Garleans and the ancients. (Spoilers)

[VargasVermillion]

The Garleans defintely have ties to Allag. If I remember my Crystal Tower cutscenes, a huge part of the rivalry between Nero and Cid was that Cid was favored over Nero even though his family had 'ties to Allag.' The last straw was Gaius still favoring Cid despite his defection when Nero had the devotion and the pedigree.

Nero's jealousy of cid comes from the fact that cid is related to a influential engineer and had social status via relations while nero was from a rural town and more or less peasant class by comparison.

[Kesey]

Nero's jealousy of cid comes from the fact that cid is related to a influential engineer and had social status via relations while nero was from a rural town and more or less peasant class by comparison.

This is the Nero and Cid backstory. It is also further complicated because Cid becomes a defector to Eorzea but Nero stayed loyal to the empire and that did nothing change his standing in the empire over Cid.

[ObsidianFire]

This is the Nero and Cid backstory. It is also further complicated because Cid becomes a defector to Eorzea but Nero stayed loyal to the empire and that did nothing change his standing in the empire over Cid.

Errr... Nero climbed to the rank of being second-in-command of Gaius' Legion. That's... he is of a higher rank than Cid is. Not that it helped him in being though of better than Cid.

What happened was that Cid escaping to Eorzea under the Empire's nose made him even more famous back in Garlemald. Nero has had people comparing him to Cid for... basically his entire life, even when Cid wasn't there and when Nero had proved himself to be way more loyal than Cid was. From Nero's pov, he could never get away from Cid's reputation always being thought of better than his own for seemingly arbitrary reasons. No one has ever seen his skills as being on par with Cid's.

Part of them getting over their differences in Omega is Cid realizing Nero has a point about not curtailing himself on the off-chance that what he designs might end up being dangerous. Nero meanwhile acknowledges that Cid himself was never comparing Nero to himself or thinking Nero was less of an engineer than he is. To the contrary, Cid respected Nero a lot because Nero was the only person capable of keeping up with Cid and that pushed Cid more as an engineer. Both of them are in way better headspaces at the end of Omega as a result because they don't resent the other for things they can't control... like how other people think of them.

[MrThinker]

Errr... Nero climbed to the rank of being second-in-command of Gaius' Legion. That's... he is of a higher rank than Cid is. Not that it helped him in being though of better than Cid.

What happened was that Cid escaping to Eorzea under the Empire's nose made him even more famous back in Garlemald.

I think "fame and popularity " is exactly what Kesey meant by "standing in the Empire".