Minfillia Speculation

[Belhi]

I did some thinking with what we've seen and the patch trailer and reached another hypothesis.

Matoya: To win a war, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes. To fight, to kill, and if necessary, to die.

In light of this and Minfilia apparently disappearing in meta world, in front of Hydaelyn the crystal, perhaps Hydaelyn is going to sacrifice herself to buy us more time or push back the darkness, and Minfilia is going to take her place as the "core consciousness" of the Mothercrystal, so to speak? We know Hydaelyn is rather weak, and perhaps she knows it's only a matter of time before she kicks the bucket (so to speak), but by having another take her place things will get better?

... yeah, I know, lacking a bit of SAN... but no matter what, I do not have a good feeling about this...

I've been considering this possibility too. It would actually make a lot of her actions and the things we have been put through lately make a lot more sense. Perhaps even the strengthening of the Blessing was to get the WoL to a point where they could stand without direct protection of Hydaelyn.

The other thing Im considering is that Zodiark doesn't actually seem to be active yet. The Ascians are trying to bring him back but I get the feeling that perhaps he is in a 'dead/dormant' state himself. Perhaps this is Hydaelyn reaching the same state and in her last moments she is giving everything she has left to her agents still in the battle. After all she really seems to be pushing for us to think for ourselves a lot. Plus there is the other translations of those lines.

Really its impossible to see anything conclusive at this point but I think its highly likely Hydaelyn will be out of the fight, at least actively, once 3.2 hits. What will be REALLY interesting is if whatever her final play is throws a spanner in the works for the Ascians.

Obviously I'll wait and see how it's all handled. 3.2 does excite me quite a bit - and I'm hoping they deliver on the promise of a 'darker' expansion as we push towards the finale of the Dragonsong War.

To be honest HW has already been a lot darker than ARR was. We have had a lot darker themes and a lot more death in HW than we had in 2.0. Hell even the history of the Dragonsong war itself and what it has done to both societies is pretty damn dark. Just with dusk vigil we have people freezing to death, cannibalism and political manoeuvring leading to an innocent woman being thrown off a cliff as a heretic leading to her husband going mad. That's ignoring the abuse of the poor and children freezing to death on the streets. Ishgard is a pretty dark place.