Endwalker's message (spoilers!)

[Iscah]

To an extent... but at the same time, people first fell in love with Hyth back when he was literally faceless in SHB lol

I'm one of those, but he just seemed nice. Emet was far harder to sympathise with because of all the awful things he has done – stirring up empires and wars, his first introduction being quite awful and manipulative to Varis... since then they've done a lot more looking at who he was before all that, though I could never quite reconcile that encouraged sympathy with him inflicting suffering on so many people. It's good to hear his younger untempered self be so horrified by the prospect of his later actions, though.

[Theodric]

I'm one of those, but he just seemed nice. Emet was far harder to sympathise with because of all the awful things he has done – stirring up empires and wars, his first introduction being quite awful and manipulative to Varis... since then they've done a lot more looking at who he was before all that, though I could never quite reconcile that encouraged sympathy with him inflicting suffering on so many people. It's good to hear his younger untempered self be so horrified by the prospect of his later actions, though.

To be fair, the only reason he engaged in all of that was due to Venat's actions...

Ultimately he worked to attempt to prevent his race and culture from being wiped out entirely, which is an admirable enough goal. The alternative would be to simply roll over and die. It's much the same for the Garleans, really - had they not done what they did, they would have been wiped out.

Ultimately, Venat is to blame for much of the story's conflicts. She is the one who forced the existence of such suffering, by her own admission. Emet was simply seeking the preservation of his people, which is an admirable act. It's unfortunate that such would come at the cost of other beings, though the only reason it came to that is due to - again - Venat.

Considering how much art and fanfic Emet gets for being a hot sad dude, this is debatable at best, hypocritical at worst. Its so easy to reduce characters popularity to something basic

There is absolute no way to prove people who like Venat do so for her looks more then her character then there is to prove the same for the Emet.

I don't think it's hypocritical. Especially when there's a big difference in regards to how the player character is forced to interact with sad female characters compared to sad male characters. There's also a lot of people over on the lore forum who defended Hydaelyn/Venat for years based on her 'soft voice' and being a 'benevolent mother'. Apologies if I hit a nerve, though - it most certainly wasn't my intention!