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Quite a few people, myself included, have brought up the politics in Garlemald in these debates in the past. It's a fascinating subject and I'm very glad to see a fresh perspective on it. I fully expect the politics of Garlemald to play out in the background much like the politics of Archades did in the background of FFXII. Clearly it's all building up to something huge it's just a matter of what - but hopefully it'll end with peace between Garlemald and Eorzea without turning the former into a toothless faction for the sake of Eorzea becoming the new superpower. FFXII is such an incredible game because it subverted the awful 'rag tag band of rebels utterly thrash the big bad empire' trope. Words cannot despise how much I loathe that trope, so here's hoping it does not come into play in FFXIV...especially with how much of a love letter the game is to Ivalice based games and political moves that are far from black or white.
If the intention is for people not to sympathise with Zenos then him simply being a rotten apple makes more sense than him going crazy due to experimentation. I also believe it is heavily implied that Aulus was only granted room to experiment at Zenos' behest, suggesting that any enhancements that Zenos underwent came from his own decisions rather than his father's own. Hopefully 4.1 will answer some of the lingering questions about him...though it may be that we don't see much of Varis for a while yet. It's a shame his cutscene wasn't voiced, for that matter. I can't wait to hear him speak once again!
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Garlean diplomacy is severely hamstrung by the fact that virtually every Garlean we've encountered (with the exception of certain traitors, like Cid and Lucia) has a raging superiority complex. You don't parley with your lessers; you command them. If they do not obey, you discipline them. For diplomacy between uneven sides to be possible, the side in the top position needs to place some value on the well being of the people in the lesser position (there is NO evidence that they do in this case), or at least believe that they pose a creditable threat to their own people (it's pretty clear they don't believe this either). Their vast army of conscripts ensures that the only folks dying on either side are savages, and the Garleans in charge couldn't care less how many savages die.
Once actual Garlean citizens are in actual danger (and no, the Garlean military in charge of the conscripts don't count; they are military, and risk of death is part of the job), only then might they change their tune - and we're a long, long way from that point.
Even Regula regularly referred to us as savages, and I'm pretty sure our brief "alliance" was little more than him recognizing that having folks immune to Tempering would be really helpful in tackling Zurvan. I have no faith that he would have been any more interested in diplomacy had he survived. It was little more than an Enemy Mine scenario, a temporary alliance against a mutual foe.
As long as Garlean society continues to nurture this superiority complex and isn't on the actual verge of annihilation, I find it unlikely that any Garlean will extend an olive branch. Even if we don't see Eorzeans actively attempting diplomacy, that doesn't mean that it hasn't happened in the past. Perhaps they gave up trying after the twentieth or so diplomat returned in a box. Even the Garleans whose JOB is supposedly diplomacy seem to suffer from this problem; the bathwater quest makes it pretty obvious that the Garleans stationed in Kugane, too, believe themselves to be the betters of the others in the city.
Admittedly, traitors or not, Cid and Lucia DO imply that it's possible for Garleans to not buy into the superiority thing, so a Larsa scenario isn't completely off the table. Larsa's going to have quite a bit of work ahead of him, however. He'll pretty much have to overturn the entire power structure of the Garlean Empire before he'll be able to make any headway at all.