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From the moment of his introduction, I knew for a fact he was going to suck. The fact that they explain to us, from the very beginning, that he is evil, through KRILE using the echo, not us. The fact that she only briefly mentions his dark intentions and nobody else in Tural seems to pick up on the fact that he was evil, and at the end of the story, Gulool Ja exists. WHO THE FUCK WAS HIS MOM? YOU'RE TELLING ME ZORAAL JA BECAME EVIL BECAUSE WAR BAD AND HE HAD NOTHING TO LEAVE TO HIS KID, SO HE ABANDONED HIM?! THIS STORY WAS FUCKING BAD. INDEFENSIBLY SO! FIRE THIS DOGSHIT WRITER *NOW!*

I mean, his story line was pretty straight forward, what happens when a child suffers under the weight of their father's shadow and is unable to either find his own place or overtake his father's achievements. And honestly between him and Wuk Lamat who knows so little about anything plus Koana just simply not caring about anything beside pure efficiency, I really question how these kids didn't have teachers/lecturers to go over a lot of this and give them a more well rounded view of their nation, he could still struggle with it, but it feels they all were just ignored and left to figure life out for themselves. I get the Dawnservant not having time to teach his kids himself, but as someone who understood the importance of the different peoples and their culture making up his nation, he really failed horribly in preparing his kids and none of the 4 claimants were worthy of the throne IMO. And its not like they were poor dirt farmers in the middle of no-where, they had all the resources they could have wanted to get his kids some private teachers which was pretty common for nobles/rulers all nationalities in history. And as a villain I never saw him as a threat, we just killed gods, his little tyranny was laughable in comparison even after he consumed all those souls. Throw in that when we get there, they don't even have a navy so any attempt to invade the mainland would have them completely outclassed before fighting on land even happened. Honestly, I blame the Dawnservant himself for his failures as a parent for all the conflict in this expansion.

As a gifted kid/firstborn sibling: Yes.

While I am optimistic about how the story will go (like in arr there are clear threads being laid out for possible stories later on) part of me wants to see what would of happened if he got his wish to invade. Because clearly he is a frog in a pond. He thinks he knows everything, and with his mighty legs and leap over any hurdle, only to realize that when he leapt over that stone wall, he’s going to face such a force, one that is already so TIRED of war, so uneasy about losing that peace, that’s he’s severely out matched.

I feel that Koana became popular and started to get art drawn of him was when he went full on "I'll hunt you down and make sure you have a very bad day" when he learned that his adopted sibling was in trouble. That at least for those two it didn't matter that they weren't blood related. I did think the sore shoulder would have been brought back up at some point, but I guess not.

I see G'raha as our tech guy. Yes he has a specialty in Allag, but he's probably the only Scion who could keep up with the tech babble anyone from the Ironworks could throw at us. That and he was the one who Kokkol chose to help him at the forge while we did things to keep busy until the adamatite arrived. He also as far as we know the only one who is a speed reader with a photographic memory. So when he does pop out an aoe Float spell we can easily go oh he must have read it in a book at some point. We did have access to Break as a role action back during Stormblood and Ryne also has access to Banish as a trust. For me he's like Garrus a guy we know can lead a team, is tech savvy and if need be can hold the line. Now some might say Thancred also fills that role, but I'd label him more of a Thane with a little bit of Jacob in there. Just not the "Oh I met someone while you were in the brig and didn't choose to stay in contact after opening up to you romantically and we both survived a suicide mission." part.

ff14 have to, for once, interpret a characters actions *through their actions* and it melts their minds.

Your video came up on my feed and i realized you said a lot of things i unconsciously figured out. One of the things i feel like ffxiv does is try and show directly opposing forces, and i have wondered if the inclusion of two (three?) opposing forces against wuk lamat was too much for some players. Each character shows a different kind of opposition to Wuk Lamat's as someone else said here, innocent ignorance, and i really liked that.

oh! it may be her, but out in Elpis you can fly to a little island and one of the npc's there mentions how they naturally grow things there. there are a couple of non chatting npc's there to! And using smt stuff here is fantastic xD i also have those cards :3

I do respect your right to a different opinion, but to me a lot of this comes off as apologism for what I would call bad writing. You make a fair point about how often characters in XIV monologue out their intentions and reasons for their outlooks, but to me Zooral Ja is a very two-dimensional bad guy who wants power for the sake of it, only occasionally using "teaching the people" or "being a strong leader" as an excuse, though that goes right out the window when he butchers the Tuliyolans(?), then again when he repeats that in Solution 9. He undercuts the only things that really lend him any character beyond "me good fighter, me want surpass dad, me prove to everyone me better by being stronkest leader." I find that he's just plain poorly written, personally, and that this whole line of reasoning in the video gives him waaaaay more credit than his character as presented deserves. All the same though, as with any writing, there's no 'wrong' interpretation, so I appreciate the food for thought and general discussion.

I really like his boss form. A two-headed mamool-ja, missing its head of wisdom. It's an extremely strong symbol of who this guy is. All his life he was trying to create a miracle to prove himself, when he'd already been a miracle, and all people actually wanted from him, was to be there. Had he instead of looking inwards, looked outwards, he'd have found family ready to help and support him. I can't help but feel that his adopted brother and sister were meant to provide the wisdom and heart he needed to become the next dawnservant, and this whole race is a backup plan because that failed. This expansion is written a lot more subtle than normal.

He's afraid. More than anything he struck me as a man of skill, who's skill is useless. Regardless what he intended to do with the invasion, he's obviously not going to win, and I don't think he's lying when he says he wants to do it. I think he believes that at some point they'll be forced to consider the dangers of the possible war when showed it in real time. It will also give him even the briefest moments of being able to actually do something "useful" to his people. He's a soldier, seemingly a very good one. But he isn't good for anything else. He knew that. He saw that. I do not believe he is wrong. The fear of never being anything, to anyone, or not being good enough I feel covers his character fairly well. The moment with his son when he says something to the effect of "I have nothing of value to give you." hit me like a truck. Your comparison to a souls character might be an excellent example un-ironically. He went hollow long before we met him, and he has no one to blame but himself, he let the fear rule him.

I think your take echoes what I might just consider the best aspect of Dawntrail: At points, it learned to be much more concise than what came before. You can be just as meaningful with one sentence than you can be with ten. I really encourage people to go back to all of the scenes with Otis and look at how much you actually learned in just a few scenes. The campfire scene with Koana, Thancred and Urianger is where I first truly felt it. I was super impressed with how much we learned about Koana in that scene and how it tied together with Thancred's but also particularly Urianger's arc. Same for anything with Bakool Ja Ja and yes, Zoraal Ja. Living Memory was the best example of this to me. You learn a lot about all of the characters involved, some you just met. You get faced with an interesting moral dilemma while resolving five different character stories. And FF14 always got down to business in key moments, but I really felt it in a lot of scenes in Dawntrail. It felt a lot like how economic older Final Fantasies were. The problem is that I think this comes with its own issues. I think this is where the tonal dissonance complaints for older Final Fantasies come from and I think where the complaints about particularly Bakool Ja Ja's redemption arc and Sphene's character in FF14 come from. Eventhough we learn a lot about them and there are hints to what's up, there isn't as much connective tissue to those reveals. If you have constant walls of text about the detail, you will always have connective tissue and nobody will ever forget it. I went back after everything regarding Bakool Ja Ja was revealed and was surprised how early the hints were there. But after his arc, he essentially also feels like a different character. He is not an uninformed redemption arc because he never reverts to his old ways (which characters are then suddenly okay with within bad redemption arcs), but he is not a graceful one, either. So I think part of the reason why people are so dismissive of Dawntrail is, yes, partially because they did it in two days and barely absorbed anything from it, but also because this concise writing style is mixed with "the usual" lore walls of text and the meaning there is can get lost in it if you don't go into it expecting to absorb every little detail (like I did). Being economic with storytelling is great, but you can just go too economic and if it's not consistent bury the cool stuff. The few lines at the start of Zoraal Ja's trial really stood out to me to the point where I went back to what came before because I also initially had an issue putting together his story. But then I realised, I was... actually intellectually working to think about a story? I wasn't just force-fed a story of a character? And that is a different kind of storytelling that can also be wonderful in its own right. It's easy to dismiss anything as half-baked, but I much prefer to face a story on its own terms. I also see a lot of dismissal about "thinking about the story" and how that either "ruined it more" or "you should think less about it" and I think to me the latter principle is just as dismissive and not fun as some of the more shallow negative dismissal. You're not obligated to be critical of something you love 24/7 (which is its own very annoying fandom group), but "only consuming, not thinking" is also really boring to me. Personally speaking, I think going over it again via other playthroughs or revisits of my own, I grew to appreciate it a lot more in some aspects, but also a little less in others. Don't have much a general unified point here to end on, but I thought this was a great video! I think a lot of RUclips essays often substitute plot summary for analysis, so you only dedicating a portion of your video to it felt like a breath of fresh air. (Not to mention it was actually relevant considering part of the thesis of the video is that many are confused by Zoraal Ja's story.) Looking forward to any other videos from you (also will be checking out your other videos)!

I'm def not against getting another character like him in the future, but I think he was the way that he was for a very specific purpose as a foil to the Dawntrail's themes. Gulool Ja Ja's words “Ignorance begets strife. Understanding begets fellowship" permeate the story. That's the big lesson that Wuk Lamat and Koana learn together. That's one of the big themes of the story. Making an effort to understand each other usually leads to people being on better terms with one another while. That's not really new for FFXIV-one of my favorite scenes in Endwalker involves Alphinaud and Alisaie talking about that same kind of thing, the way their father and Quintus both reduce people and their complex personhood into statistics, numbers, and ephemeral mass groups. Alphinaud is like "Don't be reductive. We should see people as people. The best way to help people is to learn about them and their needs." Wuk Lamat also learns to appreciate the diversity of Tural by speaking to people and learning about them. She proved that time and time again with the float in Kozama'uka, with the xibruq pibil, etc. Zoraal Ja not only failed to do any of that nonsense, which would be good enough reason to call him an antithesis of the game's themes. He also goes a step further and just... doesn't open up. He doesn't talk about himself. He might not even necessarily interrogate his own thoughts and feelings much. Zoraal Ja being a wall of a person makes him the perfect antagonist for a story about the importance of communication and understanding. The fact that we don't learn about his insecurities and his feelings until it's too late and he's killing physical manifestations of his family mid-fight is like an integral part of the story! He only really opens up right on his death bed and Wuk Lamat laments that she wishes that she and Koana made more of an effort to understand him. And that was his biggest crime. He never let anyone in. Well that and the patricide/regicide and attempted global conquest.

"Is he just stupid?" -- Cider Spider's take on him at the end of his trial. I do think Dawntrail is a test for media literacy that the FF14 fanbase has failed, because as you pointed out, people want to be told rather than shown how things work. There's a large difference between not liking something and not getting something. People not getting why Wuk Lamat went with us to Alexandria instead of Koana is a great example, because people dislike her so much and wanted to move on so much they didn't get the actual reason (the reason: because she's the thematic foil for Sphene). Zoraal Ja is similar, once you put all the pieces together. He is a dumbass, but for a reason. Really, he's more a foil for Bakoul Ja Ja. He both feels massively entitled yet has an inferiority complex due to his heritage as the true-born heir of Galoul Ja Ja, the miracle child. His entire reason for being is to live up to and surpass his father, to be the next Dawnservant. This is basically Bakoul Ja Ja, massive responsibility put on him by his people/legacy which creates his character, along with the failure to live up to his expectations and the depression that came with it. Difference is, Bakoul Ja Ja found friends and became redeemed. Zaroul Ja didn't, failed, and broke mentally. There's a reason Zoraal Ja implements Tural's Head of Reason/Resolve politics into Alexandria, because of how much he's driven by being his father's son. There's a reason he could wipe out Tural, as per his deal with Sphene, but instead only chooses to kill Galoul Ja Ja and leave Wuk Lamat/Koana, the people who stole his inheritance, to suffer and fail. This likely is the reason he had a kid in a story I'm hoping is picked up in the patches. Its the reason he turned into a two-headed (forget the Lizard people's official name) during the trial, like his father. And ultimately, its the reason that, even though he wanted nothing to with Galoul Ja (because as he stated, he felt he couldn't be a father when his father failed him), that on his death, he left Galoul Ja his birthright inheritance that Galoul Ja did not want/desire, because Zaraal Ja never got that from his father, and he's giving that to his kid. He is just dumb because he didn't pick up on the lesson hammered home throughout the expansion. Dawntrail has issues, but there is a ton of depth to the story that I think people quite frankly don't even try to engage because its not spelled out for them. And when I point out this in other comments, people say I'm on copium trying to rationalize the game as good, rather than trying to analyze what the game gives us.

Yeah most of the people complaining must have obviously played the game just like Zoraal Ja tried to complete the Trials.

I kinda came to view Zoraal Ja as Bad Tidus and Gulool Ja Ja as a Better Jecht. So Zoraal Ja is Shuyin with Tidus daddy issues and Kuja's disillusionment. Kuja also died pretty wrong. Wuk Lamat was like a Yuna with Zidane's optimism. WoL and the Scions take on guardian roles and set off on a pilgrimage Bakool Ja Ja is mostly a Saturday morning anime villain, but also like if Seymour Guado stopped being an asshole. Similar cultural pressures to perform and Mamook looks so much like Macalania Woods it's hardly subtle. But everything seems to ultimately revolve around Gulool Ja Ja. Everything is just in his image. WL and Koana admire him, Zoraal resents him. Both parties find a way to emulate his style of rule. So while everyone is mad WoL is bumped from the protagonist slot and think Wuk Lamat usurped the role, Gulool Ja Ja was the main character the whole time. We retrace his steps, learn his lessons and his legacy is reflected in all Promises, even if Zoraal Ja and Sphene go a different way with that idea. That sort of subversion reminds me of FFXII and MGS3 where some we never really play is the center of the story.

You know everything you said is certainly a possible and valid interpretation of him. I however Just think he was underdeveloped and rushed as a character much like the entirety of the second half of the DT story and this just high grade copium.

I got a strong feeling Dawntrial will eventually get its flowers once tensions settle. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the MSQ and surprisingly really subtle way the the characters grow. Esp Lumati’y

I think people don’t understand why we got him as a character/villain After getting so many characters with deeper points to their character, even Zenos got more to him over time, I think players are still just confused that we have such a straight forwards character

Holy shit, RUclips recommendations actually recommending something good for once. Subscribed!

"don't recommend this channel"

I think you nailed it. He doesn't talk much, and the FFXIV playerbase (if not the FF player base as a whole) is REALLY heavily trained to take cues and context entirely from a character's mouth. This expansion has SO much context hidden behind character's actions and words, not just for Zoraal Ja but for everyone in the new and old cast. I've seen so many hot takes about character's being too quiet or not making sense when in reality what they mean is they didn't have the thoughts/feelings of that character laid out on a platter for them and they didn't stop to *think* about how they were acting or why. Really feels like a good chunk of the people who are screaming that this is the worst expansion are also the ones who speedrun everything and take things at face value.

The thing I got stuck on was how exactly Zoraal Ja planned on carrying out his expansionary war when one of the first things DT established was that Tural didn’t have ships capable of crossing the sea. I like to think The Alliance would nip the problem in the bud if a noticeable number of shipwrights with the necessary expertise to build a war fleet suddenly went missing due to fat contracts luring them West/getting kidnapped. A point made even more moot by the fact that cyberpunk technology is no match for even the weakest dragon of the first brood.

I love the emphasis on him lacking any reason through the form he takes in his final fight against the WoL. People's main criticism of him was that his decisions were so foolish that it became unbelievable. To me, it's obvious that he's supposed to depict a very harmful mindset that many people (especially men living in toxic masculinity) struggle with their whole lives - inferiority complex. It can completely warp one's sense of identity and perception of everything around them, and I think people underestimate just how influential it is. He refuses every possible avenue of connection, and it only feeds internal struggle until it spirals out of control. I loved that he was so quiet the whole way through! His silence reinforced just how disconnected he was from everyone. His final moments where he reveals that he refused to parent his son only reinforces what was always there - inferiority complex and a lack of self identity. To Zoraal Ja, independence was everything - and that was the one thing his father couldn't give him (indeed, he felt like his father actively worked against that just by existing). So when Zoraal Ja says "I had nothing material to give my son, just as my father couldn't for me", he's saying "I couldn't give him identity" as though that was the only thing of value he could offer... So sad. He was pathetic to the very end. That's why I don't get why people don't understand him. He's a very real depiction of how many people act in real life.

I'm trying to nail down my own thoughts on Zoraal Ja, so I only caught the third section so far, but I'm stoked you touched on something I think is important about Dawntrail -- it tells some of its stories in a way that differs from how XIV usually does, and not everyone has adapted their reading process to meet it. Which is fine (and maybe inevitable with long-running media), but I think that is understandably causing some people to struggle, well, understanding some of its characters and themes.

Autism take

show, don't tell. in this case, he's quiet, yes, but his eyes do not speak either. there are also misses here where they could have used the power of the echo to help us understand this son's anguish, and they either chose not to, or simply didn't think to.

I've heard a lot of what was said and it does make a bit more sense? And I wouldn't say the game betrayed me with this character in the "teaching people how to read the story" aspect, and that this is clearly a new way they want to explore a character like this. My problem is, to equivocate this argument into gameplay terms, this is throwing a casual reader into an Extreme Trial situation, flanked by underleveled chaff on either side of the progression. He's hard to understand for the reasons you state: He doesn't communicate his intentions that well, his motivations aren't relatable to a lot of people, and everyone else in the game tells him he's wrong to his face and he refuses to listen. I think what makes Zoraal Ja harder to understand, for me, is that he is the *only* character in Dawntrail not following the typical formula. And I don't mean "we need multiple nonverbal characters" or anything. But we need characters that don't monologue their intentions plainly as others have. We need more of that variety in character writing in order to enable some kind of mental elasticity to better comprehend when something doesn't fit the otherwise rigid mold that Zoraal Ja has broken. We could have had Koana take on similar traits, where he believes himself to be right with his innovations, refuses to communicate, then something blows up in his face and he then has to ask for help from Wuk Lamat. Or we could have had more distrust from Bakool Ja Ja during Mamook without having his mother immediately smooth everything over so that we'd have to sit down and talk with him and earn his trust the hard way. We could have had Sphene be far more socially distant from Wuk Lamat and not be so earnest to earn their trust; still have that alliance of convenience, but just have it be more strained. All of this would have shown that A.) Zoraal Ja isn't such a massive outlier, and B.) It would demonstrate to the player that diplomacy is a hell of a lot harder to accomplish than what the game currently makes it out to be. All of that said, I greatly respect the pains you took in this video to explain things. I still struggle with appreciating Zoraal Ja for what his character is, but this video did make that easier to digest.

To me, what makes Zoraal Ja such a difficult character to grasp is his lack of depth. It really feels like they said "we need a character that loves war to be the baddie; this guy loves war... because people have it too good and they take it for granted? Yeah that'll work" and then didn't actually give him a narrative reason to have that opinion. At the verrrry end (literally on his deathbed) the big reveal was he was Like This because he Had Something To Prove, despite holding tremendous power in the city (being head of the admittedly limited army), and then king of alexandria, and was loved and respected by both his people and his family. It gave the impression they ran out of time to find a good reason he felt this way and just put any old reason on there. This amidst a plethora of other very one dimensional characters and unengaging narrative, it just felt like he was one of many incomplete aspects of the msq. It felt like his character wasn't nailed down until the very end and by then it was too late to go back to rewrite some of his earlier scenes to get even an inkling of his imposter syndrome & instability other than to put in other characters essentially saying "he gives me the heebiejeebies." Any depth he may have had as a character was not shown to us in any way until his act of desperation where he steals the keystones (which there's no obvious reason he does because he WAS disqualifed and he wouldn't have known the city of gold was a vault to another world with a Tron army) and the surprise key to open the door (which also, how did they know) was genetically linked to him and his father (and is also imho the only reason his son exists - so they can pass the key down). It's not even just a lack of words not being said, there's just not really any indicators because he's got so little screen time and what he does have he just keeps saying that war will teach people how good peace is instead of anything new or nuanced. Idk he just felt like a puzzle piece jammed into a spot he didn't fit and the confusing bit about him is his motivation makes no sense given everything else we know about his backstory and his actions. The cognitive dissonance he exibits is rarely found in well written characters. What I think would have been better would have been to swap him & bakool ja since bakool ja had a Reason (even if it was mid, it fit narratively) and was after roughly the same thing, but without having been spoiled and pamped (just the cream of the crop of the starving forest) and could have reasonably wanted revenge on tuliyolal for having it So Good while they suffered in the dark. And then they wouldn't have had to force his redemption arc in (which also doesn't fit).

Honestly, I think the character would have worked better for everyone if it was a bit less "Show; Don't tell" while still keeping that same core. His appearance is almost jarring to players who for the last 10 years relied on solely context, so I think him going in the direction of a transition to a little more visual storytelling in the structure of FFXIV's MSQ would help the player's appreciation of him, and pave the way for more characters like him, that need more than just reading lines of dialogue, or one single detail showing what you need to expect in a cutscene.

As always, most amazing insight and perspective, do you think that Zoraal Ja received a Zenos treatment in writing, where only at his last moment speaks his mind for the first time ? Zenos stayed in the story for so long but we never got to truly understand him and the circumstances that made him who he is today, was he always like this as his story told in the book they released, or the way he was raised made him this way? Did emet selch do something to him when he was a kid? In this video you shown that Zoraal Ja was written in a way that doesn’t give too much information because as the story mentioned at one point that he only talks when he is talked to, was Zenos always the same too? Honestly I can’t help but remember the first time we saw Zenos in stormblood when he was meeting with his legion members, he was quite “animated” and shown many emotions and reactions and never again we got to see Zenos in such light.

he’s just Vergil to me, and i like that lol

Figures.

The fight with Galool Ja Ja was unplanned. Zoraal Ja was surprised he was still alive. His goal was take the souls of the people in Tural, but he changed his Plan afterwards when he learned his father still lived. He switched back to his old self of needing to prove his existence, which is why he issued the challenge to Wuk Lamat.

“Dukat is just a Nazi.” Not a complicated character!? Dude, lol. I can’t, sorry-you lost me. Dukat is on another level, and the writers put on a villain-writing clinic with him. They managed to make him nuanced and even morally gray on occasion, but he always slid back toward evil. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by a character refusing redemption so many times. Comparing him to Zoraal Ja in terms of simplicity is…certainly a take. Zoraal Ja actually is just very simple.

"Why is this Lizard so mad?"

Zoraal Ja and Gul Dukat don't belong in the same sentence unless the rest of that sentence is "are both villains, and the latter is the one with good characterization."

Zoraal Ja's understanding of War being... incredibly juvenile, if we're being honest, makes a lot more sense when you take his upbringing into considering. He wasn't raised in a society in active warfare on multiple fronts, unlike Zenos - he was raised in an era of peace. He never fought an enemy nation or occupied hostile territory, also unlike Zenos, who was awful on purpose so he had something to do when the rebels eventually rose up. Zoraal Ja fights tural vidraal, which are basically Monster Hunter creatures. He doesn't have a grasp of strategy greater than "flush out the target to him to get to" because that's literally all he's needed to do, and he doesn't even know what logistics or tactical deployment are because the first was handled by the infrastructure that was already established by his father and the latter wasn't necessary for him to just bulldoze through most challenges solo, and I think he KNOWS all of this, or at least realizes it later on but can't bring himself to fix it out of pride. Him saying that Garlemald was "weak" for falling to internal strife was such a blatantly ignorant remark that it shook me from my "the characters are at least always honest with themselves" mindset and I started seeing him less as a FFXIV character and more of an Obsidian RPG character, who is more than willing to lie - especially to themselves - out of pride, misplaced confidence, or fear more than deception. Yes, that's right, I just compared Zoraal Ja to Atris from Knights of the Old Republic 2. They both come off as haughty, incredibly self-assured, and have incredibly *wrong* opinions but will brook no argument. It's just that Atris comes after several, several hours of the game teaching you to never take words from NPCs at face value. FFXIV spends *way more* time doing the exact opposite. So, uh, yeah. All that to say that you've convinced me. Good video.

He died being told he was wrong, such a tragedy. He thought he was cast aside after losing the rite of succession and sadly believed that his father left him nothing. I don't even have a hypothesis about what Gulool Ja Ja would have done for him or given him if his son had come home in peace despite failing the rite.

bruh some weird mfs play this shit

Zoraal Ja is not hard to understand, he is just... stupid? Tural has absolute no Navy, the invasion into Eorzea will fail asap because Limsa will absolute dominate the sea inbetween, airships wont work across such a long distance. He lacked foresight, he lacked reason, he lacked identity. He was born into his father's shadow, never able to step out of it to be worthy of his title as the Wonder Child, even when his existence alone justified the title, yet he did not much to be different. The fact he is suppose to be a reference to Kuja, Zoraal Ja lacks groundwork and connection, he demanded Koana to support him when he becomes the Dawnservant, even when its clear Koana would not use his knowledge for war. This disconnect is interesting to see, he is just as naiv as Wuk Lamat was at the start but did not even think of adapting and growing unlike hgis siblings.

Lizard Ranking: Gulool Ja Ja > Bakool Ja Ja > Gulool Ja the Second > Zoraal Ja

I was really excited for this topic. This was a really great break down. Zoral Ja was one of my favorites this expansion for his sheer presence, and as that façade crumbled he only got better to me.

That a good point. Never thought thought of him that way, but we do like him more as a villain now knowing that.

I mean his "I'll make them tired of war by dragging us all in to war and then there will be no more war" is still incomprehensible to me, logic-wise. But I did understand that was what he was saying. It just had "Hey man I heard you like war, so I put some war in your war so you can war" vibes and the logic is just hard to compute. Cus he seems cool calm and collected otherwise. (We're told he's got some rage abyss undertones by krile, but we don't really see it till the invasion.) And smart. And that logic just isn't. That was my major hangup with his character.

bad character that gets screen time and does nothing. i hate that why put him on the screen if hes not going to do or say anything.

Honestly i think Zoral Jas invasion would have failed ultimately. Aside from the elephant in the room, which is the WoL gets involved, theres a few things i think he'd overlook. 1. He'd fail to realize the countries of the east are united, and are a massive force to be reckoned with. 2. Garlemald may be weakened, but they can still fight, maybe they cant solo, but they could still be a gamechanger. 3.Vtra,Tiamat and Hraesvlgr exist,and im pretty sure 2 of them owe us a favor iirc. Hes a good stategist, in that he prepares for what he knows he can expect, it's the unexpected that gets him.

I think they missed out having Zoraal Ja show up in Living Memory.

For me the biggest hole in zoraal ja's writing is his so called motivation to teach the masses the folly of war by ironically waging war. It doesn't check out because never does the MSQ ever show that Tural is still suffering from an endless cycle of war. The x'braal and mamool ja stopped fighting decades ago and whatever escalation risk the chirwagur pose is negligible if wuk lamat could talk them down so easily. It would be a different story if the nation were still rife with assorted conflicts and zoraal ja wants to end it by beating up everyone till they are too broken to fight any longer. Heck it would even make for a good source of animosity between him and his more pacifistic father who doesn't want such an extreme solution while his son is fed up with years of stalemate that costs the landsguard men and resources when they could just crush their opponents decisively. Instead we got stuff like zoraal ja mad cos he can't cook... His writing to me was a total letdown.