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i’ve only read a few of your posts so far (i’ll read more when i get the time and brainpower!) but you seem like a good person to mention this to: someone recently recommended a certain genshin loremaster to me and only a few days after i marked it for later viewing, he made a post responding to a comment that was talking about sympathizing with or justifying colonizers (can’t remember). anyway this response post talked about like “wait until we see the Heavenly Principles’ perspective” (paraphrased but very close to actual wording) and even said “we’ve all benefited from colonization by existing” (direct quote). for the direct quote i had to go find a screenshot i’d sent to my friends bc i just went to check that i got it correct and it was gone so maybe this doesn’t ultimately matter and/or he realized the post wasn’t such a good idea? basically where i was going with this was: i’m so far behind in genshin (quit for several years, am in early sumeru and have not dug deeply into the available lore even before i quit) so i admittedly know next-to-nothing here but that… rubs me the wrong way? i think in some of your posts you talked about the revisionist history in genshin regarding Celestia and such so i feel like you’d know more about this and maybe have some thoughts. no worries if not though!! i kinda just wanted to make sure i’m not alone in finding that post/wording distasteful, for lack of a better word. if it makes it any better, i think he was trying to introduce nuance in the “we got to today through our timeline and its events” way but even then i feel like that implies we couldn’t have our advancements in any other way which i disagree with.

uh this ended up longer and more confusing than i intended so if you’ve read this far thank you 💜 and again no worries if you don’t want to comment on it, i don’t wanna put pressure on you

It’s alright, and yeah, I don’t think you’re in the wrong for that reaction. I’m don’t know when that post was released or even who released it - I do the digging and reading the source material on my own rather than through the fan stuff, so I’m out of the loop when it comes to big names in the fandom. But if they’re saying that in the big year of 2026 and with everything we know about the Heavenly Principles and Teyvat now…yikes 😵‍💫

Thing is, even as far back as with Venti and Zhongli, we’ve been getting signs that the Heavenly Principles and Celestia weren’t as upright as they seemed. Both of them have less than stellar opinions on them, then Ei comes around and reveals that she cut off contact with them because of her trauma 500 years ago…and that was back in 2021. Since then, though…the Heavenly Principles have crossed so many lines that not even an explanation can justify, nor would some “but I was sad once” backstory could redeem them for. Then there’s their entire deal with the Abyss. They hate it so much that they’ll do anything to keep its influence out of Teyvat, that alone is understandable…except not only did they not give a shit about the wellbeing of the humans they’re supposedly trying to protect from it in the process, but so many of their actions have actually left Teyvat more vulnerable to the Abyss’s influence, with those effects often lasting for hundreds of years. It all makes the Heavenly Principles look like that one authority figure who goes “I know what’s best for you” and “why are you so ungrateful? I’m helping you” while their “help” completely destroys your livelihood. And to top it all off, a lot of our playable cast have trauma that we can trace back to something Celestia did, which…wouldn’t it be awkward if the Traveler turned to all those characters and went “but think about the Heavenly Principles’ side of things!”?

-Warning for many spoilers under the cut-

Like the treatment of Khaenri’ah, which I’ve gone more in-depth about and how despite everything going on in there, it never warranted the power trip that Celestia brought onto them or the dehumanization they received afterwards. And of course, it still affects some of the Traveler’s friends in the present day, like Kaeya and Dainsleif (and Kaeya still having to carry that stigma despite being born 500 years or so after the Cataclysm…soooo beneficial am I right? /s). Hell, the reason Vedrolfnir, Dain’s brother went insane in the first place was because the HP enabled the Abyssal voices that tormented him with visions of every terrible thing that would happen in Teyvat because of “fate stuff”.

And then there’s that prophecy that would drown Fontaine…simply because the humans there weren’t created by the Heavenly Principles’ means. In what universe could that ever be a positive? And that was revealed to us back in 2023. Pretty much all of Fontaine (and yep, the entire playable Fontainian cast) would’ve had to pay for that in the Fontaine Archon Quest, but Furina about tenfold. That’s not even getting to Neuvillette, one of the dragons they tried wiping off the face of Teyvat. So the Fontaine arc revealed two attempted genocides by the Heavenly Principles, one that was happening while the Traveler was there…in what world would any of these characters have benefitted from that???

Hyperborea was the home city of the Frostmoon Scions (Lauma’s ancestors and the ones she inherited the legacy of), and where the Fae came into being (and we’ve met fae who are still affected to this day, like Flins and Linnea, plus more characters we’ll come across in Snezhnaya) They got a Celestial Nail dropped on them because…Seutervoinen found out that the dragons’ (who, again, they tried wiping off the face of Teyvat) rule has been supplanted by HP, he told the citizens, and they started questioning everything they knew about the world including the system they worshipped. As a result, the people started trying to break free of the HP’s rule and attempted to rebel against them, which led to the divine punishment. And any angels who dared try to help them after the fact? Lost a core part of their identity in the process (which is what happened to Nicole). “Why do people think Celestia are tyrants?” Well, maybe it’s cause they pulled a “never question me or else” onto an entire civilization that even present-day descendants of that civilization are still dealing with the effects of, long before they did that to Khaenri’ah??? Which even their own angels weren’t safe from if they felt an ounce of compassion or sympathy for the rebels?

Around the same time, the Moons were shattered by them to ensure their powers could never be used again, with only the Frostmoon remaining - thus leading to the deaths of the three original moon sisters and kickstarting everything Columbina went through as Nod-Krai’s Goddess.

There’s the Archon Wars where gods were forced to fight each other for the Seven’s authority, and the ones who refused or focused on peace (like Havria and Guizhong) were instantly felled, and the Gods who survived and ended up protecting the people of fallen gods and their cultures (most prominently Zhongli) were forced to harden themselves to make sure as many people lived if they could help it. Even amongst the original seven, most of them, like Zhongli and Rukkhedevata, were negative towards Celestia because of the unnecessary bloodshed.

Then there’s how their attempts to “cleanse” areas of the Abyss ended up with them not caring about innocents or long-term damage their interference would cause, kinda like that SpongeBob meme where they go “We did it, Patrick! We saved the city!” They did that with Lang-Gan’s people, who would’ve all been killed by yet another Celestial Nail drop if Zibai hadn’t gone against her neutrality pact as an angel and sacrificed herself to protect the survivors. Yep, they thought detecting Abyssal Presence there warranted the destruction of an entire innocent civilization in that way - and it wasn’t even because of Irmin/Five Sinners stuff this time, so HP has always been this bad with Abyss-afflicted situations regardless of what Khaenri’ah could’ve done. As a result, Zibai had her entire being split in three for about 6000 years and is still healing from the effects and trauma of that. But it’s okay, cause Celestia helped! Just like they helped by dropping Celestial Nails on all those other heavily inhabited areas too to suppress the Abyss! /s

They also did that with Natlan, which is the reason behind pretty much every Natlanese cast member’s trauma and need to grow up strong to hold off the Abyss. And that includes Benny (yes he’s Natlanese!) who ended up stranded in the Mare Jivari as a baby because his parents and their Adventure team were ambushed by the Abyss from those tainted Ley Lines, and turns out his bad luck stemmed from his disconnection from said Ley Lines. The First Descender, while warring with the vishaps essentially punched a hole in Natlan’s Ley Lines which allowed Abyssal creatures to invade…then when all of Natlan’s citizens were burdened with fighting back against them, the HP was like “not my problem” (you started it?!) and just let that go on for hundreds of years. Capitano, a Khaenri’ahn general, also spent the 500 years since the Cataclysm risking his life to help the Natlanese people hold the Abyss back, and HP even punished Ronova for assisting in their fight at one point saying “it’s their fight, don’t intervene.” Where’s the benefit in forcing an entire nation to bear one of HP’s “little oopsies” for centuries?

Other than that, so many new revelations have just been proving how hypocritical and rewriters of history they really are: a lot of the things that they “created” were actually the work of the dragons, like Irminsul and the Ley Lines. The systems used to create the visions? Also stolen authority from the Moon/Dragons, and more or less said to be corrupted versions of that (which makes how obsessed some characters in the game are with getting a vision, worshipping Celestia and the system to the point their morals revolve around it even more disturbing). Them getting worked up whenever someone else creates humans? If Skirk’s planet is any indication…they’re far from the first or only system where humans were created or even exist, and considering how Abyssal influence is kept well at bay in those worlds without resorting to all the extreme shit the HP put Teyvat through…yeah. The divine beings that they did create, like the Angels and Shades? All created in the image of themselves, with the expectations that they won’t feel emotions or think differently from them and end up defying their authority, with those who do getting severely punished or even destroyed.

And even their obsession with keeping the Abyss from getting any hold in Teyvat by forcing specific paths or fates onto vision bearers and their worlds…”Homeward, He who Caught the Wind” reveals that all the unchosen possible fates or paths are actually fueling the Abyss and its destructive tendencies, meaning that they’re actively making the problem they claim to hate so much worse by forcing fates onto Teyvat and its inhabitants, regardless of any well intent behind it. It’s like they think fixing symptoms of overarching issues right in that moment makes them all amazing and good, then do nothing about the fallout of both the lingering issue and their own actions. Not only is that lack of accountability way more dangerous than the stuff they make out to be monstrous and terrifying, but it leaves a lot of people and creatures of Teyvat even more vulnerable to Abyssal corruption than if they didn’t excuse everything with “but the sanctity of Teyvat!!” Like some HOA president on a power trip.

Everything I said is only scratching the surface, and doesn’t even cover everything Celestia’s touched or all the characters affected (like the Sumeru cast and especially what Collei went through, I’ll talk about that once I get the timeline for that in order). But at some point you have to look at all that and not have your first question be “but think about it from their side”, especially when so many of the Traveler’s own closest friends were so badly affected by something Celestia did (and being a good friend means not downplaying their trauma when it makes you feel uncomfortable or inconvenienced), and when so much unnecessary destruction and loss of life occurred from “their side” regardless of reasoning.

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