fanhanlon:

“His body would come to host myriad dæmons…”

“Only once the Crystal and the King are no more… I can know redemption.”

Still my favourite scene from FFXV – it’s in the original cut and it remains untouched, and I think it tells you everything about Ardyn you need to know. 

Coming from a character that up to now has been domineering and confident, his facial expressions and body language in this scene are extremely telling. He can’t even bring himself to talk about what happened to him in the first person. It’s one of the reasons I was adamant when the game first came out that Ardyn’s version of events was true (at least to him), since some people theorised he was simply lying. 

Later updates to the game revealed Ardyn’s tale to be true and worse. But to me it’s always been obvious — this is one of the few times we get to see Ardyn with all his bombastic megalomania stripped away, and he’s still sneering and spiteful, but also very, very vulnerable.