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Reposting something I said in a reply in a longer thread a while ago, and elaborating on it a bit more:
The biggest tragedy for Zenos is that he grew up in a gilded cage.
He was gifted; intelligent, strategic, a quick study, academic - all of this is canon.
He could have achieved so much under different circumstances.
Instead he was neglected, isolated, abused so profoundly he stopped feeling things and became numb and indifferent to the world. Anhedonia as a teenager must be so profoundly isolating.
At 14, he almost killed himself to best his tutor having studied a fighting style unfamiliar to him and embedded a crystal into his hand in an attempt to manipulate it's aether.
And contrary to popular opinion, his direct words on the event are:
"Battle offers no euphoria, despite what the tales may claim. Deep down I had always known this, yet I find myself disappointed nonetheless."
He finds no pleasure in fighting until he encounters the WoL. It is something he had dreamed of since he was 14. Such a typical mindset to have as a teenager; I read about this in a book and wish to experience it.
"And he settled into bed, he prayed as earnestly as a boy of his years might that one day he would cross paths with a worthy foe and feel such exhilaration as the heroic epics promised"
Someone made the valid point of pointing out the word choice here. Prayed. A Prince of a nation that outright denies worship and treats eikons as taboo, prayed. So desperate for meaning in his life he turned to the very thing he’d been raised to denounce.
And it took 12 years until he encountered someone who let him feel that pure exhilaration he dreamt of. So profoundly overwhelmed by feeling this and achieving his lifes purpose, he decided he would never feel something so pure and joyful again, so ended his own life rather than continue a hollow existence.
“Combatsexual” is so reductive because he canonically doesn’t enjoy it. He keeps chasing it because he was lead to believe it might offer him meaning, euphoria, something in his hollow existence.
So many people have covered Endwalker and his narrative role there so I won’t repeat what’s been said but the key thing people need to remember:
Zenos is and always has been a narrative foil to wol and a story of what we could have become without the scions and our support network.
Conversely, and sadly, WoL is a constant reminder to Zenos of what he could have had if he had been borne of different circumstance.
You do not have to like him but to deny his role, his impact and his narrative is ignorance and a gross misunderstanding of the games message.
⠀ ⊹ ・ #zenos ・ #ゼノス ・ ⊹
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