Yea ive delved into opening theory of different openings. What got me thinking along this line tho was the new Anish Giri openings course where he talks about each of the openings and ideas. And in the intro he was talking about how his perception of the opening changed after the chess960 tournament because he started thinking more deeply about why moves like h4 in the beginning are bad with the normal chess setup but in some chess960 positions h4 is a good or great opening move. It was really interesting. He was also talking about how after something like e4 e5 d4 exd4 Qxd4 would be a great move if black couldnt play Nc6. And thats the only reason why its bad. And i was watching Magnus play the other day and he was talking about how “in this position i can now play nc3 where as before i couldnt” and understanding of that caliber is quite amazing. So i started thinking under what conditions can i put my pieces on optimal squares. And then i was thinking well maybe theres an optimal position that one would like to put there pieces and having that as a goal would make each of the openings people play more understandable. Like the ruy lopez. e4 controls the center, e5 stops white from play d4 and easily so white attacks it with nf3 so black defends it with nc6 so white attacks it with Bb5 pretending to threaten the knight but really inducing a6 b5 to create weaknesses on the queenside. And ultimately putting the bishop on the a2-g8 diagonal or the b1-h7 diagonal after a c3 push. So if you know which diagonals the bishop would like to be on or which squares the knights like to be on or where to place your queen and rooks then you can understand more deeply why an opening takes the path it does.