Quote Originally Posted by Theozilla View Post
Wouldn’t it just be simpler to just accept that Alexander and Endwalker causal loop time travel while G’raha Tia in ShadowBringers does multiverse-theory (a la Future Trunks in DBZ) time travel. And therefore just assume that Exarch!G’raha’s timeline had a slightly different history even before the 8th Umbral Calamity?
That is basically what I "accept" already, though? G'raha's actions bring about a multiverse-style splitting of timelines despite all other examples so far resulting in causal loops in a single timeline. (Though I am not familiar enough with DBZ to know how that timeline originated exactly.)

The key thing is, there was only one timeline until the events of Shadowbringers caused it to diverge into one path that leads to the Eighth Calamity and a second path that does not. The second path could not have formed if G'raha did not come back from the future of the first path, but now they are simply equal paths for history to take.

I feel like it's something that is actually quite simple but in a way that is hard to explain, especially if people have a fundamentally different concept of how time works.