Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
Shinryu is just a primal based off of his original appearance, based off how he looks in O10 (O11 is Omega).
This isn't even remotely plausible, because Shinryu was summoned by Ilberd, who's never seen pre-journey Midgardsormr. There's a conversation to be had about why Shinryu looks like that exactly, but I think it primarily has to revolve around Ilberd.

We can't fully trace Ilberd's military history, save that he probably wasn't there to see either the Battles of Cartenau or Silvertear Skies (and I'm a little more certain he wasn't there for Cartenau). However, being around the Crystal Braves, he probably had a cursory memory of Midgardsormr's dessicated kinda-corpse. Given that history Shinryu makes sense as something of a 'dragon drawn from memory', by someone who never thought about dragons all that much; it doesn't really resemble any of FFXIV's dragons, but gets closest to Midgardsormr in the 'I mean I guess' way you'd expect from someone who only sort of looked at him on the way to work.

And of course this is all working backwards from the fact he's just based on FFV Shinryu, who just doesn't look much like how FFXIV does dragons. But that's a less interesting conversation.