(ShB Spoilers) Didn't Hydaelyn, uh...

[Lurina]

...Kind of murder billions of people?

In the setting of Final Fantasy XIV, and especially in Shadowbringers, a distinction is drawn between the soul and identity, with personhood, and subsequently right to life, invested in the latter as well as the former. As far as we know, no souls are technically destroyed during a rejoining; rather, they are simply reconnected to their corresponding fragment in the Source... But the narrative still presents this as the death of all of that shard's inhabitants. Likewise, despite Ryne being a reincarnation of Minfilia, her whole arc is about her being a distinct person in her own right regardless, with Thancred coming to accept the original's "death" despite her continued existence.

During the post-Qitana Ravel cutscene, Emet-Selch mentions that the Sundering resulted in everyone losing most of their memories prior to the event, leaving only fleeting fragments. In other words, they lost their identities and unique selves as a result.

So by the narratives own internal logic, wasn't Hydaelyn's act of splitting the world just as awful as the rejoining? I've been surprised by how little I've seen this commented on in discussions about the conclusion to the story.

[Rannie]

Is a person suffering from amnesia dead?

[Lurina]

Is a person suffering from amnesia dead?

I mean, if it's permanent, then I would say the original person is dead, yeah.

But to take this logic to its conclusion anyway, it's obvious that reincarnation exists in the setting in some capacity. If someone dies and is reincarnated as a new person, would it really be right to say they hadn't died?

And if it would, do any of the deaths that happen in the story mean anything at all? Is the philosophy of the Dotharl basically correct?

[Zackneifein]

Technically yes.

But it was basically something wrong vs something wrong.
Sacrifying new lifes form to resurrect all the Ascian pre-Apocalypse would also have been the murder of billions of people.

But the main differences is that it's Zodiark's people that start the war, by proposing the sacrifice of all other life form, those who created Hydaelyn, and the fight between her and Zodiark that resulted is just a reaction to that.
And the Sundering resulted on the creation of new life, when the Rejoining consist on sacrifying the survivor to bring back dead one. In my point of view, we should not bring back what is dead, it's just wrong.


And yes, some of the Dotharl philosophy is correct, but their "extreme" view on it that is wrong, a reincarnated person should have the choice to chose his path, even if it's at the end the same as his previous self (like it seems to be for the WoL), and not impose it on him (the suicid of the little girl is an exemple of how it's wrong). But it seems that the Au'ra have some abilities to see the soul of people, like Ascian, the matriarch of the Mol that can see ours.

[Brinne]

In my point of view, we should not bring back what is dead, it's just wrong.

On the other hand, from the Exarch's point of view, isn't that basically exactly he did? In his time, the Warrior of Light was dead, and he chose to sacrifice the people who, to him, were currently alive, to bring us back. And we were happy to support him in that after we found out.

[RopeDrink]

...Kind of murder billions of people?

The sundered were not exactly murdered, simply rendered into 14 shards of themselves that all end up living new lives on an equally sharded world of their own. You can argue that this act certainly did end one life per sundered if you view it a certain way, but the reality is they weren't exactly "killed", thus murder is not the correct word. It'd be different if the sundering snuffed out each and every one of those lives. Instead, she essentially diluted lives into a glob of water and splattered it all over the place to exist all over the universe without any memory of the original droplet it started from.

But the main differences is that it's Zodiark's people that start the war

And where did you hear this?

Last I remember, the Ancients concocted a plan (after being 'kinda-saved' by Zodiark) to nourish the world and then sacrifice life born through that new power to re-create those who were initially sacrificed to Zodiark to stop the calamity in the first place. Think of it like sacrificial recycling. However, certain Ancients did not agree with this plan, thus they split from the group and performed a similar sacrifice to summon Hyde - a Zodi-Counter. I do not recall ANYTHING being said about Zodi-worshippers instigating a war with the other group, only that a new faction arose to create Hyde, who eventually sundered the planet and all but three inhabitants. A lot of these details often boil into he-said-she-said with our only source of (potentially) correct information coming from the horse's mouth itself, Emet-Selch, who is happy to point out that Hyde might be inclined to convey a completely different story to what he tells us. In short, we'll never really, REALLY know, but for the most part it wasn't so much a civil war, rather than a hidden portion executing their own plan.

At least, that's how it was to me. As said, I saw no mention whatsoever of those groups actually 'fighting' eachother. Emet simply refers to them as foolish nay-sayers who followed their own path and caused the divide.

[Lurina]

Technically yes.

But it was basically something wrong vs something wrong.
Sacrifying new lifes form to resurrect all the Ascian pre-Apocalypse would also have been the murder of billions of people.

I guess I have two things to say to this. First, this is very ends-justify-the-means logic. Even if we accept what Hydaelyn did as a ultimately necessary and positive act, we're talking about someone killing massive amounts of people as collateral damage in a bid to stop the villain. If this was any other person or faction save Hydaelyn herself, I think there'd be a lot more people who would be unable to permit it as a reasonable solution.

But second, if we do accept that a soul being sundered is death, Hydaelyn killed everyone in the world except for 3 people. No matter how big a sacrifice Zodiark had required, by definition it would be less murder than what actually transpired.

The sundered were not exactly murdered, simply rendered into 14 shards of themselves that all end up living new lives on an equally sharded world of their own. You can argue that this act certainly did end one life per sundered if you view it a certain way, but the reality is they weren't exactly "killed", thus murder is not the correct word. It'd be different if the sundering snuffed out each and every one of those lives. Instead, she essentially diluted lives into a glob of water and splattered it all over the place to exist all over the universe without any memory of the original droplet it started from.

Well, what I was trying to say in the OP was that the story itself seems to conceptualize this kind of messing with a person's essence as essentially murder by any other name. A rejoining causes someones soul to be merged with another (or rather, restored with the original broken soul), following which they live on as "part" of that person, if only in a spiritual regard. We see this happen with Ardbert.

The game, however, minces no words in defining this as murder when it is done by force, even though by your reasoning no complete termination has occurred.

[TankHunter678]

The game, however, minces no words in defining this as murder when it is done by force, even though by your reasoning no complete termination has occurred.

Though Emet-Slech's description of how the sundering worked did not present any conclusion that the person hit by the sundering was actually killed or even considered dead, merely made lesser. Emet-Selch himself considers those born with the lesser version of the souls to not actually be alive and thus destroying them does not constitute murder. They are not of his people, the unsundered, thus he does not truly care about them, as much as he has tried in the past to care about them.

The rejoining constitutes as murder in the eyes of those who do live with those lesser souls because they see value in their own life when the one doing the murdering sees no value in their life and thus does not see it as murder.

[Alleo]

So by the narratives own internal logic, wasn't Hydaelyn's act of splitting the world just as awful as the rejoining? I've been surprised by how little I've seen this commented on in discussions about the conclusion to the story.

Well if you count the loss of your memories as the death of the person then yes she probably killed billions of people with that but I at least dont see it that way. There are people even in real life that suffer from it but the good thing is at least, that you can built up your life again. So if they only lost their memories and power by the split they are still alive imo.

We also should not forget that they had to do this because otherwise people really would have died. The Ascians were ready to kill them all and feed their souls to Zodiark to bring the old ones back. Losing your memories is honestly imo the lesser evil of the two and if they had not gone that way nothing like that would have needed to happen.

Rejoining are much worse because for that to happen people need to die before that. So of course this is shown as the death of all shard inhabitants because that it what happens. And since it happens with calamities, its often includes a cruel, horrible death too. These souls will also be taken out of the rebirth cycle and completely stop existing as own people. And lets not forget that the endgoal for these rejoining is the death of the complete soul at the end too.

Of course we also simply dont know what happened after the split. I would say that its nearly 100% sure that the people did not die because then there would have been nobody left to populate the shards again. But we cant at the same time say for sure what they lost. Maybe they only lost specific memories and their power, maybe they lost it all. But in the end none of that would have been necessary if the Ascians had accepted the sacrifice. And if the only other option to a split was the complete utter death of all of them, then losing the memories of your past is not that horrible at all. Because you get at least the chance to built up new ones.

On the other hand, from the Exarch's point of view, isn't that basically exactly he did? In his time, the Warrior of Light was dead, and he chose to sacrifice the people who, to him, were currently alive, to bring us back. And we were happy to support him in that after we found out.

After the calamity over two hundred years went by and as far as the story hinted the world was in a very bad shape. We dont know how many people were even alive at that time. And it was not really the exarch who did this all on his own, there were other people with him that decided that this future was not worth living anymore. Maybe those were the last few alive? I think if the world was going back to how it was and people were starting to have a good life they would not have done that. It seems that the world was doomed to be death and thus they tried to find a way to change that. And yes these people sacrificed themselves for that. You could say that this shows some parallels to the apocalypse that the Ancient ones faced including the sacrifice but the difference is: The world of the Ancient ones were fine again, they all could have lived on happily and yet a handful decided that it would be great to sacrifice those that survived and would be born for those that willingly gave their life so that those others can survive. The source in the bad future though was not in a good place. When the exarch was awake (which was already quite a bit in the future) we saw in the memories that there was still violence going on. There was no happy future left.

Last I remember, the Ancients concocted a plan (after being 'kinda-saved' by Zodiark) to nourish the world and then sacrifice life born through that new power to re-create those who were initially sacrificed to Zodiark to stop the calamity in the first place. Think of it like sacrificial recycling. However, certain Ancients did not agree with this plan, thus they split from the group and performed a similar sacrifice to summon Hyde - a Zodi-Counter.

We dont know if that ended in outright conflict and at the end Hydealyn was summoned or if they just went away and summoned her suddenly, but it was still at the end the fault of the Ascians. They did not accept the sacrifice that the others did willingly to save the future lifes (thus stomping on their sacrifice too) and outright went against those that wanted it to stop. Hythlo did say that this divided their race so it seems that there were more than a handful of them against it. So if they had just accepted it and looked forward to the future and not be stuck in the past then no split would have started. So in a way you could say that they started the "war" between those two crystals.

[RopeDrink]

The game, however, minces no words in defining this as murder when it is done by force, even though by your reasoning no complete termination has occurred.

It's the characters and standard moral belief behind them, not so much the game itself. A test of morals.

We're presented with the head-scratcher that the world was essentially diluted into countless other shard/versions, as were all its inhabitants (who were originally an [almost] perfect race). We're then asked whether it is 'murder' to re-merge all the shattered people/worlds to reform the originals - a process that ends the existence of said shards/worlds which have been enjoying their own unique existence for ages post-sundering. Ultimately, it isn't much different to the what the sundering did in the first place - it reduced people from powerful immortals into flawed mortals with merely a fraction of their original 'stats' so to speak, but the difference is it was one group/world that was destroyed to create what we have now, so the reverse will be viewed as millions of lives being slain.

As expected, 99.99% of characters with any kind of intelligence post-sundering will not embrace this as acceptable in any way whatsoever, unless you're privy to that past in one way and/or convinced of the previous perfection (re. people like Varis, who was essentially raised by an Ascian anyway). After all, to rejoin them all and bring back the Ancients requires pretty much all of those shards/lives to be lost, one way or another, so you don't have to think too hard about how many would instantly reject it without any thought or consideration. It's the age old 'needs of the many/few' facing a vice-versa situation. Most people would likely say that the many > few in most cases by default. The Ascian's are striving for the opposite.

As such, the typical reaction is very predictable. "You want to murderize bazillions of lives? You must be one of those evil, filthy Ascians!"

Emet already mentioned how he feels about it. Having known what we were and seeing what we are, it's easy to see why he doesn't really consider such an act murder seeing as he wants to put everything back the way it was. It's understandable, but again, the characters (and most of the players) would still react typically. It's ending too much life in the present, thus it's bad, no questions asked. You must be stopped.