Inconsistencies with the sundering (Spoilers)

[Atelier-Bagur]

This is an interesting revelation to me because now we know that the ancients could wield dynamis and could've devised an alternate strategy as opposed to just sundering everybody. My understanding about the ancients and dynamis up till now was that the ancients couldn't interact with dynamis directly but could create beings (like meteion) that could.

They really couldnt manipulate or use it at will by themselves. Thats why it was a whole plot point that they couldnt sense the Final Days. However they could themselves be affected by it if it happens to be potently strong such as when the Final Days occurred, they were brought down by its intense negative effects of despair that their creation magicks went wild. Its always been an outside source. A notable example is Elidibus whom used the dynamis of the people of Norvrandt's (as well as the Warriors of other shards) to draw its power for him to become a Warrior of Light. Now that I think about it, this is kinda like how Kuja in FFIX had to use strong souls to use the basic form of Trance that the people of Gaia could wield.

But like how we brought up the point of an Ancient creation with Meteion whom could use dynamis, their lack of understanding if its effects and potential is what held them back. So no, they couldnt have been able to use it to properly combat the huge amounts of despair.

[Fiel_Tana]

They really couldnt manipulate or use it at will by themselves.

The examples above show otherwise.

Thats why it was a whole plot point that they couldnt sense the Final Days.

I'm not clear what you mean here tbh. They definitely noticed, and therefore could sense the final days. If you mean "the story tries to claim they couldn't interact / manipulate dynamis", then yes, it does but it shows them doing just that multiple times.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Ok let's go over some of these points then:

---- "Why did Hydaelyn sunder herself? (The Watcher mentions that she did.) Are there mini-hydaelyns in the shards? Why then did she get weaker with each rejoining?"-----

I dont think its directly stated that there are 14 full blown Hydaelyns and Zodiarks. All reflections are bounded by their singular entity, with the Source being its core. There are remnants of themselves within each shard though as seen from the 13th that their moon seemed to house the same prison as our moon's Zodiark perhaps? but I feel 6.4 will hopefully bring light into whats actually going on. Until then, there's only one Hydaelyn and one Zodiark, and they were all bound by the 14 reflections of their planet that glued them together. Which also meant that everytime a rejoining happened, Zodiark grew in power and thus Hydaelyn grew weaker as the seal was slowly being broken (since she used all that power to both sunder and maintain the primal in the seal)

-----"If the sundered weren't capable of, or didn't chose to save the star, wouldn't the refugees in the moon ship also be susceptible to the song after Zodiark was killed? And where was there to go? What kind of back up plan is that?"-----

It was a gamble on a desperate situation in which she made contingency plans in the events if x happens then y can happen. Obviously it was a risk, but when faced against certain doom, you really have no other options if your main plans fail.

------"If the ancients couldn't manipulate dynamis, how did Hermes create Metion? Why did the elpis flowers react to their emotions? How did Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus use creation magic in Ultima Thule to not only make an entire field of elpis flowers, but also make the liveable environment permanent so the scions could come back? What part of manipulating dynamis were they incapable of, that only the sundered could do?"-----

We dont know (or if we will ever know) the specifics behind Meteion's creation; at best I can theorize that Hermes who somehow became aware of dynamis energy created a being whom happen to be as aether-less as possible to be able to use this energy. After all Meteion was an experiment of this at the end of the day. Its like how we can create tools to do things we normally arent capable of doing. Elpis flowers react from sensing basic emotion and not the other way around. Hermes didnt directly control the flowers. Same can be said with Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus when they conjured Elpis flowers with creation magicks and brought the Scions and forged the path with the WoL's dynamis, which they were ultimately the ones to actually pull the feat off and not them. So basically in a nutshell they cant conjure that energy on their own due to their abundance of aether in their bodies. All examples showcasing this has always been an outside source of the energy.