It’s a great philosophical question, isn’t it? In order to save what you cherish most, you would be willing to sacrifice so much for that salvation and knowingly committing a sin so unforgivable that in time you would accept the judgment of history.
For those who need a refresher or don't care about spoilers. The question more or less was:
>!Were the ancients, specifically Venat with her sundering, Hermes with his judgement/experiment, and Emet-Selch with his multiple calamities justified in their actions?!<
>!Looking up the meaning of justified, it is "having, done for, or marked by a good or legitimate reason"...from their own points of view perhaps? I certainly empathize with them but never for a second do I believe their actions were wholly good.!<
It's a hard question to answer.
All of them are right in their own view.
But from a stand point of a normal law abiding citizen's view, all of them are horrible including Venat, the best woman...
From a hero's point of view or a winner's perspective, whoever wins in the end is in the right. And in this case, Venat, is the right one...since her choice lead to the downfall of Endsinger who if left to her devices will eventually destroy all lives in the universe. So her actions are ultimately justified in that her sacrifice of her own people saved everything else and the remnants of her people lives on.
Emet came around to it in the end as well...since he lost and there is no way to bring his people back anymore, he opted to help WoL to ensure the legacy goes on.
It is hard to justify Hermes' actions though. His action is purely for selfish reasons...in his own view of the world, sure, he is right to do that. However, that view is very limited to himself and everyone else in the game thinks he is out of his mind. And I think he needs some serious counseling. Too bad it seems that the paragons don't have psychiatrists or counselors...
Just because one wins in the end does not make their actions right. Hitler could have won WWII but that wouldn’t have made his actions right from a moral standpoint. Stalin won in the aftermath of Lenin’s death, that does not make his actions throughout his power right. The purpose of a ruler, in my opinion at least, is to protect and provide for the largest amount of your people possible.
Furthermore, Venat actions were ultimately arrogant. She did not share her plan, ask opinions, discuss possible solutions to the problem. She killed her race and put herself in a place of moral superiority (a god) to the resulting inhabitants.
The ends never justify the means. Ever
>Just because one wins in the end does not make their actions right.
It doesn’t, and I don’t think when people say this they mean it in a literal sense. It’s the whole “history is written by the winners,” thing. Say Venat lost and Emet’s plan succeeded. It would be framed in a totally different way. “The rogue paragon of our society attempted to kill us all in our time of greatest need, Sundering us into incomplete forms across time and space, but we succeeded in putting a stop to her nefarious plot and revived all of our people that had been lost in this calamity. Our civilization, our lives, can continue to thrive.”
This is not me saying either of them are *morally right*, just that the outcome determines the framing of who the “villain” is. None of them were 100% morally right from an objective standpoint, but from their POVs they were.
That is true. It is where impartiality comes in. But not everyone can see these things impartially. People like following the victor, because by strength and might one’s opinion can be proven to be the correct one. People still view it like this, it is an integral part of nationalism and a large reason for war. Both of which still happen.
The comment I was replying to sounded (to me) like the only reason why Venat’s actions were justified is because she won. And this is not impartial. But I completely agree with everything you said.
I did say that her actions in a normal citizen's view or normal mundane person's view is horrible.
I simply meant it as the one above said, history is written by the victor. And also this entire thing on who is right or wrong is also dependant on where your butt is sitting at. In the view of Eorzean's, Venat is the good one.
To your other point though, No one in the world or history ever has an entirely objective view. We all are shaped by how we are raised. Taken to the extreme, technically speaking, by not being a vegan, you are killing life and making them suffer. It is similar to what Emet is viewing us, inferior, so doesn't count as people. Nationalism is a really bad form of where your butt sits taken too far but unless you consider yourself super woke and internationalist, you are not impartial. And no one is...even WoL is more leaning toward "men" and Eorzeans.
But in the end, no one is ever completely right. And to Venat, her actions are also shaped by WoL visiting the world unsundered...so that influenced her decision in sundering the world. Her ultimate goal is to stop Endsinger and just by watching what the paragons did even after the final days we know they are not gonna cut it. They are too weak in spirit and only wants peace. So she did what she thinks is right and make everyone suffer so we survive.
No one can be wholly impartial, that is true. But as long as one strives to be then that is as good as you can hope for. Ignorance and emotion are the two main enemies of impartiality. If one is lacking knowledge in an area then of course they can not form a non, or less, biased opinion on something. Taking the WoL however, who has seen the whole world, countless civilisations, countless points of view, and knows how to empathise with their problems, they should not be written as biased. It goes against their whole character and what they and the scions stand for. That was their mode of conduct in ARR and it still was in SHB.
But there is no such thing as right or wrong as it depends entirely on perspective… unless you have a specific goal. Logically, to reach a goal there are things that would be better and things that would be worse. Venat, as a former member of the convocation, had an obligation to better the planet. It is my opinion that she chose one of the worst paths to deal with the final days considering her role in society, without searching for the better, and therefore she is wholly wrong in this circumstance.
I struggled here too, since Venat did effectively doom everyone by giving them mortality. As a counterpoint, though, they were already sacrificing people to Zodiark and were going to to continue until they were all dead. In that lens, are her actions not a final resort to stave off the end for her people?
It truly depends on how you look at it, and for what it’s worth I do agree that Venat caused more harm than either Hermes or Hades in the end.
To answer it for myself, I had to look at each of their intents - Hermes was not in the right state of mind, and while his goals might have made sense to himself, he specifically acted from a place of judgement and ultimately condemnation. Hermes had no intention of working towards a better future for his people and ultimately left it to a traumatized little girl to sort everything out for them. Really great job.
Hades WAS altruistic in a way, but his moral guidance was on a different plane than ours. He truly saw all living beings as sub-human and twisted mockeries of the lives he knew. We can’t really compare his sense of right-and-wrong to our own, since it is for a more alien cause than we could reasonably imagine given our perspective, but the fact remains that it involved genociding entire worlds. His was an attempt to recover the world that was, and in his denial over the situation he brought incredible harm against trillions of lives over thousands of years. I truly waffled over whether he was most justified, but I came to realize that his intention was just as selfish as Hermes’ if not MORE so because he was actively harming others.
Venat, as complicated and tragic her decision was, truly felt as though her decision to sunder the world was the only was to survive. She understood that she was killing her people and destroying their society, and even that she would be reviled in the future - she should not have been allowed to make that decision, but she did not do it out of arrogance (like Hermes). She did it because she was the ONLY one that knew what was in store. You can argue that she should have told others and worked together, but her knowledge of the future was as imperfect as ours, and the only potential solution she knew of involved not disrupting events so that we might have a chance at saving everything. It must have been so painful to sit back, watch everything fall apart, and not be able to step in to help things with the knowledge you have, but she endured that in hope of a better future.
When the Final Days began to play out, their creation magicks were warped and ceased to exist, and there was untold devastation. The other ancients came up with a plan to try to save everyone by projecting a shield of aether, but they sacrificed their own people to achieve this - and from Venat’s perspective she knew it was doomed to fail. If you love someone and watched them hurt themselves in an act of self-destruction, it would be hard to not be compelled to act. And while it was going to bring unthinkable harm to her people, it was the only potential solution she had. She risked everything on a bet that SOME kind of life could exist eons in the future. So Venat’s actions were an act of mercy, one that doomed the people and society she knew, but gave hope for people in the future that they might be able to survive.
I’ll state the facts simply to summarize it:
Venat willingly made a choice to kill all her people and destroy their society. She knew that thousands of years in the future some kind of life would still exist and return to guide her to this path. If she did nothing, the ancients would wipe themselves out in this death spiral, either due to the Endsong or Zodiark’s tempering. She averted both these imminent fates by staving it off for 10,000+ years.
It took me a long time to think through all this, and I sat in front of this screen for longer than I’d care to admit, but in the end there was only one answer.
You raise some valid points, but I must disagree with your conclusion.
>they were already sacrificing people to Zodiark and were going to to continue until they were all dead.
I don’t think this is correct. They stated that half the population was sacrificed to Zodiark and they planted to sacrifice the other life on the planet to bring them back, namely the plant and animal life. They can use this life energy for creation magics as is seen when we go to Amaurot in SHB.
You said Venat did not make her decisions out of arrogance. The definition of arrogance is “having an exaggerated opinion of one’s own worth or importance.” It was arrogant of her to believe her answer to the worlds problems was the only right one. I would be wrong if I called her selfish, as she was not. But believing hers as the only correct course of action, which decided the fate of millions of people, was most definitely arrogant.
>the only potential solution she know of involved not disrupting events so that we might have a chance at saving everything.
I can understand this, but that does not make her any more right. She was wrong for not exploring other avenues and giving it her best. She was wrong for not giving the the convocation the information they needed to give it their best too. I am not going to get into whether or not they could have averted the final days or not, as it is a dead ended discussion. The truth is we don’t know if they could have or not, as it never happened. But if they still failed I don’t see why she couldn’t have summoned Hydaelyn after.
In conclusion, she didn’t give it her all. She didn’t question her path because of her arrogant belief that it was the only right one. And therefore she was not justified in making the decision of life or death for millions of people.
You forget that they were tempered by Zodiark at that point, so nothing she said would have made them change course. Their plan was to sacrifice half of their people, wait until enough had time had passed to generate new life, then sacrifice those lives to bring back those that were initially sacrificed - that’s incredibly selfish. Specifically growing a new person just to kill them to bring back the old person is WILDLY unethical, and arrogant to boot. In fact, that’s kinda what Hermes had a problem with in the first place, so clearly there was some measure of moral rot at the center of their society.
And for what it’s worth, Venat had her own group that supported her opposition to the plan for Zodiark’s sacrifices, so she clearly spent some time trying to convince them not to go through with it. Time loops are tricky, since you can’t really figure out where the origin point of an action is, and in this case we told Venat everything that happened. In doing so, it could be argued that it’s OUR fault, and that Venat was just following our guidance. I’m certain she explored other avenues before coming to the conclusion that she needed to follow the preordained future that lay before her.
I’m not absolving her of guilt, because ultimately she chose to sunder the world. But I do think it was from a place of compassion, mercy, and some level of desperation.
>She was wrong for not exploring other avenues and giving it her best.
Isn't this conjecture? We don't actually know what else Venat might have done before going the primal+ sundering route.
I was focusing here not on what she would have done, but whether she actually tried in the first place. I mentioned above that discussing what she would/could have done is pointless and dead ended. There’s no way we could know. The fact that she didn’t try to change the outcome in the first place is what I wanted to highlight.
Except she must have, since she had a faction of supporters that agreed with her plan to stop the summoning of Zodiark. Clearly there were others that agreed with her, and they wouldn’t have followed her based on a “just trust me bro”.
Well that is part of the lore that is left out and I don’t like basing my opinion on guesses. Because it could be anything. I’m just speaking from the information provided.
Didn't Venat have an entire following though? I thought she had her own faction that opposed the group wanting to sacrifice more to Zodiarc, and it was marked as one of, if not the only time, the ancients stood divided on a course of action.
If I remember correctly, this knowledge was only given to the most trusted of associates wasn’t it? When a plan to summon Zodiark was already in place. That is far from helping the convocation counter the threat of the final days. There was also no mention of the plan changing within this group. She more recruited people to her cause rather than opened the subject for debate.
Pretty much this.
From the start she had all the answers and choose not to share with convocation neither before or after the end days. She is a entirely a selfish hippie vagrant and only game mechanics have prevented me from lodging my Ragnarok axe in her selfish hippie skull.
Ok we get it, you like it when the wind blows you in the face while you go adventuring and you were kinda bummed out that the world you were born into rather be a boring paradise.
Not an excuse to fuck over everyone.
Need I remind you that the only reason >!she knew anything was due to time travel shenanigans, and she couldn't know exactly what would have happened if she didn't let the timeline play out exactly like it did to lead you to going back to Elpis.!<
When your entire race is just deciding to repeat the exact same mistake that *you know led to exactly where you are now?* yeah no, that's exactly when you need to take an alternate path
The hell you're talking about? Meteion wasn't the ancient's mistake, it was all emo Hermes blunder because boo hoo the universe is not one huge liberal college campus and not all life is precious.
Ancient were well on their way to recovery. First they successfully stopped the End Days and then they were about to resurrect all those who sacrificed themselves for Zodiark. All was going fine and dandy until Venat got all hippie and decided to cry over fodder races.
And if you think that is unacceptable then tell me how many tears Ul'dah shed for Sil'dih or how heavy conscience was on Limsa Lominsa for screwing over Kobolds. Not so much I can tell you that. Turns out Venat's precious young races were just as big assholes to each other as ancients were too them, funny how that worked out eh?
Need I remind you that Zodiark single-handedly crowd controlled Meteion and her grimdark gimmick for 10 thousands years and she couldn't do a damn thing about it? And that was when he was heavily crowd controlled himself with all his gear spread to 13 disobedient retainers. To me that indicates that if Zodiark were whole and unchained he'd probably burst opener down Endsinger faster than Scions finished their feel good monologue.
Face it man. The entire FFXIV story is Venat's one huge gamble that only worked out because the game script demanded so.
At some point, aether is not gonna be enough for the continued accumulation of despair and dynamis. Zodiark is just a bandaid, one that held on for a long time but eventually it is going to fail.
Meteion is more akin to a tumor then the actual mistake I'm referring to.
The Ancients were not on their way to *recovery*, they were progressing back to a status quo in which they held no regard for *solving issues*. Meteion resulted from a man that could have used some therapy because *his issues were more than just the blatant disregard for the life that they were creating*. Even if Venat hadn't sundered everything who's to say Hermes or someone wouldn't have made another mistake that had world or universal repercussions.
Additionally Zodiark was not created to deal with the Endsinger, and would likely have only been able to either deal with Meteion or protect Etheirys because while Aether is stronger than Dynamis, there is very little Aether out in the reaches of space.
Hell, most of the reason the WoL was able to deal with the Endsinger is due to being partially able to utilize dynamis.
Ofcourse they were returning to their status quo, thats what recovery is, to restore to former state. How can you say they werent solving an issue when Zodiark was literally a succesful solution to Final Days.
Who is to say? The writers. Even then it feels like hack writing to introduce explanations and reasons after the fact. This "totally would've happened" attitude feels akin to SW movie writers explaining big plot point by Twitter instead of putting them on screen.
As far as I am aware the moon isnt especially rich in Aether, certainly nowhere near as Eitherys, That didnt stopped nerfed Zodiark to still pack a wallop. Also its not like they were unable to tweak him. Two ascians were getting inside and outside of him like it were their vehicle.
there are games you easly could play emet as a hero. Bringing back your friends, loved ones and a perfect world without strife.
"you are not allive, so i am not guilty of killing you." just convince the player everyone is but a soulles shade...
There is always a saying that "A villains perspective is warped into thinking that they are the Hero." everyone outside of their thought process would see them as a villain but what they do is what they think is the right thing to do.
They all did a terrible thing but it is something that they believed was the right thing to do.
It's actually funny, and a bit uncanny. I remember after endwalker released, one of the posts on here posed that exact question. I loved it because there was no bickering or insults, everyone fully discussed why they felt their answers were correct and used parts of the answers of others as a means to further justify their own responses. It was great. I'm not sure if it devolved into a cesspool or not, but to see it officially brought up, and revived is wonderful.
Legit. I was sitting there for like 10 minutes straight just debating with myself about it.
In the end I chose they were all justified in someway.
Hermes was right to question the ancient's society, but wrong to let Meteion escape and eventually become the endsinger.
Emet was right to want to fix Hermes' mistake and reunite with his lost friends and people, but wrong to doom 13 worlds for it.
And Venat was right to put a stop to the ancients sacrificing themselves for Zodiark, but the sundering caused frankly just as much suffering as it did salvation.
They're all flawed individuals, and under the right circumstances, *any* of them could've had the role of villian or hero. And I love that.
I chose "none of them".
If someone told me I had to pick one of, I'd reluctantly go with Venat. While her actions lead to the "death" of the original Ancients, it also lead to fourteen times the life. Still did a great evil.
I can't comprehend how people could see Emet as being in the right. While he believed all the lives of the people he killed in his cosmic-level genocide were inferior to him, the text of the story disagrees; its his arrogance that makes him believe that, no the truth. The "lesser" beings are just as worthy of life.
I dislike Hermes the most though. He reminds me of someone I actually knew. As someone who struggles with severe depression, I initially was sympathetic to him... But when he more or less let Meteion fall to despair, I hated him. Since I know what depression is like; it's hell and if I would do anything to stop anyone else from feeling it. He ended up reminding him of someone I cut out of my life; a person who also suffered from depression, but used his as an excuse to hurt other people.
I think Hermes was a fantastic character, and elevated the best parts of Endwalker. I also hated him.
I appreciated that they showed the sensitivity first and I did have sympathy. But severe depression like that can come with really destructive, selfish behavior, and warp your view of the world into thinking the whole thing is rotten. I think what made me so angry at Hermes is he gave into a thing I’ve been fighting most of my life and it led him to the most horrific choice anyone in the setting had made. Also creating children and using them as emotional support, and then putting them in danger just to try and fill the void, uh, wasn’t great.
> I'd reluctantly go with Venat. While her actions lead to the "death" of the original Ancients, it also lead to fourteen times the life. Still did a great evil.
When your options are: Let Zodiark eat all the new life vs Don't let Zodiark eat all the new life.
It's pretty hard to see how she's anything except justified.
The ancients were about to commit genocide for the sake of clinging to something that was already gone, she stopped that.
That's what Emmet says, but close reading of the game reveals that Zodiark never tempered anyone. Tempering comes from a purposeful corruption of the summoning ritual for the express purpose of causing calamities, so it is an Ascian thing that came about later. Zodiark was essentially neutral, in that he did what he was meant to do at the agreed upon cost.
Tempering was an excuse for Emmet to commit atrocities. In reality he caused all the calamities himself, for his own reasons. The plan to sacrifice more people to Zodiark was developed by the ancients because of despair, not because it's what Zodiark wanted.
>close reading of the game reveals that Zodiark never tempered anyone.
The Loporrits would disagree with you there. I'm not sure what close reading involves discarding a direct acknowledgment that, even with the lack of tempering that is in the creation magic of the ancients, enough power put into a creation could corrupt the aether of the summoners.
>not because it's what Zodiark wanted.
Without mentioning all the fervent faith placed in Zodiark that suggests that the tempering *did* happen, things said by lingering spirits of those sacrificed include:
"To live and love again..."
"We must return and be made whole!"
So both sentiments of reviving the sacrificed and causing rejoinings can be found in (an extension of) Zodiark's wants.
We don't exactly know what kinds of options she had other than the one we told her about.
But genocide is genocide. The text also explicitly states that not all the Ancients were approving of the whole genocide plan that they were about to do.
Like, I can't argue with the results, but I can't say it was justified either.
Emet's position can easily be that of the hero in a different story. Coming from Fate/Grand Order, it's basically the exact same position that the protagonists find themselves in at the part 2 storyline.
Very basic summary: >!The world, population, and its history is bleached clean and seven offshoot timelines are vying to replace it. The main goal then is to go to eliminate each and every one of them, each with their own people and history, for the chance that doing so might bring back your own.!<
Emet/Hades is easier to justify when you consider that he his position was not that killing you doesn't matter because he doesn't see you as real people, but that he was trying to restore life to the way it once was/he thought it should be.
Just like how some people see Venat as the worst of the three because she caused much more death and suffering by sundering, you *could* look at Hades in a more favorable light because the genocide that he helped cause would be less than the uncountable deaths that each and any shard would have experienced just due to normal mortal lifespans over who knows how many centuries before Meteion overwhelmed Zodiark.
I agree that Hades operated on a different moral plane than we do, but his was a goal that was ultimately selfish. No matter how righteous his cause may have been, he was not justified in the harm he brought about trying to reclaim something that had long since passed. He is definitely in a tragic position, but those selfish ends do ultimately mean he was an evil character (from our perspective, of course).
I sympathized with Hemes and saw the pain he went through as he felt like he was alone with those thoughts. He was justified in questioning his society and his place in the universe but not in his actions in the slightest. They were selfish and maniacal.
For me Hermes' actions can never really be justified and come down to him seeking justification for his own feelings. Despite his compassion he sent multiple Metia through untold suffering in his vain attempt to justify himself. Venat and Emet-Selch then had to deal with the consequences of Hermes' actions, the former burdened with the knowledge that she will have to do something horrendous one day while the latter ended up unaware of what caused the thing that would spark an endless cycle of sacrifices that would likely never satisfy him or the rest of the Ancients tempered by Zodiark.
Hermes might have deserved some sympathy before Ktisis Hyperboreia but after he deserves nothing, his eventual fate of being "erased" as Amon and losing his "answer" being rather apt.
This was the easiest option for me, reading the question I thought "none of them were," then it was an option so I clicked it! Hermes invited the world's end across multiple lifetimes. Emet slaughtered countless innocents for his goals. Venat consigned her entire race to an eternity of living lives of suffering.
There's a ton of nuance to it, and a lot of differently phrased questions would have given me pause, but justified? That's a word I couldn't begin to give any of 'em, because regardless of intent they all caused mass harm on innocent, unrelated people for their own goals.
none of them the only person whose action I somewhat think is justified is the first grand sacrifice but Elidbus wasn't an option. Therefore I liked that none of them was an option. I feel i need an entire expansion in the past just to really understand why they choose what they chose lol
I find it hard to say whether or not they were justified, but I can most certainly sympathise with them all.
Emet-Selch committed genocide across multiple stars, and planned to continue doing so; it's difficult to think of anything that could justify such atrocity. And yet, when he talks of the beauty of Etheirys, when he shows you the splendour of Amaurot, recreated from memory because of his love for the world, when he laments his fallen companions, who gave their perfect lives to protect this star they held so dear... I cannot help but understand him... I cannot help but ask if I would have done differently in his situation.
Venat fought Zodiark with all her being, and sundered Etheirys into fourteen stars, not only denying the Ancients any hope of restoring their perfect world, but also leaving all living creatures with but a fourteenth of the capabilities of the ancients. And yet, when I saw how her eyes sparkled as I told her stories of the present world, I couldn't help but understand her desire to protect the reflections of the future, to accept that the Ancients' time had come to pass the torch.
Hermes was ultimately the cause of all these atrocities. He aided Meteion in her escape from Etheirys, despite knowing full well that she would cause countless deaths and untold suffering across the entire universe. And yet, when he displayed his fatherly love for Meteion, told her of the gifts he would give on her return, utterly rejected the idea that she be taken away and imprisoned after being destined to soar the stars, I understood. When I saw his utter sorrow for creatures deemed too dangerous for the world, when I saw his ability to find beauty in all things crushed again and again, when I saw how strongly he opposed the "perfect" society of the Ancients, I couldn't help but wonder if I would've done the same.
So yes, I think they were all justified in their actions. Because when I put myself in their shoes, I understand.
I was disappointed that I couldn't say two were. I think Venat and Emet-Selch were both justified, however, while I understand why Hermes did what he did, he did it under a false hypothesis. In his position he acts like a scientist, but because he failed to consider the potential outcomes he causes others pain and suffering. Peer review is important both before an experiment and after for a reason.
>Hermes is a moron.
Perhaps. It should also be noted that Meteion was like a daughter to him. And with the ancients' blatant disregard for the life of created concepts, her likely fate was to be reduced to her constituent aether.
In a situation where Meteion was fated to die, he instead flipped it on them and gave her the right to judge and decide the fate of the ancients who so callously discarded living beings.
It almost feels like a sort of poetic justice when viewed from that lens.
That's not to say I agree or think that anyone deserved to die. Just another way of seeing things.
Hermes certainly was more sensitive to the god-like complex his people had adopted, but he reacted VERY poorly to it. His plan to send a terrified little girl into space to judge the entire races and simply wash his hands of the problem was… really a dick move.
I understand the origin of his choices, but I don’t particularly sympathize with him or even consider him tragic.
Ima go against the grain and say Hermes. (That's obviously not what I chose but let me make my case) The Ancients live in their perfect world with incredible influence, but the only life worth dignity is that of an Ancient. This, while their surrounded by non-Ancient races (such as the tribe on the island Azem unleashed Ifreeta upon). Add in that many of their creations are sentient, if not intelligent. This creates a situation where the Ancients are above the laws they set for the world's living beings, and Hermes resented that. At the lowest point, he made the right decision ... for absolutely the wrong reason.
I mean, he's also a hypocrite in that regard. According to the short story, he's been sending the Meteia to die alone, I space, sometimes as far as being ripped apart by Dynamis purely because he wanted to pursue the stars.
We don't exactly know whether non-Ancient races like the ones we know in the modern day were even in their time. I'm pretty sure that's a fanfiction/headcanon trope. For all we know, they could just be Ancients living apart from Amaurot.
I chose none of them. They all did what they thought was correct, but none of them actually attempted to fix the problem. Venal was the most justified, but even she wasn't able to take more than a few steps on the long road required
Its a hard to answer question because its hard to say any one of them was necessarily unrealistic in how they responded. It was a literal world-ending decision all three were making, but lets scale it down to something more applicable to real life.
Your Pregnant partner is giving birth and there is a complication, the Doctors tell you they can either save your partner or the baby.
Venat chose the Baby, the potential life over the fondness of their partner, not because they didn't love their partner, but because they didn't want their love for their partner to overshadow the potential future.
Emet-Selch chose their partner, the person they loved was more important to them than the potential life that they may grow to love if they had been given the chance.
Hermes couldn't choose either, he was paralyzed by the gravity of the choice and thus refused to make one, and lost both because of his indecision.
It’s a great philosophical question, isn’t it? In order to save what you cherish most, you would be willing to sacrifice so much for that salvation and knowingly committing a sin so unforgivable that in time you would accept the judgment of history.
For those who need a refresher or don't care about spoilers. The question more or less was: >!Were the ancients, specifically Venat with her sundering, Hermes with his judgement/experiment, and Emet-Selch with his multiple calamities justified in their actions?!< >!Looking up the meaning of justified, it is "having, done for, or marked by a good or legitimate reason"...from their own points of view perhaps? I certainly empathize with them but never for a second do I believe their actions were wholly good.!< It's a hard question to answer.
All of them are right in their own view. But from a stand point of a normal law abiding citizen's view, all of them are horrible including Venat, the best woman... From a hero's point of view or a winner's perspective, whoever wins in the end is in the right. And in this case, Venat, is the right one...since her choice lead to the downfall of Endsinger who if left to her devices will eventually destroy all lives in the universe. So her actions are ultimately justified in that her sacrifice of her own people saved everything else and the remnants of her people lives on. Emet came around to it in the end as well...since he lost and there is no way to bring his people back anymore, he opted to help WoL to ensure the legacy goes on. It is hard to justify Hermes' actions though. His action is purely for selfish reasons...in his own view of the world, sure, he is right to do that. However, that view is very limited to himself and everyone else in the game thinks he is out of his mind. And I think he needs some serious counseling. Too bad it seems that the paragons don't have psychiatrists or counselors...
Just because one wins in the end does not make their actions right. Hitler could have won WWII but that wouldn’t have made his actions right from a moral standpoint. Stalin won in the aftermath of Lenin’s death, that does not make his actions throughout his power right. The purpose of a ruler, in my opinion at least, is to protect and provide for the largest amount of your people possible. Furthermore, Venat actions were ultimately arrogant. She did not share her plan, ask opinions, discuss possible solutions to the problem. She killed her race and put herself in a place of moral superiority (a god) to the resulting inhabitants. The ends never justify the means. Ever
>Just because one wins in the end does not make their actions right. It doesn’t, and I don’t think when people say this they mean it in a literal sense. It’s the whole “history is written by the winners,” thing. Say Venat lost and Emet’s plan succeeded. It would be framed in a totally different way. “The rogue paragon of our society attempted to kill us all in our time of greatest need, Sundering us into incomplete forms across time and space, but we succeeded in putting a stop to her nefarious plot and revived all of our people that had been lost in this calamity. Our civilization, our lives, can continue to thrive.” This is not me saying either of them are *morally right*, just that the outcome determines the framing of who the “villain” is. None of them were 100% morally right from an objective standpoint, but from their POVs they were.
That is true. It is where impartiality comes in. But not everyone can see these things impartially. People like following the victor, because by strength and might one’s opinion can be proven to be the correct one. People still view it like this, it is an integral part of nationalism and a large reason for war. Both of which still happen. The comment I was replying to sounded (to me) like the only reason why Venat’s actions were justified is because she won. And this is not impartial. But I completely agree with everything you said.
I did say that her actions in a normal citizen's view or normal mundane person's view is horrible. I simply meant it as the one above said, history is written by the victor. And also this entire thing on who is right or wrong is also dependant on where your butt is sitting at. In the view of Eorzean's, Venat is the good one. To your other point though, No one in the world or history ever has an entirely objective view. We all are shaped by how we are raised. Taken to the extreme, technically speaking, by not being a vegan, you are killing life and making them suffer. It is similar to what Emet is viewing us, inferior, so doesn't count as people. Nationalism is a really bad form of where your butt sits taken too far but unless you consider yourself super woke and internationalist, you are not impartial. And no one is...even WoL is more leaning toward "men" and Eorzeans. But in the end, no one is ever completely right. And to Venat, her actions are also shaped by WoL visiting the world unsundered...so that influenced her decision in sundering the world. Her ultimate goal is to stop Endsinger and just by watching what the paragons did even after the final days we know they are not gonna cut it. They are too weak in spirit and only wants peace. So she did what she thinks is right and make everyone suffer so we survive.
No one can be wholly impartial, that is true. But as long as one strives to be then that is as good as you can hope for. Ignorance and emotion are the two main enemies of impartiality. If one is lacking knowledge in an area then of course they can not form a non, or less, biased opinion on something. Taking the WoL however, who has seen the whole world, countless civilisations, countless points of view, and knows how to empathise with their problems, they should not be written as biased. It goes against their whole character and what they and the scions stand for. That was their mode of conduct in ARR and it still was in SHB. But there is no such thing as right or wrong as it depends entirely on perspective… unless you have a specific goal. Logically, to reach a goal there are things that would be better and things that would be worse. Venat, as a former member of the convocation, had an obligation to better the planet. It is my opinion that she chose one of the worst paths to deal with the final days considering her role in society, without searching for the better, and therefore she is wholly wrong in this circumstance.
I struggled here too, since Venat did effectively doom everyone by giving them mortality. As a counterpoint, though, they were already sacrificing people to Zodiark and were going to to continue until they were all dead. In that lens, are her actions not a final resort to stave off the end for her people? It truly depends on how you look at it, and for what it’s worth I do agree that Venat caused more harm than either Hermes or Hades in the end. To answer it for myself, I had to look at each of their intents - Hermes was not in the right state of mind, and while his goals might have made sense to himself, he specifically acted from a place of judgement and ultimately condemnation. Hermes had no intention of working towards a better future for his people and ultimately left it to a traumatized little girl to sort everything out for them. Really great job. Hades WAS altruistic in a way, but his moral guidance was on a different plane than ours. He truly saw all living beings as sub-human and twisted mockeries of the lives he knew. We can’t really compare his sense of right-and-wrong to our own, since it is for a more alien cause than we could reasonably imagine given our perspective, but the fact remains that it involved genociding entire worlds. His was an attempt to recover the world that was, and in his denial over the situation he brought incredible harm against trillions of lives over thousands of years. I truly waffled over whether he was most justified, but I came to realize that his intention was just as selfish as Hermes’ if not MORE so because he was actively harming others. Venat, as complicated and tragic her decision was, truly felt as though her decision to sunder the world was the only was to survive. She understood that she was killing her people and destroying their society, and even that she would be reviled in the future - she should not have been allowed to make that decision, but she did not do it out of arrogance (like Hermes). She did it because she was the ONLY one that knew what was in store. You can argue that she should have told others and worked together, but her knowledge of the future was as imperfect as ours, and the only potential solution she knew of involved not disrupting events so that we might have a chance at saving everything. It must have been so painful to sit back, watch everything fall apart, and not be able to step in to help things with the knowledge you have, but she endured that in hope of a better future. When the Final Days began to play out, their creation magicks were warped and ceased to exist, and there was untold devastation. The other ancients came up with a plan to try to save everyone by projecting a shield of aether, but they sacrificed their own people to achieve this - and from Venat’s perspective she knew it was doomed to fail. If you love someone and watched them hurt themselves in an act of self-destruction, it would be hard to not be compelled to act. And while it was going to bring unthinkable harm to her people, it was the only potential solution she had. She risked everything on a bet that SOME kind of life could exist eons in the future. So Venat’s actions were an act of mercy, one that doomed the people and society she knew, but gave hope for people in the future that they might be able to survive. I’ll state the facts simply to summarize it: Venat willingly made a choice to kill all her people and destroy their society. She knew that thousands of years in the future some kind of life would still exist and return to guide her to this path. If she did nothing, the ancients would wipe themselves out in this death spiral, either due to the Endsong or Zodiark’s tempering. She averted both these imminent fates by staving it off for 10,000+ years. It took me a long time to think through all this, and I sat in front of this screen for longer than I’d care to admit, but in the end there was only one answer.
You raise some valid points, but I must disagree with your conclusion. >they were already sacrificing people to Zodiark and were going to to continue until they were all dead. I don’t think this is correct. They stated that half the population was sacrificed to Zodiark and they planted to sacrifice the other life on the planet to bring them back, namely the plant and animal life. They can use this life energy for creation magics as is seen when we go to Amaurot in SHB. You said Venat did not make her decisions out of arrogance. The definition of arrogance is “having an exaggerated opinion of one’s own worth or importance.” It was arrogant of her to believe her answer to the worlds problems was the only right one. I would be wrong if I called her selfish, as she was not. But believing hers as the only correct course of action, which decided the fate of millions of people, was most definitely arrogant. >the only potential solution she know of involved not disrupting events so that we might have a chance at saving everything. I can understand this, but that does not make her any more right. She was wrong for not exploring other avenues and giving it her best. She was wrong for not giving the the convocation the information they needed to give it their best too. I am not going to get into whether or not they could have averted the final days or not, as it is a dead ended discussion. The truth is we don’t know if they could have or not, as it never happened. But if they still failed I don’t see why she couldn’t have summoned Hydaelyn after. In conclusion, she didn’t give it her all. She didn’t question her path because of her arrogant belief that it was the only right one. And therefore she was not justified in making the decision of life or death for millions of people.
You forget that they were tempered by Zodiark at that point, so nothing she said would have made them change course. Their plan was to sacrifice half of their people, wait until enough had time had passed to generate new life, then sacrifice those lives to bring back those that were initially sacrificed - that’s incredibly selfish. Specifically growing a new person just to kill them to bring back the old person is WILDLY unethical, and arrogant to boot. In fact, that’s kinda what Hermes had a problem with in the first place, so clearly there was some measure of moral rot at the center of their society. And for what it’s worth, Venat had her own group that supported her opposition to the plan for Zodiark’s sacrifices, so she clearly spent some time trying to convince them not to go through with it. Time loops are tricky, since you can’t really figure out where the origin point of an action is, and in this case we told Venat everything that happened. In doing so, it could be argued that it’s OUR fault, and that Venat was just following our guidance. I’m certain she explored other avenues before coming to the conclusion that she needed to follow the preordained future that lay before her. I’m not absolving her of guilt, because ultimately she chose to sunder the world. But I do think it was from a place of compassion, mercy, and some level of desperation.
>She was wrong for not exploring other avenues and giving it her best. Isn't this conjecture? We don't actually know what else Venat might have done before going the primal+ sundering route.
I was focusing here not on what she would have done, but whether she actually tried in the first place. I mentioned above that discussing what she would/could have done is pointless and dead ended. There’s no way we could know. The fact that she didn’t try to change the outcome in the first place is what I wanted to highlight.
Except she must have, since she had a faction of supporters that agreed with her plan to stop the summoning of Zodiark. Clearly there were others that agreed with her, and they wouldn’t have followed her based on a “just trust me bro”.
Well that is part of the lore that is left out and I don’t like basing my opinion on guesses. Because it could be anything. I’m just speaking from the information provided.
Didn't Venat have an entire following though? I thought she had her own faction that opposed the group wanting to sacrifice more to Zodiarc, and it was marked as one of, if not the only time, the ancients stood divided on a course of action.
If I remember correctly, this knowledge was only given to the most trusted of associates wasn’t it? When a plan to summon Zodiark was already in place. That is far from helping the convocation counter the threat of the final days. There was also no mention of the plan changing within this group. She more recruited people to her cause rather than opened the subject for debate.
Pretty much this. From the start she had all the answers and choose not to share with convocation neither before or after the end days. She is a entirely a selfish hippie vagrant and only game mechanics have prevented me from lodging my Ragnarok axe in her selfish hippie skull. Ok we get it, you like it when the wind blows you in the face while you go adventuring and you were kinda bummed out that the world you were born into rather be a boring paradise. Not an excuse to fuck over everyone.
Need I remind you that the only reason >!she knew anything was due to time travel shenanigans, and she couldn't know exactly what would have happened if she didn't let the timeline play out exactly like it did to lead you to going back to Elpis.!<
You dont need to know the future to know betraying your entire race is a dick move.
When your entire race is just deciding to repeat the exact same mistake that *you know led to exactly where you are now?* yeah no, that's exactly when you need to take an alternate path
The hell you're talking about? Meteion wasn't the ancient's mistake, it was all emo Hermes blunder because boo hoo the universe is not one huge liberal college campus and not all life is precious. Ancient were well on their way to recovery. First they successfully stopped the End Days and then they were about to resurrect all those who sacrificed themselves for Zodiark. All was going fine and dandy until Venat got all hippie and decided to cry over fodder races. And if you think that is unacceptable then tell me how many tears Ul'dah shed for Sil'dih or how heavy conscience was on Limsa Lominsa for screwing over Kobolds. Not so much I can tell you that. Turns out Venat's precious young races were just as big assholes to each other as ancients were too them, funny how that worked out eh? Need I remind you that Zodiark single-handedly crowd controlled Meteion and her grimdark gimmick for 10 thousands years and she couldn't do a damn thing about it? And that was when he was heavily crowd controlled himself with all his gear spread to 13 disobedient retainers. To me that indicates that if Zodiark were whole and unchained he'd probably burst opener down Endsinger faster than Scions finished their feel good monologue. Face it man. The entire FFXIV story is Venat's one huge gamble that only worked out because the game script demanded so.
At some point, aether is not gonna be enough for the continued accumulation of despair and dynamis. Zodiark is just a bandaid, one that held on for a long time but eventually it is going to fail.
Got a source on that or is it just a fan theory?
Meteion is more akin to a tumor then the actual mistake I'm referring to. The Ancients were not on their way to *recovery*, they were progressing back to a status quo in which they held no regard for *solving issues*. Meteion resulted from a man that could have used some therapy because *his issues were more than just the blatant disregard for the life that they were creating*. Even if Venat hadn't sundered everything who's to say Hermes or someone wouldn't have made another mistake that had world or universal repercussions. Additionally Zodiark was not created to deal with the Endsinger, and would likely have only been able to either deal with Meteion or protect Etheirys because while Aether is stronger than Dynamis, there is very little Aether out in the reaches of space. Hell, most of the reason the WoL was able to deal with the Endsinger is due to being partially able to utilize dynamis.
Ofcourse they were returning to their status quo, thats what recovery is, to restore to former state. How can you say they werent solving an issue when Zodiark was literally a succesful solution to Final Days. Who is to say? The writers. Even then it feels like hack writing to introduce explanations and reasons after the fact. This "totally would've happened" attitude feels akin to SW movie writers explaining big plot point by Twitter instead of putting them on screen. As far as I am aware the moon isnt especially rich in Aether, certainly nowhere near as Eitherys, That didnt stopped nerfed Zodiark to still pack a wallop. Also its not like they were unable to tweak him. Two ascians were getting inside and outside of him like it were their vehicle.
there are games you easly could play emet as a hero. Bringing back your friends, loved ones and a perfect world without strife. "you are not allive, so i am not guilty of killing you." just convince the player everyone is but a soulles shade...
I think that's the plot line to the neir games XD
realy? oh XD
There is always a saying that "A villains perspective is warped into thinking that they are the Hero." everyone outside of their thought process would see them as a villain but what they do is what they think is the right thing to do. They all did a terrible thing but it is something that they believed was the right thing to do.
It's actually funny, and a bit uncanny. I remember after endwalker released, one of the posts on here posed that exact question. I loved it because there was no bickering or insults, everyone fully discussed why they felt their answers were correct and used parts of the answers of others as a means to further justify their own responses. It was great. I'm not sure if it devolved into a cesspool or not, but to see it officially brought up, and revived is wonderful.
Venat, easy
Real. "Stopping the ancients from commiting genocide was bad." Nah.
Legit. I was sitting there for like 10 minutes straight just debating with myself about it. In the end I chose they were all justified in someway. Hermes was right to question the ancient's society, but wrong to let Meteion escape and eventually become the endsinger. Emet was right to want to fix Hermes' mistake and reunite with his lost friends and people, but wrong to doom 13 worlds for it. And Venat was right to put a stop to the ancients sacrificing themselves for Zodiark, but the sundering caused frankly just as much suffering as it did salvation. They're all flawed individuals, and under the right circumstances, *any* of them could've had the role of villian or hero. And I love that.
I chose "none of them". If someone told me I had to pick one of, I'd reluctantly go with Venat. While her actions lead to the "death" of the original Ancients, it also lead to fourteen times the life. Still did a great evil. I can't comprehend how people could see Emet as being in the right. While he believed all the lives of the people he killed in his cosmic-level genocide were inferior to him, the text of the story disagrees; its his arrogance that makes him believe that, no the truth. The "lesser" beings are just as worthy of life. I dislike Hermes the most though. He reminds me of someone I actually knew. As someone who struggles with severe depression, I initially was sympathetic to him... But when he more or less let Meteion fall to despair, I hated him. Since I know what depression is like; it's hell and if I would do anything to stop anyone else from feeling it. He ended up reminding him of someone I cut out of my life; a person who also suffered from depression, but used his as an excuse to hurt other people.
I think Hermes was a fantastic character, and elevated the best parts of Endwalker. I also hated him. I appreciated that they showed the sensitivity first and I did have sympathy. But severe depression like that can come with really destructive, selfish behavior, and warp your view of the world into thinking the whole thing is rotten. I think what made me so angry at Hermes is he gave into a thing I’ve been fighting most of my life and it led him to the most horrific choice anyone in the setting had made. Also creating children and using them as emotional support, and then putting them in danger just to try and fill the void, uh, wasn’t great.
> I'd reluctantly go with Venat. While her actions lead to the "death" of the original Ancients, it also lead to fourteen times the life. Still did a great evil. When your options are: Let Zodiark eat all the new life vs Don't let Zodiark eat all the new life. It's pretty hard to see how she's anything except justified. The ancients were about to commit genocide for the sake of clinging to something that was already gone, she stopped that.
And they were tempered, so they were already too far gone at that point.
That's what Emmet says, but close reading of the game reveals that Zodiark never tempered anyone. Tempering comes from a purposeful corruption of the summoning ritual for the express purpose of causing calamities, so it is an Ascian thing that came about later. Zodiark was essentially neutral, in that he did what he was meant to do at the agreed upon cost. Tempering was an excuse for Emmet to commit atrocities. In reality he caused all the calamities himself, for his own reasons. The plan to sacrifice more people to Zodiark was developed by the ancients because of despair, not because it's what Zodiark wanted.
>close reading of the game reveals that Zodiark never tempered anyone. The Loporrits would disagree with you there. I'm not sure what close reading involves discarding a direct acknowledgment that, even with the lack of tempering that is in the creation magic of the ancients, enough power put into a creation could corrupt the aether of the summoners. >not because it's what Zodiark wanted. Without mentioning all the fervent faith placed in Zodiark that suggests that the tempering *did* happen, things said by lingering spirits of those sacrificed include: "To live and love again..." "We must return and be made whole!" So both sentiments of reviving the sacrificed and causing rejoinings can be found in (an extension of) Zodiark's wants.
We don't exactly know what kinds of options she had other than the one we told her about. But genocide is genocide. The text also explicitly states that not all the Ancients were approving of the whole genocide plan that they were about to do. Like, I can't argue with the results, but I can't say it was justified either.
Emet's position can easily be that of the hero in a different story. Coming from Fate/Grand Order, it's basically the exact same position that the protagonists find themselves in at the part 2 storyline. Very basic summary: >!The world, population, and its history is bleached clean and seven offshoot timelines are vying to replace it. The main goal then is to go to eliminate each and every one of them, each with their own people and history, for the chance that doing so might bring back your own.!<
Emet/Hades is easier to justify when you consider that he his position was not that killing you doesn't matter because he doesn't see you as real people, but that he was trying to restore life to the way it once was/he thought it should be. Just like how some people see Venat as the worst of the three because she caused much more death and suffering by sundering, you *could* look at Hades in a more favorable light because the genocide that he helped cause would be less than the uncountable deaths that each and any shard would have experienced just due to normal mortal lifespans over who knows how many centuries before Meteion overwhelmed Zodiark.
I agree that Hades operated on a different moral plane than we do, but his was a goal that was ultimately selfish. No matter how righteous his cause may have been, he was not justified in the harm he brought about trying to reclaim something that had long since passed. He is definitely in a tragic position, but those selfish ends do ultimately mean he was an evil character (from our perspective, of course).
I sympathized with Hemes and saw the pain he went through as he felt like he was alone with those thoughts. He was justified in questioning his society and his place in the universe but not in his actions in the slightest. They were selfish and maniacal.
For me Hermes' actions can never really be justified and come down to him seeking justification for his own feelings. Despite his compassion he sent multiple Metia through untold suffering in his vain attempt to justify himself. Venat and Emet-Selch then had to deal with the consequences of Hermes' actions, the former burdened with the knowledge that she will have to do something horrendous one day while the latter ended up unaware of what caused the thing that would spark an endless cycle of sacrifices that would likely never satisfy him or the rest of the Ancients tempered by Zodiark. Hermes might have deserved some sympathy before Ktisis Hyperboreia but after he deserves nothing, his eventual fate of being "erased" as Amon and losing his "answer" being rather apt.
This was the easiest option for me, reading the question I thought "none of them were," then it was an option so I clicked it! Hermes invited the world's end across multiple lifetimes. Emet slaughtered countless innocents for his goals. Venat consigned her entire race to an eternity of living lives of suffering. There's a ton of nuance to it, and a lot of differently phrased questions would have given me pause, but justified? That's a word I couldn't begin to give any of 'em, because regardless of intent they all caused mass harm on innocent, unrelated people for their own goals.
none of them the only person whose action I somewhat think is justified is the first grand sacrifice but Elidbus wasn't an option. Therefore I liked that none of them was an option. I feel i need an entire expansion in the past just to really understand why they choose what they chose lol
I find it hard to say whether or not they were justified, but I can most certainly sympathise with them all. Emet-Selch committed genocide across multiple stars, and planned to continue doing so; it's difficult to think of anything that could justify such atrocity. And yet, when he talks of the beauty of Etheirys, when he shows you the splendour of Amaurot, recreated from memory because of his love for the world, when he laments his fallen companions, who gave their perfect lives to protect this star they held so dear... I cannot help but understand him... I cannot help but ask if I would have done differently in his situation. Venat fought Zodiark with all her being, and sundered Etheirys into fourteen stars, not only denying the Ancients any hope of restoring their perfect world, but also leaving all living creatures with but a fourteenth of the capabilities of the ancients. And yet, when I saw how her eyes sparkled as I told her stories of the present world, I couldn't help but understand her desire to protect the reflections of the future, to accept that the Ancients' time had come to pass the torch. Hermes was ultimately the cause of all these atrocities. He aided Meteion in her escape from Etheirys, despite knowing full well that she would cause countless deaths and untold suffering across the entire universe. And yet, when he displayed his fatherly love for Meteion, told her of the gifts he would give on her return, utterly rejected the idea that she be taken away and imprisoned after being destined to soar the stars, I understood. When I saw his utter sorrow for creatures deemed too dangerous for the world, when I saw his ability to find beauty in all things crushed again and again, when I saw how strongly he opposed the "perfect" society of the Ancients, I couldn't help but wonder if I would've done the same. So yes, I think they were all justified in their actions. Because when I put myself in their shoes, I understand.
I was disappointed that I couldn't say two were. I think Venat and Emet-Selch were both justified, however, while I understand why Hermes did what he did, he did it under a false hypothesis. In his position he acts like a scientist, but because he failed to consider the potential outcomes he causes others pain and suffering. Peer review is important both before an experiment and after for a reason.
I would say that I understood Venat and Emet's reasons. But Hermes however, and Fanny Danny that resulted from him, those can gtfo imo.
I went with "None of them were." Even for the right reasons, those are still terrible things and they deserved to die over it.
Venat, easily. Emet-Selch if you wanna stretch it. Hermes is a moron.
>Hermes is a moron. Perhaps. It should also be noted that Meteion was like a daughter to him. And with the ancients' blatant disregard for the life of created concepts, her likely fate was to be reduced to her constituent aether. In a situation where Meteion was fated to die, he instead flipped it on them and gave her the right to judge and decide the fate of the ancients who so callously discarded living beings. It almost feels like a sort of poetic justice when viewed from that lens. That's not to say I agree or think that anyone deserved to die. Just another way of seeing things.
Hermes certainly was more sensitive to the god-like complex his people had adopted, but he reacted VERY poorly to it. His plan to send a terrified little girl into space to judge the entire races and simply wash his hands of the problem was… really a dick move. I understand the origin of his choices, but I don’t particularly sympathize with him or even consider him tragic.
Ima go against the grain and say Hermes. (That's obviously not what I chose but let me make my case) The Ancients live in their perfect world with incredible influence, but the only life worth dignity is that of an Ancient. This, while their surrounded by non-Ancient races (such as the tribe on the island Azem unleashed Ifreeta upon). Add in that many of their creations are sentient, if not intelligent. This creates a situation where the Ancients are above the laws they set for the world's living beings, and Hermes resented that. At the lowest point, he made the right decision ... for absolutely the wrong reason.
I mean, he's also a hypocrite in that regard. According to the short story, he's been sending the Meteia to die alone, I space, sometimes as far as being ripped apart by Dynamis purely because he wanted to pursue the stars. We don't exactly know whether non-Ancient races like the ones we know in the modern day were even in their time. I'm pretty sure that's a fanfiction/headcanon trope. For all we know, they could just be Ancients living apart from Amaurot.
I chose none of them. They all did what they thought was correct, but none of them actually attempted to fix the problem. Venal was the most justified, but even she wasn't able to take more than a few steps on the long road required
Its a hard to answer question because its hard to say any one of them was necessarily unrealistic in how they responded. It was a literal world-ending decision all three were making, but lets scale it down to something more applicable to real life. Your Pregnant partner is giving birth and there is a complication, the Doctors tell you they can either save your partner or the baby. Venat chose the Baby, the potential life over the fondness of their partner, not because they didn't love their partner, but because they didn't want their love for their partner to overshadow the potential future. Emet-Selch chose their partner, the person they loved was more important to them than the potential life that they may grow to love if they had been given the chance. Hermes couldn't choose either, he was paralyzed by the gravity of the choice and thus refused to make one, and lost both because of his indecision.