Ilberd

[Enkidoh]

Well, to be fair, both Gaius and Nael were acting on their own and received a significant amount of criticism from Garlemald as a whole. It's very likely that Varis and Regula are, again, acting without the full approval of their people. Thus why the succession war was apparently so brutal. If there's another succession war then it's highly likely that a lot of Garleans will want a more moderate approach. I just really don't want to see Garleans as a whole exploited as convenient fodder whenever the WoL needs antagonists that aren't Primals.

That's not actually correct though - Varius is a dictator who oversees a totalitarian regime and thus the 'will of the people' doesn't even enter into the equation - he simply does whatever he desires and the people have to follow suit or face the consequences. And the War of Succession was because Solus had effectively established this as the normal state of affairs in Garlemald - after all Gaius's weapon Heirsbane was stated as having put down "nine aspirants to the Imperial Crown" - clearly the late Solus was paranoid about his position and purged almost his entire family to ensure his hold on power was total. This meant that when he finally passed away there was no direct successor, thus it became a free for all with high ranking Legatee and those with tenuous family links to the late emperor drawing lines in the sand and fighting each other in an effort to gain control, leading to the War of Succession (by the end of which Varius himself eliminated his own uncle just to gain the crown - by the end there was virtually no one left in Garlemald with the authority or will to oppose him, which is what has made the Eorzean Alliance so worried.)

And, although it's plain to see there are sympathetic Garleans in the game, nearly all of them have long since defected from the Empire and joined the Eorzean Alliance (Cid and members of the Ironworks,

Lucia

, that Juggernaut pilot marooned out in La Noscea) so unless there in an active resistance within Garlemald itself, I doubt we'll see any Garleans within the Empire itself treated as anything other than antagonists, as SE has made quite clear since even before 1.0 launched that the Garlean Empire are nothing but antagonists - a trope well in keeping with FF tradition after all.