Song Lyrics in FFXIV: Compilation, Discussion, and Interpretation

[StarDrake]

Now, the real questions begin since one line aside, we've got an easy 95% of the song as it's pretty clear: who's singing here?

In this case I think it's far less ambiguous than Answers ever was: the singer is either Hydaelyn-the-entity Herself, or one of the Seven Celestial Dragons. The first half of the song is, of course, a story. I suspect it's most directly the story of Shiva and her draconic lover, who I'd bet Gil on being Nidhogg at this point, and how they were eventually torn apart by differences in both their cultures (and a certain jealous king, I'd bet), and how Shiva specifically wanted this rift and fighting to stop, and tried to stop it, but in the end her actions were used to create an even bigger wedge. (Though you sure can turn the words around and apply it to a whole bunch of other people, too - "by treachery was broke, scattering her words to the wind", yeah, hi Nanamo.)

The fourth stanza is about the consequences - an age of blood, an age of people fighting for nothing, while those originally involved in the tragedy feel the pain forever. The last two, then, are actually the singer themselves - the person who watched this all unfold and just can't believe it's still going on, that the gyre of suffering the story opened still hasn't closed. Why are mortals so determined to destroy themselves? Why can't they see what was beautiful once and let it be? The singer never will know.

So yeah, I think this is all Hydaelyn (especially with that shot at the end of the video), but it'd make sense coming out of the mouths of one of the other Seven, too - maybe the one who isn't Nidhogg and has just watched this whole thing unfurl for aeons, or one from outside of Eorzea but is still tragically familiar with the whole story, perhaps the one who may have taken roost near Doma (as we know there were dragons near Doma).

[PArcher]

So yeah, I think this is all Hydaelyn (especially with that shot at the end of the video),

Unless my video is really bad, it looked like the scene with the Mothercrystal was an Echo. So Im not sure if it is her.

[Ramen]

Thank You, Ferne, for write/translate one more super nice lyrics for the song

[blackbluesky]

Susan Calloway cleared it up in a response to my youtube post. Dragonsong lyrics are:

Children of the land do you hear
Echoes of truths that once rang clear
Two souls intertwined
Children of the land do you hear
Echoes of truths that once rang clear
Two souls intertwined
One true love they did find
Bringing land and heavens near
But flames that burn full bright, soon fell dark
Memories dimmed by shadowed hearts
In the waxing gloom did wane the lover's moon
Watching as their worlds drift apart
One soul's cry
A passion dwelling within
Sacrifice, a final plea to her kin
Yet this bond of hope, by treachery was broke

[blackbluesky]

And the latter half since apparently I have a thousand character limit on posts:

Scattering her words to the wind
Swelling over long,
seas of blood, are a song
And death an afterthought
To those who fight for naught
A throne, lying empty
A reign, incomplete
Alone, for eternity
A pain, without cease
Children of the land, answer this
Why must you turn to empty bliss
Tell me why break trust, why turn the past to dust
Seeking solace in the abyss
Tell me why create, a circle none can break
Why must you let go, the life you were bestowed
This I fear I'll never know
Never know

[Anonymoose]

And the latter half since apparently I have a thousand character limit on posts:

You can circumvent this by keeping your post under 1,000 characters, then editing it. With an edit, you can make it however long you'd like it to be.

Thanks for clarifying the official lyrics; I'm glad Susan's always checking in on XIV and Distant Worlds crowds. It was a pleasant surprise seeing her name come up as the piano started; leaving Answers behind as we move past "season one" is a lot less bittersweet with her along for the ride.

[Enkidoh]

If you look closely a number of scenes in that video appear to be Echoes - such as the shot with the DRG in silver armour who picks up a helm - the footage is more washed out and grainy than the rest of the video, meaning it's highly likely to be an Echo vision.

[Cilia]

Most of the song seems to imply that Shiva was the original, rightful ruler of Ishgard and was in love with a dragon (Nidhogg?), but someone (my best guess is the famed Thordan and his Knights Twelve, possibly being influenced / possessed by the Ascians) did the whole poking out Nidhogg's Eye thing. Shiva then sacrificed herself to try to quell Nidhogg's fury, but those same perpetrators betrayed her and/or the dragons, leading to the millennium-long Dragonsong War.

Midgardsormr implies the Ishgardians are about to do something terrible again, something we (as players) know is likely being influenced by the Ascians. This is implicitly what sparked Nidhogg's reinvigoration of the War, though we don't yet know what that terrible sin is.

I can't quite figure out what the "second verse" means:

Children of the land, answer this
Why must you turn to empty bliss
Tell me why break trust, why turn the past to dust
Seeking solace in the abyss
Tell me why create, a circle none can break
Why must you let go, the life you were bestowed
This I fear I'll never know
Never know

This part's a bit ambiguous, but as it refers to the "children of the land" I'm inclined to believe it's directly addressing the Warrior(s) of Light; specifically, Hydaelyn asking why they're doing what they're doing. Specifically, it seems to ask why we're willing to settle for a hollow, empty victory that perpetuates a cycle; whether she's referring to the Dragonsong War or the overarching Astral / Umbral cycle we can't yet know.

[StarDrake]

I can't quite figure out what the "second verse" means:

This part's a bit ambiguous, but as it refers to the "children of the land" I'm inclined to believe it's directly addressing the Warrior(s) of Light; specifically, Hydaelyn asking why they're doing what they're doing. Specifically, it seems to ask why we're willing to settle for a hollow, empty victory that perpetuates a cycle; whether she's referring to the Dragonsong War or the overarching Astral / Umbral cycle we can't yet know.

As I said, the second verse is a query to whoever is listening, and is probably intended for all inhabitants of Eorzea. The entire song is structured very much like a traditional lay-ballad. The song opens with an address to, and acknowledgement of, the audience, then first two-thirds of the song tell the story of two people, their love, and its consequence with a highlight of the tragedy, and then the final section is the singer addressing the audience directly, which was an extremely common structure for middle-age musical poetry. Real-life lays were usually not quite so aggressive in tone when addressing the audience, but they often did exhort the listener to take a lesson from the story; here, the singer is asking the listeners why they perpetuate the cycle of suffering exemplified in the story, as the singer perceives it as unending (that "circle none can break").

[Viridiana]

Time for some lyrical analysis!

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"Children of the land do you hear
Echoes of truths that once rang clear"

This truth is something that has since been distorted (if it "once rang clear," it stands to reason it no longer does so).

"Two souls intertwined
One true love they did find
Bringing land and heavens near"

This truth mentioned above is about a love that could have joined the heavens and earth. Clear implication would be Shiva and a dragon. Though, I think that to join heavens and earth, it would almost have to be an important figure from both. I dunno, maybe I'm reading too much into this part, but I think Shiva's pre-heretic importance comes up again. . .

"But flames that burn full bright, soon fell dark
Memories dimmed by shadowed hearts"

Memories of what? Surely not of the love, because the love winds up broken by treachery from outside in a few lines. If the song is chronological (and I can't think why it wouldn't be), these memories are dimmed before the final plea, which means they must be of an event that predates it long enough for memories to be dimmed. I'll try not to read too much into the line about shadowed hearts and waxing gloom, but it certainly gives me pause. . .

"In the waxing gloom did wane the lover's moon
Watching as their worlds drift apart"

The encroaching darkness drives a wedge between the two's cultures. If I'm reading it right, a central part of this darkness would be the distortion of the past. . .

"One soul's cry
A passion dwelling within
Sacrifice, a final plea to her kin"

Shiva, seeing the darkness for what it is, cries out to her kin not to embrace it. The question is, did she ask them to sacrifice, or did she stake the plea on her own sacrifice? The lyric could be read either way, and either could make sense, and either could fit with the next line. . .

"Yet this bond of hope, by treachery was broke
Scattering her words to the wind"

An initial reading says that the bond is the love between Shiva and the dragon. I still favor that reading, but I have to acknowledge that it could be saying there was a brief turning back by the Ishgardians that was then shattered. I prefer the former reading, but have nothing to rule out the latter. One thing of note is the element of treachery. This isn't just her kin ignoring her cries. Someone close would have had to turn against her for it to be "treachery," I'd say.

Knowing what I do of some of the more. . ."traditional" responses to heresy and apostasy, I very much suspect Shiva would have been put to death, though I have no lines of the game text to point to confirming that. That said, I also wouldn't count putting her to death for heresy as "treachery," even if this is before the war started (I can think of setups where I would call it that, but without more information they don't stand). At this point, it's hard to say what the treachery would have been, but part of the result seems to have been Shiva's death (or at least a severing of ties with the Dravanians, but I assume death).

"Swelling over long,
seas of blood, are a song
And death an afterthought
To those who fight for naught"

Here I think we start getting some double meanings. Specifically, I think the word "song" used here references the dragon's desire for retribution:

Seven children did I sire. One now singeth of retribution. I rise to join in the chorus...

As for "those who fight for naught," I suspect it refers to both sides. Many of the dragons would be brought in based only on the betrayal of one, and the Ishgardians who are continuing to fight after so many generations that none of them truly remembers the reason the war started. For the Ishgardians, a holy war means that death (while not preferable) is honorable. For a dragon mourning his love, what would death be but a surcease?

"A throne, lying empty
A reign incomplete
Alone, for eternity
A pain, without cease"

At first I was going to split this into two couplets, but I think they're too closely tied. I assume that the empty throne is on the dragon side, simply because I don't see any sort of leadership position that would be empty on the Ishgard side. But, I do think the throne is one Shiva was supposed to occupy, so it could be on either side. That said, the lines "Alone for eternity, a pain without cease" is definitely about the dragon. So the question becomes, how closely tied are these two couplets? Was Shiva meant to take even a symbolic role among the dragons?

Also, the part about "a reign incomplete". . . I'm taking this to be something along the lines of "My reign is incomplete without X," where X could be an achievement or a person. Combined with the other lines, of course, I lean towards it referring to an incompleteness because Shiva is absent. But then, the only person that could claim an eternal reign (pretty much confirmed, at least) would be Midgardsormr and (unconfirmed) maybe his first brood. Which leads back to "Was it Shiva and Nidhogg?"

"Children of the land, answer this
Why must you turn to empty bliss"

This part I'm not sure about. I mean, would anyone describe the Ishgardians' situation over the last thousand years "bliss"? I mean, I admit I'm making the assumption that the singer is still speaking only to Ishgard, but even if not, the rest of Eorzea has been far from blissful.

Perhaps it's a reference to their initial decision to break trust with the dragons? I guess no one would have made the decision to start a war knowing it would last a thousand years? I can only assume they would have thought it would lead to prosperity at some point. Seriously, of all the lines, I think this one is the one giving me the most trouble. >_>

"Tell me why break trust, why turn the past to dust
Seeking solace in the abyss"

This couplet I think summarizes the song overall. Shiva was betrayed, the past was systematically erased (calling back to the opening lines--the truth no longer rings clear), and the Ishgardians seek (unknowingly at this point) to end the whole ordeal with death. Their own or their enemy's, either way is solace.

"Tell me why create, a circle none can break
Why must you let go, the life you were bestowed
This I fear I'll never know
Never know"

The "circle none can break" I believe refers to Ishgard's current state. Probably both to its physical defenses walling it off from the outside world and to its policies of isolation. As for the life they were bestowed, the singer seems to be lamenting the bleak life faced by the Ishgardians. Sure, their forefathers led them to this fate, but it's still sobering to think how much richer their lives could be if they could set aside the war and open their borders.

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Thoughts? Opinions? Have I completely misunderstood something? Am I reaching too far into conjecture?