ouhghhh. i cannot stop thinking about how fucking scared miquella sounds when he says "I'm going to become a god". like. he must have known this entire time how much godhood fucks up a person. and being an empyrean set this path out for him from the moment he was born!
how many of his plans were in part a desperate attempt to make the world he wanted come to be without taking those measures. the interest in golden order fundamentalism? the attempt to make a better, unalloyed golden order? the haligtree?
how many times did he try and seize the measures of the current power and seperate it from marika's ascension - not only because he believed it could improve the world, but because if any of these worked it could prove he didn't need to accept his doomed fate to make it happen.
and of course they all fail. both by the narrowness of his vision (the only pursuits he can see are ones within his mother's ideas), and because none of these could ensure as Perfect a future as godhood could manifest. He's going to become a god. It always had to happen. There is no other version of this story.