imploded themselves. Many random things can destroy a civilisation, including spiteful elements from within. Sometimes those spiteful elements wipe memory of their manifestos so no one is aware of them.

In same matter, in our real world could we actually ever go back 3 years? 10 years? 20 years? No, because usually the conditions that created benefits in the past were built on conditions that no longer apply or were inherently temporary. Great Recession of 2007-2009 was result of insane shadowbanking (and so many other factors), which probably gave us before its crash great prosperity and happiness. Hell, it is not really controversial to say that our current modern world is unsustainable and will crash in one way or another in the future, and there is no going back to a world where we just had not used the carbon.

Perhaps achieving the exact same would be impossible in their case. However, the reason is so out of the blue in this case that I cannot blame them for wanting to return to what they had - particularly the Amaurotines she approaches as the star still has red skies.

In FFXIV they deal with fantastical elements like aether and dynamis and souls and stuff, but they are still forced to deal with the same basic moral principle that you reap what you sow. They created a society that created a Hermes

Mhm, much like we all created a Mao, a Stalin etc. Much like the sundered all are to blame for Black Rose and so on.

Hermes's view is not indicated as a rational one. He even wishes for arcane creations damaging to the overall ecology of the star to prosper, even after all methods of trying to work with them have been exhausted. Even though they were reluctant, his staff entertained his requests. His views persist as Amon, who had a similar unease with death/existence and penchant for cruelty, even as Amon claimed he was his own person (G'raha surmises later on that souls may have innate dispositions.) Venat did not adopt his view on all life mattering equally, did not intend for it to be a lesson that the sundered learnt (her fixation was much more so on what she believed was necessary to defeat Meteion), nor do the sundered in any way share this view when they routinely engage in even more gratuitous consumption of lives and yes, souls, on the star. I'm not a vegan nor do I consider all life equal in the sense a vegan might, so I don't have an issue with it personally nor am I amenable to his point of view. Ultimately, it all stems from a discomfort with death, as he couldn't handle his mentor's intention to return to the star, either.

who then doomed them all, same way we humankind might had doomed ourselves to a slow death by the invention of combustion engine. Give another timespan and some other amaurotine would had created a different crisis with same results. I wager the Pandaemonium raid series explores that possibility.

Maybe, maybe not. I doubt anyone is going to consider errors of the past an adequate reason to damn all our civilisation to doom where it is preventable and better yet, reversible, as it is in this case. Any actual lessons to learn were withheld from them due to the requirement to stick to the original timeline, and so were substituted with platitudes and vagaries that'd scarcely sway anyone in such a situation. At least from what we're shown... but there's nothing thus far to indicate she ever was able to share what she learnt in Elpis with the rest of her people. We'll have to see if they ever choose to flesh that out.

I would argue that she did cause serious mental/emotional/psychological harm with the sundering even if she didn't intend to. I'm of the opinion that it is a sort of death since all they were as a person - their personality etc was wiped out and replaced. I also believe that the sundering did bring about things like disease which caused them to suffer when their way shorter life spans came to an end. I do agree that it's partly about intent but then for me it's about, did she realize what would happen to everyone once she sundered them as far as all the suffering? Did she not realize it would be as bad as it ended up once it was finally done? Or did she know the full implications and did it anyway because she was willing to pay that price?

IMO she should have known what the sundering would do before using it on such a scale, to the point where if you're going to inflict that on a star, not going to even basic lengths to test it beforehand to see what it does would be utterly negligent. Our dearest supreme deity even refers to herself as "last of my kind". Oh, how tragic. Her actions resulted in her kind being wiped out, and I fail to see how her intent in this case negates that or how she could've hoped to achieve what she sought to if she did not know what the effect would be (which again, could have been tested.) Of course, the usual arguments are trotted out about the Ascians, neglecting that they were stuck without any real notion of why in a situation where their people were gone and reduced to fragments of their souls, now closer to what they recognised as familiars - granted, Emet's view shifted eventually (or at least is surmised to by Y'shtola), but it does not undo what'd been done to them. All that aside, unfortunately with the time loop in place, we've little insight into how the dispute originally played out (as per SHB), and we're stuck with her being constrained in her actions and so some manner of after-the-fact justification being applied (via providing a route to defeating Meteion) given what we learnt through the time travel, plus the proviso of not altering the course of events - that's about as much as I'll grant.