That whole ordeal was...complicated. When it began, all of us awoke with missing memories we weren't yet aware we'd lost. Some lost weeks, years...millennia in my case, all simply locked away as though they'd never happened. So I didn't know anything of what I was, and I acted accordingly. Like I was still human, even while something I didn't understand was warping my emotions and thought processes.

With no one else from our world in that season to correct the blatant misunderstanding, I had to find out the hard way what actually happened as our memories came back a little at a time. Eventually I cracked under the weight and tried to go back to what I was. I told all of them that still remained who I was and what I'd done. And they didn't...

[He folded his arms, gripping his own sleeves restlessly.]

...They knew Ardyn Lucis Caelum before they knew Ardyn Izunia. And they wanted to believe that the former could still be pulled out of darkness and hatred.