My problem with Aglaea is that Hoyo clearly wanted a harsh character but was also clearly not brave enough to actually go through with it.

I know this will probably get downvoted to hell and/or get no engagement but i still want to say it. I don’t dislike Aglaea’s writing because she interrogated us or did not trust us from the very beginning. I have no problem with characters who are more on the bad side (i know she is not) or do not just simp for the main character. And i am not failing to look at things from her perspective either like how many people always likes to believe the other party has to be incapable of understanding the most basic and simple things.

My problem with Aglaea’s writing is that Hoyo clearly wanted to make this “she is the hardened cautious leader who let go of her emotions to always make the hard but right judgements” character but also could not actually go through with it to not fully anger fans so they tried to find a middle ground and that made her actions utterly nonsensical as a result.

Here is why: Aglaea is supposed to be cautious right ? But a cautious person would not do what she does. She can literally discern lies for gods sake, a cautious person would interrogate us FIRST THING as soon as she can but would do it under a PEACEFUL manner. That way you do not potentially make enemies out of powerful people who could have be a great help but now can cause even more problems because you antagonized them. And just get ridding of them is not safe either since they came from beyond the sky so if they die their allies might come from sky to become enemies too. Aglaea had many opportunity to ask her questions while getting our cooperation for it. She could have said in our first conversation that she is grateful for the help but they are in a critical condition so if she is to accept us into the city first she has to test us with her threads. That way she appears more reasonable and does her questioning while not making enemies out of us or lose our help. Or she could have do her questioning while we were alone with her in the bath too. But she did NOT. She barely tested us, then claimed we are heroes and have her trust and just said not to tell people we came from beyond the sky without even properly explaining why (another thing a cautious person would have NEVER done, under informing matters of great importance)

Then when we revealed it to save a person’s life she immediately turns hostile despite knowing it was to save a life and knowing we have the trust of 3 different heirs, lures us into a trap by abusing our trust and then threatens us with DEATH. What a great way to make sure your potential helpers would never help you even if you decide you can trust them. If this was not a game Dan heng and TB would have F’d out of the planet 9 out of 10 times, if you are not sure someone is an ally or enemy you have to be as natural as possible while trying to find the truth so you do not make them your enemy for real. But despite all the chances she had for a more peaceful and reasonable interrogation she instead chose to threaten us over a matter she failed to properly explain.

Now you can say perhaps the threat was needed to have us be truthful but not only she can’t know that without trying it peacefully first, once again her threads can literally detect lies so she does NOT need to go violent first to get answers, but also the real problem here is that if Aglaea ACTUALLY sticked to her guns and was actually gonna have us die if we failed her test because we were deemed untrustworthy then i can understand and accept it even with the sloppy writing. But guess what her questioning does NOT matter. You can lie in all 4 questions, she can get absolutely nothing from all that shit on top of us being even more suspicious now for lying and not only you still survive but also she STILL allows you to help. And then she later reveals to Tribbie that she never actually intended to have us die and knew Phainon was gonna be there to save us or Tribbie would have not allowed it had she be serious. So she not only knew and accepted that we had the trust of 3 heirs and knew that we were not threats worth killing but also the results of her questioning was SO IRRELEVANT that you still get to help them regardless. So she just threatened the only help she could find and potentially lost their help for a question that even she ultimately did not care about its results enough to change anything.

The problem with Aglaea is not her distrust. It is that Hoyo has FAILED to write a properly cautious character because they could not manage to go all in and had to take steps back to assure the players that she still trusts us in her own way and would have never hurt us. And this made her actions foolish instead of logical as she foolishly risks making us enemies or lose our help despite being ready to have us help NO MATTER WHAT