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[Enkidoh]

-Pro-Empire stuff-

"Just another fool desperate for Gaius's affection."

I'm sorry but no matter how you try and rationalize the Empire and their actions, like it or not, the Empire of Garlemald is evil, period. SE have made that quite clear constantly. They're nothing but a petty nation of magic-poor technocrats with an inferiority complex a mile wide.

Their rhetoric might make them seem misunderstood, but their rampant imperialism only confirms that they are definitely keeping to the well established 'Evil Empire' trope. Everything that's wrong in Eorzea at the moment has been a direct result of Imperial meddling - which started with the invasion of Ala Mhigo.

All the Eorzeans want is to be left in peace and administer their affairs in their own way. It was the Empire who fired the first shot. The Empire who invaded Ala Mhigo (and there's even a suggestion they were the ones secretly pulling the strings of 'the King of Ruin' as well), the Empire who invaded Mor Dhona that led to the disaster that was the Battle of Silvertear Skies (and the end result of the massive aetheric disruption that reduced Mor Dhona to an aether soaked wasteland, and freed the Primals from their seal within the lake), the Empire that initiated Project Meteor (yes, van Darnus did kind of go off the rails at the end, but the whole Meteor project was initiated with the Emperor's blessing), which resulted in the Calamity, it was the Empire who siezed land following the Battle of Carteneau and built strongholds. It was the Empire who enslaved the people of Ala Mhigo to recover Ultima Weapon. All the disasters and destruction caused to Eorzea over the past twenty years has been directly caused by the Empire, pure and simple.

Also, apart from Ala Mhigo, none of the city states craved areas outside their own boundaries (that's why they're citystates after all, they're nations that are literally just cities with the lands outside their walls mostly neutral territory - Limsa Lominsa is a thalassocracy (a nation of the sea). Ul'dah is a sultanate effectively under the thumb of a corporate oligarchy. Gridania is effectively a magocracy (nation of magicians). Ishgard is a strict theocracy. Sharlayan is (or was) a nation of scholars and academics. Only Ala Mhigo had a history of belligerence, probably owing to their devotion to Rhalgr the Destroyer and their strong military (which would explain the disastrous Autumn War), as well as Garlemald's invasion - they were the closest of the Eorzean citystates to Garlean territory, they had the strongest army, and were the most 'technologically advanced' (although the exact nature of that is unknown). Little wonder Gaius wanted to use it as his foot-in-the-door into Eorzea.

Either way, the people of Ala Mhigo were stated as continuing to suffer under the Empire's heel - 1.0 it was mentioned repeatedly the atrocities that the Garleans were committing against the residents (although the accuracy of that was hard to clarify, given the Empire had sealed off the city from the rest of Eorzea by a huge wall), Garlean soldiers were shown brainwashing Ala Mhigan children into zealously hating the Primals and the beastmen (ironically in a way akin to Primal tempering), and then, in ARR there's Glaumunt in Revenant's Toll during the lead up to the infiltration of Castrum Centri, who tells his sad story of just how 'noble' the Garleans are, how after the fall of Ala Mhigo he and his family were imprisoned in a gulag-style labour camp and how Garlean troops were sexually abusing his mother and sister - which drove them to suicide.

And you say this is 'just war'?

As my Path Companion in 1.0 summed it up: "when was the last time the Garleans ever did anything good for Eorzea?"