Quote Originally Posted by Anonymoose View Post
"To this riddle all souls are tied." I was like, "Ah, nuts this is gonna require looking at Answers again, isn't it." lol.
Yeeeessss. To be completely honest, I was just listening to the Shadowbringers soundtrack on Youtube as I was gathering, and Answers came up. When I heard the line "Our souls have been torn, and our bodies forsaken" I was like... wait. Let's go back and look at this whole thing through a new lens. When I did, I realized that a lot of this had to be coming from the Ascians perspective, at least in the post-ARR timeline we're in now. I agree that the song may not have originally intended to convey these meanings, but I definitely think the dev team took a look at the lyrics when they were thinking of the way the story was going to develop in the future, given the literal parallels between the events we've learned about in Shadowbringers and the lyrics of the song. I'm looking forward to learning more about Hydaelyn's intentions - all we've really gotten to see is the sort of vague glimpses of "Hydaelyn is good for vague reasons, Zodiark is sympathetic because He saved the world but for some reason He is bad and must be opposed!" Obviously, his servants are evil in our modern timeline, and we have glimpses of what Zodiark was doing that was bad, but there's no direct answer to the question of why he needed to be checked - and the Ascians obviously didn't believe he needed to be checked at all.

I want to know why Hydaelyn was created beyond just "Zodiark needed an opposing force." My best guess, as you can see through my lyric interpretation above, is that Zodiark was going to keep asking for more and more and more sacrifices, but also He was going to keep tempering more and more people as well. The Ascians had convinced themselves that they could sacrifice their 'lesser' creations to appease Him, but that wouldn't sustain His hunger for long. Zodiark did save the world, but at a cost - and that cost would be the future will of the inhabitants of the world, the domination of all things by Zodiark. Hydaelyn did break the world, but in so doing She freed it from an eternity of servitude to darkness. She represents the freedom to choose our destiny, our own fate, make our own choices and learn from our mistakes. That is why, even though She has 'claimed' us as Her champion, we are not bound to Her will in any real way - She merely protects us as we make our own choices. My current theory based on the lyrics to Answers, her actions in game, and the actions of our characters as Her champions, anyway.