Quote Originally Posted by Bright-Flower View Post
For Ala Mhigo, who did they invade in the last century? If you're talking about the Autumn War, that was over 100 years ago, and since then ala mhigo had lived in peace with the rest of Eorzea until the mad king came along, who they deposed themselves only to be conquored by the empire while weakened.

For the empire, sure they have a sad story where they were wronged in the past. And if the empire had reclaimed its old lands with its technology and stopped there, maybe that would be one thing. Instead, they go after lands that never belonged to them expanding wherever they can. 'We'll only treat you badly if you rebel' hardly excuses anything, and treating the people you conqueror with cruelty only incites MORE rebellion anyway. We've seen three provinces with a history of rebelling, with more implied to have resistance forces evne if we haven't seen them rebel directly. (Gyr Abania, Doma, Dalmasca with the first two winning free and the third one being crushed. And we know other provinces have resistances like Nagxia .) Any examples of good garlean rule are vastly overshadowed by negative ones. And even if all of the provinces had been treated well. 'we'll be nice to you if you play ball after we took your lands and sent many of your able bodied youth off to war in other provinces as conscripts' doesn't exactly justify the invasions after the fact anyway.
Their tactics when dealing with conquered territories is actually a pretty age old one and is most likely a tactic that has played out in all places of the world (Including our own City States of Eorzea). It essentially breaks down to this - Citizenry of a conquered nation can fall into two camps broadly: Those that are in league with the conquerors, and those that reject the conquerors. For a conquering nation to ensure stability overtime and bring that territory into the fold (which is what Garlemald is seeking to do), they will have to rout any and all objectors while rewarding and uplifting supporters with the long term goal of replacing the resisting population with the supporting population. Garlemald seemed to be doing this in the case of Ala Mhigo, as well as Doma. People who fell in line behind the empire were rewarded broadly (if not left alone). Objectors to the new Garlemald rule were persecuted and treated terribly. This of course created a schism in Ala Mhigo, as people hated the supporters and saw them as traitors. But as the story points out - those supporters of the Garlemald empire did so because they viewed the mad king as so much god awfully worse and did not see any real leader to take his place. For them, The empire was a good thing and would bring stability to their nation. If it meant giving up a few traditions and practices, that was worth the price.

While I dont think the story does the best job at explaining this, the empire isnt super black and white where theyre nothing but evil slavers to all but the garlemald people. Even the reasoning behind Garlemalds expanse was predicated on (or atleast to the public it was) eradicating a practice which destabilizes the environment. It's literally an argument against WMDs as that is what a primal akin to. In any case, what theyre doing isnt anything new, nor are they an exception. the Garlemald people were victims of this same system, so its no suprise they would use it too. And our own citi states are no innocent actors. Theyre self interested actors. We may disagree with Garlemalds views, but those are ideological. Uldah, Limsa, and Gridania also have sketchy history of doing some pretty inhumane crap. Varis even points this out, and it isnt to much a stretch that Eorzea is defending itself from Garlemald out of self interest and preservation and not so much some greater need for the moral good.

TLDR - Its all a bit sketch. Garlemald is not a great empire, but we the player shouldnt be sitting here and being like "Oh theyre pure evil and were oh so good." The conflict is more about a difference in view point rather than morality.