Political Ideology and Storytelling Within FFXIV

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Originally Posted by Jandor

It's not very popular to acknowledge these days, but people literally raised from birth to rule tend to be pretty decent at the business of actual ruling, especially in a society like Ishgard where I imagine secondary and tertiary education isn't all that widely available.

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While that can certainly be the case, as it is with Doma, the people stop being interested in monarchical rule when the will of the aristocracy stops being benevolent and no longer matches up with the will of the people as a whole. Without using real-world examples, the ruling nobility of Ala Mhigo and especially King Theodoric himself weren't exactly good for the people and the fact that the people were stuck with him due to him sharing blood with past rulers, meant that they had to revolt in order to change their government. An elected government is no more immune to misgoverning or corruption, but they're more easily replaced in theory. For Ishgard, the more egregious examples of nobles misusing their power had to be put to the sword in both the MSQ and DRK quests and there was no system in place to keep them in check or to stop them from being terrible people.

Ultimately, just because someone was taught from birth to be a ruler doesn't mean that they're going to be good at it, and it also doesn't mean that they won't use the position they attained only through being born to it which they can't be removed from to do bad things.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

While that can certainly be the case, as it is with Doma, the people stop being interested in monarchical rule when the will of the aristocracy stops being benevolent and no longer matches up with the will of the people as a whole. Without using real-world examples, the ruling nobility of Ala Mhigo and especially King Theodoric himself weren't exactly good for the people and the fact that the people were stuck with him due to him sharing blood with past rulers, meant that they had to revolt in order to change their government. An elected government is no more immune to misgoverning or corruption, but they're more easily replaced in theory. For Ishgard, the more egregious examples of nobles misusing their power had to be put to the sword in both the MSQ and DRK quests and there was no system in place to keep them in check or to stop them from being terrible people.

Ultimately, just because someone was taught from birth to be a ruler doesn't mean that they're going to be good at it, and it also doesn't mean that they won't use the position they attained only through being born to it which they can't be removed from to do bad things.

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Of course you can end up with bad eggs, hence the addition of the democratic component to keep them in check. I don't think a pure system one way or the other would be good for Ishgard, (although it should be noted that their aristocracy did keep the country functioning throughout a thousand year war and pretty catastrophic climate change, so I'd say on the whole they're definitely pretty decent at what they do) but the hybrid system they've arrived at isn't just a compromise that keeps enough people happy to remain stable, it's a combination of the strengths of both systems.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

While that can certainly be the case, as it is with Doma, the people stop being interested in monarchical rule when the will of the aristocracy stops being benevolent and no longer matches up with the will of the people as a whole. Without using real-world examples, the ruling nobility of Ala Mhigo and especially King Theodoric himself weren't exactly good for the people and the fact that the people were stuck with him due to him sharing blood with past rulers, meant that they had to revolt in order to change their government. An elected government is no more immune to misgoverning or corruption, but they're more easily replaced in theory. For Ishgard, the more egregious examples of nobles misusing their power had to be put to the sword in both the MSQ and DRK quests and there was no system in place to keep them in check or to stop them from being terrible people.

Ultimately, just because someone was taught from birth to be a ruler doesn't mean that they're going to be good at it, and it also doesn't mean that they won't use the position they attained only through being born to it which they can't be removed from to do bad things.

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Another example of this is Bozja, where the nobles had the vast majority of the wealth and the poor underclass was everywhere. The queen was a political tool, and the nobles treated those lower than them with other disdain. It's rather telling that Garlemald taking over actually IMPROVED life for those who were poor.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

If you mean "political messaging in FFXIV" then, I guess I'm not a fan of the democracy wank. Out of the 5 nations the WoL helps establish a new government in, 4 of them became democracies (Ishgard gets a House of Commons. Ala Mhigo, Eulmore, and Bozja become democratic republics), and the story bent over backwards to demonize monarchy and glorify democracy. And we also have Charlemand's custom delievery questline, where he is a high ranking stogy noble who - within just a few quests - leaps to wanting every Ishgardian citizen to be equal? What? Going by this pattern, Lord Nerva (if he survived) won't become Emperor of Garlemald and it will just become yet another democratic republic (though in lore it started out as a republic, but I digress). Out of the other 2 nations that had alternative governments, Limsa was stripped of its unique political system of pirates and racing, leaving just Gridania and their prophets who interpret the will of the Elementals.

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Honestly, I can understand most of the nations going for democracy, it's basically struggling nations following the example of the ones that are doing better, what I don't like is how magical they portray democracy to be, everyone agreeing when an emergency action must be taken(Or any action for that matter) is the least democratic thing I've ever seen.

I guess it's basically that situation where humans in fantasy worlds tend to not be really humans as know, seeing as they more often than not are not nearly as tribalistic or stubborn.

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Originally Posted by Hysorn

Honestly, I can understand most of the nations going for democracy, it's basically struggling nations following the example of the ones that are doing better, what I don't like is how magical they portray democracy to be, everyone agreeing when an emergency action must be taken(Or any action for that matter) is the least democratic thing I've ever seen.

I guess it's basically that situation where humans in fantasy worlds tend to not be really humans as know, seeing as they more often than not are not nearly as tribalistic or stubborn.

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This is exactly the problem I'm having with the game.

The game is defying democracy as THE political way and answer to their old terrible monarchy that are either not working well enough or were horrendously bad in the past and oversimplify the solution by saying " we doing democracy now". They always give monarchy the worst image and show democracy as a redemption like when they show how gruesome and horrible the past king of Ala Mhigo was. "Oh we surely can't go back to monarchy after this". It's always in that way 'monarchy bad vs democratic republic good' never showing it could be the other way around. Not once.

I feel like a political story can be done showing huge drama, great strategies, plots and a bunch of thrilling events without the need to assert or show political biases especially by oversimplifiying the redemption as that particular political form of government.

I mean the amount of different systems possible is vast even within a republic, they don't even explore their options, no proposition of a feudal system, no proposition of a constitutional monarchy or City-state or any other than the simplistic humanist definition of a free state, democracy.

I mean, Doma is still a monarchy, isn't it?

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Originally Posted by hellodarknesu

This is exactly the problem I'm having with the game.

The game is defying democracy as THE political way and answer to their old terrible monarchy that are either not working well enough or were horrendously bad in the past and oversimplify the solution by saying " we doing democracy now". They always give monarchy the worst image and show democracy as a redemption like when they show how gruesome and horrible the past king of Ala Mhigo was. "Oh we surely can't go back to monarchy after this". It's always in that way 'monarchy bad vs democratic republic good' never showing it could be the other way around. Not once.

I feel like a political story can be done showing huge drama, great strategies, plots and a bunch of thrilling events without the need to assert or show political biases especially by oversimplifiying the redemption as that particular political form of government.

I mean the amount of different systems possible is vast even within a republic, they don't even explore their options, no proposition of a feudal system, no proposition of a constitutional monarchy or City-state or any other than the simplistic humanist definition of a free state, democracy.

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I miss the days of FFIV, FFIX, and FFXII where monarchies are allowed to persist and the good guys end up taking the throne at journey's end. Final Fantasy players by and large want to go to kingdoms-not republics.

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

I mean, Doma is still a monarchy, isn't it?

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So is Ul'dah, and Gridania isn't a democracy either. Dalmasca is trying to restore Monarchy.

Most of the allied nations aren't Democracies. Which makes the complaining that there are to many strange.

Political Ideology in Heavensward :
"Dragons be bad"
"Sickness must be purged!"
"Daddy issues"

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Originally Posted by Slatersev

So is Ul'dah, and Gridania isn't a democracy either. Dalmasca is trying to restore Monarchy.

Most of the allied nations aren't Democracies. Which makes the complaining that there are to many strange.

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For the sake of counting them up, the democracies of FFXIV's world, when talking about the present-day (so not including stuff like 'Garlemald was a republic once') and only counting the places we've been:

1. Ishgard, post-HW
2. Ala Mhigo, post-SB
3. Eulmore, post-ShB
4. Sharlayan

And the non-democracies, along with the forms of government they actually are, while excluding the ones that reformed in-story like Ishgard since we don't need them for this argument:

1. Ul'Dah (compromised monarchy)
2. Gridania (theocracy)
3. Limsa Lominsa (uhh... boat race-determined thalassocracy)
4. Hingashi (Shogunate-puppeted empire)
5. Doma (monarchy)
6. The Crystarium (...benevolent dictatorship?)
7. Amaurot (weirdo Platonic philosopher-kingdom*)
8. Garlemald (totalitarian empire)
9. Thavnair (monarchy, technically)

*For the record, selection of a new Convocation member was done by the rest of the Convocation with no mandatory input or weighting to public response (although they generally listened), so they aren't democratic.

And the uncertainties, for the record:

1. Crystarium, post-ShB
2. Bozja, post-Save the Queen

Democracies aren't a small number, by any means, but they're actually outnumbered by hereditary-ruled nations (both monarchies and empires). Though I would point out, with the exception of Sharlayan, all of those democracies came off the back of long-standing, widely-disliked totalitarian governments where the people had no say; why would any of those people, left to choose their own government once again, pick a form that would continue to give them no say in their own lives? Frankly, every government that's a democracy in this game is one I'd entirely expect to become one of their own volition given their circumstances. Whereas Doma... well, they liked living under a monarch when the monarch didn't suck, and a lot of the nation still remembers when they had a good one.

If anyone's curious, I did a whole video on most of the nations of the game and what they're actually based on in the real world or fiction (it's over here). Still working on part two, which is all the Garlean-occupied nations--and I don't want to record everything today only for the live letter to tell me something new on Sunday. But honestly it's a really interesting subject to me to discuss the forms of rulership we see in the world, and the problems all these nations face, so I'm really hoping we see more of it soon.