Who on the 13th?

[Rongway]

The characters we play aren't the "canon" Warrior of Light. I mean, they are in the narrative sense, but cosmetically they're just a sort of stand-in.

There is no reason to believe that. The NPCs have opportunities to remark on how much Ardbert physically looks like the player character, and they never do because it would be ridiculous for someone to do so if the player character is anything but a midlander male. It is more reasonable to conclude that Ardbert's appearance as a shard of the WoX has nothing to do with the WoX's appearance, and any characters whose shards resemble them do so by coincidence or narrative convenience, not as a general rule of shard characters.