[SPOILERS for 5.5 and 6.0] The Fate of the Garlean Empire

[Kesey]

I think what little remains of the Garlean Empire will be shown as a refugee crisis in existing areas. Garlemald will cease to exist. Furthermore, a refugee crisis creates the greatest narrative jumping off point for next season of the msq story.

My reasoning is that majority of the population is now tempered to Garlemald and will most likely be sacrificed as aether to feed a primal they are cooking up or just Zodiark.

The small remaining portion of the populace will impose a refugee crisis in Werlyt and Ala Mhigo in the west and Dalmasca and Bozja in the east. This will give Maxima and Gaius things to do in the plot, such as advocating for their people, where they need to appeal to the WOL's influence. It will allow places like Sharlayan, who have learned the lesson of helping the people of the world, to put their money where their mouth is.

[FrightfulNight]

I think what little remains of the Garlean Empire will be shown as a refugee crisis in existing areas. Garlemald will cease to exist. Furthermore, a refugee crisis creates the greatest narrative jumping off point for next season of the msq story.

My reasoning is that majority of the population is now tempered to Garlemald and will most likely be sacrificed as aether to feed a primal they are cooking up or just Zodiark.

The small remaining portion of the populace will impose a refugee crisis in Werlyt and Ala Mhigo in the west and Dalmasca and Bozja in the east. This will give Maxima and Gaius things to do in the plot, such as advocating for their people, where they need to appeal to the WOL's influence. It will allow places like Sharlayan, who have learned the lesson of helping the people of the world, to put their money where their mouth is.

Except as pointed out Garlemald is being added as a zone, we generally return to those throughout the patches of an expansion and beyond. What's more it looks to be one of the few official countries that are also zones meaning it is more likely we will return there in the future then more of the fantastical zones in EW, along with Thravnir and Sharlyan being places to return to for more human stories I also expect there will be a lot of return quests there in 6.x patches. Finally as mentioned before, Since it is a exploration zones those need NPCs for services and quests. On top of the 2 or 3 Aetheryte settlements (of which I imagine Garlemald will have three since we already saw the leaked concept art for the Aetheryte and they made a point of the EW zones being much larger) there are also sometimes other settlements that do not have Aetherytes in zones. whats more it appears that not everyone in the capitol is tempered yet as we saw possible resistance against Zenos in the last cutscene of 5.55 and the burning airship in front of the tower implying it was attacking it before being shot down in the EW cinematic trailer hinting resistance to his rule.

Past refugee crisis's such as with Ala Mhigan and Doman refugees have usually been the result of the zones not being accessible but since we know Garlemald is and accessible zone in EW that theory does not hold up.

I do however believe that while it is likely the country might get some reform in EW the Empire as a whole will be no more. Meaning a power vacuum can open up and instead of one more morally black super power that controls most of the world with some morally grey nations opposing it we can have various morally grey nations with their own ideals competing with each other across the 3 continents making further exploration of Islabard and Orthard more interesting from a storytelling and world building perspective creating more morally ambiguous conflicts between these nations that that the heroes do not have the right answer for who is right and wrong. Who knows perhaps this is how they intend to make better PvP.

[Katie_Kitty]

Well, Garlemald is really just a city and the area surrounding it, isn't it? One city that is now in ruins...So...I don't think anything will be done with it in the future.
I think it will stay in ruins forever, just like the Sharlayan colony in the Dravanian hinterlands is now occupied by Goblins and creatures of all kinds.

Hmm, I dunno. Doesn't it kind of go against the general trend in the game's story for square to basically just be like "bye garleans, you all die now."

Even the beast tribes are parlaying with the alliance and working together now as equals. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see them genociding the garleans.

[Tensaihime]

I’ve been freaking out about what’s going to happen to areas I’ve previously visited and grown to care for. Somebody up here said the WoL and friends (maybe enemies too, if Hades pops in from the Rift again) will probably stop the destruction before it gets too bad; also, a guy I raid with says that the destruction to previously visited areas won’t be too bad because then we won’t be able to access the guilds/shops/etc. that are there. And it would just be too damn depressing if everything got the equivalent of Calamity’d when we’ve just stopped a Calamity and they’re still cleaning up the mess from five years ago.

But the trailer makes it perfectly clear that Final Days are here again, and fantastically horrific beasts are going to run amok. Where to find them? Garlemald, most likely -other places too, but I think the most extensive damage will be in new areas, especially the place where Zenos and Fanboy have been doing their dirt. Between this devastation and the uprisings in areas that never wanted to belong to it, the Empire is finished. Depending on how many people survive whatever Zenos is up to, maybe they’ll rebuild to be a republic again? Probably with a ton of restoration quests, like others have said. I have a silly pet theory based on nothing but paranoia that Maxima is a triple agent, but if/when I’m proven wrong (maybe even if I’m not, as it wouldn’t be the first time we were forced to go with it when somebody in the MSQ went “I totally screwed y’all LOL let’s all act like it never happened”) then he could go back there and organize elections, possibly guilt-tripping the WoL/Scions isn’t helping set things up. I don’t know if Gaius wants or needs to be involved in any sort of government; last time he was, we got Crania Lupi and labor camps. Whoever is in charge, I imagine we’ll be watching them closely for quite some time, if only to make sure no more Ascians are hiding in the background.

[Sathona]

Hmm, I dunno. Doesn't it kind of go against the general trend in the game's story for square to basically just be like "bye garleans, you all die now."

Even the beast tribes are parlaying with the alliance and working together now as equals. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see them genociding the garleans.

we dont need to genocide garlemald, since they already did it to themselves /sweat
safe to assume even the garleans we cured from tempering are going to be imprisoned etc instead of executing them whatsoever.

[Kesey]

we dont need to genocide garlemald, since they already did it to themselves /sweat
safe to assume even the garleans we cured from tempering are going to be imprisoned etc instead of executing them whatsoever.

This is spot on. They've already destroyed their culture and people before we can get there. This is what happens in every Final Fantasy. An empire's pursuit of power is their ultimate down fall, not the hero marching an army through the gates and taking it down by liberating it's people.

[Katie_Kitty]

we dont need to genocide garlemald, since they already did it to themselves /sweat
safe to assume even the garleans we cured from tempering are going to be imprisoned etc instead of executing them whatsoever.

oh, that was kind of my point. I believe there's clear messaging here related to tribal conflict and the idea that, despite their differences, they're all the same. Writing a story where one society collapses permanently flies completely in the face of that general trend we've been observing.

It seems far more likely to me that it will be the *empire* that falls while *Garlemald* lives on and joins the international community peacefully. Comparing it to the Sharlayan colony is kind of off-the-mark because the colony was just part of sharlayan, not its own separate culture/society, and most of them just packed up and headed back home.

[RyuDragnier]

I have a feeling Landis may take over. It has a Magitek Academy, it has a city of technology, and most of the learning didn't happen in Garlemald proper but there. Meaning it'd be very easy for it to become the new seat of government, and also allows us to have an iffy "are they allies or not?" relationship with them. Plus well, Landis was one of the original territories taken by Garlemald before they became the empire, and it's very likely its citizens were given full citizenship in Garlemald affairs

[FrightfulNight]

I have a feeling Landis may take over. It has a Magitek Academy, it has a city of technology, and most of the learning didn't happen in Garlemald proper but there. Meaning it'd be very easy for it to become the new seat of government, and also allows us to have an iffy "are they allies or not?" relationship with them. Plus well, Landis was one of the original territories taken by Garlemald before they became the empire, and it's very likely its citizens were given full citizenship in Garlemald affairs

If I recall there is real world precedence for this happening since Garlemald takes some inspiration from the Roman empire then Landis in this case could be the Constantinople parallel. While the western half of Rome fell into disarray and the capitol was eventually taken and sacked by the Germanic tribes the eastern half would go on to survive for nearly another millennia as the Byzantine Empire, ruling from their prosperous capitol of Constantinople, which was both one of the most well defended cities and situated right at a major crossroad of trade between Europe and Asia.

It is possible that Landis will serve as a similar means, it is also possible that since the Garlean capitol is situated in a more harsher northern territory that wealthy families and influential individuals might have gradually moved to Landis. This means it could still give us a glimpse at a magiteck city one of these days that is not destroyed. we could also see some of this in play in 7.0 since I feel that the expansion following the literal end of the World and the beginning of a new chapter might try and be a bit more grounded and human.

However I just hope they do enough to shake them up like with the IVth legion because at this point i am getting a bit tired of fighting the same Garlean mobs and kind of want to move on to more original and newer enemies.