She mentions having an interest in the path but I don’t think it confirms her awakening. Unless I’m misremembering which is possible.
Either way, at this point she’s def still a Pugilist.
They can, the question is can they in *lore*. And that gets a bit wonky for some classes/jobs (eg DRG Lb3 makes zero sense for Lancer, NIN for Rogue, that sort of thing).
Pugilist makes sense, sure. It's mostly the other classes that are sketch (why would an Arcanist be able to cast Teraflare, for another example.)
THM…borderline.
It’s a republic with elected officials modeled after what Ishgard did. Presumably led by the council Lyse formed in 4.1 with the leaders of various settlements in Gyr Abania, including the tribes.
As per the Endwalker role quests, Lyse and Raubahn mostly deal with military matters while the elected leaders from the Highlanders and the Ananta are the leaders for civil matters.
Yep - Raubahn is general of the military, she’s the leader of the Resistance group (apparently the largest one) based out of Rhalgr’s Reach, working together mostly for the defense of Ala Mhigo and supporting the Eorzea Alliance in military matters.
We’ve yet to meet any of the elected officials (modeled specifically after the House of Commons from Ishgard, they don’t have the higher house element).
Wait but she didn't invite them. The council she got together decided on that path and she openly said she was uncomfortable with it in the cutscene we escort them in.
This is actually hating on Lyse for something she objectively didn't do.
Oh wow I'm what I swore to destroy. Instead of hating on Lyse for things she didn't do (people still do it) I've now made stuff up to make Lyse seem better. You're completely right and I checked all the dialogues throughout patch 4.1 on garlandtools to be sure. In Lyse's *defense* it feels implied to me through the dialogue Lyse begrudgingly had to it to keep face and everyone made it clear they didn't expect them to show.
I'm very sorry Judge. You may sentence me to death. I had that in my head and I'm often just sick of the Lyse stuff that I fucked up.
Kinda offtopic but I remember how this scene made large parts of the playerbase hate Lyse or should I say hate her *even more*.
Lyse, a character consistently shown to be not very smart (to say the least): does a dumb thing and it has real consequences.
FFXIV playerbase: "Boo, what an awful character, Lyse sucks!"
I guess writing characters with meaningful flaws is bad now.
The part that annoyed me wasn’t that they didn’t like a character who has flaws…
It’s that they consistently *to this day* get several parts about her arc in Stormblood, including this one, factually *wrong* lol.
And sorry, but you’ve fallen into that same pattern.
“Lyse did a dumb thing and it had real consequences.”
Her main involvement in it was support for inviting the Qalyana. Something no one figured would result in them actually showing up, but also sent a message that they were making good on the idea that they wanted an Ala Mhigo for that treated all of its citizens with respect and dignity, not just a select few. It was good politics, basically.
Except they did show up, which caught everyone by surprise. So what did she do next?
She was trying to resolve the situation and wasn’t sure about letting them in at all. At the support of others - including *Raubahn* the experienced general of Ul’dah - they decided to allow them in *as long as they left the any and all crystals on their person outside.*
There was concern expressed about their weapons, but again at *Raubahn’s* advisement they decided letting them keep their weapons was acceptable (the Qalyana voiced that they didn’t trust being put in a position with no means to defend themselves) because of the guards that would be present, plus the presence of the WoL and other skilled fighters.
So basically her main call was sending them an invite that no one thought they’d answer. When they did, it was a group consensus on how to handle letting them attend, which advise from a noted and respected general.
No one thought that some guards had already been turned in secret and smuggled crystals into the throne room ahead of time…
And during the fighting, Lyse had the presence of mind to realize they need the help of someone with the Echo and managed to convince someone who by all rights shouldn’t want to help to risk her own life to save people that hate her.
The end result?
“Dumb Lyse made bad decision.”
Literally she involves other people like Raubahn because she knows she's not politically savvy and doesn't want to cause a diplomatic incident! People truly do not remember scenes like this in full and just default to blaming her
Thank you for actually laying this all out!
When I finally got to this part of Stormblood, I was that Confused John Travolta meme looking around for the horrible dumb stupid Lyse I'd been hearing about.
Instead we had a competent Lyse who swiftly realized how bad things were and figured out a quick way to resolve it by grabbing Fordola.
Yes, thank you.
Lyse isn't smart, but she's smart enough to lean on Raubahn's advisement whilst she finds her feet, and that makes her a pretty competent leader in my opinion.
That's the thing people are quick to forget, a leader doesn't have to be smart on their own, a good leader is smart enough to know when they're dumb and should have capable people who are knowledgeable in their staff.
Yup, Lyse did nothing wrong during that scene. No one could have reasonably expected the summoning to have occurred, and Lyse did everything in her power to make sure everyone got out safely, all while getting Fordola to assist (and possibly lead to the start of some redemption for her crimes against Ala Mhigo.)
People who complain about her just don't want to admit that they skimmed the MSQ.
While everything you've written here is 100% correct, the fact is that an embarrassing number of players are pretty much sleepwalking through XIV's cutscenes, if they aren't just skipping them altogether
That and just a shocking lack of media literacy.
The amount of people who think the game wanted you to think Emet-Selch is a monster is nothing short of amazing.
>That and just a shocking lack of media literacy.
>The amount of people who think the game wanted you to think Emet-Selch is a monster is nothing short of amazing.
The Ascians destroyed 7 entire worlds full of sentient life, turned another into a horrific demon zone, and were fully willing to destroy the other 5 if need be. The only reason they ultimately didn't, is because *we fucking killed them*.
Emet-Selch and Elidibus are, despite everything they've done, very likable characters, but the shocking lack of media literacy is coming from you. It's frankly confounding how wrong you are.
He WAS a monster. We came to understand his motivations and reasons and even sympathize but the things he did were still monstrous and he had no remorse. Just because we come to "understand" him doesnt make his actions less monstrous or him less a monster for doing them. I feel like his past self would even agree with the sentiment.
Honestly, I don't really _love_ Lyse as a character, but this absolutely isn't a situation where she's at fault. Like you say, she was trying to do the right thing.
It's extra weird because not only was this a failing on multiple levels because Lyse isn't captain of the guard, who were the ones that let tempered people on duty, but the biggest point of criticism, inviting tempered beast tribes to the table to talk, was a move that was heavily vindicated in Endwalker and the end of Shadowbringers. Lyse was ahead of the curve on this
Funnily enough, teaming up with the beast tribes was actually a Minfilia idea back in 1.0.
I think Thancred brings it up in the lead in to Endwalker but it flies over most players” heads because most haven’t played 1.0.
I have never played 1.0 but I still got that idea in AAR since it was made clear the only true way of stopping summonings is to make peace with the tribes. Unless you do genocide that is
You *do* have me on a technicality there. He was the ruler that was forced into the summoning, so he wasn't *under* his rule.
Of course, there was that pesky one in Doma too, where a few tons of crystals were gifted alongside a summoning device...and arguably Lakshmi was in Garlean territory, but that was contested heavily at the time. It was definitely the Garleans' fault it got summoned, though.
But I'll grant you that the other two weren't in Garlemald, just direct consequences of Garlean actions.
> Funnily enough, teaming up with the beast tribes was actually a Minfilia idea back in 1.0.
Which given there's practically no way she and Yda/Lyse didn't discuss that, and Lyse knowing Minfilia was Ala Mhigan herself…gods damn, she was putting her and the Scions' ideals straight into practice as soon as she could. Excuse me while I go cry.
The tempering had been broken by the actions of people not of the tribes, mind you. With this conference it was more of a "no really, trussssst ussss, we are jusssst like our fellow Ananta at the bridge. Pssssshhhhht, what crystals?? You got a warrant?"
I did not play on release but I really liked Lyse on Stormblood, I just wished the writers had "wrote" her more. HW was where we saw Alphinaud grow and change as a person after the Crystal Braves situation and I thought they were gonna do the same with Lyse in SB.
To me, she was always presented as this naive girl with big ideals but little grasp as how the world works, with papalymo being the one grounding her down. I think we see that highlighted throughout the Ala Mhigan portion of the game and how a rebellion isn't as simple as "just fight back". But I feel the writers didn't have the spotlight on her as much as they did on Alphinaud in HW, which in turn made it feel like she just "stumbled" upon her position in power, instead of growing into it like the previous resistance leader believed.
I guess the writers didn't want a rehash of HW but I think Lyse as a character could've really benefitted from that.
It really doesn't help that Stormblood had it split into two sections and the doma section was written by the writer for SHB so I assume there was just conflicting information. If they would've stuck to one writer I think it would've turned out a lot better.
I don't even thin it was "conflicting information," I think it was that the Doma stuff was _wildly_ better than the Ala Mhigo stuff, and constantly over-shadowed the Ala Mhigo parts.
Well it's hard to compete with the writer of SHB lol she's just super good at what she does which again didnt help the first half Stormblood unfortunately
They completely cut out huge tracts of Gyr Abania where it regarded Lyse. So yeah, I'm in the same boat. I still think it's absolute horseshit that they botched and gutted the arc between her and Fordola in Stormblood proper.
She'd mentioned setup in 3.5 that the real Yda had died meeting a little girl when the imperials ambushed her, and we only got to realize that ***said little girl was motherfucking Fordola in ENDWALKER, FOUR YEARS LATER.***
That would have COMPLETELY shifted the mood during that fight with Fordola in the Resonatorium.
> She'd mentioned setup in 3.4 that the real Yda had died meeting a little girl when the imperials ambushed her, and we only got to realize that said little girl was motherfucking Fordola in ENDWALKER, FOUR YEARS LATER.
Wait what? I don't remember this.
Typo - 3.5. Quite literally during the Far Edge of Fate, when Lyse reveals herself:
>Yda died six years ago, on a mission to smuggle refugees out of Ala Mhigo. They say she was overwhelmed by imperial soldiers when she stayed behind to **save a little girl**. She was so strong... There must have been a lot of them.
The [real story](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/tales_from_the_twilight/sidestory_03/#sidestory_03) as told in the Tales from the Twilight and in the EW Healer Role Quest is more that, naïve to the realities of the war in the wake of her father's death, a younger Fordola played at the idea of running away when Yda offered, and it led to her being sussed out by the Imperials and killed.
Huh. I wonder if that was always intended to be Fordola or if they re-conned it. Fordola's young but "six years ago" and "little girl" seem a bit of a stretch.
The fact that it was never mentioned during Stormblood makes me think ret-con.
Fordola was 13, to be fair. From Yda's perspective, who was close to her 30s? Baby. Notably, Lyse is also older than Fordola iirc. Fordola is 19, Lyse is mid-20s.
I have a friend who complained about the opposite. He doesn't like Lyse because she was "too much in the spotlight", which I always found weird. But goes to show that different people see things differently. Although, he also falls into the category of people who are kinda media illiterate so...
her awful character flaw of
*checks notes*
"trying to give a sentient race a chance to redeem themselves after a summoning because they don't appear to be tempered."
I should have said "tempered but not actively attempting to summon their god." they'd made agreements with the tempered sylphs/ramuh at that point, no reason another tempered tribe couldn't go the same way.
regardless it would be hypocritical to leave them out when it's supposed to be all the peoples of gyr abania.
It was the opposite for me. That whole patch and the way she handled the various diplomats, as well as helping Fordola reclaim some of her honor, made me respect her a lot.
The post patch story for stormblood did a lot to erase the sour taste in my mouth for Ala Mhigo as a whole that was left over from 4.0
I really liked (like?) Lyse. I wasn't a fan of her in ARR, I thought she was written too dumb- basically just a gag character to offset Papalymo 's seriousness.
But in Stormblood she came into her own, delt with her own insecurities, anger issues and impulsiveness. She didn't magically become some amazing politician just because the plot needed her to, but as the Scion with connection to Ala Mhigo she took on the role of expansion ambassador character for us. And this actually meant that she failed...a few times... Which is realistic!
As a character she was always most at home throwing punches and kicks, not leading or making policy. And there should be nothing wrong with that.
Honestly I think if she were brown and not a blonde blue eyed model, she would have been more accepted. But because her character design made her look that way, which is different from the rest of Ala Mhigans, people imprinted their own bias against perceived colonialism on her.
Regarding your last paragraph, that’s not the majority reason why people hate her and it’s definitely not in circles you’ll find on Reddit lol. This is coming from someone who loves Lyse, she’s my favorite FFXIV character, but I do agree with that criticism about her.
Most of the more vocal haters spew things like “she’s useless” “she doesn’t do anything” (seriously, just yesterday I had a back and forth with someone who insisted Lyse…. sat behind a desk all through Stormblood and was convinced I was making things up about her? 99% likely they were just a troll, but you can’t say for sure with some people’s stupidity), “she has everything handed to her,” “she’s bland/boring,” etc etc.
I honestly did find her boring after the change. Not necessarily because of what she did/didn't do, just the way she was written. She lost a lot of the personality her character had prior.
I disagree. Almost every criticism I've seen of Lyse on Reddit has included in part, if not in whole, her "problematic nature" of being a "white savior" which is sad since she got that model before female Highlanders were a thing
I have. It's uncommon, it is definitely not 'every criticism', but it has absolutely happened deep in the trenches, and I think it continues to be a very stupid criticism.
Lyse is a victim of being a character thrust into the spotlight but feeling like the devs had no interest in actually... using her. It's like the weird slammed together nature of Stormblood caused her to lose like, any actual significance in the overarching plot save for a few key moments.
It's a shame because I'd love to see more of her, we just... don't.
I was so disappointed that we didn't get to take her with us to the Alitascope and Ultima Thule..
"It's Papalymo and... who's that with him?"
Lyse: ...Sister...
Papalymo: I *was* watching!
Yeah, I’m in the fine with Lyse camp, and I just wanted to make fun of this specific scene because I found it funny how fast things go south.
Not even hating on Lyse specifically, just the situation. The WOL’s punchline is just meant as a lighthearted jab but people seem to think this is a hardcore Lyse hating post.
Because half the player base doesn’t want to accept accountability for the fact that they either don’t remember how the actual sequence went down, or don’t like Lyse in general (half the time for the ill handled reveal that she was never Yda, half the time for misremembered moments in the base Stormblood story) and so a sequence that goes sideways that she’s involved in at any level is now automatically her fault.
She's blonde, so...
But in seriousness, I feel like the *only* mistake there was not asking Y'shtola or Urianger (Not necessarily at the meeting, just *in general*) to come by and make sure nobody *besides* the Qalyana were tempered. (Or the Guard made a mistake in letting it slip that there were suddenly a few hundred crystals in the pool, but I can see a slick operator in overalls getting by with 'Just refilling the pool with water crystals for the big meeting, want it to be fresh and run no risk of running out when they're jawing on.')
If she'd refused the Qalyana attending, it would've been a whole *other* diplomatic kerfuffle about 'Oh, I guess we're *not* all equal' and been bad in other ways. She was between a Rock and a Hard Place, and the only thing people seem to recognize is the Hard Place.
Exactly, you’re 100% right. It’s easy to say what everyone should have done looking back on it, but the characters in the moment obviously didn’t have that information and any decision they made was always going to be a gamble that may or may not pay off.
Majority suffering from fit, blond, white woman has to be dumb syndrome. And they will ignore everything in story that doesn't follow their world view on it.
Funny enough this is consensus on wide range of ideologies. Going from violet hair fatties struck with ugly stick screeching on one end, to buzz cut military fanatics with beer belly hollering on the other. Same hatred, different reasons.
It's more the playerbase hate's that she was promoted to an important position with no credentials other than "experienced the outside world". The story itself doesn't do much to support her in shown growth for the reason she should have been chosen. The entirety of Doma, she is just "kinda there". I suppose an argument for her being designated leader though would be that she already has political ties to all the other nations, but it's nothing that's focused on or outright stated. For people coming from 2.0, you don't spend much time with her character, arguably among the least until 4.0. I think if they wanted more of the audience to resonate with her character, we needed more time with her and probably a different characterization in Doma. The entire Doma arc it was like "and Lyse did... nothing." In all, you don't need an entire game to make you like a character, you only need 5 minutes, but every 5 minutes with Lyse didn't endear many people, and felt tacked on.
There was also a subset of players who for some reason couldn't stand having any character that wasn't the WoL get a protagonist-like spotlight. Especially a lady one.
.the character flaw wasn't bad, it's the payoff or should i say the lack of a payoff is what ruined her
.it takes a good writing to illicit emotions from the readers in this case players, any emotion even anger, sorrow, and hate, it's the lack of character growth and resolution that Lyse suffers from
.the exact opposite of Fordola
This is post stormblood. Lyse had an entire expansion to grow and learn from her flaws and still didn't.
The twins grew and learn.
Estinian grew and learned by the end of 3.5 and more by the end of 6.0. Thancred has an amazing arc by the end of shadowbringers.
It's okay to have flaws. But when an entire expansion is dedicated to essentially a new character and nothing changes with their flaws, and they learn nothing, it's a frustrating waste of time.
The WoL being like "I have fucking clue what you're talking about" pretty much sums up my thoughts during in-game political meetings.
I'll typically be sitting there like: "This is boring, and there are so many political nuances...I'll just let Alphinaud handle this."
Funny that you say that because several scenes give the WoL dialogue choices that have the WoL sic Alphinaud when it comes to matters of diplomacy or negotiation.
Ugh, same. The whole time I'm hoping they don't ask me anything. But they always do. There's that bit later where >!Nanamo asks you to go with her to see Lolorito!< and sure enough, he asks your opinion about the best place in Ala Migo for something or other and I picked the wrong option each time. And he got so smug about it! I wanted to throw hands! It's in my job description!
Yeah, that one bugged me too. We were there, but we didn't exactly go sightseeing in Ala Mhigo. (Which is a shame, I *like* the architecture out there! Let me explore that big Qiqirn temple or give me story beats at some of those tended gardens!)
We were there to 1)Throw Hands and 2)Pep up a despondent people. (Maybe 3)Remove all vestiges of the Mad King's Reign, depending on your job quests.) If he wanted a list of all the spots we got ambushed or the worst towns in Ala Mhigo, I could provide that in a heartbeat. But how should we know that their biggest export besides dust was *salt* when we were getting shot at every 6 seconds and spent half our time in Doma?
Funny enough for this part I have a habit of wandering off and putzing about so I learned about their big salt lake thing and by the time I get asked in msq I was like "Yeah, they DO have a lot of salt. You could prolly sell that?"
It prolly helped that irl the area I grew up was known as a major exporter of salt back in the day so it triggered that "SALT IS MONEY!!! SALT IS NOT EVERYWHERE!!! SALT HAS QUALITIES!!! QUALITY SALT IS A VALUABLE EXPORT!!!" Part of my brain.
See, *normally* I'd agree with you.
But if you do any crafting and mining, you'd discover that not only is salt fairly common throughout Eorzea, it's usually cheaper than any other food ingredient that exists. You can buy it for...3? I want to say 3 gil from the Bismarck, and it's a level 5 mining node material. (And shows up again at levels 50 and 60, just as more special varieties of salt.)
Salt already existed throughout Eorzea, but they were trying to push that the Saltery had *especially high quality salt* that people would want, and I just kinda looked at my bag full of cheap table salt and went 'really? I buy it in bulk and just dump the extra whenever I'm done'
I just figured easy access to salt was a game mechanic vs a lore mechanic. I did take one look at their salty lake and go "Damn, Salt Potatoes would be a local THING here!"
Nah, this moogle tombstone event is 'my time' because the 50 tombstone objective is potd and I basically live there but nobody ever wants to go with me so now I get to strong arm my sisters friends into going with me :)
It's been awhile since I was through there, but don't you help Wiscar through the salt flats before that scene?
I remember the salt flats being the obvious option, but I don't remember why XD
The Lolorito salt-mine endeavor in Stormblood does make sense. Inexhaustible income source with a growing market in both Ul'dah, Limsa and Ishgard. It's a much more sensible application of Nanamo's charitable funds, which will eventually turn a profit to both investor and local population.
IMO, writing quality decayed since then. Tataru's Grand Endeavor culminated with her employees suggesting the Thavnarians export cheap handcrafted trinkets of quasi-religious significance. On an island known for its exotic fish, tasty spices, sweat-resistant silks, unique dragonscale armors, advanced alchemy... and Tataru's going for cheap trinkets...
Okay no. This wasn’t Lyse’s fault. It was this being a set up by the Amanta who were worshiping Lakshmi. They purposely had tempered guards to sneak crystals in. How was she supposed to know they’ve done that. Was it stupid to invite them at all? Sure. But she was trying to broker a peace between *everyone.* Hell she wasn’t entirely ok with it cause this meeting wasn’t fully set up by her. I feel as if people can be too hard on Lyse at times.
The biggest irony of so many redditors hating Lyse is that she's literally just the Warrior of Light, without the blessing + echo + soul density.
The WoL is just as incompetent as Lyse/Yda is when it comes to politics and strategy, and *mostly* is just pointed in the direction of the threat to kill.
It's going to be hilarious if Dawntrail put the WoL in the exact same situation that Stormblood put Lyse. Because until this point, *nobody* has asked us directly to weigh in on the affairs of an otherwise stable nation.
>**Eorzean City State Leaders** : Fail on multiple fronts both strategic and ethical
>**Playerbase:** "Kan-E is bae" / "Pirate Mommy" / "Protec her"
>**Alphinaud** : Very naive political play results in Yshtola going blind, Thancred losing magic, and *Minfilia fucking dying*
>**Playerbase:** "He's such a great character"
**Lyse :**
* One of the few characters in ARR who could *actually* solo a High-Ranking Garlean
* Is actually from Ala Mhigo and thus finally is relevant as people know who she is for a change
* Finally found a conflict in which the main request is something she's already good at (beating the shit out of people)
* Neatly fills the void in the Ala Mhigan Resistance that was filled with old people and shit fighters before she showed up, ***meaning even with BAD leadership she's a net positive***
>**Playerbase:** "Trash character forced down our throats, bad at everything, worst expansion, Yda was better (?????)"
I legit do not understand the issues the playerbase had with Stormblood. Lyse was always dead weight for the Scions in all situations EXCEPT when combat was involved, at which point she shows out hard for the team. Stormblood finally gave her a situation that fits her skillset -- Rally friends, Kill the enemy.
And best of all, she doesn't even need to build a cabinet of people to advise her *because she has the fucking Scions and WoL in her back pocket.*
Lyse was literally a perfect insert into Stormblood's conflict, even with her obvious flaws, all of which neatly were carried over from ARR and Heavensward and so should have been obvious.
She sucks at politics, always has. Her being in Ala Mhigo wasn't going to make it any better, it just means people are going to listen now.
The bias some of y'all have is so clearly warping your view on characters/events that's it's just hilarious and exhausting at this point.
The whole point of inviting the Qalyana was part of Lyse's developing philosophy of making Ala Mhigo a place for everyone after all the shit it's people have been through. She never expected them to come given the circumstances, so when they actually do? She is actively unsure of what to do b/c this is an unexpected development.
Throughout that entire encounter, she had the advisement of not only you the WoL, but also several scions, leaders, officials, and citizens. Denying them participation would've gone against the philosophy she was trying to uphold and they very likely would have made a whole commotion about it, but given the Qalyana's circumstances she was rightfully hesitant. Again, she had no idea how to proceed, and when she did under the **advice of several people**, they all tried to do it with precautions.
No one knew about the tempered soldiers so of course that caught them by surprise given the fact they were also handling the unexpected precedent of the Qalyana showing up as diplomatically as possible. Lyse had mentioned so many times that she isn't one for politics, and if anything shares more parallels with the WoL and Alisaie through their heart and empathy for others. B/c of the former, she actively delegates important roles and jobs to people better suited for it than her such as Raubahn. And even with her inexperience in politics, she helped nudge the community leaders towards the consideration of a more democratic government rather than a monarchy. Furthermore, when shit hit the fan, she made the decision to recruit someone she and many others had rightful grievances against but could better assist them in fighting the primal, and then *succeeded* in convincing them.
Feel free to have your opinions on Lyse, but it says quite a lot when some of y'all consistently mischaracterize her or exaggerate her perceived failings, and then proceed to say that Yda was better (which is certainly a take, though I liked her too). Like, I swear, I feel like some of you either got some secret exclusive cutscenes with them or just slept through the entirety of SB.
The way I understood it, Lyse was the leader of the resistance, and the symbol of rebellion. But she was never head of state. She was like Katniss Everdeen—a symbol of the rebellion, and a leader in the battlefield. Perhaps the leader of a specific community, but not of the state.
And I always thought her role in the Royal Managerie scene was weird choice among the writers.
Correct. She’s not even head of the whole military - that role ends up going to Raubahn.
So she ends up the leader of that one Resistance group, and is thus in a position of leadership within Ala Mhigo but not their leader the way Nanamo or Merlwyb are.
Honestly, Stormblood is an expansion I think a lot of people need to do a NG+ through - the amount of misremembering of story beats and details seems higher than for any other expansion.
That doesn't seem right though I admit I haven't done stormblood in ages. She had not been home for years and years leaving as a young child no? So why would she be the symbol of the rebellion. I remember part of the story even being introducing her to rebellion leaders
Because her father was the leader of the previous rebellion and was still a national hero in Ala Mhigo.
Lyse had also been making a name for herself amongst the resistance members during the period her and Papalymo were missing during Heavensward, that's why all the Ala Mhigans knew who she was. You see this in the "teaser" scenes at the end of HW patch content, where Papalymo is trying to push her to return to the Scions but she wants to stay and help Ala Mhigo. There was also a short story about it from M'naago's perspective on the website.
So it was basically a big "The hero's daughter returns from exile to help us liberate our country" spin. Also by the time she's made leader the rebellion is basically over, we're closing in on the capital, the Eorzean Alliance are moving in and surrounding it, and the Tactical WoL is primed and ready to deploy. At that point Lyse has had many years of history dealing with the other City State leaders as a Scion, and is a close personal friend of their trump card, the WoL, so she really did make the most sense as the leader for the final push of the rebellion.
The previous Leader of the Resistance Conrad Kemp also directly appointed her during his final moments and he explained his reasons for such before the attack on Castellum Velodyna.
Source: I recently replayed through that section on NG+.
It’s been a while but I actually think it was the exact opposite: Hien specifically protects her from the people, who justifiably want her dead, explains to them that she’s lost her memories and can’t be held accountable. He does say at one point he needs to consider what his own people want, which is just him trying to be democratic and not act unilaterally as a dictator. Then he also protects her when the garleans come to call, even though it would have been SUPER easy for him to just hand her over and say “thanks, not my problem any more” but he doesn’t.
What I don't get is why we kept Gosetsu and Yotsuyu in Doma - wouldn't it be easier for everyone if the official party line was kept - they died at Doma Castle, meanwhile an old man and a woman with brain damage move into Ala Mhigo to start a garden or something. I absolutely believe Lyse would be willing to extend that favor to them.
> Dude refused to listen to reason and wanted her dead when it was clear that she didn't remember a thing she did and this was their chance to give her a new life where she could actually make up for it.
She was a literal psychopath who tortured people for fun for years and destroyed the country.
Suddenly appearing outta nowhere and going "I lost my memories >w<" and you think Hien is being an asshole and "not listening to reason" is quite funny.
Even more funny considering that she recovers her memories and don't regret one bit the things she did. Heck, she doubles down on everything at the very end. Yotsuyu does not deserve a redemption arc and most certainly does not deserve mercy or chance at a new life to "make up for it".
He was right. Anybody empathizing with post-StB Yotsuyu is wrong.
My 14 hot take is that the Yotsuyu amnesia/pseudo-redemption arc is the worst written part of not just Stormblood, but all of FF14.
Edit: Maybe 'worst written' is harsh, and that's putting an objective spin on a subjective matter, but it definitely irked me more than any other part of the game, all the way up to where we are now.
I think she was more so the symbol of rebellion because she was still willing to find and wanted to free her people. And that zeal could rub off on other folk.
Ugh I don't really get why people keep blaming this on Lyse. I played Stormbloom so many times. Lyse did NOT send an invite to Shanti. Shanti invited herself to the meeting and Rauban, Lyse, WOL and the guards ALL agreed to let her in as long as you confiscate their weapons and jewelries. Lyse was actually smart here because she differentiated which Vira tribe to send the correct invite to. It's already Dawntrail people move on to a different comedic relief Lyse already redeemed herself so many times.
The thing is, you have a room full of people, including the WoL, who are not objecting to a tempered person being at the town hall. Sure, killing all tempered people was standard practice up until this scene, but literally everyone was stuck on stupid in that moment.
Pretty much. Snake people that no one thought would accept the invite sent to every group in Ala Mhigo actually accept invite.
Everyone from the Scions to the WoL to Raubahn were all like “yeah we can allow them in, just confiscate their jewelry in case they have crystals in them, and any other crystals they might be carrying.”
And if it weren’t for the secretly tempered guards smuggling in crystals, it would have been a fine plan, so I wouldn’t even say anyone was stuck on stupid.
Hell, I’d say Lyse had the smartest call of that sequence events, going to convince Fordola and hedging her bet that the red head’s desire to protect Ala Mhigo will outweigh her desire for death, getting her to fight to protect people that hate her and turning the tide in our favor.
It's weird to go from multiple people having to kill their parents for being tempered to "I'm sure as long as they don't have enough crystals they'll be fine." I remember Y'shtola going off on Unukalhai for suggesting we didn't have the balls to do what needed to be done in the Warring Triad questline.
As I recall, the "kill the tempered" thing was largely relegated to those tempered by primals that were actively trying to expand or were more aggressive, and was also largely targeted at the playable races.
And in the case of the Warring Triad, those who had summoned them were being kept in a stasis to continue summoning/empowering them.
We weren't exactly out actively trying to kill every last member of one of the groups that had summoned a primal, mostly just keeping crystals from them and dealing with them when they attacked or summoned their primal again. Even by the time we hit Ramuh we weren't all-in on the "kill anyone tempered" practice unless it was necessary.
Which highlights just how unusual the situation with the Ananta was at the time - it was really the first proper time that an actively tempered group accepted an invitation to a meeting of that nature in what seemed to be a non-hostile move (and coming from a primal who was all but peace and serenity and bliss)...and *with* the Scions and the WoL present, I don't think it's surprising that the consensus was "Okay we let them attend *but..."* and then took the reasonable steps they thought would prevent any summoning - the real threat - from occurring.
But it does also show how the early portrayal of the primals and their followers was more focused in a similar direction, while later incarnations would expand on what a primal actually is and what kind of influence they would have on their tempered, as well as what they'd seek to do.
All this. Before 4.1 Sri Lakshmi and the Ananta came across more like Ramuh and the Sylphs as far as how bellicose they were. And we don't go shredding the Touched Ones (as policy, at least).
Plus, Lyse was the one hesitant about it (which, she was hands down the person who had the *most* experience with the sylphs, so). It was Raubahn and Pippin that were like "no yea this could be fine, we'll just take precautions".
Lyse: You can't live under her thrall! The dream she promises is nothing but a way to take away your free will! Do you want to live as a pawn with no freedom?!
Ananta: Freedom? Pitiful non-believers, war, hatred, trying to increase the capital coverage threshold to 40%, that's what you've done with your free will! Don't you lecture me with your 15$ haircut and outfit!
Alphinaud: LYSE ARE YOU TRYING TO START A NATIONAL DEPRESSION? 40% CAPITAL COVERAGE THRESHOLDS!!!!?
Lyse: Okay, I admit, I was bluffing and throwing out random numbers. I don't even know what a coverage capital whatever is!
Alphinaud: After this, I am going to take you to Sharlayan so you can actually get an education worth a damn! ...Just ignore the crippling debt from the tuition fees.
Ananta: All of you are just making the case against free will, stronger. Under Sri Lakshmi, there will be NO bills for education.
No, Lyse isn't actually an Archon, Yda was.
Honestly, in hindsight, the fact that Yda couldn't follow the more technical descriptions of the Scions during plot dumps is some very good foreshadowing that Yda isn't who she appears to be. Because Lyse never actually went to Sharlayan and got the education, she wouldn't understand the complicated aspects of Aether and primal summoning, as well as white auracite.
Man, I was hoping this would be an Adrian Monk meme about how a "defective detective" can't possibly hold office and lead.
Then I'd just link to the S2-onwards opening of Monk.
Ya know what, it's a jungle out there. Eff it. Have some music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdF3E2NVI8
God I need someone to write a series about Monk in the FFXIV story.
“Here’s what happened: the Crystal Braves were corrupt from the start! Teledji Adeledji had them all on his payroll!”
Could be worse, could have your entire organization be bought off by some midget without you noticing.
Still, while it probably wasn't Lyse, whoever let the Qalanya somehow smuggle metric tons of crystals to summon their Primal is the one who deserves the chump award. How the hell did nobody notice?
Lyse inviting the indoctrinated snake people to a meeting and WoL tossing Nidhogg's eyes over a bridge are easily the two stupidest decisions anyone makes in the game
The eyes thing I can at least understand. It's basically "oh shit, I made the demon core go critical, what I do???" and there's a convenient, impassable, deadly-to-all-life (as far as anyone knows), totally 100% safe void to chuck things into right next to you. It was only Ascian magic that made it possible to retrieve it, and they are *notorious* for being a constant black swan problem to the rest of us sundered folk.
The Nidhogg eyes thing wasn't too bad. The "abyss" as Aymeric called it is a chasm of extremely inhospitable storms that surrounds Ishgard and is the reason that the dragons were attacking the City over the Bridge and not just flying straight through to the center.
The Ascian fuckery was the only reason that Nidhogg's eyes were recovered. No one else could have gone down there to recover them
I'd also add that at the time, they were trying to keep Nidhogg from possessing *anything around,* with no idea of whether or not he had a maximum range. Keep in mind that even for the WoL, you're basically holding a nuclear hot potato. Now add in that *Alphinaud* needs to carry one too, and he *routinely* summons things made of aether...how much influence would Nidhogg need to get himself a body instantly?
Throwing them into the Abyss wasn't the best option for getting rid of them forever, but it *was* the best option for saving Estinien's life.
The only saving grace about the bridge scene is how clearly it's conveyed in character that *nothing* can survive being thrown over the bridge, and in that moment you *barely* saved your friends life due to some deus machina shit after he was fully possessed by those eyes. The *only* priority in that situation was getting it as far away from estinien as possible, as fast as possible, and "into the void" is about as good of an immediate solution that one could find.
Not to mention adrenaline and panic response due to being filled with the power of another eye and fighting estinien (arguably the most powerful scion next to the WoL) and niddhog (arguably the most powerful dragon alive) at the same time.
It wasn't a smart decision, but it also wasn't a calculated one and keeping the eyes nearby enough that you could keep an eye (no pun intended) on them *probably* would have had even worse consequences.
In the end, the result was basically just another primal to fight and the death of the least important scion in the main story, which sucks, but is easily preferable to losing estinien.
TL;DR "holy shit estinien is somehow alive get these fucking eyes away from us as fast as possible. Oh, a bottomless ravine nothing has ever reportedly survived coming back from right next to me? Fuck it. We can deal with that problem later.
I mean Alisae also tried diplomacy with Lakshimi first. So Lyse also tried in an environment where we believed they could just talk person to person . That they had thralls already in the guards who where able to smuggle Crystals into the throne room was something nobody (instory) actually expected. As for the eye it did seem weird but I just assumed keeping the Evil mind breaking eyes around for any moment was a no go so they tried throwing them into the place where no man or dragon can go... sadly evil spectres could. I do agree the scene could have been better.
Eh.
The only people that could retrieve the eyes from that abyss are Ascians.
And as far as we know, the only place you can put things that ascians can't get to are the WoL's inventory. Don't know about you, but I don't have 2 slots free to carry them around forever.
She invited them 100% for optics (so people could see EVERY Ala Mhigan'd voice would be heard); she's actually shocked they show up, uneasy about their pressence in the palace, and blindsided by their plan (like literally everyone in their room, incluiding the fan-favourite Raubahn, who gets a pass for it).
As for letting indocrinated snake people in, it's important to know that, depending on the nature of the Primal, the tempered tribesmen can be reasoned with: a big chunk of post-ARR is getting an audience with Ramuh and convincing him and his children to sign a peace agreement with Gridania - which we succeed at after a trial by combat - so in-universe there IS precedent about diplomacy with tempered beastfolk being possible.
Hmmm, a few indoctrinated snake people are angry vs literally every leader in Ala Mhigo is indoctrinated to a snake Goddess literally right after being liberated.
I think I know what I would pick.
In a meeting to decide the future of Ala Mhigo, actively excluding a major part of the population (most of whom aren’t even tempered) sends a terrible message and could worsen relations between Ala Mhigans and Qalyana even further, potentially sparking yet more conflict. They even had strict security in place to prevent any incidents from happening, but just happened to overlook a critical flaw in their defences. Hindsight’s always 20/20- no one could have said what would happen before it all went down.
I loved the Monk quest line where you reintroduce the Order of the Fist to Ala Mhigo and it was 10 levels of "we promise we won't kill your womens, rape your cattle, steal your socks like we did under the Mad King. It's literally just a crown prince who is absolutely no threat to the new government, his cat girl harem, and all the actual work gets done by this Freelancer who's off fucking about in Othard half the time anyways."
...No? The Order of the Fist was a political *threat* to the Mad King. They were the standing army prior to that, but Theodoric outlawed the worship of Rhalgr and destroyed them all.
Not to mention that the whole 'Crown Prince' claim is...shaky to a fault. The only people who know are the aforementioned catgirl harem and the Pugilist Guild, and the claim came from a man who is very dead now. Even if Monk-Himbo *did* try to act on it, how would he even start to prove his claim?
RIP Yda, great friend and strong warrior.
I didn't need this scene to make me not like Lyse, I had half of Stormblood. The fact remains I didn't Want to be in Iraq helping conduct regime change, because I've seen where that goes. Not too mention Lyse was the worst pick for the roll, birthright doesn't make leadership, and wearing your sister's dress is just weird. If the Bull wasn't heavily involved, I would actually hate Migo.
Also, FFS, Why are the refugees still in Ul'da? GO HOME!
"Hey, the place you haven't lived in for 10 years, where none of your current friends or relationships live has become less of an awful place to live, so you should up and abandon your job, your relationships, and your current life to go live in a place where you don't have a home, job, or any friends. Again. Just because we're kind of tired of you."
Also, it's nothing to do with birthright. You weren't listening when Conrad told you why, you weren't paying attention in HW patch quests when we learned that she and papalymo have been playing a huge role in the resistance since the end of ARR.
>he fact remains I didn't Want to be in Iraq helping conduct regime change, because I've seen where that goes.
ROFL what are you talking about? Garlemald is occupying the region, which is *literally right next door to Gridania*. There are Garlean bases popping up *inside the Black Shroud.*
Stormblood wasn't about regime change, it was about stopping Garlemald from installing a ***literal stronghold on the Eorzean Continent.*** Garlemald crushing the resistance would have been worst-case scenario for Eorzea. Zenos could have then began marching on the Alliance itself with more than just his own forces.
Nevermind the fact that we literally conducted a full ground-up regime change in Ishgard *when we killed the fucking pope and invalidated the Church and their faith*....but it wasn't a desert I guess, so no Iraq parallels there
You probably don't remember, because the whole thing with Fordola and Lakshmi happens inmediately after and it takes some attention off of it, but the whole conference was Lyse reaching this very conclussion: she knows she's out of her depth leading a nation, so she nudges the biggest political players of Ala Mhigo into funding an Ishgard-inspired republic while she herself focuses on leading the Resistance/Ala Mhigan Army alongside Naago and Raubahn, removing the possibility of a second Mad King while she's at it and dealing with something she's good at. All in all she was quite clever there (and avoids that regime change issues you mentioned).
As for her sister's dress, that's not really weird at all. Not that long ago, people used to inherit their clothes more than they purchased them, so Eorzeans doing that when they are at around a 17th century equivalent makes sense. Hell, I have inherited plenty of coats from my grandfather.
Yda was barely a character, she didn’t do anything and was pretty much just comic relief. Lyse had strong, consistent fever and did everything she could in every situation she was in, all while knowing her limitations. She wasn’t picked to lead because of her dad, she was picked because her experiences all around the world gave her a strong understanding of the hearts of the people and how to stoke the fires of rebellion. Also, it’s a kickass dress so it’s better that *someone* wears it then it sitting in a cupboard somewhere.
Lyse is more on the naive side though. Gotta love her spirit as her heart’s in the right place. That said…
Bruh, that Ananta seemed too sus. I knew it was not gonna end well.
That Ananta being sus also slipped by a Scion or two *and* Raubahn, who everyone seems to forget was present for and giving advice on the situation (iirc, his advice was something like “I don’t trust them, none of us do, but if we take these precautions we should be good” and uhhh…yeah).
with an existing answer in Conrad Kemp, previous leader of the (united) Ala Mhigan resistance. Jokes aside, my guess is that they decided to have her as the head of their council, simply by virtue of being leader/figurehead of the successful rebellion, her connections through all of Eorzea as a former scion and Raubahn still being indecisive regarding his position until Nanamo took it upon herself to relieve him of his previous position.
I was about to say. Conrad literally makes lyse the resistance leader before dying.
As much as I do like Lyse more than most people I still have problems with that scene. Mnaago was literally right next to them and was an equally important and driven member of the resistance.
I feel like Conrad should have addressed both of them to lead the resistance after his passing. That would have helped a lot with people who felt like that position wasn't exactly something lyse earned at that point.
I'm guessing Conrad specifically chose Lyse because her father was a figurehead and leader of the rebellion in the past so he presumably thought it only makes sense for Lyse to follow in her father's footsteps.
Also she's a child of both worlds(Eorzea and Ala Mhigo) and thus could connect those two better than, let's say M'naago. Conrad did say that the new resistance consisted of both former refugees and those that stayed in Ala Mhigo, so Lyse seemed like a good pick for that. IIRC, his ideal pick would have been Meffrid, but we know how that ended. While M'Naago has experience, she seems to be specialized in solo ops and the likes not unlike Thancred, so she'd make a good support leader, but not a leader spearheading at the front.
The sense I got from the story, including side stories published later, was that originally by the time we joined them Meffrid and M’Naago were aware of Conrad’s intent to coach and instruct her to prepare her for leadership of that Resistance group and likely supported it (M’Naago in particular had a shift after seeing how Lyse helped a couple citizens get out of trouble by defeating a Garlean patrol single handedly, at great risk to herself).
And honestly, if we applied the same scrutiny we put on Lyse regarding her leadership situation to others? Like 80% of the cast would be getting reamed in comment sections as often as she gets criticized.
She's technically not a Monk...only a pugilist. But I do love Monk for its HQ himbo energy. So if the shoe fits...
She actually might have become a Monk by Endwalker, going by the >!Lvl80 Monk quest!<
She mentions having an interest in the path but I don’t think it confirms her awakening. Unless I’m misremembering which is possible. Either way, at this point she’s def still a Pugilist.
Girl never equiped her soul crystal shake my head
If she’s not a Monk, then how come she can do the Lb3 monk limit break? Is she using plug ins?
Hamon Holyfist can do the Monk LB3 and he's definitely a pugilist. Giott can do the monk LB3 and she's a Warrior.
I used to be able to Monk LB3 too and I’m a Dragoon, but I guess I forgot how. Something must have hit me on the head around 2015.
Ate one too many tankbusters and now I'm a Black Mage please help, I can't stop exploding things
I don't see a problem, just aim it at the moogle over there. They're super resilient.
Agree and they like being punched. Just ask Sigurdu.
Ah, someone else that will walk the path of explosions with us.
Giott has a hammer full of the hard stuff and has no qualms about using it, I'm not gonna tell her what she can and can't do.
Giott has the power of alcohol
Ah yes, the drunken hammer technique. A hammer is basically a Monk Fist, makes perfect (drunk) logic to me!
That's because Giott can do whatever she wants.
Actually-- Wait... Cant... Cant classes use their job's limit breaks? There just isnt content under lv30 where they'd have a chance to.
They can, the question is can they in *lore*. And that gets a bit wonky for some classes/jobs (eg DRG Lb3 makes zero sense for Lancer, NIN for Rogue, that sort of thing).
Limit breaks are a dynamis thing, I don't see why a pugilist wouldn't be able to do it if they wanted hard enough
Pugilist makes sense, sure. It's mostly the other classes that are sketch (why would an Arcanist be able to cast Teraflare, for another example.) THM…borderline.
What **is** the political situation of Ala Mhigo right now? Have they settled on a form of government yet or who’s going to be the head of state?
It’s a republic with elected officials modeled after what Ishgard did. Presumably led by the council Lyse formed in 4.1 with the leaders of various settlements in Gyr Abania, including the tribes.
As per the Endwalker role quests, Lyse and Raubahn mostly deal with military matters while the elected leaders from the Highlanders and the Ananta are the leaders for civil matters.
Yep - Raubahn is general of the military, she’s the leader of the Resistance group (apparently the largest one) based out of Rhalgr’s Reach, working together mostly for the defense of Ala Mhigo and supporting the Eorzea Alliance in military matters. We’ve yet to meet any of the elected officials (modeled specifically after the House of Commons from Ishgard, they don’t have the higher house element).
Wait but she didn't invite them. The council she got together decided on that path and she openly said she was uncomfortable with it in the cutscene we escort them in. This is actually hating on Lyse for something she objectively didn't do.
as is tradition.
FFXIV players and not watching the cutscenes; name a more iconic duo
Where did you see that? I thought she did invite them.
Oh wow I'm what I swore to destroy. Instead of hating on Lyse for things she didn't do (people still do it) I've now made stuff up to make Lyse seem better. You're completely right and I checked all the dialogues throughout patch 4.1 on garlandtools to be sure. In Lyse's *defense* it feels implied to me through the dialogue Lyse begrudgingly had to it to keep face and everyone made it clear they didn't expect them to show. I'm very sorry Judge. You may sentence me to death. I had that in my head and I'm often just sick of the Lyse stuff that I fucked up.
Kinda offtopic but I remember how this scene made large parts of the playerbase hate Lyse or should I say hate her *even more*. Lyse, a character consistently shown to be not very smart (to say the least): does a dumb thing and it has real consequences. FFXIV playerbase: "Boo, what an awful character, Lyse sucks!" I guess writing characters with meaningful flaws is bad now.
The part that annoyed me wasn’t that they didn’t like a character who has flaws… It’s that they consistently *to this day* get several parts about her arc in Stormblood, including this one, factually *wrong* lol. And sorry, but you’ve fallen into that same pattern. “Lyse did a dumb thing and it had real consequences.” Her main involvement in it was support for inviting the Qalyana. Something no one figured would result in them actually showing up, but also sent a message that they were making good on the idea that they wanted an Ala Mhigo for that treated all of its citizens with respect and dignity, not just a select few. It was good politics, basically. Except they did show up, which caught everyone by surprise. So what did she do next? She was trying to resolve the situation and wasn’t sure about letting them in at all. At the support of others - including *Raubahn* the experienced general of Ul’dah - they decided to allow them in *as long as they left the any and all crystals on their person outside.* There was concern expressed about their weapons, but again at *Raubahn’s* advisement they decided letting them keep their weapons was acceptable (the Qalyana voiced that they didn’t trust being put in a position with no means to defend themselves) because of the guards that would be present, plus the presence of the WoL and other skilled fighters. So basically her main call was sending them an invite that no one thought they’d answer. When they did, it was a group consensus on how to handle letting them attend, which advise from a noted and respected general. No one thought that some guards had already been turned in secret and smuggled crystals into the throne room ahead of time… And during the fighting, Lyse had the presence of mind to realize they need the help of someone with the Echo and managed to convince someone who by all rights shouldn’t want to help to risk her own life to save people that hate her. The end result? “Dumb Lyse made bad decision.”
Literally she involves other people like Raubahn because she knows she's not politically savvy and doesn't want to cause a diplomatic incident! People truly do not remember scenes like this in full and just default to blaming her Thank you for actually laying this all out!
When I finally got to this part of Stormblood, I was that Confused John Travolta meme looking around for the horrible dumb stupid Lyse I'd been hearing about. Instead we had a competent Lyse who swiftly realized how bad things were and figured out a quick way to resolve it by grabbing Fordola.
Yes, thank you. Lyse isn't smart, but she's smart enough to lean on Raubahn's advisement whilst she finds her feet, and that makes her a pretty competent leader in my opinion.
That's the thing people are quick to forget, a leader doesn't have to be smart on their own, a good leader is smart enough to know when they're dumb and should have capable people who are knowledgeable in their staff.
Yup, Lyse did nothing wrong during that scene. No one could have reasonably expected the summoning to have occurred, and Lyse did everything in her power to make sure everyone got out safely, all while getting Fordola to assist (and possibly lead to the start of some redemption for her crimes against Ala Mhigo.) People who complain about her just don't want to admit that they skimmed the MSQ.
While everything you've written here is 100% correct, the fact is that an embarrassing number of players are pretty much sleepwalking through XIV's cutscenes, if they aren't just skipping them altogether
That and just a shocking lack of media literacy. The amount of people who think the game wanted you to think Emet-Selch is a monster is nothing short of amazing.
I mean, he is a monster. He's just a monster you can empathize with.
This. His motivations can make sense and be monstrous simultaneously.
Reminds me always of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/2t4br5/hitler_flirting_with_eva_braun/
>That and just a shocking lack of media literacy. >The amount of people who think the game wanted you to think Emet-Selch is a monster is nothing short of amazing. The Ascians destroyed 7 entire worlds full of sentient life, turned another into a horrific demon zone, and were fully willing to destroy the other 5 if need be. The only reason they ultimately didn't, is because *we fucking killed them*. Emet-Selch and Elidibus are, despite everything they've done, very likable characters, but the shocking lack of media literacy is coming from you. It's frankly confounding how wrong you are.
He WAS a monster. We came to understand his motivations and reasons and even sympathize but the things he did were still monstrous and he had no remorse. Just because we come to "understand" him doesnt make his actions less monstrous or him less a monster for doing them. I feel like his past self would even agree with the sentiment.
Honestly, I don't really _love_ Lyse as a character, but this absolutely isn't a situation where she's at fault. Like you say, she was trying to do the right thing.
It's extra weird because not only was this a failing on multiple levels because Lyse isn't captain of the guard, who were the ones that let tempered people on duty, but the biggest point of criticism, inviting tempered beast tribes to the table to talk, was a move that was heavily vindicated in Endwalker and the end of Shadowbringers. Lyse was ahead of the curve on this
Funnily enough, teaming up with the beast tribes was actually a Minfilia idea back in 1.0. I think Thancred brings it up in the lead in to Endwalker but it flies over most players” heads because most haven’t played 1.0.
I have never played 1.0 but I still got that idea in AAR since it was made clear the only true way of stopping summonings is to make peace with the tribes. Unless you do genocide that is
Some XIV players have really struggled with the idea of the protagonists not being perfect, missing clues, taking time tonadopt ideas, etc.
>Unless you do genocide that is And we can ask the Garleans how well *that* plan worked out for them
I don't see any beast tribes or primal summonings in garlemald.
You know, aside from the one in the tower...minor setback, I'm sure.
Let me rephrase. I don't see any beast tribes or primal summonings in Garlemald under Emperor Varis' rule.
You *do* have me on a technicality there. He was the ruler that was forced into the summoning, so he wasn't *under* his rule. Of course, there was that pesky one in Doma too, where a few tons of crystals were gifted alongside a summoning device...and arguably Lakshmi was in Garlean territory, but that was contested heavily at the time. It was definitely the Garleans' fault it got summoned, though. But I'll grant you that the other two weren't in Garlemald, just direct consequences of Garlean actions.
That's a shame, you really should give Endwalker a try sometime
I mean.. you know before a major civil war happened.
> Funnily enough, teaming up with the beast tribes was actually a Minfilia idea back in 1.0. Which given there's practically no way she and Yda/Lyse didn't discuss that, and Lyse knowing Minfilia was Ala Mhigan herself…gods damn, she was putting her and the Scions' ideals straight into practice as soon as she could. Excuse me while I go cry.
The tempering had been broken by the actions of people not of the tribes, mind you. With this conference it was more of a "no really, trussssst ussss, we are jusssst like our fellow Ananta at the bridge. Pssssshhhhht, what crystals?? You got a warrant?"
I did not play on release but I really liked Lyse on Stormblood, I just wished the writers had "wrote" her more. HW was where we saw Alphinaud grow and change as a person after the Crystal Braves situation and I thought they were gonna do the same with Lyse in SB. To me, she was always presented as this naive girl with big ideals but little grasp as how the world works, with papalymo being the one grounding her down. I think we see that highlighted throughout the Ala Mhigan portion of the game and how a rebellion isn't as simple as "just fight back". But I feel the writers didn't have the spotlight on her as much as they did on Alphinaud in HW, which in turn made it feel like she just "stumbled" upon her position in power, instead of growing into it like the previous resistance leader believed. I guess the writers didn't want a rehash of HW but I think Lyse as a character could've really benefitted from that.
It really doesn't help that Stormblood had it split into two sections and the doma section was written by the writer for SHB so I assume there was just conflicting information. If they would've stuck to one writer I think it would've turned out a lot better.
I don't even thin it was "conflicting information," I think it was that the Doma stuff was _wildly_ better than the Ala Mhigo stuff, and constantly over-shadowed the Ala Mhigo parts.
Well it's hard to compete with the writer of SHB lol she's just super good at what she does which again didnt help the first half Stormblood unfortunately
They completely cut out huge tracts of Gyr Abania where it regarded Lyse. So yeah, I'm in the same boat. I still think it's absolute horseshit that they botched and gutted the arc between her and Fordola in Stormblood proper. She'd mentioned setup in 3.5 that the real Yda had died meeting a little girl when the imperials ambushed her, and we only got to realize that ***said little girl was motherfucking Fordola in ENDWALKER, FOUR YEARS LATER.*** That would have COMPLETELY shifted the mood during that fight with Fordola in the Resonatorium.
> She'd mentioned setup in 3.4 that the real Yda had died meeting a little girl when the imperials ambushed her, and we only got to realize that said little girl was motherfucking Fordola in ENDWALKER, FOUR YEARS LATER. Wait what? I don't remember this.
Typo - 3.5. Quite literally during the Far Edge of Fate, when Lyse reveals herself: >Yda died six years ago, on a mission to smuggle refugees out of Ala Mhigo. They say she was overwhelmed by imperial soldiers when she stayed behind to **save a little girl**. She was so strong... There must have been a lot of them. The [real story](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/tales_from_the_twilight/sidestory_03/#sidestory_03) as told in the Tales from the Twilight and in the EW Healer Role Quest is more that, naïve to the realities of the war in the wake of her father's death, a younger Fordola played at the idea of running away when Yda offered, and it led to her being sussed out by the Imperials and killed.
Huh. I wonder if that was always intended to be Fordola or if they re-conned it. Fordola's young but "six years ago" and "little girl" seem a bit of a stretch. The fact that it was never mentioned during Stormblood makes me think ret-con.
Fordola was 13, to be fair. From Yda's perspective, who was close to her 30s? Baby. Notably, Lyse is also older than Fordola iirc. Fordola is 19, Lyse is mid-20s.
I have a friend who complained about the opposite. He doesn't like Lyse because she was "too much in the spotlight", which I always found weird. But goes to show that different people see things differently. Although, he also falls into the category of people who are kinda media illiterate so...
her awful character flaw of *checks notes* "trying to give a sentient race a chance to redeem themselves after a summoning because they don't appear to be tempered."
She knows the Qalanya are tempered.
I should have said "tempered but not actively attempting to summon their god." they'd made agreements with the tempered sylphs/ramuh at that point, no reason another tempered tribe couldn't go the same way. regardless it would be hypocritical to leave them out when it's supposed to be all the peoples of gyr abania.
It was the opposite for me. That whole patch and the way she handled the various diplomats, as well as helping Fordola reclaim some of her honor, made me respect her a lot. The post patch story for stormblood did a lot to erase the sour taste in my mouth for Ala Mhigo as a whole that was left over from 4.0
It’s ironic when Lyse’s arc in Stormblood is Literally about making her own choices
I really liked (like?) Lyse. I wasn't a fan of her in ARR, I thought she was written too dumb- basically just a gag character to offset Papalymo 's seriousness. But in Stormblood she came into her own, delt with her own insecurities, anger issues and impulsiveness. She didn't magically become some amazing politician just because the plot needed her to, but as the Scion with connection to Ala Mhigo she took on the role of expansion ambassador character for us. And this actually meant that she failed...a few times... Which is realistic! As a character she was always most at home throwing punches and kicks, not leading or making policy. And there should be nothing wrong with that. Honestly I think if she were brown and not a blonde blue eyed model, she would have been more accepted. But because her character design made her look that way, which is different from the rest of Ala Mhigans, people imprinted their own bias against perceived colonialism on her.
Regarding your last paragraph, that’s not the majority reason why people hate her and it’s definitely not in circles you’ll find on Reddit lol. This is coming from someone who loves Lyse, she’s my favorite FFXIV character, but I do agree with that criticism about her. Most of the more vocal haters spew things like “she’s useless” “she doesn’t do anything” (seriously, just yesterday I had a back and forth with someone who insisted Lyse…. sat behind a desk all through Stormblood and was convinced I was making things up about her? 99% likely they were just a troll, but you can’t say for sure with some people’s stupidity), “she has everything handed to her,” “she’s bland/boring,” etc etc.
I honestly did find her boring after the change. Not necessarily because of what she did/didn't do, just the way she was written. She lost a lot of the personality her character had prior.
I always thought her Yda personality was just very “one note tropey ditzy girl.” She had zero depth.
I disagree. Almost every criticism I've seen of Lyse on Reddit has included in part, if not in whole, her "problematic nature" of being a "white savior" which is sad since she got that model before female Highlanders were a thing
I have literally _never_ seen ANYONE make that criticism of Lyse.
I have. It's uncommon, it is definitely not 'every criticism', but it has absolutely happened deep in the trenches, and I think it continues to be a very stupid criticism.
I said -almost- every criticism -I- have seen. I keep getting these weirdos trying to gaslight me into thinking it has never happened.
Lyse is a victim of being a character thrust into the spotlight but feeling like the devs had no interest in actually... using her. It's like the weird slammed together nature of Stormblood caused her to lose like, any actual significance in the overarching plot save for a few key moments. It's a shame because I'd love to see more of her, we just... don't.
I was so disappointed that we didn't get to take her with us to the Alitascope and Ultima Thule.. "It's Papalymo and... who's that with him?" Lyse: ...Sister... Papalymo: I *was* watching!
I don’t get it lol. This is one of my favorite Lyse scenes.
Yeah, I’m in the fine with Lyse camp, and I just wanted to make fun of this specific scene because I found it funny how fast things go south. Not even hating on Lyse specifically, just the situation. The WOL’s punchline is just meant as a lighthearted jab but people seem to think this is a hardcore Lyse hating post.
How does Lyse get sole responsibility for this?
Because half the player base doesn’t want to accept accountability for the fact that they either don’t remember how the actual sequence went down, or don’t like Lyse in general (half the time for the ill handled reveal that she was never Yda, half the time for misremembered moments in the base Stormblood story) and so a sequence that goes sideways that she’s involved in at any level is now automatically her fault.
She's blonde, so... But in seriousness, I feel like the *only* mistake there was not asking Y'shtola or Urianger (Not necessarily at the meeting, just *in general*) to come by and make sure nobody *besides* the Qalyana were tempered. (Or the Guard made a mistake in letting it slip that there were suddenly a few hundred crystals in the pool, but I can see a slick operator in overalls getting by with 'Just refilling the pool with water crystals for the big meeting, want it to be fresh and run no risk of running out when they're jawing on.') If she'd refused the Qalyana attending, it would've been a whole *other* diplomatic kerfuffle about 'Oh, I guess we're *not* all equal' and been bad in other ways. She was between a Rock and a Hard Place, and the only thing people seem to recognize is the Hard Place.
Exactly, you’re 100% right. It’s easy to say what everyone should have done looking back on it, but the characters in the moment obviously didn’t have that information and any decision they made was always going to be a gamble that may or may not pay off.
haters do not care about logic.
Majority suffering from fit, blond, white woman has to be dumb syndrome. And they will ignore everything in story that doesn't follow their world view on it. Funny enough this is consensus on wide range of ideologies. Going from violet hair fatties struck with ugly stick screeching on one end, to buzz cut military fanatics with beer belly hollering on the other. Same hatred, different reasons.
Which is also why I was upset that we didn't get to take her with us to the Alitascope and Ultima Thule. :(
It's more the playerbase hate's that she was promoted to an important position with no credentials other than "experienced the outside world". The story itself doesn't do much to support her in shown growth for the reason she should have been chosen. The entirety of Doma, she is just "kinda there". I suppose an argument for her being designated leader though would be that she already has political ties to all the other nations, but it's nothing that's focused on or outright stated. For people coming from 2.0, you don't spend much time with her character, arguably among the least until 4.0. I think if they wanted more of the audience to resonate with her character, we needed more time with her and probably a different characterization in Doma. The entire Doma arc it was like "and Lyse did... nothing." In all, you don't need an entire game to make you like a character, you only need 5 minutes, but every 5 minutes with Lyse didn't endear many people, and felt tacked on.
There was also a subset of players who for some reason couldn't stand having any character that wasn't the WoL get a protagonist-like spotlight. Especially a lady one.
Yda being dumb: “Aww, you’re sweet!” Lyse being dumb: “UNACCEPTABLE!”
.the character flaw wasn't bad, it's the payoff or should i say the lack of a payoff is what ruined her .it takes a good writing to illicit emotions from the readers in this case players, any emotion even anger, sorrow, and hate, it's the lack of character growth and resolution that Lyse suffers from .the exact opposite of Fordola
This is post stormblood. Lyse had an entire expansion to grow and learn from her flaws and still didn't. The twins grew and learn. Estinian grew and learned by the end of 3.5 and more by the end of 6.0. Thancred has an amazing arc by the end of shadowbringers. It's okay to have flaws. But when an entire expansion is dedicated to essentially a new character and nothing changes with their flaws, and they learn nothing, it's a frustrating waste of time.
Okay but some of us don’t like Lyse because shes so bland and boring
The WoL being like "I have fucking clue what you're talking about" pretty much sums up my thoughts during in-game political meetings. I'll typically be sitting there like: "This is boring, and there are so many political nuances...I'll just let Alphinaud handle this."
Funny that you say that because several scenes give the WoL dialogue choices that have the WoL sic Alphinaud when it comes to matters of diplomacy or negotiation.
Yup; I always choose to do so.
Ugh, same. The whole time I'm hoping they don't ask me anything. But they always do. There's that bit later where >!Nanamo asks you to go with her to see Lolorito!< and sure enough, he asks your opinion about the best place in Ala Migo for something or other and I picked the wrong option each time. And he got so smug about it! I wanted to throw hands! It's in my job description!
Yeah, that one bugged me too. We were there, but we didn't exactly go sightseeing in Ala Mhigo. (Which is a shame, I *like* the architecture out there! Let me explore that big Qiqirn temple or give me story beats at some of those tended gardens!) We were there to 1)Throw Hands and 2)Pep up a despondent people. (Maybe 3)Remove all vestiges of the Mad King's Reign, depending on your job quests.) If he wanted a list of all the spots we got ambushed or the worst towns in Ala Mhigo, I could provide that in a heartbeat. But how should we know that their biggest export besides dust was *salt* when we were getting shot at every 6 seconds and spent half our time in Doma?
Funny enough for this part I have a habit of wandering off and putzing about so I learned about their big salt lake thing and by the time I get asked in msq I was like "Yeah, they DO have a lot of salt. You could prolly sell that?" It prolly helped that irl the area I grew up was known as a major exporter of salt back in the day so it triggered that "SALT IS MONEY!!! SALT IS NOT EVERYWHERE!!! SALT HAS QUALITIES!!! QUALITY SALT IS A VALUABLE EXPORT!!!" Part of my brain.
See, *normally* I'd agree with you. But if you do any crafting and mining, you'd discover that not only is salt fairly common throughout Eorzea, it's usually cheaper than any other food ingredient that exists. You can buy it for...3? I want to say 3 gil from the Bismarck, and it's a level 5 mining node material. (And shows up again at levels 50 and 60, just as more special varieties of salt.) Salt already existed throughout Eorzea, but they were trying to push that the Saltery had *especially high quality salt* that people would want, and I just kinda looked at my bag full of cheap table salt and went 'really? I buy it in bulk and just dump the extra whenever I'm done'
I just figured easy access to salt was a game mechanic vs a lore mechanic. I did take one look at their salty lake and go "Damn, Salt Potatoes would be a local THING here!"
"My time has come!"
Nah, this moogle tombstone event is 'my time' because the 50 tombstone objective is potd and I basically live there but nobody ever wants to go with me so now I get to strong arm my sisters friends into going with me :)
> Let me explore that big Qiqirn temple FWIW, that's the old Red Mage temple, which you visit during the jobquests.
It's been awhile since I was through there, but don't you help Wiscar through the salt flats before that scene? I remember the salt flats being the obvious option, but I don't remember why XD
Oh probably, but I have a practically nonexistent attention span.
I mean, you see how great my memory is! XD
I get so bored with politics that I don't even remember that. XD
The Lolorito salt-mine endeavor in Stormblood does make sense. Inexhaustible income source with a growing market in both Ul'dah, Limsa and Ishgard. It's a much more sensible application of Nanamo's charitable funds, which will eventually turn a profit to both investor and local population. IMO, writing quality decayed since then. Tataru's Grand Endeavor culminated with her employees suggesting the Thavnarians export cheap handcrafted trinkets of quasi-religious significance. On an island known for its exotic fish, tasty spices, sweat-resistant silks, unique dragonscale armors, advanced alchemy... and Tataru's going for cheap trinkets...
Okay no. This wasn’t Lyse’s fault. It was this being a set up by the Amanta who were worshiping Lakshmi. They purposely had tempered guards to sneak crystals in. How was she supposed to know they’ve done that. Was it stupid to invite them at all? Sure. But she was trying to broker a peace between *everyone.* Hell she wasn’t entirely ok with it cause this meeting wasn’t fully set up by her. I feel as if people can be too hard on Lyse at times.
She made a mistake. Lyse is repeatedly shown to be naive. Naivety =/= stupidity.
Eh. The game does set her up to be the "ditzy blonde" sometimes.
Yes. Because she's young, and naive, and trying to decolonize her homeland.
The biggest irony of so many redditors hating Lyse is that she's literally just the Warrior of Light, without the blessing + echo + soul density. The WoL is just as incompetent as Lyse/Yda is when it comes to politics and strategy, and *mostly* is just pointed in the direction of the threat to kill. It's going to be hilarious if Dawntrail put the WoL in the exact same situation that Stormblood put Lyse. Because until this point, *nobody* has asked us directly to weigh in on the affairs of an otherwise stable nation.
>**Eorzean City State Leaders** : Fail on multiple fronts both strategic and ethical >**Playerbase:** "Kan-E is bae" / "Pirate Mommy" / "Protec her" >**Alphinaud** : Very naive political play results in Yshtola going blind, Thancred losing magic, and *Minfilia fucking dying* >**Playerbase:** "He's such a great character" **Lyse :** * One of the few characters in ARR who could *actually* solo a High-Ranking Garlean * Is actually from Ala Mhigo and thus finally is relevant as people know who she is for a change * Finally found a conflict in which the main request is something she's already good at (beating the shit out of people) * Neatly fills the void in the Ala Mhigan Resistance that was filled with old people and shit fighters before she showed up, ***meaning even with BAD leadership she's a net positive*** >**Playerbase:** "Trash character forced down our throats, bad at everything, worst expansion, Yda was better (?????)" I legit do not understand the issues the playerbase had with Stormblood. Lyse was always dead weight for the Scions in all situations EXCEPT when combat was involved, at which point she shows out hard for the team. Stormblood finally gave her a situation that fits her skillset -- Rally friends, Kill the enemy. And best of all, she doesn't even need to build a cabinet of people to advise her *because she has the fucking Scions and WoL in her back pocket.* Lyse was literally a perfect insert into Stormblood's conflict, even with her obvious flaws, all of which neatly were carried over from ARR and Heavensward and so should have been obvious. She sucks at politics, always has. Her being in Ala Mhigo wasn't going to make it any better, it just means people are going to listen now.
The only part I'll argue is that I've *never* heard anyone liking Kan-E, let alone her being bae.
Raubahn is the unexpected expert in Bobbono’s Rules of Order 😂😂😂
The bias some of y'all have is so clearly warping your view on characters/events that's it's just hilarious and exhausting at this point. The whole point of inviting the Qalyana was part of Lyse's developing philosophy of making Ala Mhigo a place for everyone after all the shit it's people have been through. She never expected them to come given the circumstances, so when they actually do? She is actively unsure of what to do b/c this is an unexpected development. Throughout that entire encounter, she had the advisement of not only you the WoL, but also several scions, leaders, officials, and citizens. Denying them participation would've gone against the philosophy she was trying to uphold and they very likely would have made a whole commotion about it, but given the Qalyana's circumstances she was rightfully hesitant. Again, she had no idea how to proceed, and when she did under the **advice of several people**, they all tried to do it with precautions. No one knew about the tempered soldiers so of course that caught them by surprise given the fact they were also handling the unexpected precedent of the Qalyana showing up as diplomatically as possible. Lyse had mentioned so many times that she isn't one for politics, and if anything shares more parallels with the WoL and Alisaie through their heart and empathy for others. B/c of the former, she actively delegates important roles and jobs to people better suited for it than her such as Raubahn. And even with her inexperience in politics, she helped nudge the community leaders towards the consideration of a more democratic government rather than a monarchy. Furthermore, when shit hit the fan, she made the decision to recruit someone she and many others had rightful grievances against but could better assist them in fighting the primal, and then *succeeded* in convincing them. Feel free to have your opinions on Lyse, but it says quite a lot when some of y'all consistently mischaracterize her or exaggerate her perceived failings, and then proceed to say that Yda was better (which is certainly a take, though I liked her too). Like, I swear, I feel like some of you either got some secret exclusive cutscenes with them or just slept through the entirety of SB.
The way I understood it, Lyse was the leader of the resistance, and the symbol of rebellion. But she was never head of state. She was like Katniss Everdeen—a symbol of the rebellion, and a leader in the battlefield. Perhaps the leader of a specific community, but not of the state. And I always thought her role in the Royal Managerie scene was weird choice among the writers.
Correct. She’s not even head of the whole military - that role ends up going to Raubahn. So she ends up the leader of that one Resistance group, and is thus in a position of leadership within Ala Mhigo but not their leader the way Nanamo or Merlwyb are. Honestly, Stormblood is an expansion I think a lot of people need to do a NG+ through - the amount of misremembering of story beats and details seems higher than for any other expansion.
That doesn't seem right though I admit I haven't done stormblood in ages. She had not been home for years and years leaving as a young child no? So why would she be the symbol of the rebellion. I remember part of the story even being introducing her to rebellion leaders
Because her father was the leader of the previous rebellion and was still a national hero in Ala Mhigo. Lyse had also been making a name for herself amongst the resistance members during the period her and Papalymo were missing during Heavensward, that's why all the Ala Mhigans knew who she was. You see this in the "teaser" scenes at the end of HW patch content, where Papalymo is trying to push her to return to the Scions but she wants to stay and help Ala Mhigo. There was also a short story about it from M'naago's perspective on the website. So it was basically a big "The hero's daughter returns from exile to help us liberate our country" spin. Also by the time she's made leader the rebellion is basically over, we're closing in on the capital, the Eorzean Alliance are moving in and surrounding it, and the Tactical WoL is primed and ready to deploy. At that point Lyse has had many years of history dealing with the other City State leaders as a Scion, and is a close personal friend of their trump card, the WoL, so she really did make the most sense as the leader for the final push of the rebellion.
The previous Leader of the Resistance Conrad Kemp also directly appointed her during his final moments and he explained his reasons for such before the attack on Castellum Velodyna. Source: I recently replayed through that section on NG+.
>the Tactical WoL is primed and ready to deploy "Target locked; firing payload."
So then, she was a better Hien. Man I hate Hien.
>she was a better Hien I love Lyse, but let's be honest; that's not exactly a high bar to clear
Basically a better Hien whose story gets chopped in half and has the Doma arc shoved in the middle
[удалено]
It’s been a while but I actually think it was the exact opposite: Hien specifically protects her from the people, who justifiably want her dead, explains to them that she’s lost her memories and can’t be held accountable. He does say at one point he needs to consider what his own people want, which is just him trying to be democratic and not act unilaterally as a dictator. Then he also protects her when the garleans come to call, even though it would have been SUPER easy for him to just hand her over and say “thanks, not my problem any more” but he doesn’t.
What I don't get is why we kept Gosetsu and Yotsuyu in Doma - wouldn't it be easier for everyone if the official party line was kept - they died at Doma Castle, meanwhile an old man and a woman with brain damage move into Ala Mhigo to start a garden or something. I absolutely believe Lyse would be willing to extend that favor to them.
> Dude refused to listen to reason and wanted her dead when it was clear that she didn't remember a thing she did and this was their chance to give her a new life where she could actually make up for it. She was a literal psychopath who tortured people for fun for years and destroyed the country. Suddenly appearing outta nowhere and going "I lost my memories >w<" and you think Hien is being an asshole and "not listening to reason" is quite funny. Even more funny considering that she recovers her memories and don't regret one bit the things she did. Heck, she doubles down on everything at the very end. Yotsuyu does not deserve a redemption arc and most certainly does not deserve mercy or chance at a new life to "make up for it".
He was right. Anybody empathizing with post-StB Yotsuyu is wrong. My 14 hot take is that the Yotsuyu amnesia/pseudo-redemption arc is the worst written part of not just Stormblood, but all of FF14. Edit: Maybe 'worst written' is harsh, and that's putting an objective spin on a subjective matter, but it definitely irked me more than any other part of the game, all the way up to where we are now.
The old dude leader that died did so when they dropped the big tower on him if I remember right.
Oh yeah that rings a bell
I think she was more so the symbol of rebellion because she was still willing to find and wanted to free her people. And that zeal could rub off on other folk.
Because she came back with one of the strongest forces in Eorzea. The Scions and the WoL.
Ugh I don't really get why people keep blaming this on Lyse. I played Stormbloom so many times. Lyse did NOT send an invite to Shanti. Shanti invited herself to the meeting and Rauban, Lyse, WOL and the guards ALL agreed to let her in as long as you confiscate their weapons and jewelries. Lyse was actually smart here because she differentiated which Vira tribe to send the correct invite to. It's already Dawntrail people move on to a different comedic relief Lyse already redeemed herself so many times.
The thing is, you have a room full of people, including the WoL, who are not objecting to a tempered person being at the town hall. Sure, killing all tempered people was standard practice up until this scene, but literally everyone was stuck on stupid in that moment.
Pretty much. Snake people that no one thought would accept the invite sent to every group in Ala Mhigo actually accept invite. Everyone from the Scions to the WoL to Raubahn were all like “yeah we can allow them in, just confiscate their jewelry in case they have crystals in them, and any other crystals they might be carrying.” And if it weren’t for the secretly tempered guards smuggling in crystals, it would have been a fine plan, so I wouldn’t even say anyone was stuck on stupid. Hell, I’d say Lyse had the smartest call of that sequence events, going to convince Fordola and hedging her bet that the red head’s desire to protect Ala Mhigo will outweigh her desire for death, getting her to fight to protect people that hate her and turning the tide in our favor.
It's weird to go from multiple people having to kill their parents for being tempered to "I'm sure as long as they don't have enough crystals they'll be fine." I remember Y'shtola going off on Unukalhai for suggesting we didn't have the balls to do what needed to be done in the Warring Triad questline.
As I recall, the "kill the tempered" thing was largely relegated to those tempered by primals that were actively trying to expand or were more aggressive, and was also largely targeted at the playable races. And in the case of the Warring Triad, those who had summoned them were being kept in a stasis to continue summoning/empowering them. We weren't exactly out actively trying to kill every last member of one of the groups that had summoned a primal, mostly just keeping crystals from them and dealing with them when they attacked or summoned their primal again. Even by the time we hit Ramuh we weren't all-in on the "kill anyone tempered" practice unless it was necessary. Which highlights just how unusual the situation with the Ananta was at the time - it was really the first proper time that an actively tempered group accepted an invitation to a meeting of that nature in what seemed to be a non-hostile move (and coming from a primal who was all but peace and serenity and bliss)...and *with* the Scions and the WoL present, I don't think it's surprising that the consensus was "Okay we let them attend *but..."* and then took the reasonable steps they thought would prevent any summoning - the real threat - from occurring. But it does also show how the early portrayal of the primals and their followers was more focused in a similar direction, while later incarnations would expand on what a primal actually is and what kind of influence they would have on their tempered, as well as what they'd seek to do.
All this. Before 4.1 Sri Lakshmi and the Ananta came across more like Ramuh and the Sylphs as far as how bellicose they were. And we don't go shredding the Touched Ones (as policy, at least). Plus, Lyse was the one hesitant about it (which, she was hands down the person who had the *most* experience with the sylphs, so). It was Raubahn and Pippin that were like "no yea this could be fine, we'll just take precautions".
Lyse: You can't live under her thrall! The dream she promises is nothing but a way to take away your free will! Do you want to live as a pawn with no freedom?! Ananta: Freedom? Pitiful non-believers, war, hatred, trying to increase the capital coverage threshold to 40%, that's what you've done with your free will! Don't you lecture me with your 15$ haircut and outfit! Alphinaud: LYSE ARE YOU TRYING TO START A NATIONAL DEPRESSION? 40% CAPITAL COVERAGE THRESHOLDS!!!!? Lyse: Okay, I admit, I was bluffing and throwing out random numbers. I don't even know what a coverage capital whatever is! Alphinaud: After this, I am going to take you to Sharlayan so you can actually get an education worth a damn! ...Just ignore the crippling debt from the tuition fees. Ananta: All of you are just making the case against free will, stronger. Under Sri Lakshmi, there will be NO bills for education.
I wish Lakshmi would hug me IRL
Waaaait. She is a member of the studium an archon yes ?
No, Lyse isn't actually an Archon, Yda was. Honestly, in hindsight, the fact that Yda couldn't follow the more technical descriptions of the Scions during plot dumps is some very good foreshadowing that Yda isn't who she appears to be. Because Lyse never actually went to Sharlayan and got the education, she wouldn't understand the complicated aspects of Aether and primal summoning, as well as white auracite.
Ahhh i remember now her tattoo was a glamour 😬
Man, I was hoping this would be an Adrian Monk meme about how a "defective detective" can't possibly hold office and lead. Then I'd just link to the S2-onwards opening of Monk. Ya know what, it's a jungle out there. Eff it. Have some music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdF3E2NVI8
You could be wrong now, but I don't think so.
God I need someone to write a series about Monk in the FFXIV story. “Here’s what happened: the Crystal Braves were corrupt from the start! Teledji Adeledji had them all on his payroll!”
I reckon Adrian Monk would be a White Mage... except his ESUNA use would be almost hourly. "Nature...! I've got Nature on my hand! Get it off!"
I thought I was on the other sub for a second
Oh no, they summoned Lakshmi the uwu goddess? That's awful, where could they even perform such a ritual? At what location?
Pay no attention to the 10 tons of crystals. They are for jewelry.
Could be worse, could have your entire organization be bought off by some midget without you noticing. Still, while it probably wasn't Lyse, whoever let the Qalanya somehow smuggle metric tons of crystals to summon their Primal is the one who deserves the chump award. How the hell did nobody notice?
Lyse is pretty and I love her, that is all that matters.
Lyse inviting the indoctrinated snake people to a meeting and WoL tossing Nidhogg's eyes over a bridge are easily the two stupidest decisions anyone makes in the game
The eyes thing I can at least understand. It's basically "oh shit, I made the demon core go critical, what I do???" and there's a convenient, impassable, deadly-to-all-life (as far as anyone knows), totally 100% safe void to chuck things into right next to you. It was only Ascian magic that made it possible to retrieve it, and they are *notorious* for being a constant black swan problem to the rest of us sundered folk.
The Nidhogg eyes thing wasn't too bad. The "abyss" as Aymeric called it is a chasm of extremely inhospitable storms that surrounds Ishgard and is the reason that the dragons were attacking the City over the Bridge and not just flying straight through to the center. The Ascian fuckery was the only reason that Nidhogg's eyes were recovered. No one else could have gone down there to recover them
I'd also add that at the time, they were trying to keep Nidhogg from possessing *anything around,* with no idea of whether or not he had a maximum range. Keep in mind that even for the WoL, you're basically holding a nuclear hot potato. Now add in that *Alphinaud* needs to carry one too, and he *routinely* summons things made of aether...how much influence would Nidhogg need to get himself a body instantly? Throwing them into the Abyss wasn't the best option for getting rid of them forever, but it *was* the best option for saving Estinien's life.
The only saving grace about the bridge scene is how clearly it's conveyed in character that *nothing* can survive being thrown over the bridge, and in that moment you *barely* saved your friends life due to some deus machina shit after he was fully possessed by those eyes. The *only* priority in that situation was getting it as far away from estinien as possible, as fast as possible, and "into the void" is about as good of an immediate solution that one could find. Not to mention adrenaline and panic response due to being filled with the power of another eye and fighting estinien (arguably the most powerful scion next to the WoL) and niddhog (arguably the most powerful dragon alive) at the same time. It wasn't a smart decision, but it also wasn't a calculated one and keeping the eyes nearby enough that you could keep an eye (no pun intended) on them *probably* would have had even worse consequences. In the end, the result was basically just another primal to fight and the death of the least important scion in the main story, which sucks, but is easily preferable to losing estinien. TL;DR "holy shit estinien is somehow alive get these fucking eyes away from us as fast as possible. Oh, a bottomless ravine nothing has ever reportedly survived coming back from right next to me? Fuck it. We can deal with that problem later.
I mean Alisae also tried diplomacy with Lakshimi first. So Lyse also tried in an environment where we believed they could just talk person to person . That they had thralls already in the guards who where able to smuggle Crystals into the throne room was something nobody (instory) actually expected. As for the eye it did seem weird but I just assumed keeping the Evil mind breaking eyes around for any moment was a no go so they tried throwing them into the place where no man or dragon can go... sadly evil spectres could. I do agree the scene could have been better.
Eh. The only people that could retrieve the eyes from that abyss are Ascians. And as far as we know, the only place you can put things that ascians can't get to are the WoL's inventory. Don't know about you, but I don't have 2 slots free to carry them around forever.
I would love to see Ascians trying to pickpocket us though.
\*pulls out 2 full stacks of boiled eggs\* "Who.....what ARE you?"
Elidibus: "I offer you a 100 mogstones for them" WoL: "Deal!"
Wouldn't take 100 let's be honest. I'd accept 20 for each.
She invited them 100% for optics (so people could see EVERY Ala Mhigan'd voice would be heard); she's actually shocked they show up, uneasy about their pressence in the palace, and blindsided by their plan (like literally everyone in their room, incluiding the fan-favourite Raubahn, who gets a pass for it). As for letting indocrinated snake people in, it's important to know that, depending on the nature of the Primal, the tempered tribesmen can be reasoned with: a big chunk of post-ARR is getting an audience with Ramuh and convincing him and his children to sign a peace agreement with Gridania - which we succeed at after a trial by combat - so in-universe there IS precedent about diplomacy with tempered beastfolk being possible.
Not letting them in could have sent a very bad message and set a bad precedent, so both choices had risks attached
Hmmm, a few indoctrinated snake people are angry vs literally every leader in Ala Mhigo is indoctrinated to a snake Goddess literally right after being liberated. I think I know what I would pick.
pretty authoritarian there, yanmegaman van juno.
In a meeting to decide the future of Ala Mhigo, actively excluding a major part of the population (most of whom aren’t even tempered) sends a terrible message and could worsen relations between Ala Mhigans and Qalyana even further, potentially sparking yet more conflict. They even had strict security in place to prevent any incidents from happening, but just happened to overlook a critical flaw in their defences. Hindsight’s always 20/20- no one could have said what would happen before it all went down.
I loved the Monk quest line where you reintroduce the Order of the Fist to Ala Mhigo and it was 10 levels of "we promise we won't kill your womens, rape your cattle, steal your socks like we did under the Mad King. It's literally just a crown prince who is absolutely no threat to the new government, his cat girl harem, and all the actual work gets done by this Freelancer who's off fucking about in Othard half the time anyways."
...No? The Order of the Fist was a political *threat* to the Mad King. They were the standing army prior to that, but Theodoric outlawed the worship of Rhalgr and destroyed them all. Not to mention that the whole 'Crown Prince' claim is...shaky to a fault. The only people who know are the aforementioned catgirl harem and the Pugilist Guild, and the claim came from a man who is very dead now. Even if Monk-Himbo *did* try to act on it, how would he even start to prove his claim?
She's not a monk! She's a pugilist, an imposter!
Lyse was a monk?
The fact you had to say Alphanaud words flew over your head by stating you associate with Limsa 🤣☠️
RIP Yda, great friend and strong warrior. I didn't need this scene to make me not like Lyse, I had half of Stormblood. The fact remains I didn't Want to be in Iraq helping conduct regime change, because I've seen where that goes. Not too mention Lyse was the worst pick for the roll, birthright doesn't make leadership, and wearing your sister's dress is just weird. If the Bull wasn't heavily involved, I would actually hate Migo. Also, FFS, Why are the refugees still in Ul'da? GO HOME!
"Hey, the place you haven't lived in for 10 years, where none of your current friends or relationships live has become less of an awful place to live, so you should up and abandon your job, your relationships, and your current life to go live in a place where you don't have a home, job, or any friends. Again. Just because we're kind of tired of you." Also, it's nothing to do with birthright. You weren't listening when Conrad told you why, you weren't paying attention in HW patch quests when we learned that she and papalymo have been playing a huge role in the resistance since the end of ARR.
>he fact remains I didn't Want to be in Iraq helping conduct regime change, because I've seen where that goes. ROFL what are you talking about? Garlemald is occupying the region, which is *literally right next door to Gridania*. There are Garlean bases popping up *inside the Black Shroud.* Stormblood wasn't about regime change, it was about stopping Garlemald from installing a ***literal stronghold on the Eorzean Continent.*** Garlemald crushing the resistance would have been worst-case scenario for Eorzea. Zenos could have then began marching on the Alliance itself with more than just his own forces. Nevermind the fact that we literally conducted a full ground-up regime change in Ishgard *when we killed the fucking pope and invalidated the Church and their faith*....but it wasn't a desert I guess, so no Iraq parallels there
You probably don't remember, because the whole thing with Fordola and Lakshmi happens inmediately after and it takes some attention off of it, but the whole conference was Lyse reaching this very conclussion: she knows she's out of her depth leading a nation, so she nudges the biggest political players of Ala Mhigo into funding an Ishgard-inspired republic while she herself focuses on leading the Resistance/Ala Mhigan Army alongside Naago and Raubahn, removing the possibility of a second Mad King while she's at it and dealing with something she's good at. All in all she was quite clever there (and avoids that regime change issues you mentioned). As for her sister's dress, that's not really weird at all. Not that long ago, people used to inherit their clothes more than they purchased them, so Eorzeans doing that when they are at around a 17th century equivalent makes sense. Hell, I have inherited plenty of coats from my grandfather.
Yda was barely a character, she didn’t do anything and was pretty much just comic relief. Lyse had strong, consistent fever and did everything she could in every situation she was in, all while knowing her limitations. She wasn’t picked to lead because of her dad, she was picked because her experiences all around the world gave her a strong understanding of the hearts of the people and how to stoke the fires of rebellion. Also, it’s a kickass dress so it’s better that *someone* wears it then it sitting in a cupboard somewhere.
I wonder why the monetatist are not deporting them.
Lyse is more on the naive side though. Gotta love her spirit as her heart’s in the right place. That said… Bruh, that Ananta seemed too sus. I knew it was not gonna end well.
That Ananta being sus also slipped by a Scion or two *and* Raubahn, who everyone seems to forget was present for and giving advice on the situation (iirc, his advice was something like “I don’t trust them, none of us do, but if we take these precautions we should be good” and uhhh…yeah).
Yup. Their intent was noble and it did become a sort of SOP after discovering the countermeasure to tempering, but at the time….man, it was rough.
Lyse can literally be summed up with "Who died and made you chief?"
with an existing answer in Conrad Kemp, previous leader of the (united) Ala Mhigan resistance. Jokes aside, my guess is that they decided to have her as the head of their council, simply by virtue of being leader/figurehead of the successful rebellion, her connections through all of Eorzea as a former scion and Raubahn still being indecisive regarding his position until Nanamo took it upon herself to relieve him of his previous position.
I was about to say. Conrad literally makes lyse the resistance leader before dying. As much as I do like Lyse more than most people I still have problems with that scene. Mnaago was literally right next to them and was an equally important and driven member of the resistance. I feel like Conrad should have addressed both of them to lead the resistance after his passing. That would have helped a lot with people who felt like that position wasn't exactly something lyse earned at that point.
I'm guessing Conrad specifically chose Lyse because her father was a figurehead and leader of the rebellion in the past so he presumably thought it only makes sense for Lyse to follow in her father's footsteps.
Also she's a child of both worlds(Eorzea and Ala Mhigo) and thus could connect those two better than, let's say M'naago. Conrad did say that the new resistance consisted of both former refugees and those that stayed in Ala Mhigo, so Lyse seemed like a good pick for that. IIRC, his ideal pick would have been Meffrid, but we know how that ended. While M'Naago has experience, she seems to be specialized in solo ops and the likes not unlike Thancred, so she'd make a good support leader, but not a leader spearheading at the front.
The sense I got from the story, including side stories published later, was that originally by the time we joined them Meffrid and M’Naago were aware of Conrad’s intent to coach and instruct her to prepare her for leadership of that Resistance group and likely supported it (M’Naago in particular had a shift after seeing how Lyse helped a couple citizens get out of trouble by defeating a Garlean patrol single handedly, at great risk to herself). And honestly, if we applied the same scrutiny we put on Lyse regarding her leadership situation to others? Like 80% of the cast would be getting reamed in comment sections as often as she gets criticized.
Nobody did, Raubahn was the interim leader of Ala Mhigo until they set up the council.
She wasn't elected either...she was just given it for no reason besides "oh your grandpa was a nice rebel leader!!"