I'm going to address these theories seperately.
Why Artemisia has very little/no relevance to Final Fantasy 8
If Square-Enix were going to base someone on a mythological Greek character, and considering the high quality of translations throughout VIII, one would think that they would give them the correct name when translating it to English.
Also, of interest about Artemisia is that her husband, Maussolus, was her brother. Squall & Rinoa are not brother and sister. And one cannot say that Artemisia was in fact mad. I went looking for the ash drinking reference you made, and could only find it in Wikipedia, at this link: Artemisia II of Caria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
where it states:
Now, "She is said to have" from an article on Wikipedia is definitely not a substantiated truth, especially when what is said to have happened does not have any citation. Who is this person who said this? Seeing that I could not find any other article that referred to this ash drinking, I would think this is usual Wikipedia nonsense. Also, considering the way she tactically outclassed and defeated the Rhodians, I would think that her mental facilities were operating quite well, thank you very much.She is said to have mixed his ashes in her daily drink, and to have gradually pined away during the two years that she survived him.
The Mausoleum of Maussollos was not started by Artemisia, but by Maussolus. This is substantiated out of Wikipedia by articles such as this: Maussolus
There are differing versions on how far along the Mausoleum was when Maussolus' died. One article said that it had just begun, some said that it was almost completed, and some say that Artemisia just commissioned the artists to do the decoration. However, this is irrelevant. The key is that Maussolus, not Artemisia, started the idea.
The lion on the coin was quite interesting. But take a look at this article: Caria
On the bottom left hand corner are some pictures of Carian coins, circa 200. And, one is a lion. This is after Maussolus' time. Also, according to this article: Silver Lion Coinage of Mylasa in Caria (Ancient Coins of Miletos)
the Carians stole the lion coin idea from their neighbour, and it first appeared in the time of Maussolus' father.
The Mausoleum has a greater resemblance to Edea's house, with the pillars surrounding it. The paintings in Ultimecia's castle are on canvas, and canvas painting only occured much after (like 1400 AD) the building of the Mausoleum. There are also carpets, wooden stairs, etc. which gives Ultimecia's castle a resemblance to a Renaissance era castle, not an ancient Greek castle.
Mausoleum would be translated as [building] dedicated to Mausolus. So, Ultimecia's castle should, if your theory is true, should be called the Squalloleum, or something like that.
This Artemisia connection was far-fetched to begin with, even if all the facts were true. But, after doing a little bit of checking of the facts, NOT ONE RELEVANT FACT IS ACTUALLY TRUE!
Oh, and I can answer my first question about why Squaresoft translated it to Ultimecia. It was so people did not get the wrong idea.
Why the QM Theory is also a bit irrelevant
The QM theory is an interesting article. I suggest you read it. But why it is irrelevant to the R=U debate is quite simple.
Firstly, just because someone is able to do something, does not mean that they are going to do it. My car can go x km/h. This does not mean I am going to drive it at x km/h. Same applies to Rinoa.
Secondly, there is no evidence from the game that Rinoa is able to travel forwards in time. Excluding time compression, there is no evidence of a being moving their entire being through time to another point. Time compression is a freak occurence, and obviously has never been completed, as the game would not be able to occur if all time was compressed into one state. Ellone and Ultimecia, through her machine, are moving mental consciousnesses to people in the past. And, in Ellone's case, not changing anything. But that is very different to moving one's entire body through time & space.
Thirdly, the QM theory only states that if one moves backwards through time, you will not change the present. But it is possible that it rules out forward time travel (I am no scientist, so I may be wrong). The way I picture it is that we are kind of like a train. From the present, if I look back, there is only a single railway track. If I move back into the past, I will not be able to change the present. However, the future is still uncertain, and as such there is an infinite number of railway tracks, illustrating all my possibilities. Therefore, one cannot move forwards through it, because one cannot know what the future actually is.
Conclusion
In my opinion, Serapy's use of Artimesia to try and prove R=U is completely flawed, as all the evidence brought forward is flawed. The QM theory is irrelevant to the game because of my first two points, and may actually remove the possibility of forward time travel, if my third point is correct. Perhaps someone wise in the mechanics of time travel can have a look at this article and see what they think the implications of this are in terms of forward time travel.
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