"Who...what are you?"

[Belhi]

I fully agree with you, Kallera, that's why my True question is : Is light really That great for the world ? For beastmen ? For humans ? I feel like light isn't any better than darkness, especially when you do the DRK quests and try to understand what Darkness is... And if You admit PLD represents light. (Which I think it does, given the final quest)

If we ignore the light/dark labels, I think the better question is if the Warrior of Light is that great for the world. The Warrior of Light opposes genocide. The Warrior of Light will even go out of his way to protect beastmen being abused by Garleans or people from the City States (this happens in the Beasttribe quests). The WoL does their best to minimise the suffering of others and end conflicts. The Warrior of Light cares.

The Ascians don't. THAT is the difference. We could be perfect clones of the Ascians but our actions make us different. The Ascians will lay waste to civilisations, trigger world shattering events and manipulate the vulnerable without care for their wellbeing. Regardless of what we are, we aren't the same as the Ascians.

As for Hydaelyn, regardless of her nature, we know Aether is Life force and Primals drain Aether from their surroundings. That's why they can eat souls. Primals suck the life out of the world around them. The very same effect happened during the War of the Magi when the Mages kept whipping out more and more large scale spells until the land suffered so much, nature itself triggered the 6th umbral error. Primals are bad news. Not because they are necessarily evil by nature, but because of the damage their very existence causes.

As for Thordan, I would suggest you review what he actually says in his last encounter. He talks about ruling as a God King of the world and enforcing order by his will. But even if he was great, the fact it would be a primal doing all this would undermine any good he did. Again, the war was mostly already won at that point and even if the Ascians were his biggest concern he hardly needed the power of a primal to fight them. Hell, the one time he does stand up to them, he waits for us to do most of the work. That Ascian was already on his knees by the time Thordan showed up.

As for Aymeric, there is several times his dialog seems to imply he actually cared about his father. He was upset with his father for perpetrating a lie that lead to such division and abuse within Ishgard's society. He was angered that his father would continue the same lie even in the wake of Nidhogg's defeat.

Again, I don't think Thordan was necessarily evil, nor do I think his goals did not have noble qualities. However how he went about it was wrong. Even good men can do evil if they will go to any length to achieve their goals, no matter how noble the goals.