Quote Originally Posted by EaraGrace View Post
Would it not be possible
that Emet and the rest of the unsundered mistakenly believed their ascended sundered brethren were more permanently tempered than they were? Both Fandaniel and Gaia appear in the 5.x patches, both represent sundered Ascians with, to put it lightly, disagreements with the unsundered, and both have rebelled against unsundered/Zodiark. While obvious differences abound, Gaia’s memories seem to pull her dangerously close to siding against Ryne and WoL, while Fandaniel with seemingly all his memories is still going full throttle, the principle, however, seems similar to me.

The sundered Ascians have a complex interplay between the desires of their sundered selves and the desires of the former ancient who originally held their soul, an interplay that can bring conflict or just in general lead to unexpected developments. Perhaps either the original Fandaniel experienced something that would justify this course of action, or perhaps the sundered soul is not swayed by the tempering in the way he might have been initially. Or they raised a random and made a huge mistake. That is also a distinct possibility!
To a degree, yes; there's some wiggle room to build the shadow of doubt. I can see a lot of ways to make it work, my trouble is that I don't see the writers actually building anything in those spaces which do make it work. (At least, not ones that are visible yet.)

Even in the Mitron / Gaia example, Mitron's first lines in that very story arc were "I am Mitron, servant of Zodiark." and as soon as Gaia remembers who she was she starts seething Darkness, gets a face-glyph, and has an (unused) recorded battle line in which she shrieks, "In Lord Zodiark's name!" so we know where some developer heads are at, lol.