Why Erenville succeeded as a character where others did not

[Rosenstrauch]

The Wachumeqimeqi Miner/Botanist quests go a bit into Shetona lore, and iirc one of the things touched on is that Shetona men will form multiple families over the course of their lives, traveling between them frequently and otherwise living in isolation.

In other words, Erenville not knowing much about his father isn't an exceptional circumstance for a Shetona. It's entirely reasonable to assume he's just another Shetona living out on the fringes of Xak Tural.

As for whether or not Erenville meeting his father would be an interesting direction for the story to go... not really? Erenville's father played no significant role in his life, something of which Erenville makes no bones about. I can't imagine any scenario where Erenville meets his father that wouldn't play out exactly the same if the man in question wasn't his father, because Erenville does not care. Best case scenario, Erenville gets a sibling or two he can play off of, but he already has that with Wuk Lamat.

As for that father being Emet-Selch instead of something less blatantly fanservice...

Maybe this'll sound hypocritical coming from me, but I find Erenville's active participation in the story in spite of his lack of combat prowess to be refreshing. He is, imo, what Minfilia should've been from Heavensward to Endwalker, rather than Crystal Jesus, Ryne's GF (Guardian Force), and a cameo in the afterlife dungeon. And I would hate to lose that on the altar of "only fighters matter". So any secret Ascian fathers would ruin the character for me—because that is the only remotely meaningful thing that could come out of revealing Erenville's father to be an immortal wizard ghost.

Besides, after Myths of the Realm I thought we were all rather sick of "Actually, Ancients!" being deployed to fill in the blanks of other, more interesting characters/lore figures.

[Cleretic]

Besides, after Myths of the Realm I thought we were all rather sick of "Actually, Ancients!" being deployed to fill in the blanks of other, more interesting characters/lore figures.

This is largely unrelated, but yeah, even Ancient fans have seemed to consider that one a step too far in retrospect. And while I agree that it's definitely an example of them overusing the note, part of me maybe wonders if the communal rejection of that one isn't actually because of Ancient overuse. Because I personally thought the overdoing was the short story that was literally nothing but Ancient fanservice, but people seemed to like that one. And this is far from the only person that I've seen try to make some part of Dawntrail into some form of Ancient Time (usually around some member of the Ascians/Convocation) even after its release, this is just perhaps the most poorly-justified one.

I worry if maybe 'the Twelve are Venat's crew' starting to be considered the bad note isn't actually because of 'it was really Ancients' for a lot of people, but because it was the wrong Ancients, not the lineup people are invested in. That maybe if we replaced Elygios with Pashtarot doing an 'it was me all along, here's my tragic backstory' dance a lot of those people would actually be completely fine.