Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
I think you need to entertain a possibility that's much more likely, both in terms of general plausibility and in terms of narrative convenience: What if there wasn't a Fandaniel shard before him? What if Amon was just the first one they found? It's not particularly implausible; on the scale the Ascians were working on the Third Astral Era was relatively early in, and they apparently didn't lose Ascians all too often before we started offing them, so it wouldn't be that weird that the reason it's empty is because nobody's been sitting there anyway. The actual line in question just says 'the seat of Fandaniel lies empty and waiting'; there's no actual implication that it was a recent vacancy.

And on a practical writing standpoint, there just not being any previous Fancy Dans means there's nothing to clean up when you're done with the story, and no open questions to resolve. Don't need to answer how they died if they never lived in the first place. Given that they've openly said Endwalker was the end of the whole Zodiark/Hydaelyn/Ascians story, it'd be a pretty bad idea to introduce loose ends right at the last moment.
You left out the part of the quote which got my ears up. Emet says, “And as fortune would have it, the seat of Fandaniel lies empty and waiting.”

It’s that first “fortune” part which got me interested. It’s possible that line implies the lack of an available Fandaniel is a recent one - and Emet considers himself lucky to have found Amon.

It’s also possible the Ascians just didn’t bother with old troublesome Hermes before finding Amon.

But I do wonder… something prompted them to decide that was the time to snag them a new Fandaniel.

As far as starting new threads at the end of an old storyline - the writers got to seed for future stories somehow (besides having Emet rattle off the DLC). And if there were another Hermes shard out there, perhaps he’d make an appearance in the 6.X patches to help tie up some of those loose ends.