Is 'Hydaelyn' a misnomer based on a misconception?

[MikkoAkure]

The average person living on the planet doesn’t know about a great big crystal entity living underneath or the secrets of Ascians and Zodiark. It’s likely that a past WoL heard Hydaelyn talk to them and just understood her as connected to the Star and somehow the name caught on among normal people.

The writing team has done a good job establishing the fact that a lot of the lore is given to us naturally through characters living in the world rather than exposition saying “this is that and this is that thing”. Considering the characters in the world call the Star Hydaelyn, then there’s probably not a super deep reason for it.

[MikkoAkure]

Parts of the city may have been illusion, but the ruins in the surrounding area are of Amaurotian origins, as are the ruins the Ondo live in.

It is likely Emet used the ruins of an actual Amaurotian city as the base of his illusion. Not sure if it was ever outright stated if it IS the ruined city of Amaurot itself though, but its probable.

It is the actual city. Thancred even mentions being unable to get into the big building Emet was hiding in because what we see is a veneer of an illusion over the ruins and the window he was trying to get into was sealed shut by years of junk. When we get to the Tempest, the Ondo even say that the ruins have always been there, but it is just now that they’ve been turned on.

[Izar_Chillen]

It is the actual city. Thancred even mentions being unable to get into the big building Emet was hiding in because what we see is a veneer of an illusion over the ruins and the window he was trying to get into was sealed shut by years of junk. When we get to the Tempest, the Ondo even say that the ruins have always been there, but it is just now that they’ve been turned on.

WARNING

Spoilers

Indeed, the city even "recognises the WoL"when you first get there. If the city was a complete illusion born of the mind of Emet Selch then there would be no reason why he would imagine his creations to recognise the player having Ascian heritage because he was unaware of it until his end.

[Enkidoh]

And the design of the buildings in said mural outright matches the ruins in The Tempest, and it was that mural that Emet actually confirmed really was of Amaurot and the Terminus (it was the first time we actually heard the name mentioned). And the WoL actually matches a distinctive structure in that mural at the end of the game with one of the ruins in The Tempest, that strange vaguely open pyramidal structure called 'The Walls of the Forgotten' on the map.

Having said that, it's still unclear if Emet's reconstruction of Amaurot was built 'from the ground up' with his Creation magic or was simply a glamour laid over the empty ruins like a tablecloth, but what is clear is that the ruins in The Tempest are the remains of Amaurot (a big clue is the distinctive 'zigzag brickwork-in-concrete' pattern on the ruins... is identical to the buildings in the reconstruction... albiet without 12000 years worth of coral and rock formations on them. ).

[swiss_Momo]

as for the initial topic: We indeed don't know what the ancients called the planet before the terminus (it's entirely possible though that they did literally just call it the star, after all Earth isn't that imaginative of a name either). Zodiark was created as "the will of the star" itself, so he and the planet became synonymous. And later our mommy crystal took over that role after banishing Zodiark.
So yes, Hydaelin is the planet.

[purgatori]

as for the initial topic: We indeed don't know what the ancients called the planet before the terminus (it's entirely possible though that they did literally just call it the star, after all Earth isn't that imaginative of a name either). Zodiark was created as "the will of the star" itself, so he and the planet became synonymous. And later our mommy crystal took over that role after banishing Zodiark.
So yes, Hydaelin is the planet.

Not to me she isn't! :P Hydaelyn seems like a usurper—as Eloah said, it most resembles a case of the victor writing the rules—of this synonymy, if anything. Though I also have my doubts about Zodiark embodying "the will of the star." I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the star has no will, and that Zodiark embodied nothing more than the will of a people desperate to survive at any cost. They are, after all, both Primals, and I'm always apt to believe that any positive PR for either one of them is born of tempering.

The Ancients or, more specifically, the Amauoritines, remind me a lot of the Krell from Forbidden Planet, or the Atlanteans: a race so physically adept that they are able to give form to powerful entities/forces that prove to be their undoing. Sulky Selch makes it sound like the horrors of the Terminus event just befell his blameless people for reasons unknown, but I suspect that what we have here is a very literal imagining of the sleep of reason giving birth to monsters. So, from my vantage point, Zodiark and Hydaelyn are just monsters called forth to deal with other monsters, and the star is just a big rock that doesn't have much of anything to do with either of them.

[Theodric]

I'm also very curious as to what the original planet was called before Zodiark and Hydaelyn entered the equation. I think it'd be very poetic for the truth surrounding Zodiark and Hydaelyn to become common knowledge and for the reigns of history to truly be placed into the hands of man. There's something rather egotistical about the Source being named 'Hydaelyn' in light of all her deception surrounding her true nature. She had many convinced that she was a benevolent deity and yet as it turns out she is simply another Primal. A very powerful one, certainly, but a Primal all the same.

[swiss_Momo]

I still think Emet calling Zodiark and Hydaelyn primals was a deliberate mislead by him. Sure, creation magic and primal summoning follow the same principle on paper, but in practice it's like comparing a masterfully crafted piece of artisanship with some cheap bootleg that only barely resembles the original and will set itself on fire if looked at the wrong way. Also if mommy and daddy crystal were primals, then logically ALL of the countless plants and animals originating from creation magic would have to be primals as well, no?
(As for the ascians getting tempered, this might've simply been an unintended side effect of Zodiark stopping the terminus. After all, a big part was the chain reaction of the mass hysteria amongst the ancients creating more monsters, so Zodiark might've simply decided that ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL via tempering as a way to stop that)

[Lersayil]

I still think Emet calling Zodiark and Hydaelyn primals was a deliberate mislead by him. Sure, creation magic and primal summoning follow the same principle on paper, but in practice it's like comparing a masterfully crafted piece of artisanship with some cheap bootleg that only barely resembles the original and will set itself on fire if looked at the wrong way. Also if mommy and daddy crystal were primals, then logically ALL of the countless plants and animals originating from creation magic would have to be primals as well, no?
(As for the ascians getting tempered, this might've simply been an unintended side effect of Zodiark stopping the terminus. After all, a big part was the chain reaction of the mass hysteria amongst the ancients creating more monsters, so Zodiark might've simply decided that ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL via tempering as a way to stop that)

I think the statement was misleading, but not necessarily deliberately. I think that its just as you said: they are much better crafted primals. So much better in fact, that many rules we apply to run-of-the-mill primals don't apply to them. He was just using words that we can understand easily.

It does bring up some interesting questions about creation magic and its limits though. But thats for another thread.

[purgatori]

I think the statement was misleading, but not necessarily deliberately. I think that its just as you said: they are much better crafted primals. So much better in fact, that many rules we apply to run-of-the-mill primals don't apply to them. He was just using words that we can understand easily.

It does bring up some interesting questions about creation magic and its limits though. But thats for another thread.

Regardless of the degree of sophistication involved in their construction, the fact remains that they are not ontologically necessary, non-contingent beings upon which all non-contingent phenomena depends. They are themselves part of the created order. In fact, until contrary evidence emerges, I would hypothesise that these beings are not even capable of the sort of free exercise of creation that the Amaurotine engaged in. They may be extremely powerful, but in every way that matters, they're nought but false gods.

If you're looking for a hard no about the possible of her having tempered the WoL or associates, we don't have that.

What we do have is logical inference. We have no known instances of anyone being tempered by Hydaelyn herself. Some tempered are able to display a degree of self control most seem to have no problem admitting to being tempered. See in particular Emet-Selch and the Anata from Ala Migho council quests.

We do know that the WoL from the first shard and WoL from the thirteen shard are able to act against what would be considered Hydaelyn's goals and motives while cooperating with Ascians. While as this is quite circumstantial, it is a decent amount of evidence that discredits the "Hydealyn Tempering" theory.

I think it most likely that you're correct, but I wouldn't be totally caught off-guard if it turned out that Hydaelyn engages in tempering. After all, we don't know what the subjective experience of being tempered is like. Perhaps when Hydaelyn was speaking to us, this was itself a symptom of tempering. As we know, though, she has grown weaker over the course of the game and no longer speaks to us, which may be a sign that her hold over us, and other WoLs has diminished, and they are able to act in ways contrary to her intent.

On the other hand, tempering has been shown to persist even when a Primal has been vanquished, so this theory probably doesn't hold water.