I'm ok with the emperor. I think it works better than "Daisy". The way I interpret it is that the emperor put the tadpole in you. Then, takes care of you while posting you to fight against the brain. But also has a conversation with you about how he used to be an adventurer before turning and about his independence from the brain is important to him. And at some point Ommelum question if his race is evolving.
Omeluum is talking about the modified tadpole here, since he doesn't know how it was done.
The emperor is written like an entry from wikipedia; illithids have always viewed themselves as superior and everyone else as lesser, and that is what the emperor meant by evolution. Even him dealing woth loneliness by mind thralling Stelmane is classic mind flayer. The only unusual aspect of his personality is that he remembers being Balduran, before BG3 this was only possible with gnomes. The only mind flayer that is the outlier, is Omeluum, as he indeed does not act as expected.
The issue is that even if the manipulation is obvious, due to the above, you still have go along with it. Because the interactions with the emperor, even antagonistic, don't matter. With Daisy there was an alternative path at least. Effectively the emperor is just Larian making it easier for thrmselves, because instead of writing two paths through the game, there is just this one with no reactivity.
