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A god, a good caring god, especially of Justice, would not leave her people to live in squalor and destitution. Even a silly, frivolous god who made stupid, seemingly random laws, would not punish her people severely for their inevitable crimes.
But Furina is no god, and Focelors has long been silent to her. Furina does not exist for Justice. She is an actress on the grand stage, and the conservator of an entire nation. When the waters rise, at least some of her people must survive. All the caches of technology, history, culture that she can preserve will amount for nothing if there is no one left to appreciate them.
That is why Spina de Rosula exists. Why the people literally beneath her throne curse her and all of Fontaine. Someone must survive. Five hundred years has taught her that those with the most spite and least to lose, the cockroaches and rats of the world, will find a way when no one else will.
It's not right, or fair, or just. And she is none of those things either. She tries, she longs to be what they want, what they expect, but she can not. It would be counter to her very purpose. A good, kind, fair Archon who treated all her people equally and raised them on merits alone and bled herself for them in every way... She would not be able to fool the eyes of the watching Warden of all their fates. Such a person would crumble, when faced with the possible loss of all the lives under her protection.
Furina can not crumble. Her better qualities can only take her so far, take Fontaine to a point.
The rest has to come from spite, and rage, and bitter choices.
In conservation, oft times mistakes are made.
Human error. Miscalculation.
She learns that humans do not thrive in overly controlled environments. She can't keep them in hermetically sealed, oxygen rich environments under the waves. She has many ruins attesting to this. But Meropide is very much an attempt. A last, terrible bolt hole. A terrible mistake.
She doesn't know what lies beneath it. She doesn't know what Egeria did, what Focelors created or manipulated. She doesn't have the knowledge of the Archons, and she can never admit her ignorance or the whole paper tiger collapses.
Sometimes in trying to clean a painting, you scrub too hard and skin the paint. Sometimes the solvent to lift off the varnish is too strong, for one fugitive color, and you do more damage than the the smoke filled air of the last century in a mens club has managed. You make more work for yourself, undoing your mistakes, but it must be done.
It's not the lies that drown her, but the consequences. All her suffering will not balance the scales of the losses. Not when pushing for impossible answers means her own scientists destroy themselves for her ends.
There is no Justice in her existence. That was never her purpose.
She never tells the writers what to write. It's not for the conservator to paint over or erase the original work, only to hide the damage, to preserve the original intent.
Thank sleepless inventors for the typewriter, copying works becomes so much easier. As does the record keeping. Every birth, every death, and all the stages in between that can be committed to paper and ink. She tries to catch them all, sets up a legion of bureaucracy over the centuries to highlight as much of every brief, glittering moment as possible. She funds the advancement of every sort of time saving technology, of the phonautograph and the daguerreotype.
Paper yellows and film degrades, the originals may never last as long as the hand skilled with a bit of crushed stone, glue and steady breaths, but the latter fades from existence with the advancement of the former. She encourages all the arts. Creation is a fundamental part of humanity. Even if she never makes anything original herself, she will bask in the process of others.
She writes no diaries, no memoirs. Let Neuvillette remember her. Him and history. She will leave no evidence of her sins past the reckoning, will fade from Fontaine like the fresh details of a marble sculpture left to the rain.
He was the last duty given by Focelors. Other Archons sealed away their rival sovereigns, or vanquished them. She however, teaches him, because she is no Archon, any more than oil and pigments on canvas are a woman. She teaches him all about the sweetly bitter lie that is Justice, and the awful act of loving that which cannot last, and the endless, inexorable battle that is their lot against the ravages of time.
She loves him, she thinks. At least in the way she loves her cats, who freely choose to return her affection or not. He will be her last standing testament as a performer. Whatever he becomes, whatever he chooses once she's gone, will be because of the lessons she gave him, the efforts she achieved or failed in providing a world he could give his heart to.
She's not allowed to hold anyone too close. It's far too dangerous. Neuvillette and his daughters set an example for the rest of Fontaine, and she watches with pride as he finds individual humans to connect to. To cherish. She can't lead by example there, but even dragons can be lured in with a spot of tea and warm smiles.
She could have acted in Absentia, as so many Archons do, but she is no Archon. They would expect to see her power if they didn't see her, and so she offers neither Hydro nor herself. Only the masterpiece they already expect. She falls into any role with ease, compared to the performance of her lifetime.
Song and dance and light and motion, captured on Kamera and phonograph, more entries for the archives.
She lives in constant fear, grinding away the small joys she struggles to find in the beautiful land of her people. In the people that are hers.
The fear is not disappointment. It's failure. The disappointment already lies in the stones slowly solidifying in her legs, keeping her weighted to the ground, pulling her inexorably under the water.
She has to dance anyway. It's what they want, what they expect to see, what they demand from someone who is supposed to be theirs. She has to dance, no matter the exhaustion. It doesn't make you stronger to move with more weight, that's a myth, it just tears your muscles from your bones and shreds your tendons and you sing through the agony another day.
Humans crave community. It's a strange thing, that a species so set on besting each other as individuals, that can do the most horrific acts of violence against their fellow members, can not survive in solitude. She has studied extensively the phenomena, trying to understand where the lines between captivity and preserve are drawn. Even the most criminally minded seek connections. Abused victims seek out more abusers than the crushing safety of being alone. People need people, need families and friends and routines built around each other to find fulfillment in their lives.
Gods do not require these things. The Archons slaughtered thousands akin to themselves to sit alone on their thrones of stolen authority. Seven gods of seven nations of seven elements, all alone at the top of their seven towers of righteousness.
She's not a god, and she's so glad. All the stabbing, aching, grinding pain of loneliness and desperate fear are hers. They make her what she is, and they make her the same as all the people who are hers, but of whom she is not. What bleak, hollow, meaningless lives must they have? All the power, but a purposeless existence. Humans do not need gods. Celestia and Tyvat might, but humans have only ever needed a chance. A choice.
She knows that the Traveler will change things. They have already carved changes through four nations, of course they will change things here.
Will they bring about her promised trial? The Trial to end all trials?
If so, Furina will put on the best, last, grandest performance. She will annoy her dragon with her flightiness, will outrage her enemies with her callousness, will raise the tides of public drama and outrage to a storms pitch. Five hundred years she's sat on a throne as a puppet pulling her own strings to a predetermined design she has never fully seen, and her shoes have worn grooves in the twirling sections of the stage. No matter the cost, she will not falter.
The show, as they say, must go on.