#just... man

One of the things I absolutely adore about Endwalker, a list that is growing longer and longer, is how beautifully it humanises the Ancient Amaurotines and makes them feel so much closer than what we have seen of them so far before Elidibus sends the WoL back in time to Elpis.

Before now, FFXIV has been VERY deliberate with how it portrays the Ancients; in Shadowbringers, all we saw of their world, the world that existed before Hydaelyn sundered it into the Source and its reflections, was what Emet-Selch described to us and recreated from his memories of Amaurot. Amaurot was unlike anything we had seen before- the city itself was built with VERY art deco-inspired architecture that much more closely resembles a turn-of-the-century American city that was also built using similar architectural styles than any other of the cities we had seen before.

And then of course you have the Amaurotines themselves, or rather, their ghosts, their shades. They're literal giants compared to us when we arrive in Amaurot for the first time, and they mistake us for children when we speak to them. They're all dressed in identical robes and cowls, and they have no discernible facial features at all except for their masks, and they speak in a language that's so alien to us it sounds more like a metallic ringing than anything spoken. Even when we meet the conjured shade of Hythlodaeus, who seems to be the only one who is aware of the fact that he is just an aetherial hologram conjured from Emet-Selch's memory, he's still very much an alien spectre to us, despite his casual nature.

The Ancients seem so alien to us, and in a sense they ARE, because they hail from a world completely different to ours, a world that existed before the world we know today. We got some valuable insights into their tragedy, of both their wisdom and their folly, but this was only history as Emet-Selch remembered it, and this it was conjured from one person's perspective. And then when we get to Anamnesis Anyder, we are introduced to Venat, the woman who would later on become Hydaelyn, and of course we get the Azem reveal, something which admittedly altered my brain chemistry (and consequently made me ship Emet-Selch and Azem, despite being a DEVOUT HaurcheWoL shipper. Canon isn't real if I shut my eyes and put my fingers in my ears).

Fast forward to Endwalker, and you get to meet Emet-Selch before he became the Emet-Selch we know and love, as well as our new old friend Hythlodaeus, as well as Hermes, the man who, remarkably, would later on go on to become Fandaniel, and of course my girl Venat (Venat haters DNI), who we find out was the previous holder of the seat of Azem. And when we meet them in the flesh, we get to see these characters' personalities shine through without any trauma or tragedy, and their dynamic and the way they interact with each other is so beautifully HUMAN that you almost forget these are unsundered ancients who would later on go on to be so influential in the game's story, because they feel so much like ordinary people, they feel HUMAN; there's Hythlodaeus' laidback playfulness and casual mannerisms and the way he laughs at Emet-Selch being totally done with his antics, and there's Emet-Selch being perpetually grumpy and hanging by his last nerve, showing that even before he was swamped by soul-crushing grief he was a grumpy pants and I love him for it.

Probably one of my favourite examples of Emet-Selch's innate humanity in this setting is when the Warrior of Light speaks with the ancients about the Final Days, when he is just wracked with disbelief at hearing of the madman he would later become, and while he condones the drastic measures taken and (to my memory at least) considers such great sacrifice to preserve the future of the star as noble (somebody correct me if I'm wrong here), he's left in utter disbelief as to how he would not only lose his world, his loved ones and everything he cares about, but would then go on to recreate the city of Amaurot and populate it with shades of its people, which he deemed an insult, and subsequently stormed off.

But the way he just looked so BROKEN throughout hat whole scene broke my heart, like he looked like he was crumpling under the weight of grief he had yet to feel, aghast as to how he could ever conceive of both losing everything he cared about AND going to the lengths he did in the grief that eventually drove him mad. And just storming off and leaving the room in a fit of anger was, again, something so painfully human, as was Hythlodaeus trying to reason with him.

And then we've got Hermes, who is probably one of the most interesting examples; Hermes and the Fandaniel we would encounter later (or earlier, technically both since time travel is involved) are so WILDLY different that its hard to believe they're technically one and the same, but given how sundering works and how Fandaniel is technically a sundered Ascian in a similar vein to Azem (and, if you read into things way too much like I do, a thematic foil to Azem), they could still be considered different enough to be two separate people, but that will need a separate thing to go into.

While Fandaniel, the obnoxious, annoying little squirt who decided to possess the sorry corpse of the most punchable person on Etheirys (Asahi ky beloathed), wants to die and take everyone else with him, to the point where he tricks the Warrior of Light into killing Zodiark by orchestrating the rise of the Telophoroi (who in the grand scheme of things were little more than a smokescreen to trick the WoL and the Scions) and playing us like a fiddle, Hermes in the World Unsundered could not be any different; Hermes is a remarkably gentle soul who deeply cares about the creations in his care in Elpis to the point where he would rather teach a creature deemed "defective" to fly rather than just kill it outright because of its perceived weakeness.

However, Hermes's caring nature, not only towards life he deemed precious but to Meteion as well, in fact ESPECIALLY Meteion (look me dead in the eye and tell me Hermes didn't think of Meteion as a daughter), that in the end proved to be his downfall; part of his search for meaning in the distant stretches of the cosmos beyond Etheirys was driven by his despondence and depression at not only the indifference shown by his peers towards creations he deemed worthy of a chance at life but also his own anguish going unheard by everyone else around him (everyone except Meteion and eventually the WoL) that further deepened his depression and loneliness and made him feel as though he himself was defective, an aberration. And while I'm no expert or therapist when it comes to mental health, the feeling of aloneness and being ignored at best or outright demonised at worse for experiencing things like depression is an all to common experience for people suffering from depression or other such mental illnesses, and all too often the sufferers themselves end up just breaking down entirely.

From what I know and have seen and studied, cases like Hermes are horrifyingly common, and its heartbreaking to know, and both beautiful and bittersweet to see it in the ancients.

And last but not least, there's Venat. Until Endwalker, we only know Venat as the Amaurotine who sacrificed herself to become Hydaelyn's heart, much like how Elidibus became Zodiark's heart, from what was established in the post-Shadowbringers patches up, namely in everything surrounding Anamnesis Anyder. She, like the other Amaurotines, doesn't seem to have much of a personality and is only seen as a largely shapeless ghost in a hologram. But then, when we travel back in time to Elpis courtesy of Elidibus's spirit inside the computer systems in the Crystal Tower in the First, we meet Venat in the flesh, before she became Hydaelyn; she's a bright, sunny woman who happily joins Hythlodaeus in gnawing on Emet-Selch's last nerve, and we then get the bombshell that she's a former Azem. She loves exploring and helping people, and she has a shiny doggo named Argos. She challenges us to a fight so said doggo will let us ride on his back.

But above all, Venat is a kind, thoughtful soul who sees the world through a lens of almost childlike wonder, something that comes to the forefront when she speaks with the WoL in person. She loves big, and loves deeply, and loves the world and the people in it, but the WAY she loves isn't in any way distant, but its intimate; she loves the world and its people in the same way that we do. She cares for all those whom she meets with the same human love we have for our friends and loved ones. And she too, like Emet-Selch, was heartbreakingly grieved by how the world she adored would be struck by the Final Days.

When she becomes Hydaelyn and sunders the world into the Source and its reflections, she is so overcome with guilt and grief the pain and tragedy the necessary evil of her decision caused her people, her friends, her CHILDREN, that she was literally rotting away as the pain in her heart consumed her (that whole cutscene in Thou Must Live, Die and Know might have been a visual metaphor but hey).