Fordola

[Lazaruz]

After all, it took 20 years for them to even consider trying to fight back and retake their own eastern border.

I actually dont think it's as much to do with the Eorzean Alliance lacking the strenght to go toe to toe with the Garlean Empire, because I mean we've techniqly done so already once at Carteneu (although neither side walked away as the winner, and both suffered catastrophic losses in particular thanks to Bahamut. So there's no way of knowing who would've won). But rather it's why would Eorzea spend the manpower assisting what could, in effect, be considered a enemy nation, since Ala Mhigo very much so attempted to invade Gridania in the past (And said attack is what coincidentaly caused the original formation of the alliance in the first place). And this is assuming the alliance even wins to begin with. Because if not, all that would've happened would be Eorzean lives being spilled on foreign soil, trying to help a nation that atleast one member of the alliance is in all likelyhood not exactly on good terms with.

Hell a major part of why we even went to Ala Mhigo is after The Griffin's scheme, we were doomed regardless. No matter what we did, Garlemald was gonna think we'd just given them a declaration of war after what happened on Baelsar's Wall

Seems people pretty severely overestimated the Empire, turns out they're such a minor threat they can't even derail mine and Lyse's far east holiday plans.

If memory serves it's actually somewhat implied the reason the Empire steamrolled their way inside Ala Mhigo, is not as much blatant army superiority, but rather that the Mad King, Ala Mhigo's last ruler prior to the occupation, kindof gutted the capabilities for Ala Mhigo to defend itself, in his quest to en masse find and execute anyone and everyone who might be working to betray him (with theories that it was a garlean agent that "tipped off" the Mad King that people were planning to overthrow his rule.) Plus doesnt the MSQ more or less state that Zenos was holding back intentionally, because he wanted us to survive, but even more importantly, fuel our hatred for him, so that once we get to the palace in Ala Mhigo, he (Zenos) gets to fight someone skilled, and driven, enough so that for once, he might actually feel something?

(TL;DR Zenos was in all likelyhood holding back the garlean army, so that he'd get his "good fight" against the WoL. And Varis didnt interfer because he saw Zenos for the "monster" that he was, and believed such a man unfit to rule)