as part of something, i was thinking on ilberd recently. he's definitely not my favorite villain in the game but there is an emotional rawness to him thats quite interesting and arguably underexplored. but the matter of whether or not he was "right" or if he "won" came up, and mullin it a bit i think i land on:
the eorzean alliance suffered a moral failure in not acting on ala mhigos liberation until forced to own a terrorist attack and finangle something from there. strategically eorzea made the right call in the end, as very cold comfort that would be ilberd and the rest of ala mhigo. the simple reality of the matter is that no one in eorzea had the force disposition necessary to do anything about the ala mhigan situation but play defensively. during its initial fall the eorzean alliance didn't even exist, you think gridania on its own could counter invade and push back the garlean forces entirely on its own? they couldn't even stop baelsars wall being built on their own. even when the alliance did invade, the campaign had to play exceedingly defensively during the initial invasion. so as coldhearted as it is, the monetarists do have a fairly sound reason for shooting down any attempt at starting the liberation of ala mhigo until everyones hands were quite literally forced.
now as to whether ilberd won. i'd say he won inspite of himself. dude was definitely clever mind, but thematically its probably quite important to consider how the le epic primal summoned from the wrath and rage of dead ala mhigans towards the empire, was immediately hijacked by the empire and its chief asshole nepo baby zenos as a weapon to use against literally bloody everyone. hell, zenos completely dominates shinryu by the time of endwalker, by all accounts ilberds special weapon was a complete failure at what he wanted it to do. though it did end up saving the universe.
like i'd say a big theme in stormblood is in anger and using it constructively. lyse has a lot of unresolved anger towards a whole heap of things, and an important part of her story is in learning how to use and direct that anger productively. and she succeeds in that task, eventually becoming the leader/face of the rebellion with a clear vision in mind for ala mhigos future.
and thats contrasted by the opponents lyse has to engage with and the directionless destructive anger that envelopes them. fordola has a bone to pick with the world in general, yotsuyu turned her entire governance of doma into a revenge shit list. about the only one without the anger defining them is zenos, and thats mostly because zenos is the antithesis of directionless destructive anger: directionless destructive apathy.
and ilberd is the one who sets that tone to the story, with his own brand of directionless destructive anger.
I think sometimes it's easy to miss the fact that Stormblood pivots the entire story of FFXIV in a new direction.
Rambling under the cut.
