Yeah, I think it's a legit interesting debate, but like I said before, I think the Sept-Terrions are commentaries on human nature than the nature of the Sept-Terrions themselves. Instead of asking, "Why didn't this work?" Their question became, "How do we replace it?" with a self-congratulatory "think of all the good we could do with this" while ignoring all the children they had to sacrifice to create KeA.
This goes back to my issues with Dieter, who wanted to talk about all the good he's doing for Crossbell, but doesn't want to be held accountable for all the people he had to trample to do all this good. Contrast that with Lloyd, who feels guilty and responsible for not being able to save freakin' Joachim, the loser of all losers.
And you can call out Lloyd for being a beneficiary of KeA's powers while being against her being used by Grimwood, but if we go down the causality wormhole, virtually nothing that happens in Zero or Azure would have happened if KeA doesn't exist or is just an ordinary girl. So that means the SSS probably doesn't die trying to take down Joachim because there's probably no cult. You just have to ask if it was worth it to sacrifice so many innocent people over the course of a millennium for the prospect of what KeA could do.
Regardless, all this conversation has cemented my option on Lloyd. I was on the fence about whether I liked him better than Rean or not, and now I'd say I definitely do. It just made me appreciate the choices he made with all he went through. The pain was always with him (and Tio and Randy, who arguably went through far worse), but unlike Arios and Grimwood, he didn't let it define him or dominate him.