Manipulation is sure something Xehanort is good at. He probably just continued Oldnorts ways in his chaind up cells.
It's intereating that despite losing his memories(if we run on the assumption that Apprenticenort suffered from ammesia) he still ends up doing the same things all over againg. Like Xehanort has locked himself into this sort of loop.
Hmm, turning them into empty shells by transforming the test subjects into Heartless, to get them to shed their indivuality and personality. All of this sounds like a prototype for the brainwash and manipulation that Xemnas had going on with the Org XIII, probably aiming to create a similar state of minds like Saix had.
God, letting the Heartless devour your patient alive while you watch... D: When I thought I had enough reasons already to hate Xehanort.
Not only Xehanort though, remember CoM, KH 2 and Days? Both Zexion/Ienzo and Xaldin/Dilan are shown to be quite decent emotional/mental manipulators as well while Vexen/Even has the same science-focused mind as Xehanort without any moral and ethical compass while Braig is by definition a huge troll who likes to rile people up and toy with their emotions.
The only one of Ansem's apprentices who doesn't fit the description is Lexaeus/Aeleus.
Considering the whole amnesia-issue is more murky than ever I won't dare to make any definitive assumptions on that. The parallels of the "experiments" to Master Xehanort's actions as a sort of "Fallen Keyblade Master" are indeed noteworthy though.
Well yeah, the experiments continued for some time after the apprentices had already become Nobodies and Ansem the Wise was banished. Xigbar notes in one of the extra scenes in KH 2 FM that after Ansem was banished the first thing Xemnas did was breaking the seal on the secret laboratory in order to construct the chamber of repose, but that doesn't rule out that the experiments were continued by what was then already the core group of the Organisation.
Thus Xemnas most likely was highly involved from the start and just extended the whole thing then to the Org members themselves.
It totally fits with Xehanort's personality and modus operandi though. Remember this is the same guy who summoned a bunch of Heartless with his own hands to sic them on an 11/12 year-old Ventus four years before BBS in order to force the kid to give in to the Darkness. It was only when
that didn't work that he came up with the extraction stuff.
The scale and scope changed somewhat as did the victims, but at the core Xehanort was and is always doing the same thing and that is treating other hearts (and thus other existences) as garbage to be only used to further his own goals and curiosity. When Sora accused him of "treating hearts like bottles on a shelf" he hit the mark more directly on the spot than he himself might have realized.
It actually astounds me that we rarely discuss the fact that this implies the non-living samples were corpses. Does this mean they murdered people? Did they dig up graves? Or did they find dead/dying people in the underbelly of Radiant Garden? I really need to see this more crime-filled part of Radiant Garden because it has so much intrigue behind it.
Yeeesh, and here was I assuming that when writing about "non-living samples" he actually spoke mostly about objects and items to test how Heartless respond.
It would make sense though to also go into this area as it would be an ultimate consequence of the experiments.
I'd imagine that there might have been test subjects who didn't actually turn into Heartless but nonetheless broke somewhat under the ordeals inflicted on them by Xehanort and the apprentices, resulting in a living "wreck" that could not be used anymore for further experimentation and/or torture.
Xehanort's solution?
"Alright, that one broke and is useless now but still alive...let's throw him/her to the black creatures and see how they react."
This ironically also has a precedence as Xehanort is known to discard "tools" that are broken and he sees no more use for, as is stated in the Chronicles of DDD (and shown in BBS, the action some people actually interpret as Xehanort doing an "empathic" action):
Chronicles: Birth by Sleep said:
Master Xehanort had decided to abandon his pupil Ventus on the Destiny Islands. The boy's heart was fractured--useless.
Then however some people might have not only been broken through the experiments, but outright
died without actually turning into a Heartless, and with those Xehanort would have done the same.
Holy heck, that is pretty dark. D: How on earth I have not really thought about that before. I think it's not past Xehanort to kill people to get samples for his schemes.
I guess the Heartless only respond to the living samples since the heart has probably left the body at that point.
I've also not thought about that particular point so far, but as grim as it sounds it makes
sense.