How many legions are left and what is the status of them?

[RyuDragnier]

We know that he exists, and might be a very young man—a particular side story mentions that Titus has no ready heir circa Kaien's rebellion. Nerva is Titus's son and thus Zenos's uncle, which makes this hard but not impossible to reconcile with him being the Legatus of the IIIrd Legion.

We also know that he is supposedly being backed for the throne by House Brutus. Finally, we know that Lyon, one of the top men of the IVth Legion, believes him to be "weak and a coward", and supports Gabranth's decision to abandon Garlemald instead of following Nerva's demand that they return to the capitol.

I'm kind of hoping this leads to Nerva turning out to be a more political type, or a tactician. Somebody who doesn't fight himself, but knows how to set the field to his advantage. It would explain why Lyon calls him weak and cowardly since Lyon lives for the fight. Nerva being more of a tactical mind type would work for giving Garlemald a leader who could possibly bring the country back from the brink. Think of the Solidor family from FF12 as an example. If he and Garlemald are going to be antagonists, he'll be the equivalent of Vayne Solidor. If the country is going to lean towards trying to become allies, he'll be more like Larsa Solidor.

[Enkidoh]

Besides the main force marooned in Azys Lla due to Ysayle-as-Shiva freezing the Gration's engines and disabling the airship permenantly, a smaller unit of the VIth legion remains also stuck in the Sea of Clouds where they've established a rudimentary encampment right in the heart of Vanu territory (presumedly they were the accompanying force Varis and Regula sent to attack the Vanu and which were accidentally left behind when Regula and Varis had to do a hasty retreat back to the Gration when Lucia showed up in her magitek armour with guns blazing. Now they're constantly being hassled by the Vanu (there's a FATE there which shows them battling the beastmen).

As for the VIIth, the original legion under Eulla-as-Nael van Darnus were mostly wiped out during the Battle of Cartenau (as they were basically zealots completely and fanatically obssessed with carrying out the will of their late Legatus so they basically fought to the death. Any survivors that managed to avoid being killed or incinerated by Bahamut ended up being absorbed into the XIVth as I understand it, so the legion was rendered completely extinct, until now of course.

[Kiurai]

I suppose I'll do a bit of a derail sorry, but have we ever met truly good people still allied entirely to Garlemald? We can't say Maxima because he's in exile right? Cid and Nero are turncoat and Gaius is still up in the air as far as his true allegiances. I hope Nerva or whatever legatus we meet in 6.0 can show Garlemald in a better light than it's been in since 1.0

[Enkidoh]

I suppose I'll do a bit of a derail sorry, but have we ever met truly good people still allied entirely to Garlemald? We can't say Maxima because he's in exile right? Cid and Nero are turncoat and Gaius is still up in the air as far as his true allegiances. I hope Nerva or whatever legatus we meet in 6.0 can show Garlemald in a better light than it's been in since 1.0

We know there are more moderate or even progressive Garleans in the Empire's ruling class, they call themselves the 'Populares' and were wanting to bring hostilities with other nations to a peaceful end (coexistance and independence for those nations wanting to be free of the Empire). It was this group that Maxima belonged to and was taking Alphinaud to meet with during SB's storyline. Alas though, they're something of a minority in Garlemald and naturally Elidibus-as-Zenos conspired to ensure Maxima and Alphinaud never made it to their destination (shooting down their airship over the Burn).

Irony of ironies though, it was that act that not only brought Gaius back into the picture (and revealed the whole Black Rose project the Empire was working on behind the scenes), it also revealed the prescence of the ancient Allagan forcefield generators in the Burn, which Hein and the Domans realized could be reactivated to form an impenetrable defense barrier that would basically cut the Empire off from Othard (or rather Othard's western flank) and so reduce the risk of Imperial forces mounting a counterattack against Doma to retake the newly liberated country. So, the Empire actually made their job of conquest harder with that one act of trying to strangle the Populares, so, nice job fixing it villain?

Either way, there definetely are benign Garleans still in the Empire and actively working for the betterment of their country (even Gaius still regards himself as a patriotic Garlean, but is outright resisting the government and military he once served), but alas their numbers would be pretty low (especially as it seems Varis initated some kind of purge of the Populares so if there was any survivors still holding to that ideology, they would probably be in hiding within Garlemald). We'll probably find out either way.

[Kesey]

We know there are more moderate or even progressive Garleans in the Empire's ruling class, they call themselves the 'Populares' and were wanting to bring hostilities with other nations to a peaceful end (coexistance and independence for those nations wanting to be free of the Empire). It was this group that Maxima belonged to and was taking Alphinaud to meet with during ShB's storyline. Alas though, they're something of a minority in Garlemald and naturally Elidibus-as-Zenos conspired to ensure Maxima and Alphinaud never made it to their destination (shooting down their airship over the Burn).

Irony of ironies though, it was that act that not only brought Gaius back into the picture (and revealed the whole Black Rose project the Empire was working on behind the scenes), it also revealed the prescence of the ancient Allagan forcefield generators in the Burn, which Hein and the Domans realized could be reactivated to form an impenetrable defense barrier that would basically cut the Empire off from Othard (or rather Othard's western flank) and so reduce the risk of Imperial forces mounting a counterattack against Doma to retake the newly liberated country. So, the Empire actually made their job of conquest harder with that one act of trying to strangle the Populares, so, nice job fixing it villain?

Either way, there definetely are benign Garleans still in the Empire and actively working for the betterment of their country (even Gaius still regards himself as a patriotic Garlean, but is outright resisting the government and military he once served), but alas their numbers would be pretty low (especially as it seems Varis initated some kind of purge of the Populares so if there was any survivors still holding to that ideology, they would probably be in hiding within Garlemald). We'll probably find out either way.

Pretty sure Fandaniel eludes that the Populares have been "taken care of" off screen. Its a nice sentiment to think of sympathetic Garleans, but given that the towers are tempering people to be loyal to the Empire there is probably no one left (albeit unwillingly) to help us if the expansion goes there. I know there is a lot of talk about Nerva, but until he physically walks into the story not tempered we have to assume the only untempered Garleans are Gaius, Maxima, and the other ex-pats.

[YianKutku]

I suppose I'll do a bit of a derail sorry, but have we ever met truly good people still allied entirely to Garlemald? We can't say Maxima because he's in exile right? Cid and Nero are turncoat and Gaius is still up in the air as far as his true allegiances. I hope Nerva or whatever legatus we meet in 6.0 can show Garlemald in a better light than it's been in since 1.0

Depends on your definition of "truly good". We know there are people who have at least some semblance of conscience and morality, but most of the time when they're on-screen they have no power or desire to go against the monsters. And so there's the real-life ethics question of whether it's "good" to prioritize your own survival in the faint hope of enacting some change in the future (keeping your head down, following horrible orders), or to protest immediately in an effort to stop the current suffering, with the near-certainty that it will not help the situation, and indeed cause more harm by giving an excuse to crack down on like-minded allies, but at least your personal conscience is clean.

As an example, the pilots of the Weapons are the former. Are they good? Are they deluding themselves into thinking they're good? Has their remaining under the command of van Varro and abetting his atrocities been balanced out by the alleged reasoning of "at least fewer other victims will be involved"?

But speaking generally, Garlemald (and the story) has been systematically pushing out all the "good" Garlemald-aligned characters, turning them into defectors, exiles, or corpses. Even the rank-and-file soldiers are shown to be perfectly happy to desert at the earliest opportunity just to see their families again. Cid, Nero, the various engineers who defected to the Ironworks (including Biggs and Wedge), Lucia, Maxima and the Populares, the cast of the Prima Vista, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Rhitatyn and Regula are dead, albeit while still believing in Garlemald.

I don't even know about Gaius, since he seems to mostly be against the current actions of Garlemald, but still believes in the social structure of the Garlean Empire, including the primacy of the Emperor. Which anyone even remotely familiar with political theory would know is like trying to excuse the atrocities by blaming them on "a few bad apples", while conveniently ignoring the rest of the proverb "spoils the whole barrel".

[Slatersev]

I am interested in seeing more sane Garlean aliened Garleans, but I highly doubt Nerva is going to be it.

House Brutus is specifically mentioned as backing him, and Fandaniel is just about the last person alive who would back a competent tactical minded leader who could stabilize the empire. That's basically the exact opposite of what he wants.

Nerva and Titus are pretty clearly being portrayed as another type of way Monarchies tend to suck. Nepotism, men who only got to where they are due to birth.

Though on the subject, it would be interesting if the I's legions Legatus ends up being important, they were fighting the III after all. Maybe they could be the sane uniter after everything falls apart.

Also, not for nothing but I want a female Legatus someday. (One that everyone knows is a girl, not pretending to be a man like Eula was)

[Kiurai]

I define good more as, Maxima or somewhat corrupt if it serves a greater good ala Lolorito but my standards of how far you can go differ from everyone's at the end of the day. I will say that I hope we see someone who supports populares like ideals or atleast more moderately minded,( the populares were gaining the support of the public in 4.3 before Elidibus' meddling if I remember correctly so who knows) we can work with, would be a shame to just tear down the empire when even our side has more shades of grey to it so far lol

[YianKutku]

I define good more as, Maxima or somewhat corrupt if it serves a greater good ala Lolorito but my standards of how far you can go differ from everyone's at the end of the day. I will say that I hope we see someone who supports populares like ideals or atleast more moderately minded,( the populares were gaining the support of the public in 4.3 before Elidibus' meddling if I remember correctly so who knows) we can work with, would be a shame to just tear down the empire when even our side has more shades of grey to it so far lol

It's easy to have more shades of grey than the Garlean Empire, given the Garlean Empire is almost entirely terrible. The Empire is evil by design (as has been boasted about by Emet-Selch), almost fractally; it's evil to individuals, even under its alleged protection (what happened to Fordola's parents, which happened under the "decent Legatus" Gaius), it's evil to groups of people ("good" Regula was willing to wipe out the Vanu Vanu on Varis's orders), and it's evil to the Empire itself (as Emet-Selch carefully arranged, for maximum chaos).

I've been fairly careful and precise when I say the Garlean Empire needs to be torn down. This is completely different and distinct from saying that Garlemald needs to be torn down. The Garlean Empire has literally existed for only 55 years at this point, and it has already caused mass suffering and pain on three continents. Hence why "the empire", and more specifically the system of imperialism, must be destroyed and stopped. Garlemald itself is perfectly able to survive and even thrive as a non-Empire, given it has existed as a major polity for like 500 years before turning into an Empire. (Before anyone claims "oh but they were persecuted", that happened about a hundred years before Garlemald existed. Garlemald as a nation was formally founded after it had taken over all the territories and settlements in its vicinity.)

So Gaius automatically obeying the orders of Emperor Varis at the end of 5.0 is kind of puzzling, since that implies Gaius follows the ideals of the Empire, rather than of Garlemald. Maybe to him it's the same thing (he probably has only known about the Garlean Empire), but the Garlean Empire is only one of many possible political systems available for Garlemald, and given the sheer chaos it caused, I would say being an Empire is not a good thing.

(The obvious route would be returning to the Garlean Republic, but I figure it's also fine if they want to try other political systems. The Holy See of Garlemald, perhaps?)

[RyuDragnier]

(The obvious route would be returning to the Garlean Republic, but I figure it's also fine if they want to try other political systems. The Holy See of Garlemald, perhaps?)

I've always seen pre-HW Ishgard as how the Garlean Empire actually was on their home terf, with post-HW showing what it could become. Depending on how the writers want to take Garlemald after the end of 6.3, it could either stay pre-HW Ishgard levels or could end up being elevated to post-HW. That of course depends on how things with the Empire go next expansion.