Tales from the Dawn #4: "A Question of Death" (Jullus)

[Cleretic]

I'm really not sure what, exactly, you're struggling to grasp. Garlemald is repeatedly described as an inhospitable wasteland. It's cold. Even colder than Coerthas after freezing over in the aftermath of the Calamity. There are a great many references to the fact that the Garleans have been forced on the defensive at every turn both before and after becoming an Empire. They're not obligated to roll over and allow themselves to be wiped out - and their distrust of outsiders is completely understandable given all they've been through across multiple generations.



The Ishgardians were locked in a bitter war with the Dravanians over the course of a thousand years so I'm wondering why it's apparently such a stretch to accept that the displaced Garleans were locked in similar bitter struggles after already being actively persecuted...?

What Kari's saying (and something that isn't refuted by any of your choices of quote) is that while Garlemald has absolutely been pushed to the barest edgest of habitability, it just doesn't square that they were actually at constant war after that point. They end up in present-day Garlemald sometime around six hundred years before the game's present day (by nomadic raiders rather than outright organized armies), and it's definitely been an existential fight to live there for them, but there is no actual evidence that there was a literal fight to live. The only thing that comes close is Quintus, and Quintus isn't exactly citing sources; seriously, we went there, what was even there to fight them over aside from ceruleum that people didn't even have use for for most of that time? I assume it's combustive, sure, but... so is fire magic, and everyone else had that. Without magitek that wasn't rediscovered yet (remember that Allag was mostly a curio until Solus dug up their stuff and the Seventh Calamity blew some holes in Eorzea), would that have been worth going all that way for?

The Garlean cultural identity is absolutely one of a cornered dog forced to get violent, and nobody is arguing that such an outlook wasn't historically justified, but it's just that: historically justified. The Ishgardians and Dravanians were confirmably at war for a thousand years, we have proof, but Garlemald at constant war over a little over half that same period? There's not actual evidence for it, and there's not much logical explanation for why they would've been; only the rhetorical allegations of an old man desperate to win an argument after he'd lost everything else.

You ever find evidence of the Garleans at brutal war with Corvosians in the 1200s 6AA I'll be happy to believe it, it's not even the longest war in the game's history, but as it stands that evidence just doesn't exist.