okay so obviously the correct answer to "my people are more deserving of life than yours because we were more magically/technically advanced" is "fuck you, the sophistication of a life form does not indicate its value" and also "fuck you, why should your standard of value matter more than someone else's," and some extra "fuck you"s thrown in for good measure,
....but also, how delicious is it that Emet-Selch has to admit that, while he doesn't know it, a bunch of very fallible mortals, in some of the worst circumstances imaginable, beyond the edge of all hope, managed to pull off a feat he considers impossible
speaking of which, I don't think I've made enough of the fact that, in a kind of terrible way, you could argue that G'raha and the folks from the timeline of the Eighth Calamity did in fact make the same choice as the Ancients.
minds capable of creating a machine that could traverse time and space and span the rift are minds capable of figuring out some other miraculous solution besides "we stay in the dead-end universe timeline and send our technomagical marvel back to save the lives of a specific group of people who have already died."
the distance between "a bunch of our friends gave up their lives to make this slim chance at salvation work, and we're willing to doom the rest of life in this timeline to correct what we perceive as the last, ultimate loss which doomed us" and "a bunch of our friends dedicated their lives to making this slim chance at salvation work, and we're willing to doom the rest of life in this timeline including ourselves to correct what we perceive as the last, ultimate loss which doomed us" is very, very small.
it's only the "including ourselves" that puts any distance between them at all
the Ancients decided that other life was worth sacrificing to right a grievous wrong (not in the initial sacrifice to summon Zodiark, but in the plan to bring their world back)
the Sons and the Ironworks workers and G'raha decided that all life was worth sacrificing to right a grievous wrong
continuing the thread of foils between heroes and villains, oh golly, Ran'jit
This is Ran'jit's point of no return scene, IMO. We'll see if I still agree when we see him for the real last time, but I recall him feeling already dead at that point. Anyway.
It only takes 3 lines for us to see how Ran'jit went from potential ally to most dogged enemy of the expansion:
You forget to whom you speak! Who armed you? Trained you? Fought and killed a thousand sin eaters with you!?
And when you were inevitably cut down and lay lifeless in my arms─who sought out your successor to carry on the futile struggle again and again!?
We seek to bring peace to what is left of this shattered land, while these mad fools would only bring further chaos down upon us!
Ran'jit speaks first of their becoming allies by fighting on the same side. He then speaks of the way he and she perpetuated the cycle, committing more and more of themselves to the cause. And then without acknowledging the dissonance, he berates her for wanting to continue to pursue the cause that united them, the cause he has given up.
That second line, about watching someone you love die over and over and seeking them out over and over to do it again because it's what you both believe has to happen for there to be any chance of things being right in the future, is so poignant to me because it's...it could be Venat talking to the Azem shards, you know? It could be Emet-Selch talking to any of the Mitrons or Loghrifs. They have all been caught in those same cycles, making those same sacrifices that have a chance to be only tragic, rather than tragic and evil, when we choose to make them with ourselves rather than demanding them from others.
Like Fordola, Ran'jit made a choice at one point to give up a cause he believed in because he thought all hope of the truly better future was lost; he thought this compromise would secure the new most hopeful option. And like Fordola hates the rebellious Ala Mhigans, Ran'jit resents that Minfilia hasn't also given up hope.