A PoC Scion please? There is so much untapped potential here.

[Jandor]

So I don't think Eorzea is meant to be Africa, much less all of Aldenard being Africa. In fact, I think the Eorzean cultures actually pull from a surprising variety of places; the classical China/Khanate Mongolia/isolationist Japan -> Doma/Steppe/Hingashi mapping was almost disappointing to me in comparison. Yes, they probably pulled from various real-world locations, but most writers/artists do that; pulling a little bit from a real-world location means you can make something feel a bit more grounded and cohesive, recognizable to readers in our world. (And makes it easier to find art references.)

And while you can maybe argue that Eorzea serves a similar storytelling purpose as a 'dark continent' or 'unknown land' from the point of view of the Imperials regarding Eorzeans as 'savages', I feel like trying to say it's intended that way is somewhat subverted by the fact that Ilsabard is covered up by clouds in all of the maps we've seen, making it a literal 'dark continent' within the narrative, as no one seems to really know what happens within the boundaries of the Empire, and only the bravest Eorzeans dare venture past those borders.

I don't mean a dark continent, I mean the dark continent, what Africa was often referred to as during the colonial period. You wouldn't refer to it like that now, but when the Empires of our world were scrambling for territory in Africa it was often portrayed as a dangerous expanse of untamed wilderness, where one wrong turn can take you miles away from civilization and leave you stranded in the territory of savage tribes, or have you stumbling upon ancient lost ruins, or stuck dealing with some kind of strange occultism or mysticism.

I know the cultures in Eorzea aren't inspired by African ones, I've never said they were, but what Eorzea is and old ideas of what Africa was like as a continent track pretty damn closely IMHO. It's not the cultures of the individual city states (although 2 out of 5 are clearly not European) that make Eorzea a bit like Africa, it's how Eorzea as a whole fits into the greater world. I honestly find it kind of weird that no-one else seems to see the parallels.