Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[Slatersev]

The Zodiark tempering point is honestly so inconsistent in how it is explained and shown that I genuinely choose to just not pay it any further mind beyond it simply aligning the person more towards darkness and thus giving them their dark powers. Emet-selch and Elidibus both at times act in ways that do not serve to further Zodiark's will. They appear more high-functioning and in control of themselves and their decisions than any other tempered person we've seen. Their devotion is far more to their loved ones than Zodiark himself.

I'd previously held a theory that primals of greater power can make their tempering more subtle, as Bahamut's thralls in Midas and Louisoix are both more coherent compared to the tempered of lesser primals such as Ifrit or Lakshmi, but even they exude a stiltedness that makes them shells of their former selves.

Lahabrea is the only one who could fit this bill, but you could just as easily attribute him losing his mind to a result of the tragedy he bore witness to.

To top it all off, when we see Emet-selch again in Ultima Thule, at a point where his soul would have doubtlessly been cleansed from this tempering, he does not make a single mention of regret or ill-judgement on account of it in his decisions. In fact, he only doubles down that his values are unshakable. I really don't think Zodiark's tempering had much of anything to do with this.

In regards to your theory, i’m not sure if it’s the answer you seek but there was an interview with yoshi done a bit before endwalker where he stated a primal can choose how tempered they want their followers to be. He used Thordan as an example in that he didn’t make the knights mindless zombies and instead let them have will i believe.

I mean, we literally had an entire MSQ patch go over this just before EW with Tiamat which explicitly showed and stated that extremely powerful being like Dragons arent effected by tempering to the same extent and can still have will of there own.

That was literally the entire point of that whole thing.