Quote Originally Posted by YianKutku View Post
Something I'd be curious about is how far the story will go with the Optimates and Populares when it comes to parallels with Rome.

As in, one reason Julius Caesar was assassinated by the Roman Senate was because Caesar was Populares, and his assassins were Optimates. Because Caesar wanted to consolidate his power by riding on the approval of the masses (or so his critics claimed), and the Optimate Senate wanted to keep the power in the hands of the nobility and out of the Dictatorship/Emperor. So it's not a case where the Emperor must be aligned with the nobility; in fact, quite often the monarch is directly opposed to the nobility (Louis XIV is kind of the poster boy of this when it comes to breaking the power of the nobility), and whipping up the sentiments of the middle classes and peasantry is often a useful way to keep the nobility in check.

However, we're told here that the Optimates are the hawkish faction, and Varis is also a hawkish Emperor, while the Populares are the dovish faction, and the 4.4 trailer also calls them the "liberal voices". So I'm not sure how far to read into the names of the factions here.
I'm interested in this as well. Though if I were to make a guess, I don't think the parallels will be that strong. The real-world factions occurred in the days of the late Roman republic, where no central power within the government existed, because Rome hated kings. Julius Caesar nearly upset the balance, but his assassination gave way for Augustus to become something greater than a king. The Garleans, on the other hand, had already past that stage of stop being a republic.

If we were to take the literal meaning of each faction, it fits the politics of Garlemald. The Populares meaning "favouring the people", goes well with their desire for peace, favouring the welfare of the common man, be they Garleans or non-Garleans. As for the Optimates, their meaning is "best ones" or "good men", which goes with the traditional Garlean thinking that the Empire has taken the noble crusade of eliminating the Primals, believing themselves to be the best ones for the job. Not to mention how they view the non-Garleans as "savages".

Though I may be proven wrong later, I believe that the factions are named the way they are for their literal meaning, not for the historical context.