Revelations from Patch 7.2: Seekers of Eternity

[fulminating]

So could zoraal ja be the product of parthenogenesis?

The allagans have created their prior blue mammools - a group of people known for equal parts enthusiasm and amorality in biological endeavours. Possibly reading between too many lines, but the blue scales could be a recessive trait in that particular type of mammool.

He has some anger issues and isn’t the brightest bulb in the shed, both traits associated with incest which this would essentially be.

There’s no mention of a mrs jaja, and a noticeable size difference between blessed and standard siblings that might make traditional methods impractical. Unless we read through too many lines again and determine he may have been involved with cahciua - symbolic bridging of continents and so on is quite common to cement a regent’s rule.

Zoraal’s child is the tiniest mammool ja you’ve ever seen; reduced litter size is another associated consequence.

The writers have historically taken inspiration from a song of ice and fire; who could look at zoraal and not instantly think “jaime Lannister”?

[Cilia]

(EDIT: And actually there's also a villain behind Athena, but that villain is a rock, which kinda doesn't hit the same.)

You could make an argument that Venat fits the same general shape as a story figure, but I feel like you can't rightly put her in the same lineup.

Except nope, it's pointedly stated that with or without the Heart of Sabik Athena would have still done what she did (or similar), it just gave her the means to speed up the timetable. Besides which, auracite (except for the white and synthetic flavors) traces back to Ultima, a similarly villainous female figure whose malevolence has nothing to do with men.

While there may be a shortage of female villains there is no shortage of strong female characters - all three starting city-state leaders are examples, and there are plenty more.

So could zoraal ja be the product of parthenogenesis?

Mamool Ja reproduction remains shrouded in secrets, what with their embryos apparently being kept in jars (Skydeep Cenote) and Teeshal Ja bearing Zoraal Ja's child without his knowledge.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say "no blue Hoobigo before Zoraal Ja" is a retcon, and either way it's not like they'd have known about Allagan experiments locked in Syrcus Tower all the way over in Tural where modern Mamool Ja hail from.

In other words I don't think so but we don't have enough information to make a clear determination one way or another.

[Dikatis]

And to clarify, I’m not calling out what I perceive to be blatant or intentional misogyny. Just that it kinda came off as such in my eyes - like, a woman can only be ‘villainous’ if it’s related to a man sort of thing. One of those inadvertent implication sort of things.

There's also Rosalinde in the Ninja quests, a ruthless pirate who hires the male Garlean operative Redway to help her steal the priceless artifacts of the Yatsuragi clan and beheads him when he tries to run away when he fails. Or the Siren boss of Pharos Sirius who lured countless sailors to their deaths and was dangerous enough that Mistbeard led a genocidal purge of the creatures. The Dawntrail Tank and Healer role quests gave us Leophyne and Ellerete, a self-serving knight who terrorizes the Temple Knights out of spite and a psychopathic womanchild who tries to plunge Vylbrand into anarchy for the heck of it. Then there's Apyaahi, the moneyhating moron who rallied a terrorist organization together solely because she didn't want to have to pay for room and board.

It is true that FFXIV's female antagonists tend to be the subject of some kind of tragic backstory or abuse that motivates them, but it's definitely not all of them, with Athena being chief among them.

Mamool Ja reproduction remains shrouded in secrets, what with their embryos apparently being kept in jars (Skydeep Cenote) and Teeshal Ja bearing Zoraal Ja's child without his knowledge.

IIRC, the Mamool Ja don't keep their embryos in jars. Those urns are burial urns akin to the urns you'd keep the ashes of a stillborn baby in (though I doubt any of the Mamool Ja in Mamook would have the stomach to cremate their children's bodies by the time of the story because of how much grief they were in).

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say "no blue Hoobigo before Zoraal Ja" is a retcon, and either way it's not like they'd have known about Allagan experiments locked in Syrcus Tower all the way over in Tural where modern Mamool Ja hail from.

They reuse the Mamool Ja model but it's not impossible for Allagan experiments to have produced a similar lizard-man type creature. They did create the Ixal after all. It's weird to write this one-off as a retcon when there's no instance of a blue Hoobigo existing outside of creatures that are explicitly not called Mamool Ja reusing their models. It's like calling bees a type of hornet when they use the same model in-game.

Parthenogenesis is kind of a leap given that Mamool Ja clearly have the typical male-female mother-father nuclear family structure. If it were really how they reproduced, Zoraal Ja wouldn't be surprised at the existence of Gulool Ja.