#the fatui

❥ scenario: their s/o decides to take up residence on their lap --- during a meeting. ❥ no triggers ❥ i don't have any beta readers - you get what you get. ❥ requested.

I know Kaeya is obviously one of the most lore important characters, we know that for sure now but before a lot of his stuff was confirmed it was speculation, similar to Diluc's position in theories right now, yet I notice the way evidence is treated is very different from Kaeya to Diluc. People will outright deny evidence that Diluc could be connected to the Hexenzirkel, or that his father may be connected to the Fatui. I've also seen Diluc theories treated as if they're a threat to Kaeya being special before.

What if after the final confrontation, Dottore didn’t actually lose, he shifted the traveler into an alternate reality to keep us out of the real endgame?

Because once you start looking at the post-quest world through that lens a lot of things feel suspiciously curated.

Right at the start, he isolates us in a controlled environment tailored to our psychology. He builds a world meant to appeal to our sense of justice and order and tries to convince us to stay there.

Canon says these are experimental realms / constructs, not full timelines. Sure. But the question becomes: If he can make a small fake reality, why couldn’t he scale it up?

What if “beating” him just transitions us into a more stable version of the same trick? One that’s based on what he knows about us and those around us.This is supported by Wanderer’s ending in the quest. 

Dottore doesn’t recognize Wanderer for who he actually is. Which means his understanding of Wanderer is already incomplete and flawed.

Because Dottore is not omnipresent or at least, he doesn’t admit to being that way, he likely doesn’t know Wanderer’s core was removed to run Sandrone’s extrapolations. Which means at the end, when Wanderer is leaving for Sumeru, the core being returned never gets addressed in dialogue. The same thing goes for the curse Dottore places on everyone after we raid his lab. Since he was busy with us, he wouldn’t have known Sandrone found it. 

If we’re in a Dottore-built reality, both the curse and Wanderer being “stable” without explanation makes sense. Because from Dottore’s perspective, nothing was wrong in the first place. He was too distracted with other things, like possibly altering Teyvat’s history, to notice.

Another thing that sticks out is how we’re told certain conversations happened, but we never see them. In the past, Hoyo has been consistent in showing us the traveler’s important character interactions.

One explanation is we don’t see it due to pacing. That’s totally possible. Another explanation is that we’re being given reconstructed memories to smooth over narrative seams.

It creates this lingering feeling that something happened in the gaps, and we’re only seeing the edited version. Much like we did when Dottore had us in the initial alternate space. He only let us see what he wanted and not the truth. We see this in how everything wraps up in one of the alternate endings. Nod-Krai moves toward unity in a way that feels extremely convenient. People who were deeply divided start aligning faster than you’d expect. Is that character growth? Yes, absolutely. But through the theory lens, it looks like we’re living inside the exact type of world Dottore tried to design for us.

It’s funny how Columbina’s “one chance” dialogue echoes Dottore’s earlier rhetoric almost beat for beat. It could be a coincidence, but it’s enough to feel like the world is speaking in his narrative voice.

When we meet with her on the moon, Columbina gives us info on our sibling, she shows us our lost ship, and she unlocks more of our powers. Aka the exact information Dottore promised us earlier. Again, this is a totally normal quest resolution, if that was the true resolution. We know the ending on the Moon is one of two. Who is to say which one is real? Who can say either is real?

Another part of the story that’s been bothering me is the whole “rogue harbinger” thing. What if that’s theater, or at least not as out-of-control as it looks?

Because here’s the part that keeps nagging at me: the Dottore we actually meet is probably a segment, and not necessarily acting independently the whole time. We already know the real Dottore can control his segments remotely, which means there’s almost certainly some kind of oversight or fail safe built into the system. Additionally, the Jester would know that on some level, Dottore is a liability. It’s hard to believe the Fauti would just let him run wild with zero contingency. 

Then there’s the physical side of things. The amount of energy being channeled through Dottore’s body during the quest is absurd. The kind of power that should realistically kill or destabilize a normal human. So that raises two possibilities: The “real” Dottore isn’t human anymore (or hasn’t been for a long time) or he engineered a specific segment designed to withstand god-level power, essentially a disposable vessel meant for ascension attempts. 

We see proof of this in Sumeru, where Dottore tries to engineer a false god using Scaramouche. He collected the data from that experiment, made improvements based on that data, and applied it to what we see in Nod Krai.

This becomes extra interesting when you remember that Wanderer is the basis for Dottore’s segment research in the first place. Dottore improved on Scaramouche’s flaws, creating a vessel fit for god-hood.

So if the segment we fight is being piloted or guided at key moments, and a fail safe exists somewhere in the system, and the Fatui never trigger it… Then the question becomes, if he truly betrayed them, why not just shut him down?

Instead the Tsaritsa gives specific orders to Sandrone and Arlecchino to exercise lethal force if need be to stop Dottore. This causes the whole thing to turn into a very public, very chaotic confrontation. Which feels less like damage control and more like a staged conflict. Very similar to what happened in Liyue with Childe. That makes me wonder if the mess was the point.

Because from a strategy angle, it accomplishes a lot:

The traveler gets occupied or potentially sidelined, possibly permanently. Since we’re the protagonist, we are a threat to the Tsaritsa’s plan. From the onset, the Fauti have been hesitant to kill us. If anything, they’ve been using us through different tasks through the Adventurer’s Guild to reach their goals. If we didn’t serve a higher purpose to them, they would have offed us long ago. To keep us out of trouble until we’re needed, Dottore tucks us away in a world that he or the Fatui can control. An alternate theory could be that the Jester and the Abyss sibling are working together. The Jester wishes to kill the gods and burn away the old world, while the Abyss sibling is looking to restore Khaenri'ah. The two could have reached a deal where we’re kept safe until the plan is realized. This is accomplished by dropping us into an alternate timeline that echos the main one. Once the plan is realized the sibling or the Jester may let us out, or they may keep us there. For all we know, the plan could have been realized long ago and at the end of this cycle, we wake up in the “new world.”

Harbingers like Sandrone, Arlecchino, and Columbina could no longer be necessary to the main plan. Since they are not 100% loyal to the Fauti or the Tsaritsa, they are a liability. The Fauti can’t just get rid of them. If, however, they're lost in the fight to Dottore, so be it. Given the lack of the reaction to other character deaths *coughs CAPITANO coughs* No one will question the narrative. BTW, I’m not suggesting Dottore is 100% loyal. He’s not, but since he can wield the power of the Trilune, he is useful.

A “rogue harbinger” narrative gives everyone plausible deniability while the real plan keeps moving behind the scenes. It’s worth noting that prior to 6.3 Columbina was being rejected by the world. That means whatever she gave the Tsaritsa wasn’t complete. The false moon being replaced by the real moon restores Columbina’s power; Completing whatever she gave to the Tsaritsa. Since we don’t know what Dottore was up to in between the time we escape and when we confront him again. He could have been moving the plan forward as well. He doesn’t view us as a threat, and while we aren’t in his line of sight, he does have us trapped. While we’re distracted trying to stop him, he can do other things.

So maybe the Dottore we saw wasn’t a traitor, just a specialized segment playing the villain role, while the real architect stayed somewhere far away, pulling the strings. Kind of like Lygus from HSR.

6.3 leans hard into surreal environments, perception manipulation, and morally curated outcomes. Everything feels slightly too tidy after a quest that was otherwise chaotic and psychologically intense.

And if there’s one thing Dottore believes in, it’s this: Control what people perceive, and you control the reality they accept. 

So maybe we won, or maybe we just got moved somewhere we can’t interfere anymore. Maybe we’ve been there the whole time and we’ve just been in a loop. That could be why we have virtually no memories at the start. Dottore is our version of Lygus and he keeps running us through different cycles to see how many different outcomes he can achieve before he’s through. 

all three were an enigma in their own way. Capitano held this air of intimidation and strength from his appearance and title alone, Dottore encapsulated this controlled madness, and Columbina displayed this eerie juxtaposition of a small and gentle woman with angelic motifs yet holding a high seat in a notoriously antagonistic organisation.

for me, i was most excited to see Dottore and Columbina's dynamic, especially after their little exchange in Winter's Night Lazzo (also can i say that, if we take her current lore into consideration, Dottore was one of the few people she made the effort to open her eyes for. or she's just ragebaiting lol). with Capitano, you could tell from the jump he's the strongest combat wise, so when it came to Dottore and Columbina, they don't look like fighters, nor does it appear to be their skill of choice. where their power stemmed from, to get them to their rankings was so intriguing and was honestly scarier than knowing that they were actually capable of.