An 7.2-7.5 Speculation

[Gember]

Hi everyone, with 7.2 coming up within a few weeks; I have been wondering about something with the Kingdom of Alexandria, and well.. Alexander, the primal. (The raid series from Heavensward.)

I have noticed they have been trying to weave in the lore from the raid series into the expansions. So far Alexander, and Eden? (Please correct me if I am mistaken.) have not been correlated with the MSQ yet.

With Heritage Found going through a 30 year time skip, (Alexander manipulates time.) and dealing with the Kingdom of Alexandria, which the whole kingdom was the primal in FF9. (Eidolon in FF9's terminology.) Do you think we will have a lore correlated with the lv60 raid series? Or is this just all electrope, and Alexander will have no references to this at all?

I feel it could fit into the MSQ, but I also think it could not work, so I wanted to know what you all think about the return of Alexander? Even if its just a slight mention of it?

I would love to hear your thoughts about this.

[Cleretic]

With Heritage Found going through a 30 year time skip, (Alexander manipulates time.) and dealing with the Kingdom of Alexandria, which the whole kingdom was the primal in FF9. (Eidolon in FF9's terminology.) Do you think we will have a lore correlated with the lv60 raid series? Or is this just all electrope, and Alexander will have no references to this at all?

No, I genuinely think it's all unrelated. This sounds weird coming from a massive lore nerd that usually loves everything linking up, but they seem to be deliberately avoiding that particular link as much as possible.

Not only is there no real crossover point between the two stories anyway outside of both being conceptually rooted in 'Alexander the recurring Final Fantasy primal', but the game itself had ample opportunity to have someone bring up the connection to hint it back onto the table, since Y'shtola was actually involved in that storyline. It's a rather easy Chekhov's Gun to put back on the set to remind us, so the fact they didn't feels like a deliberate attempt to avoid us drawing that line. I suspect it's actually also why the game's so deliberately refused to give us an easy look at Alexandria Castle, either by deliberately directing attention away from it in the Alexandria dungeon, or only showing it in essentially caricature in Yesterland; it's such a natural and obvious money shot that I feel like they have to be deliberately avoiding it, to let the story of Alexandria build itself up without distracting us with 'hey, that's just Alexander'.

And that's all putting aside that 'Alexander the recurring Final Fantasy primal' is itself a complete nightmare, because every game that bigs it up uses it differently, to the point where it'd be genuinely hard to reference both at once. In FFIX, Alexander was essentially the protector deity for the city of Alexandria, which is a completely different implementation than it has in FFXIV, where it's a giant walking time machine; they're different to the point where I think it would be more confusing instead of less to try to evoke and reference both simultaneously. You start letting in other games, we have an even bigger nightmare: neither of them have anything in common with FFXI's implementation which went for 'ancient mecha', or Type-0's, where it's essentially the in-universe equivalent of the atomic bomb. (All of that's why I'm genuinely extremely interested in seeing how the FF MtG set handles Alexander, but that's beside the point!)

[mallleable]

Thematically, I think we're more likely to see more Eden, and Pandaemonium references in Dawntrail as their stories deal with memory, and souls respectively. While the Alexander story does have a primal called Alexander, and does deal with time travel, it handles its time travel in a somewhat scientific way, and is more interested in time travel as a tool, and things like paradoxes. While Dawntrail is more interested in using time to explore themes like nostalgia, grief, and legacy. So I don't think FFXIV's Alexander has any ties to FFXIV's Alexandria despite the FFIX stuff.

[Anonymoose]

As of today, I suspect the 30-year time-skip was solely the "oscillating difference in relative time passage between shards" invoked in 5.0 to give the history of the First some time to develop an interesting status quo before we got there trying to squeeze an entire expansion of content out of it. Re-invoking that lore allowed Zoraal Ja to reappear immediately after the rite of succession with 30 years of prep already done, allowing the story to continue at a brisk pace.

As for the rest, I'm on a sort of "wait and see" pause. The Alexander we know was a hulk of a Sharlayan defense mechanism with a primal summoned into its core for no real reason beyond that it seemed the the easiest and most effective way for Quickthinx Allthoughts to realize his ideals inspired by the Enigma Codex, authored by an Auri technologist 100 years before. There's not a whole lot there for Alexandria to hang their hat on, but, hey, Mide and Dayan are their own people's ancestors. When, from Alexander's perspective, all time is happening at once, the linear series of moments we experience is an illusion, and "when" you are is relative, there's always room for retcons. If someone on the writing team wants an Alexander connection badly enough, it might happen...

[Gember]

And that's all putting aside that 'Alexander the recurring Final Fantasy primal' is itself a complete nightmare, because every game that bigs it up uses it differently, to the point where it'd be genuinely hard to reference both at once.

I do agree with you that Alexander in the FF series is such a mix bag when it comes to its place in the stories. Since Alexander had such a huge role in FF9, I just felt maybe it would make a reference, but you would be right that there was zero hints to build up to its return. I think about Everkeep, because its an electrope version of the Iifa tree from FF9. I just imagine a electrope designed Alexander, and maybe its because the Twinning had an ironworks version of it too, and its a machine to boot (xD); so my brain just thinks it could correlate in some way but its hard to put it into the story. (Also, no old characters like Cid have came into the Dawntrail story as of yet. I miss that guy.)

[Gember]

As of today, I suspect the 30-year time-skip was solely the "oscillating difference in relative time passage between shards" invoked in 5.0 to give the history of the First some time to develop an interesting status quo before we got there trying to squeeze an entire expansion of content out of it. Re-invoking that lore allowed Zoraal Ja to reappear immediately after the rite of succession with 30 years of prep already done, allowing the story to continue at a brisk pace.

As for the rest, I'm on a sort of "wait and see" pause. The Alexander we know was a hulk of a Sharlayan defense mechanism with a primal summoned into its core for no real reason beyond that it seemed the the easiest and most effective way for Quickthinx Allthoughts to realize his ideals inspired by the Enigma Codex, authored by an Auri technologist 100 years before. There's not a whole lot there for Alexandria to hang their hat on, but, hey, Mide and Dayan are their own people's ancestors. When, from Alexander's perspective, all time is happening at once, the linear series of moments we experience is an illusion, and "when" you are is relative, there's always room for retcons. If someone on the writing team wants an Alexander connection badly enough, it might happen...

I actually forgot about the First's weird time differences, and that makes a whole lot more sense. The whole time thing would have be carefully planned because that... THAT type of storytelling can go absolutely wild. I mean we have went to the past already, so I am with you on "Lets wait and see.". I am quite hesitant to think Alexander will make a return because its so... far fetched with its original lore, but if the devs do something; I'd be interested to see where that goes.

[Cleretic]

I do want to say that I think it's actually a little lucky that this particular figure is the one they had to double-dip on, just because of the name. Two entirely separate Ifrits would have been very suspicious, just like two separate Shivas or two separate Bahamuts. Meanwhile, Alexander is a fairly normal name even to modern people in 2025; it feels completely understandable that the name just happened to crop up twice.

...but in thinking about it, it might be exceptional that of all the names to crop up twice, it's the famously Greek one. Two civilizations in the game have a tendency to tap into Greek, but Sharlayan basically only uses it for place names and descriptors; Greek names for people and figures, that's squarely an Amaurotian thing... who happen to be damn near the only civilization that could've conceivably left fingerprints across shards.

I hate the notion that we might have more Ancient Time ahead of us, and I really hope we don't. But I'd think that, if the writers were ever inclined to write up a link between the primal and the city, it'd trace back to that.

[MikkoAkure]

...but in thinking about it, it might be exceptional that of all the names to crop up twice, it's the famously Greek one. Two civilizations in the game have a tendency to tap into Greek, but Sharlayan basically only uses it for place names and descriptors; Greek names for people and figures, that's squarely an Amaurotian thing... who happen to be damn near the only civilization that could've conceivably left fingerprints across shards.

I hate the notion that we might have more Ancient Time ahead of us, and I really hope we don't. But I'd think that, if the writers were ever inclined to write up a link between the primal and the city, it'd trace back to that.

I’m under the impression that on the surface Sharlayan and Amaurot using Greek is just because of the thousands of years of western culture associating the Greek language with knowledge. If you wanted to justify it in-universe, you could say the Sharlayans picked it up after studying the Ancients.

Alexandria’s use of the actual Ancient script is a bit more mysterious but until we see any proof of a direct connection, I’m convinced the devs just picked it due to being a third pre-made script and not having to make a fourth one just for Solution Nine. Its use seems uneven too since Honey B. Lovely to me looks to be using cursive Eorzean script especially with the shape of her ‘y’ and she could be Tonawawta rather than Hyune.

As for future Ancients showing up, there was still that comment before from Yoshi-P asking us to remember the Convocation seats unless that was a red herring. And I won’t be convinced Altima has nothing to do with the Arcadion questline until the last quests wrapping it up after M12.

[Vallavia]

I’m under the impression that on the surface Sharlayan and Amaurot using Greek is just because of the thousands of years of western culture associating the Greek language with knowledge. If you wanted to justify it in-universe, you could say the Sharlayans picked it up after studying the Ancients.

Not to veer entirely off topic, but I still believe that the original Archons who founded Sharlayan were either a) the actual Twelve in human form or b) acting on direct behalf of the Twelve, either of which put them on the trail of eventually making contact with Hydaelyn and thus solidifying the Ancient association (there's also the very conspicuous shots of the assembled Forum in their identical robes and obscured faces being direct parallels of assembled Ancients, but that could just as easily be entirely within the context of Endwalker's story).

This might get some more attention soon in the Occult Crescent with the accidentally leaked BGM making a tenuous link to the War of the Magi.

That said, though, I think I broadly agree with the 'on its face' interpretation you presented, the classical Greek association seems far more likely to be because it's suitably ancient and culturally ubiquitous. The Ancients/Ascians also fulfill a Titan-esque narrative role to the people of today; Hades even has a spell called 'Titanomachy'.

[Grimr]

I don't know about speculation though i did spot some familiar landmarks in the trailer for 7.2 of the occult cresant assuming they weren't the originals. The pyramid from weeping city of mhach and what looks like moss covered towers from the floating city of nym. Don't know why they are there much less in the same place.

As for 7.2 and beyond if i were to speculate to be quite honest we could have by now gone to the "unlost world" supposed ninth shard use a bunch of electrope and create a massive amount water aether i believe to counter act the massive lightning aether on the ninth and send everyone home.

I also wish they would stop beating around the bush with these shades of the thirteenth. From the ninth floor of pandemonium's boss, to Zorral ja becoming a voidsent with all those souls, to now with arcadian, and solution nine's soul use. it is just everywhere. Stop teasing us.