At least you do not undergo a succession, Dantarg lets you live if you lose, which may seem more a strike to one's own pride that he doesn't see you worth being absorbed.
@@kuronezumi_snessounds If you are speaking of the ending, the whole game itself is a retelling of the events throughout from the Minstrel. The Last Emperor is called that for a reason, the inheritance magic wore off around the time Kujinshi reconstituted, Orieve explains this if you reach the Ancients Village as any other Emperor that the magic will wear off. At the very start when the Minstrel begins to play you see the Last Emperor. Most new players may not catch this. They will see an character that stands out but may not recognize them since they only saw the front in the character select screen. The same is done in the Remake, you do see the Last Emperor, but only a part of them due to the camera angle moving towards the Minstrel. Now this is just a guess, but since the Minstrel is retelling the story, this means 1 of 3 things since this whole thing spans potentially centuries or millennia: 1) The Minstrel is an Ancient like Orieve and the others that remained and he is able to transmigrate to a new body like them. 2) The Minstrel has a long family line and the clothes and instruments are passed down from father to son along with the story being chronicled. 3) The Minstrel may be Elore himself who left Mardias after the events of RS1 like how the gods of old did affer the first war of the gods in which he himself was birthed from Saiva and chose to stay behind like Nisa to restore Mardias after her defeat.
Price one had to pay for further power to stop the Seven. Salamanders being sacrificed to be able to access Umbrology is the RS2 equivalent of the Ice Sword from RS1 where you had to kill Galahad or the easier victory against Aunas in RS3 with Flurry's (Snowman) self-sacrifice.