Zenos: The Big Bad (The Feedback Thread, Part 1)

[Cilia]

Anyone who's taken basic psychology courses will tell you that "Nature vs. Nurture" isn't even the right question; both shape an individual's mindset, the debate is over how much weight each has.

Yes, even with both Varis and his unnamed dead mother hypothetically being loving parents to him it's possible Zenos could still have ended up the way he is, but it would be much, much less probable. Further what we have about his upbringing suggests (if not outright states) he had no positive attachments to anyone at all - having never been given the chance to be a normal child, attended to and raised by servants who would cater to his every need and whim. Being as academically gifted as he was, blessed with Garlean constitution, afforded every privilege in life but lacking any sort of attachment to anyone, and raised in a culture that glorifies domination through force, that Zenos turned out the way he did is... no surprise at all. (And that's not even getting into whatever experiments Emet-Selch and/or Varis implicitly performed on him.)

Aside from his sword instructor (who he easily bested after a bit of improvisation), the PC is the first person Zenos has ever met with the ability to deny him. That he would have an unhealthy, obsessive attachment to them is... also unsurprising.

Of course Zenos sees the PC as a kindred spirit - they keep showing up in the only place he feels alive, always ready with new tricks and techniques to catch him off-balance. It's interesting, to him. It breaks up the tedium his life has been so far.

One of the things addressed in the presentation is that while the PC may not feel the same (or outright despise him), Zenos sees them as a genuine friend; the issue is that he's so horribly, horribly maladapted the only way he knows how to express himself is by trying to kill them.

And this is all without getting into whatever may be revealed about him in Endwalker.

Not every antagonist needs to do this:

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Apropos of nothing... Anima is showing up in some capacity, and while it's possible she's just the Matanga primal, given her personal connection to Seymour in X I can't help but wonder if there might not be more to her than a boss fight for the sake of having a boss fight.