7.2 MSQ opinions (spoiler obviously)

[Lunaxia]

I stand by what I said.

It's interesting you view them that way. And I won't argue with you, because that's your point of view and you're entitled to it, and I doubt it would achieve anything even if I did, but it gives some insight behind the vitriol, at least. Given how much you have against them and your feelings about Hermes I'm hard-pressed to believe otherwise, but I'll take your word on it.

No. I don't struggle understanding it...

I mean, you've kind of tip-toed near the answer yourself: the Ancients were inherently a highly intelligent and extremely logical society and dealt with matters accordingly, and they were ignorant, in a sense, or rather living in ignorance - of pain, sorrow, trauma, loss. The Final Days were a violent and all-consuming introduction to concepts that we mortals still struggle with even as we come into contact with them on a daily basis, and their struggles thereafter were a reflection of the underlying message that permeates theirs and the Ascians' storyline; that for all of our differences, they are more similar to us than they either aware of or care to admit, and aren't immune to the effects of grief and despair - no one is, and especially not on such an immense level. It's easy to say what the right thing to do is and what they ought to have done, but you can never predict how grief will affect you or how you deal with it, regardless of how wise or learned you are. And they didn't just lose their loved ones, they lost everything one could conceivably lose, and were left isolated, alone and immortal in a world that to their mind was a poor facsimile of their own and how it always had and should have been. Add in the sense of responsibility and guilt they would have felt as both the leaders and last remaining survivors of their people, and it becomes even more difficult to rationalise effectively.

I don't offer this as necessarily a way of changing your mind, but simply another side of the coin as you've explained yours. It doesn't mean justifying or agreeing with them in any way even looking at it from this angle, but I do think it's fair to say they were stuck between a rock and a hard place in most respects, regardless of how you feel about them.

As for Hermes, I mean, again, I struggle with the idea of praising a character for highlighting the "cruelty" of the Ancients when it's apparent his problems were less about his empathy for living beings and more about his own inner turmoil, and led him to things that were far crueller and more deliberate than anything they might have done. The Ancients acted with the best of intentions and out of ignorance, but he wilfully chose death and destruction and almost condemned life as we know it to doom out of his own frustration with the world. Any point he might have had in the beginning kind of flies out the window with that. And that line was absolutely meant to be ironic and a parallel to ShB, the "hypocrisy" was fully intended.