4.1 Hype and Speculation

[Jyera]

I speculated a while back that Garlemald itself is likely to be very cultured and not necessarily as bleak in terms of architecture and so on where the inner territories are concerned compared to the outer territories. A Garlean Theatre Troupe - complete with a lovely take on the Prima Vista itself - serves to cement that and humanises the Garleans further. We already know, for instance, that Regula was fond of music as per the revelation in the lore book. That many Garleans are fond of theatre shows that they are not solely consumed with war and conquest like some try and portray.

Exploring the ruins beneath Loch Seid will be interesting, especially with the talk of 'mysteries unsolved'. It makes me wonder what we'll find down there.

We know they're cultured. We know they're human. Those things are not ambiguous or debatable. What we take umbrage with isn't Garleans as people--it's Garlemald as an empire and all the baggage that goes with that. You don't need to appreciate one while stanning for the other. It is not inherently paradoxical to love individual Garleans, including appreciating the goodness in some of our antagonists that makes them complex and thought-provoking characters. Not even all of current Garlean culture is inherently 'evil'--it's a pretty nice deal to have such a huge research budget and encourage young people to go into STEM careers--it's that those things are co-opted to serve purposes that are blatantly destructive, disenfranchisement, genocide, and mass exploitation among them.

Having a troupe of Garleans whose careers flourished in the arts, as opposed to strictly-speaking military, is going to be a a cultural exploration that makes me giddy. (I wonder if they are affiliated with the military, but in a morale-boosting USO-show kind of way!)