LegendofLex
Member
As an aside,did the Dynast-King rule over all of Ivalice? He's said to be the ancestor of Dalmascan royalty. Is it stated he ruled far beyond that?
I actually don't remember.
That would make sense... if their reason for wanting power is explained at all. They don't want to be glorified like other gods, they don't want wealth, there's no indication that world stability is beneficial to them or what relationship they have with the world at all, besides their manipulations. I don't feel like we remotely know their nature or what they desire. Power is a means to an end: an end that we never see. They're just sitting in the netherworld living their eternal lives doing apparently nothing in particular. How would anything for them change if they didn't control history?
I'm actually pretty okay with not knowing what their motivations are.
It places the moral focus on whether it's okay to be manipulated from the shadows, rather than the intentions of the people doing the manipulating.
The intentions that matter in the story are the intentions of Ashe and her crew and of Vayne, Cid, and Venat.
I get that. But it felt like the entire game was setting up there being more to the whole conflict than meets the eye. Vayne's murder of his brothers is portrayed as of an ambiguous nature, and his relationship with Larsa is good besides their differing views on foreign policy. Vayne's initial introduction showed him being magnanimous towards the conquered Dalmascans, not condescending or brutish. He makes overtures for peace with Ashe's crew. Hell, in the final scene before the climactic battle, he's shown as having pity towards Ashe for not being willing to wield power to save her people, like he (apparently?) feels the need to. He's shown as having an amicable relationship with virtually everyone he gets screen time with. The only moments of cruelty he has in the entire game is with some of the Judges, and even then he's not exactly full-blown villainous. And I never got the impression that he had the naked ambition of expanding territorial control or ruling the world, like you seem to have. His desire for war with everyone was inscrutable to me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a line between "look at this morally ambiguous villain" and "look at this villain that you don't understand." Vayne definitely felt more like the latter.
In the very first scene where we see Vayne, he's just set up Basch as a traitor, murdered the king of the kingdom he just conquered ("and to think, we were going to let you keep some of your sovereignty"), and directed the false announcement of the suicide of that king's surviving heir. He's basically engaged in a massive fake news/gaslighting campaign against Dalmasca.
That gaslighting continues beyond his conquest of Dalmasca. He tells Migelo that the emperor of Archadia is a democratically elected official, but it's clear his perspective on that matter is bullshit.
He kills his own father to seize the throne, and orders the arrest of the senate that hoped to restrain his rise.
That all seems very power hungry to me. Power hungriness doesn't need a motivation; want for power is a motivation.
Except... he doesn't co-opt the puppet strings? He destroys the nethicite entirely. Your view would be more tenable if he had killed the Occuria and/or seized the Sun Cryst for his own ends. Instead, he didn't make a move against them, destroyed the Cryst, and then delved headlong into his entirely unnecessary war.
Vayne doesn't do this.
It's Ashe/Reddas who do this.
he's actually harnessing the Mist that spills from the Sun-Cryst to power Bahamut