Building a better Alphinaud

[MikkoAkure]

As I said above, they have no right and are nobody to try and cause regime change in Garlemald or have any say in their future. Sharlayan is under no threat from being invaded by Garlemald. Leaving the Garlean Empire with nothing but a faceless senate in order to continue to push the ideals of Sharlayan democracy was a mistake. It has robbed the region of the things that drew me towards it in the first place, but I suppose if what you want is to see your own real life ideals reflected directly in the game world then you'd have no issue with the current state of the writing.

I however do not. I want my fantasy world to remain as such. I do not believe that people who want the real world in FFXIV should be prioritized in this manner, there are fundamental pieces of world building that shouldn't be compromised in the way in which they are now. Garlemald should have remained a monarchy. There should be far more monarchies as well. Ilsabard as a whole was left underdeveloped by the decision to rush the conclusion of Season 1, and my confidence in the current state of affairs is at an all time low.

The twins had nothing to do with Garlemald's government at all and their father said "well there's some senate members who are still alive, they're better than nothing, let's get everyone to them and get together to rebuild the country".

Garlemald for all intents and purposes currently does not exist as anything more than a smoldering ruin and a bunch of refugees. The entire royal family was wiped out by infighting, which also destroyed the entire country. Some senators happen to still be alive and that's the closest thing the survivors have to anything closely resembling a civilian government. Garlemald was also a republic for 600 years. 60 years of a ghost with an emperor hat doesn't change that and it ended up giving them the destruction of their society. Sharlayan had nothing to do with their choosing a republic when they first created their senate and all Fourchenault is doing now is trying to find someone in charge so that the Garleans can rebuild themselves without outside interference because Sharlayan is all about non-interference.

I'm not sure where you get all these ideas from, but if you keep repeating the same thing over and over, it doesn't make you right.

Limsa Lominsa, O'ghomoro, Gridania, Xelphatol, Ul'dah, Paglth'an, Dravania, Idylshire, Thavnair, Doma and its many petty-kingdoms, the Azim Steppe, Hingashi, Dalmasca, Nagxia. These are not republics.
Sharlayan, Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, Bozja, Garlemald. These are republics. 2 of those have been republics for centuries and 4 are coming off of having extremely terrible regimes with no one left to continue the old ways.

The number of non-republics still outweighs the number of republics in the game. Then there's the old imperial remnant provinces, but we don't really know how those will go. I'm sure the majority of them were monarchies but when a giant empire comes in and destroys your country's government and kills off the royal families, they tend to not be monarchies anymore. It's funny that you keep talking about fantasy elements disappearing in the game but yet you support Garlemald who was actively destroying them. Besides killing off mages and knights in Landis, they also have oil refineries, very sci-fi forts and buildings with screen displays, airships, guns, robots, and even skyscrapers and modern day cars and trains.

Even if we had the rest of Ilsabard in an expansion set in the first half of Endwalker, nothing would have changed because we already know that all of Ilsabard is ruled by Garlemald. There's no room for any other monarchies there and the end would have been the same with Garlemald falling and Varis's corpse turning into Anima. It would have just been the usual "Garlean technology on top of whatever was there before that wasn't already destroyed", and a lot of unique elements like Landis's magic knights all dead or turned into Garlean soldiers.


Another thing to add is that nothing has changed to the casual observer in Ishgard. They weren't a "traditional, medieval monarchy" before, just a theocracy. The people themselves chose not to trust the church anymore and the church did all of that themselves. The lords still have power, but they can no longer force the peasants to do their bidding with the backing of the church now that the peasants have guns and ideas and there's no more existential threat about to wipe them off the mountainside. But there's still castles, knights, mages, and tons and tons of grey stone. It's just that there's no more elf pope on a throne and the lords and the peasants get together behind the scenes to squabble about government but it's not like we can see that, nor do we really hear anything about it at all after the storyline is over anyway.