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

[Vyrerus]

Air of mystery.

Let's talk about the air of mystery, because that's one thing people seem to be taking for granted. We all assume that we have Zenos pegged, down, and ready to be butchered. I don't think so. When he lost to us while he was controlling Shinryu, controlling a god, he smiled. Then he killed himself. He wanted to leave the stage. He even has lines about, "There upon the stage I stood, prepared to take my final bow, only to find out the finale was but an intermission..."

He's got the air of mystery. Why was someone who was satisfied so completely, willing to come back to life in another body, and then seek out their old body? Why not drift off to oblivion? In this cavalcade of science experiments and body augmentations, what did Emet-selch do, that makes Zenos see the Final Days of Amaurot? Why does love and the other pleasures of the flesh seem lowly and hold no interest for him? When did he transcend man and become inhuman?

And it's not that people aren't allowed to dislike people, but it's the commonly held opinion, view, and feeling. People willingly post their dislike of Zenos all of the time, mostly to accolades, as if people need to justify disliking him. It becomes a little Zenos hate party, and that's fine. I just think it's shortsighted.

Also, I'd hate to have had a whole expansion of Elidibus. He was literally a plot device, the way people describe Zenos, but without anything beyond just being a white robed Ascian for a long time. I actually didn't really care for 5.3. To me, that was a patch that was more about giving Catboi Sage Deluxe a means to show off and play center stage. As he ever was, Elidibus's role could have been filled by any Ascian, and it would have been just as compelling.

[Alleo]

Let's talk about the air of mystery, because that's one thing people seem to be taking for granted. We all assume that we have Zenos pegged, down, and ready to be butchered. I don't think so. When he lost to us while he was controlling Shinryu, controlling a god, he smiled. Then he killed himself. He wanted to leave the stage. He even has lines about, "There upon the stage I stood, prepared to take my final bow, only to find out the finale was but an intermission..."

He's got the air of mystery. Why was someone who was satisfied so completely, willing to come back to life in another body, and then seek out their old body? Why not drift off to oblivion? In this cavalcade of science experiments and body augmentations, what did Emet-selch do, that makes Zenos see the Final Days of Amaurot? Why does love and the other pleasures of the flesh seem lowly and hold no interest for him? When did he transcend man and become inhuman?

And it's not that people aren't allowed to dislike people, but it's the commonly held opinion, view, and feeling. People willingly post their dislike of Zenos all of the time, mostly to accolades, as if people need to justify disliking him. It becomes a little Zenos hate party, and that's fine. I just think it's shortsighted.

Well we know that he has a version of the echo so him coming back is imo not suprising or that mysterious. Zenos simply did not know about the part of being brought back and who knows maybe he would have just moved on but then we got Elidibus in Zenos body and maybe he did not like it. I honestly doubt that there is much deeper meaning to that.

About love and other pleasure: I mean there are probably enough people in our own world that are simply not interested in such things. Zenos just takes his pleasure from fights.

I get that there are some mysteries but for me none of them are truly interesting, at least not enough to have someone like him back.

About other peoples opinion: But just because its a common one still does not make it a hate boner. This is also a thread specifically asking what we think about him. And maybe people are posting why they dont like it because they know that they will just be seen as a hater by some? Isnt it great that they at least try to take their time to say why they hate a fictional character? I remember a certain muscular female from a recent game...and how people that just did not like her were called names because surely you cant just dislike/hate someone (thats not even real) without being a terrible human being yourself.

[Lauront]

I think Zenos can be very interesting, if you actually try to understand him.

He's not entertaining, sympathetic, tragic, redeemable, or particularly complex, but if you actually try and get into his headspace, try to understand why he says and does the things he does, there's more to him than a psycho killer.

tl;dr: For all his physical power Zenos is a poster boy for mental illness.

He still isn't interesting to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There's plenty of characters you can reduce to poster boys for mental illness. Doesn't add much for me. Could just be that it doesn't translate well to this medium as someone else mentioned.

Let's talk about the air of mystery, because that's one thing people seem to be taking for granted. We all assume that we have Zenos pegged, down, and ready to be butchered. I don't think so. When he lost to us while he was controlling Shinryu, controlling a god, he smiled. Then he killed himself. He wanted to leave the stage. He even has lines about, "There upon the stage I stood, prepared to take my final bow, only to find out the finale was but an intermission..."

He's got the air of mystery. Why was someone who was satisfied so completely, willing to come back to life in another body, and then seek out their old body? Why not drift off to oblivion? In this cavalcade of science experiments and body augmentations, what did Emet-selch do, that makes Zenos see the Final Days of Amaurot? Why does love and the other pleasures of the flesh seem lowly and hold no interest for him? When did he transcend man and become inhuman?

And it's not that people aren't allowed to dislike people, but it's the commonly held opinion, view, and feeling. People willingly post their dislike of Zenos all of the time, mostly to accolades, as if people need to justify disliking him. It becomes a little Zenos hate party, and that's fine. I just think it's shortsighted.

Also, I'd hate to have had a whole expansion of Elidibus. He was literally a plot device, the way people describe Zenos, but without anything beyond just being a white robed Ascian for a long time. I actually didn't really care for 5.3. To me, that was a patch that was more about giving Catboi Sage Deluxe a means to show off and play center stage. As he ever was, Elidibus's role could have been filled by any Ascian, and it would have been just as compelling.

Compared to a character whose sole purpose is to take on Zodiark's power as a justification to fight him (one of the two at any rate), I'd say they're not really the same. Elidibus was always different to the other Ascians for the fact that he was preoccupied with the balance between light and dark (itself peculiar given that they represent darkness), and claimed closer proximity to Zodiark's will than the rest, which made it even stranger. The entire plot of the story revolves around the war of the supposed gods of light and dark. That puts him at a very central position in it and potentially privy to knowledge the other Ascians were not. He also took a contrary stance to the other Ascians in his interest in the "gifted", was implied to have objections to harm coming to Minfilia via Nabriales, was the only one who initially approached the MC in a non-confrontational manner, had implied if the truth of the world were known the conflicts would cease and as things progressed, there were hints that he had insight into what Hydaelyn's summoners had intended, by the end of 5.0. If anything, what rendered him harder to write was Emet's introduction. But there were plenty of deeper mysteries there to build upon should they have wished to, ones feeding off the game's central conflict and could get to the bottom of the Ascians' core motivations as well as their god's. We can say with the benefit of hindsight that his plotline could be fitted to any other (unsundered) Ascian, but really, that's besides the point that it was in him that those plot points existed until they made the decision to use Emet for a chunk of them, presumably because of the way they had written Elidibus's role in 4.1 onwards. I've mixed feelings on 5.3 (and yes, I'm no catboi sage fan), although there's aspects of it in how they built Elidibus's background that I liked.

With Zenos, they all mostly resolve to the Resonance. There's some minor questions around how that functions, but even the vision of the Final Days is potentially tied to his Ascian lineage. And yet, everyone has such visions seared into their soul provided the right impetus to unlock them. All the same, we'd likely require some other party to explain all that (like Fandaniel.) They could build a deeper background for Zenos, but why do so if they've got Fandaniel for that and when they said they've no intention to? The way things are going, it is Fandaniel on whom the mystery is focused.

[Alleo]

I think Zenos can be very interesting, if you actually try to understand him.

He's not entertaining, sympathetic, tragic, redeemable, or particularly complex, but if you actually try and get into his headspace, try to understand why he says and does the things he does, there's more to him than a psycho killer.

tl;dr: For all his physical power Zenos is a poster boy for mental illness.

Seeing how the devs stated that he was created to be pure evil and not sympathetic at all, a character for people to hate, I kinda wonder if they ever intended for him to be seen through the lenses of mental illness. I mean you can I guess but as someone that is more towards "no matter the past that does not take away from your actions" I honestly dont really care if he migth have some mental illness he is still a horrible person that slays his own underlings for petty reasons. That kills his own father and that just destroyed a whole huge city because he does not care.

Also I am not sure that if I had a similiar illness (is it depression?) I would like to have someone like him as a poster boy for that and be one of the possible only "interesting" character traits for him. I mean we had someone like Emet that seemingly suffered from some cases of depression but he was more than that. And he was sympathetic in some way.

[KageTokage]

It's mostly Varis' fault he ended up the way he did, as he was given a joyless upbringing that focused entirely on teaching him the skills needed to be the next heir to the throne, and he unfortunately ended up finding his sole sense of fulfillment from combat.

His little speech about you being his one and only friend gave me a strong impression of someone who was socially deprived even before they went into his backstory.

He's a bit pitiful, but too far gone to be worthy of much sympathy.

[Theodric]

It's mostly Varis' fault he ended up the way he did, as he was given a joyless upbringing that focused entirely on teaching him the skills needed to be the next heir to the throne, and he unfortunately ended up finding his sole sense of fulfillment from combat.

His little speech about you being his one and only friend gave me a strong impression of someone who was socially deprived even before they went into his backstory.

He's a bit pitiful, but too far gone to be worthy of much sympathy.

That's a common misconception. Varis didn't abuse or neglect Zenos. He provided Zenos with everything he could want or need and even ensured he would be in a position to build up friendships. We know that Varis himself befriended Regula early on in his life and that the pair maintained that friendship over decades. Zenos could have done something similar but he pushed people away deliberately because they 'bored' him due to Zenos' own superiority complex.

Furthermore, Varis going away to war is in itself not something unusual in the setting. Lyse's father did the same. So too did Hien's father.

[Lauront]

I agree with most people saying that if Zenos is the big bad last boss, that that would be pretty boring. We already defeated him in SB, if the same happens again, then what? Zenos kills himself again?

This is precisely why I don't think he's the last boss, and if anything.... I think he's going to help us defeat the last boss(es). He's our friend after all, and we are very much alike in many ways, as people have pointed out in this thread. One thing Zenos has shown time and time again is his desire for us to live and become better. I don't think he'll be defeated and kill himself or let himself be killed knowing that the WoL will be facing the big bad primals alone... No, I think we will stand side by side and go against Zodiark and Hydaelyn (side note: a lot of people here say we need to defeat Zodiark, but wouldn't that cause a big imbalance in light/dark and potentially cause another Flood of Light?? Both need to be dealt with, they're both primals, and I always thought Hydaelyn was annoying and shady AF. I say we get rid of them both). No one else matches our power and potential like Zenos does, so yes... it has to be him in this role.

Also there is A TON of room for character development here, what with Zenos's (implanted or actual) memories of the Final Days. I do have to say that I disagree with people saying he's boring, although it's not totally their fault. Zenos is a super interesting character once you start digging into his backstory. I really wish this stuff had made it into the main story, it would have really changed people's experience I think. Zenos is single-minded, yes, but not boring (at least not for me). Just my disjointed two cents.

I disagree on a few points. Although there's some vagueness here, Zenos is far from the most powerful antagonist we've faced, as he was already bested in SB. Bear in mind, the WoL isn't doing this purely through their own strength but also with Hydaelyn's Blessing shielding them. So it is the WoL + Hydaelyn's borrowed power, and this has been the case with Zenos, with Emet-Selch (explicitly referenced), with Elidibus, and with many others. There was a brief period in HW where this was gone, but it was fully restored by the end of it. They only gave a vague indication to the contrary with Zenos's encounter with Elidibus. However, we then found out there was no actual fight, and on top of that, that Elidibus is not equal to Emet-Selch in power, because of his unique primal nature, meaning his power is more scalable. Hence the need to bolster the otherworldly champions' faith in him to augment his power before you face him the last time. This primal aspect probably was what made him susceptible to Zenos in the first place. If you're saying few are as powerful as him barring the MC? Then perhaps, but he himself formulated his new plan to feed on one of the two Primals so that he can get his desired rematch as his "directive". I'm not sure whether he understands how the two primals differ in their power but he probably thinks it'll even the odds. It's less about Zenos's own raw power and more how he can take it a step further.

I also don't think he shares much in common with the MC, who has grown further apart with SHB, when they took on the task entrusted to them by Emet. He certainly thinks they do, because he sees in the MC a similar battlelust to his own, but with all due respect, he's not alone in sharing this trait with the MC, and it's but one facet of them. The MC wouldn't destroy a world purely to get their jollies out of it.

Where I believe they may invoke the very one-sided friendship angle is with whether he can actually control Zodiark (or Hydaelyn, if plans change - it'd fit with the Venat/Vayne theme from XII) and whether he can see it through. I also have my doubts that he'll be the true end boss.

I'm familiar with his history, his character hook, his arc. People seem to premise his appeal on two main strains of argument.

1) He's just a pure psychopath/nutjob, and that's refreshing because it's different to the other major antagonists. That's all well and good, but I can't say it changes my view of him. This sort of thing works better when you haven't got a mostly mute protagonist like the MC and the psycho can actually affect them psychologically. Whereas in the game it just affects some of the dialogue at best.

2) Trust in Ishikawa. Well, she can of course write some ancient persona for him. However, it'd essentially be a completely separate person in essence.

I found him briefly interesting towards the end of SB, mostly because of his dialogue, but really it's a one trick pony and from that point, the only way to take it further is to up the ante with bigger and better fights. You'll appreciate there's limits to how many times that can remain interesting. For me it's in the region of one. I'm somewhat intrigued by how Emet's lineage affected him, and the visions of the Final Days, but those are questions specific to those things, and not Zenos.

In all honesty, I think they've brought him in because they need a way to create a Zodiark fight but without going through the full spate of Rejoinings and also without compromising the story of the ancients, since Zodiark isn't malevolent, per se. It's less to do with his tremendous appeal - which isn't as great as it once was in popularity rankings I've seen e.g. from Japan. Hence you have Fandaniel accompanying him, to lighten up the scenes and also to provide that hook for greater depth in the story. As much as I call Fandaniel budget Emet, he's his own character and will serve as the impetus to further progress the story.

So I can understand why people don't want him around longer than 6.0, and I personally wouldn't care for him as a companion. It's bad enough I have to endure the catboy.

From Zenos's official backstory: "With such an upbringing, he could not choose but be different from other children. Indeed, it could be said that he was never a child at all. Innocence and playfulness were quite alien to him, the former expunged by his earliest schooling and the latter afforded no outlet." There being no outlet for playfulness indicates to me that he wasn't allowed to play with other children, and the backstory only mentions him interacting with tutors and servants. I think he was in a very sterile/cold environment where no one showed him any love or care. The people he encountered acted in total deference/fear, so he couldn't really build any social relationships there... I think that's a solid form of neglect and abuse on the part of Varis.

I'm assuming you're taking this from the Chronicles of Light. Do you have the section referencing this "upbringing"?

Regardless, it may not matter much, because if Yoshi intends to stick to the following:

JeuxOnline: In a previous interview, you said it was quite challenging to create realistic villains from one expansion to another. Ran’jit & Solus are great in that way: they look very strong, fearsome & crazy. How do you manage to keep getting inspired and make charismatic bad guys for the story not to be redundant?

Naoki Yoshida: That is a very difficult question to answer. So when making the villain characters, what the dev team tries to keep in mind is that they have to stand out, either by being really hateful and the players really hate them or still kinda loveable in a way. So for example Zenos is some sort of entity of ultimate Evil. [spoiler]But for Emet-Selch, he just wants to restore his world, that he believes is the best world.[spoiler]. So each time we create a new villain, we try to put them on either end of the scale, either complete evil or with having their own belief, their own goal. Having someone in-between is quite half-baked and is something the dev team wants to avoid.

...then I have my doubts that such an obscure source is going to alter what they present in the game about him.

[waifugenerator]

Not every villain needs to be Emet! Having a character with zero human qualities can be just as compelling as a multifaceted villain. Again with the antisocial analogy, don't think of Zenos as a boring person but rather someone who lacks the necessary qualities to even be a person. Emet was necessary to show us that Ascians aren't just avatars of evil, Zenos does NOTTT need this treatment and doing so would just devalue Emet and the rest of the ancients' character arc

[sciencebot]

I'm going to put a post behind spoiler boxes because it's quite long and rambling, but the TL;DR is: Zenos is an interesting choice to me because of his thematic resonance to the story so far. To my reading, he's the ultimate expression of both the Ascian and Garlean ideals, and what essentially the whole core story has been discussing and asking questions about so far. It's a chance to confront what I think are some of the central ideas driving FFXIV's story by punching them directly in the face.

So, you have the Ascians: Their plan is to raise up Zodiark, whose power will let them seed the star with new life, and then kill all that life to bring back their fellows. Listen to Emet-Selch talk about the Sundered. They're lesser beings, they're unworthy, their reduced aetheric density and inability to create makes them sickening reflections of what used to be. The Ascians have power, so they can enforce their will. The Sundered don't have power, so they don't deserve to stand toe to toe with the real people who actually matter. Emet-Selch's grandson was a disappointment because he didn't have the same power as an Ancient. The Warrior of Light is a disappointment because they don't have the same power as an Ancient.

And this ideology of power being everything is reflected in what the Ascians create. It's not an accident that the Allagan Empire expands and crushes their enemies with an iron fist, doing massive injustice and inflicting untold suffering on all sorts of people in the pursuit of greater strength and control. Political power, science, magic, capital, creation-- any form of power they can get their hands on, at any cost. They're literally destroyed when a fancy power plant is too strong for them. You see what's happening here, right?

When the tribes are being pushed back by the Eorzeans, the Ascians show up to offer them rituals to summon Primals. By destroying life and causing harm to the world around them, they can become stronger and in that strength -- with their will, conscience, and humanity suppressed in service to something greater -- strike back against their enemies. The problem is, it's not just destructive to their foes, but corrosive to themselves. It's those same themes echoing again. They echo down sidequests, they echo down other forks of the MSQ, in large and small ways. Nanamo, Raubahn, and the Monetarists. The Ivy. Hien's questions about reclaiming the throne. Yotsuyu's whole arc. Eulmore's tower and the rickety town below. The Weapon arc, and Bozja too. FFXIV is regularly examining what power is, who has it, what kind, what they use it for, and what the effects of it are.

The Garlean Empire is set up by Emet-Selch as a successor to the Allagans, in the same mold. It has that same ideology as the Ascians, on a smaller scale: that people who aren't the right people are somehow lesser for it. That strength is what matters. The only way a lesser person can earn real distinction and citizenship in the Empire is to literally give their strength at arms to the cause. That cause is itself to trample all over the supposed lesser beings. It is to seize what they want at the point of the (gun)sword. The Empire conquers and expands, it puts its boot on countless necks, it gets deep into unethical science just like the Allagans, and nobody has the right to say anything about it because nobody can muster enough force to do so.

It's a harmful way to live, both to the people who encounter it and to the people who perpetuate it. The plan is for it to eventually generate a Calamity that's going to be equally destructive to people in the Empire, whether that's through its own hubris or inspiring uprisings against it or some combination thereof. It's very successful at this: not only does it actually work once, it does a second time in an alternate future, and it had at least one more good shot at it foiled by the WoL.

But that ideology isn't just a government-level thing, right? It affects the people who are living under it too. Look at Varis: while Emet-Selch cared for theater, he bans everything that doesn't meet the standard of the Imperial censors because it's not something that generates strength. The ideology is reinforcing itself, becoming more concentrated. And then he finds out that Garleans are actually not the people who matter, like he's been told his whole life! Instant inferority complex. The only solution he can think of for this is to accumulate more power by becoming one of the worthy few-- speedrun killing untold numbers of people to return everyone to Unsundered status and then fight the Ascians themselves!

Look at Zenos, too: Here is the Ascian and Garlean might-makes-right ideology crystallized into one person. Strength is all that matters, so he becomes strong. Getting what you want, without regard for the cost to other people, is what's done, so he gets really good at that. Grasping for more strength, using it to crush others in the hopes that one of them might eventually inspire an uprising against him is literally the whole thing he's doing in Ala Mhigo. Zenos is power as conceived by the Garleans and Ascians, not held in thrall to conscience or pity or kindness, used only to get what you want and forget the consequences. He is everything about the way those powers operate and think distilled into its purest form.

If power is the only thing that matters, running into someone more powerful than you is a calamity. Varis gets in the way of what Zenos wants, so he cuts him down. Garlemald is a smoking ruin, because why would Zenos care about that? They're weak and not worthy of his attention. Elidibus' plans and schemes revolve around the Empire and Zenos' body, but the instant they become inconvenient to Zenos, he throws them into chaos and sends Elidibus running for the hills. They have made the perfect monster in their image, and it turns out that when you take that ball and run with it, it makes a monster that terrifies even them!

The only thing that brings Zenos any joy is the WoL. The one person with enough strength to face off with him, an actual equal, someone he can finally think of as real, in the same way that Emet-Selch was hoping he could feel about the WoL. And the only response he has to it is the thing he's been taught, the ideology he's been surrounded with since he was born. He accumulates power and makes plans to accumulate more power, including planning on cracking Zodiark open like an egg and sucking out all the gooey crystal juice. If the world burning is a necessary piece of that, hey, fine: he can make that happen, and what are you going to do about it? Because if you're not strong enough to keep up, you don't get a seat at the table.

Zenos is everything you've come up against in the story coming back, echoing, repeating itself for emphasis. It's like poetry, it rhymes. He's the thesis statement, the central thing the story has been circling around, discussing, thinking about, but magnified and centralized. Confronting the question of Zenos is a wonderful way to put a bow on the story of the Empire, the Ascians, and the Unsundered all in one go.

It's tied in closely to another question for the reader to consider: hey, the WoL is strong too, right? What's the difference? Is it that they're tempered by conscience? That they have friendship and companionship? Their strength is used for service: to defend, rather than to seize and destroy; is that it? Is it just circumstance, would there be no difference if things shook out differently? Maybe it's just because power-hungry monsters drop better loot than dirt-farming peasantry on average!

In the end, the writers' answers and the readers' answers will probably diverge based on your experiences and your viewpoints. But I can't imagine Zenos, and the contrast between him and the WoL, not being an important part of shading both that question and answer. That is an opportunity that is unique to the character he is, in the position he's in, from the history he has, that I feel like can't be effectively replicated by just bringing in some new guy.

[Lauront]

Just a few notes in response:

I think it's normal for Zenos's popularity to have gone down since SB. Most of what we saw from him since have been one-liners (with the "My friend... my enemy" line getting old real quick), and then him sitting on his throne for half of the cutscenes. The sheer fact that the devs added Zenos as a character in Dissidia 2 years after Stormblood speaks to his continued popularity I think.

That's part of the issue and why people are getting bored of him. Many of us we're also satisfied with the conclusion he got in SB. With Fandaniel now taking on the plot point of "further mysteries", it seems even less likely to me they'll carry any over to him and again, even if they did, if it entails writing an ancient persona for him to add "depth" it's essentially a new character. My hope is that they know when to stop with him and stick to their guns on their approach for him.

I think Zenos is our only match. Yes, we bested him in SB, but he bested us twice before that. We keep one-upping each other as we evolve. The Zenos of today is more powerful than the Zenos we defeated in SB. In contrast, we defeated most of the other threats on the first try IIRC (I think the exception is Ranjit? I can't quite remember. The Elidibus as Zenos fight doesn't count because we got Called by catboi).

He did but that's before the WoL surpassed him. He had the Resonance implanted by that point so the logic behind that isn't exactly the most solid, but bearing in mind it's a knock-off Echo over which he already had a degree of mastery, he nonetheless lost - of course the WoL is partly aided by Hydaelyn's blessing, so there's that. I don't really count Ran'jit as it's not clear to me that he was more potent than the MC at all, beyond the MC being yeeted out. The answer SE gave on him also didn't do much to really address the issue. My issue with this line of reasoning is that it's based on what point the antagonist engages the MC. Had Emet engaged the MC before he had all that stored up light, before the other champions could join them and before the soul rejoining, they could've gone with similar forced losses. There would be little point from a narrative perspective, but the point I'm making is it's largely a matter of choice and has little bearing on how potent the adversary truly is. Zenos simply came after you at earlier points but chose to bide his time. I'll grant that he is potent with his false echo, otherwise he'd play little part in advancing the Zodiark plotline, but to me some of it stems from smokes and mirrors resulting from that confrontation with Elidibus and what we now know is a false equivalence between Elidibus and Emet-Selch. But they can shape this sort of thing as their writing requires it, so we'll see where they take it.

I'm clinging to the hope that the devs will explore him further and make all of these things (Emet, the memories/visions, etc) a compelling part of his character. After all, the Ascians were extremely boring for most of FFXIV, up until ShB.

I hear that often but it's not my sentiment and it basically is something I see come up from people who didn't pay particularly close attention to what Elidibus and Lahabrea were saying, or just wrote it off as "lies" etc., but to me they were indications that they had a deeper backstory. With that said, the Ascians were there for a significant part to enable other antagonists whilst they took their own scheme to fruition. But there was always the understanding that there was more to them provided one didn't just dismiss it as lies.

Yes, it's from there. Here's the section:

"One might think it a blessing to be born into the ruling family of a vast and powerful empire, but for the young Prince Zenos-great grandson of Solus zos Galvus, revered founding father of the Garlean Empire-it was a curse.
From the beginning, Zenos was alone. His lady mother succumbed to illness shortly after bringing him into the world, and his lord father was seldom present, occupied as he was with his military campaigns and political maneuvering. And while the prince was surrounded by countless servants, they were as machina to him, trundling about on invisible rails, bereft of independent thought. Nor did he hold the learned men and women who served as his tutors in much higher regard. His brilliant mind found their lessons-their very existence-monotonous, and he preferred the silent company of books.

With such an upbringing, he could not choose but be different from other children. Indeed, it could be said that he was never a child at all. Innocence and playfulness were quite alien to him, the former expunged by his earliest schooling and the latter afforded no outlet. His days were uniformly joyless, and he went about his scheduled tasks with apathy. Thus did he pass his first four and then summers-in a steel-grey blue of tedium."

That makes me question whether his father's presence would've even made a difference. If he came to a similar view of his father (and his words to him as he died suggest he would have) and his mother, who's to say he wouldn't just add them to the list of adults who bored him? Or that other children wouldn't simply bore him as time went on? The issue here seems to be rooted in the fact that he simply can't relate to others. In a way, it's similar to the angst Emet-Selch experienced while he was surrounded by the sundered life forms, with whom he couldn't relate (and that is largely because of objective differences with them), strengthening his yearning for the return of his people. Whereas with Zenos, without ever having been capable of forming such a connection, it just results in a sense of emptiness and boredom. I suspect that's why they think they're in a better position to not write him a tragic backstory. Because that potential was never there. He only experiences fleeting moments of joy through his clash with the MC. I get that motivationally, but as someone who's more interested in the world and its lore, it has limited appeal to me.