If ZYL had said something, that would definitely have made it better! ("What? I didn't know the King of Cats could be humble!" - And then DQ would swipe him, and it'd be okay.)

Awwww! *wants that to be canon*

Yeah, I didn't mean he'd do it to defy the Emissary - but as soon as there was SOMETHING to potentially agree to, ZYL was bound to find a reason to do it, and SW should have realised by this point that telling ZYL "don't do it" isn't going to stop him from doing anything he thinks he has a reason to do.

Yeah. ZYL's course of action was already in progress when SW's letter arrived. I don't think the letter made any difference one way or another.

It felt to me like he was about to say something different, but that's definitely a good point.

I had to go back and look at the context. It's while they're talking about Ghost Face, so maybe ZYL is worried SW will feel like GF's evil deeds will reflect on SW too, because they have the same origin. Or that he'll do something reckless to stop GF?

By "they", do you mean priest? Because yeah, she definitely smoothed out that arc in the version the official translation is based on.

I'm super unclear on the versions, who did the edits, and how the translations were done. I was just vaguely going "whoever decided this".