Due to the Walking Spoiler nature of Hydaelyn's presence and the integral role she has in the plot, all spoilers from this point forward will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Voiced by: Masako Ikeda (JP, A Realm Reborn to Shadowbringers), Kikuko Inoue (JP, Endwalker onwards), Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (EN, Los Angeles cast), Joanna Roth (EN, London cast), Véronique Augereau (FR), Sonngard Dressler (DE)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hydaelyn_5.jpg

The Mothercrystal

"Hear. Feel. Think."

The goddess of the world who aids the Player Character in their quest to put an end to the Ascians' machinations and restore peace to the realms. She initially appears to you as a disembodied voice seemingly coming from an enormous crystal orbited by other crystals, though as the protagonist's power and knowledge of the world grow how you perceive her continues to change. As the story goes on, it also becomes clear that the story of Hydaelyn and the Ascians is far more complicated than it appears, and Hydaelyn's intentions are not as simple as they first appeared either.

Ambiguously Evil: After the reveal in Shadowbringers that Hydaelyn and Zodiark are Primals, there is much ado about the Blessing of Light not preventing tempering, so much as Hydaelyn already having tempered the Echo-user, which would mean the Warrior of Light has been enthralled by a Primal all along. As of Endwalker, this is proven not to be the case: the Blessing is just a basic magick in Venat's repertoire, and its most basic function is simply to prevent aetheric corruption (which tempering entails). Ultimately, her blessing is benign and God Is Good.
The Anti-God: While at first it seems like Zodiark is the dark opposite of Hydaelyn, in reality the opposite is true: Zodiark was created before Hydaelyn, having been created to be his exact opposite in order to sunder him. One of the rare cases where the Anti-God figure is the positive one.
Anti-Hero: She is revealed to be a bit more morally dubious than a pure God Is Good type by Endwalker, even if she is still firmly planted as a good guy.
- As shown by the Endwalker quest "Thou Must Live, Die, and Know", she knowingly destroyed the world as it was by shattering it into fourteen fragments, consigning everyone to lives of suffering and struggle. However, she did so for two big reasons. First of all, she witnessed how her fellow Amaurotians had become pitifully complacent in the face of the first true hardship they had experienced in ages, and was afraid that the same fate awaited all of mankind if nothing was done to stop it. Secondly, she was aware that for as much aether as they had, mankind would be no match against the power of dynamis, which was Meteion's power source and what most of the energy in the universe comprised of. So Hydaelyn created beings that were weaker in aether, but could harness the power of dynamis themselves, giving them a fighting chance against Meteion. However, it was shown that all of this still weighed heavily on Hydaelyn's mind. Even if she still defends it as necessary, Hydaelyn also admits that she didn't feel good about it.
- While maintaining that she loves her children, she also acts as a Beef Gate with a potentially lethal trial because if they can't beat her, then there's no way they can beat Meteion. While Hydaelyn does engage in some flattery during the Trial against her, it's still one that the Scions could lose their lives in if they're not careful.
Batman Gambit: Her plan to defeat Meteion recognized the fact the Ascians were hiding behind aether, and had no actual plan to deal with the dynamis-based nature of Meteion. So Hydaelyn sundered the world in order to create beings weaker in aether but more abundant in dynamis through facing hardship and suffering. She had no idea if this plan would actually succeed, and even made sure to develop a back up plan to flee the star if it didn't work. This entire plan hinged on the fact that the Ascians would both try to reclaim their lost aether, and to undo Hydaelyn's Sundering and rejoin the fourteen shards into one world again. In both cases, she was correct.
Beef Gate: Played for drama. Hydaelyn wants mankind to get on the starship left behind for them and flee to another star, while the Scions want to face Meteion head-on and defeat her. Hydaelyn thus challenges the Scions to combat her, with whoever wins being allowed to enact their plan. Hydaelyn does this because mankind as a whole won't get a second chance, whichever path is taken, because they only have enough aether to do one or the other, not both. As such, she needs to be absolutely sure that the Scions can pull it off. And if they can't defeat Hydaelyn, then defeating Meteion is right out. It's also implied from her comments as Venat that she was waiting for the day that mankind didn't need people like her anymore, and she could leave them behind.
Big Good: As a goddess that the adventurer fights to protect and the source of the Blessing of Light, Shadowbringers reveals that she was also this towards Ascians who felt threatened by Zodiark's power. Endwalker shows that she's a bit more anti-heroic than she first appeared, but she remains firmly on the side of the heroes.
Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Subverted. As revealed by Elidibus, the Echo was never truly her power. What Hydaelyn did was awaken the innate power that resides in every person who lives in the Shards and the Source, which was the remnant of the power they once had as Amaurotines. The only thing Hydaelyn did was either conjure meteors along with her calling or illusions of these meteors, creating the lie that they are her chosen. The Blessing of Light - that is, protection from primal tempering - is a separate power from the Echo proper, but her willingness to bestow it upon anyone who awakened to the Echo led to a mass misconception that the two powers were one and the same.
Came Back Strong: Unlike Elidibus who has gone through The Fog of Ages after separating from Zodiark, Hydaelyn still retains all her mental faculties from back when she was Venat. The will of the star is, however unwillingly, Venat essentially having attained godhood after her sacrifice; it would not be a stretch to assume the concept of Hydaelyn is Venat's Amaurotine transformation similar to Hades and Hermes.
Can't Kill You, Still Need You: When she was summoned to stop Zodiark, she knew that killing him would essentially destroy the aetheric shield protecting the world from Meteion's song of oblivion. She instead decides to sunder him and the world into multiple pieces while keeping him alive for his aether protection. However, this also meant that thousands of her people's souls remained trapped inside of the primal for millennia, and upon waking up from their slumber when Fandaniel weakened the seal, were in a state of anguish and agony since Elidibus, who had become the Heart of Zodiark, was not inside anymore to keep them stable.
Cast from Hit Points:
- Hinted at throughout the 2.X story. The Ascians make note that her shield used to defend the Warriors of Light from the Ultima spell during the fight with Ultima weapon drained much of her power, and their strategy, up until Midgardsormr sealed away the Blessing of Light, was to force the Warrior of Light to keep calling upon her blessing by throwing stronger and stronger Primal fights against them. Midgardsormr, likewise points out that one of his reasons for sealing away the Blessing, was because Darkness would eventually overwhelm it if he hadn't sealed it away.
- In Endwalker, this causes her demise in a fully literal sense. After the Warrior of Light and the Scions defeat her in combat, thus proving they're capable of facing Meteion, Hydaelyn uses up the last remaining aether she held in reserve to enhance Azem's crystal and tells them to use the Mothercrystal as a source of fuel for the moon. That last remaining aether was her soul. With Hydaelyn's death, nothing but the blessing of light remains of her.
Character Catchphrase: "Hear. Feel. Think." She later puts these words into context during the events of Endwalker.
Hydaelyn: Hear... the song of creation's end. Feel... the sorrow of hope's demise. Think... and find your way in the darkness.
The Chooser of the One:
- The Echo is her blessing. Revealed to be a lie by Elidibus during Shadowbringers where he demonstrates by conjuring an illusion of a meteor shower and the people that saw it gained the Echo and heard Hydaelyn's voice. The Echo is a power that the Ancients had during their time and was passed down to the new lives made when Hydaelyn split Zodiark into the thirteen Shards. By witnessing an event that is similar to The Final Days (the event that nearly doomed the original world), the traumatic experience awakens the Echo within that person and allows them to hear Hydaelyn's voice. Hydaelyn's actual blessing is the immunity to primal tempering that protects a person's aether, though the fact that the Blessing of Light is only given to Echo-bearers (that is, people who can hear Hydaelyn) led to mankind assuming they were one and the same.
- Endwalker reveals that in the end she only ever had one chosen to begin with: the Warrior of Light. They met her in the past when she was still Venat and told her everything that was to come. So in the present day, she was only ever waiting for them to appear so she could guide them towards the salvation of the world. Every other "chosen" was a bonus in assisting the Warrior of Light.
Climax Boss: Her test of strength for the Warrior of Light and the Scions is the final step for activating the Ragnarok and reach the final zone of Endwalker. It also renders her Killed Off for Real and removes Hydaelyn from the story, signifying the gravity of the situation.
Commuting on a Bus: Played a major role in A Realm Reborn, but goes mysteriously quiet afterwards due to certain circumstances. She sporadically appears throughout the Heavensward storyline and has vanished again in Stormblood. She also doesn't make an appearance in Shadowbringers, but is brought up for an important info dump regarding her and Zodiark. She's back in a big way for Endwalker though.
Cruel to Be Kind: It is revealed that the sundering of the planet into fragments was no accident but a very deliberate choice. Learning of how so many other planets had neared perfection only to crash and burn and seeing how pathetically complacent her fellow Aumarotians had become in the face of calamity, she chose a path that would guarantee that the people of her planet would always face conflict and suffering. Because she believed only through conflict and suffering could they grow strong and survive. Of course by the time she reached this decision, the Final Days had extremely hardened her to her particular viewpoint, to the point she was fully aware she was damning her people to extinction in the name of defeating Meteion to save all life in existence.
Cryptic Conversation: What few conversations she has with the Warrior of Light lean towards this. This is because she has to maintain a Stable Time Loop wherein the Warrior of Light and Venat (her past self) met in the past, so she has to steer them in the right direction without saying too much. Once the loop is resolved, she becomes a lot more forthright.
Deader than Dead: The post-Endwalker Liveletter reveals that Hydaelyn expended all of her soul's aether in her test against the Warrior of Light and the Scions; this means not only that she is dead, but won't reincarnate and can't be summoned back from the Lifestream. Post-game dialogue from the Watcher suggests that she's become one with Etheirys itself, and fused with the aetheral currents of nature. Previously established lore about the nature of existence and the afterlife states all souls will go back to the lifestream and reincarnate. In Hydaelyn's case, her soul's aether is far too dispersed to go back to its core form and reincarnate, and instead seemingly merges with the currents. All of this is to firmly establish that, at the conclusion of the 6.0 story of Endwalker, Hydaelyn is gone for good, and there is no way to bring her back.
Death Seeker: Her final test for the Scions has them fight and overcome her in battle, which results in her taking significant damage while using up every ounce of aether she held in reserve, and begins to disperse into aether. But her comments in Elpis as Venat imply that she was waiting for the day that she could leave mankind to find its own way forward before finally letting go. Should the Warrior repeat these words to her, Hydaelyn bursts into Tears of Joy as she finally returns to the aetherial sea, fully confident mankind will overcome their trial without her after all her toil and suffering for them.
Didn't See That Coming: She did plan an absolutely massive amount of a Gambit Roulette in attempting to make sure that Meteion is ultimately overturned and the universe saved, while also having measures in place for her people to attempt to escape should such a plan ultimately fail. But amidst all of this, even despite her knowledge of the future thanks to the Warrior of Light telling her plenty in a Stable Time Loop, there's many things she couldn't account for, from Zenos and his own artificial Echo powers that ultimately endanger the Warrior of Light significantly (enough so that Zenos helping the Warrior of Light in the final battle was a fluke thanks to Krile more than any sort of fate or prediction), to a variety of matters independent of her people's plight such as Ultima's mere existence upon the star, to somehow failing to take into account that the Loporitts would've designed all of the Moon around the Ancient's sizes rather than the modern Mankind's. That last one could've been a tidbit of a joke on her part, though, given Venat's penchant for it.
Disabled Deity: Her shielding on the Warrior of Light against the Ultima spell during A Realm Reborn has her powers all but spent and is barely able to communicate. Even when using Minfilia as her mouthpiece in Heavensward, she only has enough power to talk for a few minutes. Only by bringing the six Crystals of Light (one from the Warrior of Light and the rest from the Warriors of Darkness) together gives Hydaelyn enough strength to help out again, which includes giving the Scions another Tupsimati and having Minfilia absorb the excess Light consuming the First so that she can transfer it to Hydaelyn. It is also later revealed that every rejoining by the ascians took a great deal out of her.
Elemental Powers: When she's fought as a trial, not only does she wield light, but she also uses the other umbral elements: water, ice, and earth.
Flowery Elizabethan English: Often uses words such as "thy" and "Thine", and phrases her sentences in a roundabout way.
God Is Flawed: Justified, since she's not really a god. As benevolent as she is to the Warrior of Light and company, as powerful as she is, in Endwalker she admits to being an imperfect being's attempt at envisioning perfection; she may be godlike, but she still doesn't quite have the flawlessness a "natural" god, whatever that might be, would have.
Good Counterpart: While Zodiark was never truly "evil", Encyclopedia Eorzea III reveals that Hydaelyn was created when Venat and her cohorts stole the "deity" concept from the Words of Lahabrea. This means they were constructed using the same "blueprints", only altered to create a being of Light and stasis instead of Darkness and activity.
Good Is Not Soft: She is a being that truly does want to keep all the lives on the Source and its Shards safe from the machinations of the Ascians, and is never anything but kind and patient whenever she calls to you. The reason why she cares so much is that she's actually a primal, albeit one that was created by a splinter group of Ancients after their world was ravaged during The Final Days and their numbers drastically thinned by summoning Zodiark twice. Her defeating Zodiark was what resulted in the star being fractured, and the Ancients were wiped out as a result, with only three Unbroken Ascians being the known survivors. Even her means of gaining new champions via The Echo is in part caused by triggering events, or illusions thereof, that remind them of the destruction of the original world, essentially relying on PTSD ingrained in their souls to get them to hear her. She also doomed her people with the understanding that their successors will have a better chance at saving existence.
Go Out with a Smile: She tearfully smiles at the Warrior of Light and the Scions before disintegrating into aether, confident that mankind has found strength to stand against Meteion.
Greater-Scope Paragon: She is gravely weakened by the time A Realm Reborn ends and Heavensward begins, with her in need of outside help just to communicate with her choosen.
Have You Seen My God?: A major plot-point brought up near the end of Shadowbringers patch storyline is that nobody has heard her voice in a while. The Warrior of Light mentions last hearing her back during Heavensward when their connection was restored, and Krile theorizes something is blocking her from being able to lend her aid. It's revealed that the combination of the 7th Umbral Calamity and using so much aether to protect the Warrior of Light from Ultima had greatly weakened Hydaelyn to the point that she could no longer easily communicate with the world at large.
Hunter of Their Own Kind: Shadowbringers reveals that she's an anti-primal primal, designed by the citizens of Amaurot to free them from Zodiark.
Irony: Most Ascians believe her to be a parasite that usurped their own almighty Zodiark, demonizing her with every opportunity they can get including blaming the Sundering upon her as an inherent part of her very nature. In the end whether because Zodiark tempered them, or because they were blind to their own faults, Hydaelyn as Venat had voluntarily chosen to commit the Sundering because the Amauroutines couldn't comprehend living in a world without their paradise and were sacrificing themselves en masse to power Zodiark. Their haste to consider her nothing more than an enemy of all true life blinds them to ever looking deeper into the causes and reasons, nor does anyone seem to realize that she had to be one of their own the whole time on identical rules as Elidibus was to Zodiark.
Killed Off for Real: Endwalker has her face down the Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in combat. After the Scions win, Hydaelyn uses the last of her aether to bless the Warrior's crystal of Azem, then Disappears into Light. The rest of the story confirms that Hydaelyn is gone for good. According to a Live Letter, she's Deader than Dead, since her soul had its aether expended and can't reincarnate in the Lifestream in any case, which means Hydaelyn is well and truly gone when she goes.
The Last Dance: Even after millennia of her power waning and awaiting her long awaited reunion with the Warrior of Light, Hydaelyn always saved just enough strength to be able to battle her champion with her full might for one final test if they had what it took to defeat Meteion. She makes full use of it in her trial battle.
Leitmotif: "Answers", sung from her perspective during Bahamut's awakening at the end of 1.0, in which she speaks to her children, all of mankind, and tells them to persevere despite the suffering that the Calamity brings. "Your Answer", the Boss Remix for her fight, is instead directed at the Warrior of Light and the Scions.
Light 'em Up: As one might expect from a Goddess of Light, all of her attacks during her trial are light-based. She not only uses light-based blasts to attack — near, far, and diagonal — but also summons literal waves made of light to swarm across the field.
Light Is Good: "May you walk in the light of the crystal," is another way of saying "God bless" in Eorzea, referencing the mother crystal. She also grants you a "blade of light" to defeat Lahabrea.
Light Is Not Good: While Hydaelyn is good, Light itself is not necessarily good. As it turns out, Light in excess is in fact just as bad for life in general as excess Darkness, being the essence of stasis itself. And although Hydaelyn is the Goddess of Light, she, being a primal, is by no means in full control of it.
Mercy Kill: Effectively what she did to her people by sundering them, forcing them to be reborn rather than die pointlessly for Zodiark (notably this did not apply to the souls already inside Zodiark however whom she needed to act as battery for him to continue functioning). And in Endwalker, by the time she challenges the Scions in a personal trial-by-combat to prove themselves capable of saving the universe, she forces them to perform a Suicide by Cop version of this on herself, finally returning her aether to the aetherial sea and ending the legacy of the ancients at long last.
Misery Builds Character: As it turned out, Hydaelyn believes this. Knowing of the death of other civilizations across the universe that could not withstand the pain of despair, and Meteion's harnessing that despair being the "Sound" that caused the Final Days, she refused to allow mankind to ignore suffering and live in an ignorant paradise through the power of Zodiark. Thus she sundered the world so all of mankind would be forced to suffer and fight forevermore, so that they might grow strong enough to stand up to Meteion's song of oblivion rather than hide from it. That having been said, her decision ended up having horrific consequences, with the remaining Ascians causing rejoinings and repeatedly setting back mankind. Even Hydaelyn was unsure of her course, and made plans to allow mankind to escape their planet using Zodiark's remnant aether as a shield if it proved impossible for mankind to grow.
Morph Weapon: During her trial, she changes her weapon repeatedly with the power of magic. It starts as a sword, but it can also change to a pair of chakrams or a staff.
Mother Goddess: The world of Final Fantasy XIV is named after her, and she is claimed to have created it. Fittingly, one of her other names is The Mothercrystal. This is a Half-Truth; she did stabilize its current form, but her real contribution was to serve as a Power Limiter on Zodiark.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her fragmenting of the world into a source and shards to stop the Ascian's god Zodiark has left much of life on each planet far weaker than it once was and drove the Ascians to cause one umbral calamity after another to bring Zodiark back, leading to unending suffering and death over the ages. To say nothing of it killing all but four of the planet's original ancient mankind. Endwalker however reveals this to be a subversion, as even the worst fallout of her actions was by design. As the ancients were utterly unwilling to face the despair that Meteion had weaponized against them, instead wishing to recreate their "perfect" paradise and hide behind Zodiark even as the threat of Meteion's song of oblivion continued to loom over them, Venat / Hydaelyn purposefully shattered the world and Zodiark so that paradise would never be attainable again. That way, mankind would forever have to contend with suffering and despair, and strive to grow stronger in spite of it, until the day they could truly put an end to Meteion and the Final Days.
Only the Worthy May Pass: Her Trial is the last obstacle between the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and Meteion. It's done not by arbitrary values of purity, but by pragmatism. Hydaelyn can either provide the means for people of the star to escape to a new world, or for the Warrior of Light and the Scions to pursue Meteion. But she can't do both. If the Scions gave chase but failed to defeat Meteion, it would cost the lives of everyone on the star. Only by battling Hydaelyn could she determine the best chance for saving as many people as possible, since if the Warrior of Light and the Scions could not defeat the most powerful goddess on Etheirys, they would stand no chance of defeating the universe's despair incarnate.
Pals with Jesus: Done in a mutual way with the Warrior of Light: Not only is it revealed that Hydaelyn is actually a dear friend of said Warrior from her time as Venat. Similarly, the Warrior acts as her champion on Etheirys, similarly to how Jesus Christ was the Biblical prophet of God.
Patron God: Hydaelyn empowers her champion, the Warrior of Light, with her blessing, granting them the ability to banish the darkness and keep the Ascians at bay when few others could. In exchange, the Warrior goes across the land doing as much good as they can.
Power Crystal: Hydaelyn looks to be a crystal the size of a mountain. Until we finally meet her in the flesh; she's actually a proper Primal like Zodiark before her, and the Mothercrystal she guards is the aether she's built up over the millenia.
Power Incontinence: While she's never anything but benevolent, Hydaelyn seems to have trouble controlling her own light essence when the balance of light and dark shifts too far in her favor, this is what leads to the creation of the Warriors of Darkness as the Flood of Light from her power running out of control is destroying their world. Getting her power back under control requires her sending Minfillia there directly to effectively act a sponge for the destructive excess of light, and it's implied that soon the same thing will happen to the Source, aka the main game world. Shadowbringers reveals that this is why the world was split, the only way she could win the Forever War with Zodiark was to break reality, splitting him into pieces. Since Zodiark was the will of the planet itself, the world also split at the same time. Unfortunately for all, this shattering had vast unintended consequences for everyone, namely the destruction of the very lives she had been meant to spare from Zodiark's hunger in the first place.
- And then Endwalker reveals that actually, no, the destruction of the shattering was the point - the Ancients were unwilling to try to learn to face Meteion's weaponized despair and wanted to hide behind Zodiark, so she forced the matter.
Pre-Mortem One-Liner: If you take too long to defeat her in her Extreme trial, she says one to signify that you have failed and hit her enrage phase.
"Flee. You have been found wanting."
Red Baron: The Mothercrystal. Except not, since she never was the Mothercrystal itself. Her real callsign is "Divine Light".
Signature Move: Exodus. After channeling aether through her crystals of light, Hydaelyn creates a magical seal on the ground and performs a Diving Kick Ground Pound, appearing as she did when she sundered Zodiark.
Stable Time Loop: Basically what created Hydaelyn in the first place. The Warrior of Light going back in time and meeting Venat, as well as telling her about the future including her becoming Hydaelyn, is what lead to the primal's creation. Venat, prior of the Final Days, was plainly horrified at the idea of what her future self would do but by the time it happened remembered the Warrior of Light's words and had a guide on what she must do.
Top God: Despite not being venerated in any official manner, Hydaelyn is the closest equivalent to a true god other than Zodiark and the Twelve. In Endwalker, during the Myths of the Realm Raid series, Krile theorizes that the Twelve (who themselves are not primals) were Hydaelyn's collaborators that she herself ascended into godhood to oversee the post-Sundering world; this is later revealed to be true, automatically placing her at the top of the Pantheon. Characters in A Realm Reborn and for a bit onward even refer to Hydaelyn in their speech with capitalized pronouns, such as She/Her, signifying her place at the top.
Walking Armory: As Venat was her core, Hydaelyn utilizes her weapons during her trial: a Paladin's sword and shield, a White Mage's staff, and a Dancer's chakrams.
Walking Spoiler: As more gets revealed about Hydaelyn's origins and motivations, the nature of the world of Eorzea and the Warrior of Light's struggles gets increasingly changed. It's all but impossible to talk about Hydaelyn's true identity without talking about why she chose the Warrior as her champion, what her ultimate goals are, and how she plans to do it all.
Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: She speaks with a very old-fashioned dialect in A Realm Reborn, similar to Urianger. But when she's encountered in Endwalker as Venat, she doesn't do this. Even during the Trial against her, Hydaelyn drops this.

Characters / Final Fantasy XIV - Hydaelyn

Due to the Walking Spoiler nature of Hydaelyn's presence and the integral role she has in the plot, all spoilers from this point forward will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Voiced by: Masako Ikeda (JP, A Realm Reborn to Shadowbringers), Kikuko Inoue (JP, Endwalker onwards), Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (EN, Los Angeles cast), Joanna Roth (EN, London cast), Véronique Augereau (FR), Sonngard Dressler (DE)

Previous

Index

Next

Characters / Final Fantasy XIV - Hydaelyn

Edit Locked

Due to the Walking Spoiler nature of Hydaelyn's presence and the integral role she has in the plot, all spoilers from this point forward will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Voiced by: Masako Ikeda (JP, A Realm Reborn to Shadowbringers), Kikuko Inoue (JP, Endwalker onwards), Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (EN, Los Angeles cast), Joanna Roth (EN, London cast), Véronique Augereau (FR), Sonngard Dressler (DE)

Previous

Index

Next