Plurk paste

okay now that I have watched it again and gone frame by frame screencapping the entire thing I have some thoughts

I wanted to wait until I had a better look at things before I made any statements. I know this is going to be unpopular opinions R Us but I think between the actual anime and the interview afterward we get more than some people seem to realize?

I've seen people upset because it is stated in Royal Edition that Somnus and the Oracle often "traveled together" I think it is. Aera tells Ardyn that she had to flee from the castle to track him down to spend time with him which implies that she has been stuck at solheim with Somnus for God's know how long. His guards use her and tracking her down as a way to find Ardyn because at that point Somnus is already the largest military power and therefore the disagreements that he has with his brother are not just disagreements but it's a fundamental difference that is going to make things more difficult for either one of them to take the throne.

If you look at things as far as the time period goes as well as just the extent of what is going on at that time I don't think Somnus is really as evil as everyone seems to be jumping on straight away. They said that when they were younger Somnus looked up to Ardyn and I can definitely see that being a thing but as they get older Somnus is honestly just more practical than Ardyn. So when he sees people dying, he goes about it in the way that plagues have been handled for centuries on in our reality and he starts trying to quarantine things.

That doesn't make him evil, that just makes him willing to make the hard choices and sacrifice the few for the many which, unfortunately, with that kind of plague happening that's what has to happen if you don't have a magical cure. Considering the fact that not only are the people that are sick infecting others but turning into raging monsters that are destroying everything they come across it's doubly important to cut it off and kill the disease as quickly as possible

Because of how quickly everything had to go there's a lot of little bits of the animation that you kind of have to pull some extra context from. We never see Somnus enjoying all of the destruction and death that's going on. It's not like he's completely evil. Once he gives the command to light that pyreit's not really obvious but there are like three frames there where he looks absolutely heartbroken but by the time he finishes turning around to face his soldiers he's back to being stoic and a cold and distant because he can't afford to lose face in front of his men especially with what they're doing.

His men have to believe that what they're doing is right. That what they're doing is the only option and so do the people because as soon as people start to doubt that then there's going to be even more issues both with people trying to hide people that are sick and that's going to potentially completely waste all of the sacrifice that's already been made. Also there's no way that his men will ever be able to live with themselves for what they have done.

From Somnus' perspective it is absolutely necessary there's no way for one person to be able to cure a plague that is affecting the entire country. It doesn't matter how powerful Ardyn is or how it impressive his healing abilities are it is not possible for him to be everywhere he would need to be to be able to completely head it off. So with that in mind of course he's trying to find Ardyn and he's trying to get him to come back to the castle and just stay with Aera and be happy instead of making him out to be the bad guy. He actually says that. And that's probably a large part of the reason that he's trying to keep Aera there, hoping against hope that his idealistic big brother will get his head out of the clouds and finally come home and just spend time with his fiance and this girl that loves him instead of killing himself wandering around trying to do something that is not only impossible but is undermining the efforts of the entire country's military

They give us a very good example of Ardyn telling everyone that this is not how it has to be they can just cure everything and he's magically going to be able to just fix everything and how much strife that creates between people. You can only imagine how much more strife that creates between the people and the military. Honestly from a political context Ardyn is kind of setting them up for a civil war

okay now to tackle the Betrayal

For one thing we don't know for sure what the Gods say to Aera. What we do know is that it shocks her is very upsetting and before she has any time to compose herself or collect herself or process the information that she has Somnus is there up in her business. Again this doesn't make him evil but I guarantee you that was intentional because he wanted to know exactly what they said before she had any time to consider any kind of cover that she might give it or any way that she might try and sugarcoat it to make things nicer because let's be real she's a sweet girl and that's exactly what she'd do.

We don't know for sure but I feel like it is very probable that what the gods told her was that there can only be one Lucis Caelum. Appropriately cryptic for the gods and also for them to have implied in some way that Ardyn is or could become a monster. Somnus being the strategist and tactician that he is gets her to agree to let him handle things and then they can be happy together and he will take care of things for the country. Again at this point he feels like Ardyn is sowing seeds of dissent through the people and is going to spark a Civil War. At the same time Ardyn feels like Somnus is being unduly cruel. No, Ardyn doesn't want to be king but he also doesn't want to let Somuns rule when (from Ardyn's perspective) Somnus is being a tyrant.

The people that are there for the coronation are not going to be the lowly villagers that Ardyn has been spending time with and that want him to be their King. They're going to be the nobility that are higher ranking Aristocrats and military leaders and the artists went to extreme lengths to make this look very Grecian so it's fair to look at some of their culture for support there. All the Greek and later Roman city-states were very militaristic. These are the people that are not directly affected by the scourge because they are not interacting with the common folk very often. (It's very Prince Prospero and Masque of the Red Death)

So Somnus confronts Ardyn to see how he will react, expecting him to maybe challenge him a little bit and then to step aside because Ardyn isn't a fighter. He's a pacifist he wants everything to go in a way where no one gets hurt. Somnus underestimates how much Ardyn will fight for the people that he's been helping.

In the beginning of the fight Somnus is very cocky and smug and smirky because he's a military General, he knows that he has the better tactics and strategy on Ardyn and Ardyn's not a fighter so clearly he's going to win in a heartbeat and Ardyn will step aside and surrender the name. Which is kind of the key point there, that there can only be one and therefore if Ardyn steps down and willingly gives up his claim to the throne and takes a different name then he can just move on and have like a normal life and not have anything to do with the crown... but Ardyn is willing to fight so much more for his people than what Somnus is expecting.

Things go up a few notches, the fight gets more intense and about halfway through Somnus has that moment of realization (when Ardyn breaks his sword) that there only being one means that one of them is possibly going to have to *die*. He can't let it be him because if he leaves the kingdom to Ardyn then everyone is going to die especially if Bahamut told them that Ardyn could become a monster a demon.

So out comes the spear and he puts it through his chest and is going to take one for the team and do what is necessary for his country no matter whether he wants that to happen or not. Still not evil just devastatingly practical. Then Aera, who had agreed that telling him he would be the king is the only way that they were ever going to get Ardyn to come home sure but definitely not on board for killing her fiance, goes and throws herself in front of him. The look on Somnus' faces as he follows through with that swing is shock and horror.

That is the point where Ardyn changes and we have that line from Somnus where he's looking at Ardyn and just very very sad and resigned says "you've become the monster I made you out to be". This was not the plan at all and he can regret it all he wants but one way or the other he has to do his duty. (Gosh that's not a Lucian principle or anything, is it?)

It is only after the point that Ardyn shows that he has Scourge in him that Gil joins the fight. Gil was perfectly content to stand back and let Somnus push for either surrender or whatever was hiding inside of him to come out. One of the two. Something was going to give and Gil was not going to step in until that happened. (For all the Gilgardyn shippers)

Because there could only be one Lucis Caelum it makes sense to cut Ardyn's real name out of the history books. Because the people that were there to witness the coronation were all aristocracy and nobility it makes sense that they would look at this as Somnus, their great military leader, who saved them all from bringing the plague from the low common folk up into the higher ranks. It's entirely possible that if Somnus had just stood by and let Ardyn walk up those stairs and touch the crystal that it would have accepted him but because he didn't do it until after he had gone like hardcore Scourge face the crystal rejected him but I honestly don't think the crystal or the Gods ever betrayed him. Somnus lied and because Aera died no one else would ever know what really happened.

So there you go, my take on why what we got and what we had isn't as huge a discrepancy as I've seen people say and I don't think it makes Somnus an irredeemable douchebag.