People have always weirdly mistrusted Hydaelyn, citing stuff like "But she didn't tell us about Amaurot in 3.2!!!!" when that was COMPLETELY irrelevant to what we needed to know. In that specific instance Hydaelyn told us why she sundered the world (Zodiark wanted more power, so I jailed the dude), which hilariously is backed up by Emet-Selch himself in 5.0 (Yeah we wanted to bring back the dead people so we wanted to power up Zodiark by killing childeren). Hydaelyn at no point in the game has actually given anybody a reason to distrust her, she helped us until she was literally drained and unable to speak to us. And over the last 10 years of playing FFXIV, I've seen every excuse under the sun why she's evil. "She Tempered us" "We're a Primal she made" etc etc. All of which absolutely ignore the game's story and were weird from the get go.

Am I justifying Venat's actions? God no, she was like every other Ancient we've met, flawed. I don't justify her in the same way I don't justify Emet-Selch literally killing entire planets, i don't justify her in the same way Hermes decided to kill all of Humanity because he was depressed. I am however going to point out that her decision to Sunder the world stems from the same love of the planet that Emet-Selch had.

But anyway, Foxy Grandpa sad, venat bad, bring on the rejoining.
4/4