Social-Politicals, Economic Order, and City-States: Politics in Eorzea

[YianKutku]

To be fair, would the Opium Wars have even started, had the Emperors of China not decided to come down hard on the opium trade? Statistics aren't that reliable, but some sources say that 90% of Chinese men were addicted to opium. You can't cut off a customer base like that and expect the opium to go nowhere. (The furthest back I can trace my ancestry is to my great-grandparents, who fled the civil war at the end of the Qing dynasty, and sailed south to settle in a British colony.)

Eminently fair. While I am skeptical of the 90% number, that's beside the point that a large portion of the populace were addicted, and the Emperors of China were definitely too heavy-handed in their decrees.

(I can only trace my ancestry a few more generations beyond what you could. My parents' generation migrated south to Indonesia and Singapore for economic opportunities, since the Japanese invasion wiped out the family's wealth.)

Finally, on the Brass Blades: The lorebook states that they're employed by the Syndicate as a whole. So, on paper, they're not Lolorito's personal army. While many of them do answer only to the Monetarists (which is only Lolorito since the other prominent moneypopoto got chopped) there are a fair few who do serve the city at large. Fufulupa is just one example.

It does bring up the question of what the arrangement was like prior to 2.55, though. It's well known that Lolorito and Teledji were not fond of one another, and the Brass Blades being in the pay of "the Syndicate as a whole" makes me wonder if Brass Blade were ever pitted against Brass Blade in yet another power jockeying play between the two.

I mean, I know Brass Blades have arrested other Brass Blades with alarming frequency, but one side tends to be following the official rules when doing so.

The third (now second) Monetarist on the Syndicate, Fyrgeiss, still has his private Stone Torches army, so the Brass Blades would be redundant.