Daisy, and... the fact that he's called THE EMPEROR.
I've said this a hundred times already, and I apologize for being a broken record here...
He should have been the Emperor of the *Actual* remaining Illithid Empire.
If that were the [logical] case, then he wasn't 'recruiting' you for *his* personal survival, he's doing it for the survival of all Illithid. Him going to defend the Elder Brain if you choose Orpheus suddenly makes sense, too.
Now the stakes rise, and the final decision is a lot harder to make.
You can free the Elder Brain for the Emperor, and give the Illithid a fighting chance - at the risk of total planar domination.
You can go the Orpheus route, but you'll be condemning a whole race to death, basically committing genocide. You can ponder whether that is justified or not.
And then there is still the question of what to do with the Crown.
You see, it makes perfect sense. In that scenario, you get to see the Emperor perhaps in a better light, and think that maybe not all Illithid are as bad as we think. Or maybe you've just been led to believe that. Then again, there is also Omeluum.
