/r/ffxivdiscussion: What's Next? Theories and Speculation (DT Edition)

[Willemdarke]

The reason it felt dissatisfying to me was because she basically stopped being her own character once the Word of the Mother stuff happened.

I agree that was a weird choice.
It painted Hydaelyn as some sort of an unfeeling cosmic power that used our characters as chest pieces. Now that we've met her it seems even weirder, as in EW she was presented as deeply sympathetic, benevolent and self-sacrificing.

I don't mind what happened or how that story went, just how it was presented and the dialogue used. Yeah I think Minfilia should have remained herself and had the autonomy to sacrifice herself.

[Jeeqbit]

It painted Hydaelyn as some sort of an unfeeling cosmic power that used our characters as chest pieces.

Firstly, aside from having the aetherial strength of an Ascian, she was not actually as strong as, say, Zodiark without having sundered them. And perhaps the spell she had used to sunder everything taxed her when it was undone somehow (this is implied a lot throughout the MSQ, but not entirely clear why it's then fine for her to die). Either way, she was not quite as strong as she presented herself.

She could have used the aether from that mothercrystal, but her "deeply sympathetic, self-sacrificing" behaviour led her to leave that aether alone for the future.

In any case, she was weak enough from defending the WoL from Ultima that she needed more aether and Minfilia provided it. In order to release Minfilia, Urianger thought of a way to provide Hydaelyn with a boon of aether of the variety she needs - a complete set of elemental crystals like the ones we collect to form the blessing of light, or that we see in the trial and in the depiction of the elementally sundered shards.

Minfilia should have remained herself and had the autonomy to sacrifice herself.

She did. Hydaelyn needed help and Minfilia sacrificed herself immediately in ARR, since she knew Hydaelyn helped the WoL a lot.

After she was released by Hydaelyn, she was given a choice by Urianger to go to The First. But every single person there knew she would choose to go to The First willingly. So Urianger was a bit treacherous in forcing this choice on her, but it was completely within Minfilia's character to be self-sacrificing for the greater good anyway.

Since going to another shard the way she did requires shedding flesh, that made her like an Ascian but she could have continued living. She decided to sacrifice herself instead for real this time to help Ryne.

So she had this autonomy 3 times and sort of lived through it the first 2.