I actually really liked that they have that juxtaposition between Somnus & Ardyn.
Having Somnus as someone who is properly at war against the Starscourge en masse, vs. Ardyn as someone who is individually concerned for his people is really interesting. I really liked the fact that when they start out they don't really have anything against each other, but over time when you're looking at someone to become your leader, you have to start thinking about things on a larger scale:
Ardyn is more concerned about alleviating the suffering his peoples' individual experiences – so much so that he's sacrificing himself to do it. He's gaining the trust and the belief of his people, but at the same time, he's hiding a growing corruption that it's clear he's not always able to control or repress. While his intentions are pure, without a clear path to achieving his ambitions he's just stalling the inevitable – or even possibly becoming an even greater danger. If he was made king, there's no telling what may have transpired or when the darkness would have overtaken him.
Somnus is heavily preoccupied with the idea of the Starscourge as a plague and is more looking at it as an "ends justify the means" perspective of dealing with a plague-like infection. He's on the battlefield constantly, and is burning masses of people to keep it from spreading. Realistically, the only reason that Ardyn can do what he's doing one a smaller case-by-case basis is because his brother is obliterating
armies of Daemons. As the younger brother, he's always motivated by the ambition to overcome his older brother. It's clear that he's of the opinion that his ambition is the most important to overcoming their issues.
When it comes to the betrayal, it's clear that Somnus feels that there's a necessity in him becoming king over his elder brother. However, bringing in Ardyn under false pretenses is also INCREDIBLY important to the point of actually being functionally necessary, (even if he didn't know it at the time). If Somnus went out (as king or not) and directly confronted his brother in any scenario, the people would turn against him –
because they rightly love Ardyn vastly more than Somnus for what he's done to help them. Given what Ardyn was doing, he was essentially guaranteeing that he would eventually come into direct conflict with his brother, because their ideologies are not only opposed, but they're building to come into direct conflict with one another.
Somnus isn't noble in how he attempts to openly shame Ardyn into giving up the throne at all. That's his clear plan to attempt to seize control uncontested, which may have to do with some of the "younger brother" legacy, since he wants Ardyn to give up his name and make the claim to the throne clearly uncontested. When it's clear that Ardyn really
IS as corrupt as whatever rumors arrived to prompt that action, it becomes clear that while Somnus is far from noble, that this conflict was becoming inevitable to some degree.
I think that the anime is clearly meant to set up a sense where everyone embraces the perspective Ardyn has so that they're making the players WANT to take up Ardyn's cause for the DLC. It'll be interesting to see what additional things we learn from playing through the DLC about the little bits where Ardyn's self vs. his corruption helps to guide his actions. I think it'll start to make people consider the perspective to consider what would have happened if Ardyn took the throne and when up against his brother, and THEN fell to corruption. It seems as though everything would've been infinitely worse, so that we get to see Ardyn's story as a,
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." which makes me properly interested, since the whole thing was always a massive tragedy of inevitable sacrifices to end it all and giving Ardyn that righteously slighted ambition makes the conflict against Noctis feel like it's more extreme than ever in looking at the legacies of their ideological differences, but that also ends with Noctis purifying the corruption from Ardyn and giving him some degree of the kindness that he constantly showed to others.
Genuinely excited as hell for all of this.
X 
