Endwalker was "meh" (for reasons other than technical issues)

[KatsuraJun]

It absolutely did not. He went into a non-sequitur on his personal beliefs which had nothing to do with the actual history of their conquest or how they supposedly offered 'prosperity'. Alphinaud is supposed to be a master debater from a nation of scholars and getting shut up by such a stupid argument is absolute cringe storytelling. I don't think the writers even know how to write a smart character. You can't keep fanboying how smart and talented Alphinaud is and then keep having him fail so God damn always and resort to stupid anime schlock like 'the power of hope and friendship'.

He went into his personal beliefs precisely because it is a matter of personal belief.

The core disagreement between him and Quintus was simply this: given that humans will naturally come into conflict because of their differences in values, that as established by Quintus holds greater value to them than peace (if peace was your greatest desire, why not surrender?), is there any hope of real resolution, or can you boil down every human interaction to a zero-sum game where one party stands to lose from the exchange? In the end, all Alphinaud can do is affirm his belief in the ability for humans to cooperate ー ergo, the power of friendship/hope/whathaveyou.

It's precisely because he is a good orator that he doesn't launch into the trap of calling out Garlemald about their conquests, because you saw how well *that* went with Varis, no? lol. In the end, it's action which proves the truth of Alphinaud's worldview, which is why he set out to prove their good intentions through action and not words with characters like Jullus. Whereas, the one whose worldview led to self-destruction is Quintus.