What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Kolsykol]

"Goal"? I need a goal to state an opinion now?

How about you? What's your goal here?

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In regards to Garlemald, they had five expansions to introduce some nuance to Garlemald other than "well, some of them AREN'T racist monsters", but that's pretty much the direction they went to the very end. I was hoping that the Stormblood expacs leading into Shadowbringers would add more nuance to Varis (and thus, the Empire), but we basically just got "I want to cause rejoinings because something-something one true race". I honestly would've saw trying to cram all that into 6.0 or later as a cop-out.

Tbh the racism thing isn't exactly unique to Garleans, and the Garleans being racist is a bit more understandable too considering their history.
Not saying it's right, but it's more like retribution for wrongs committed against them in the past.
( And it becomes a circular thing, but ultimately they were the first to be victimized. )

The whole '' one true race '' thing makes sense too if you know the context behind it ( which we didn't then ), altho the way he presented it was definitely quite unhinged.
But his overall point was that the Ascians were bad and if we were going to stand a chance against them we had to be '' whole ''.
I definitely think Varis is a bit more nuanced with the full context revealed, I also think it's a bit understandable that he'd be a bit unhinged about it considering he had basically been carrying that knowledge alone and even been the grandson of and puppet of an Ascian himself.
Varis just was in a very very screwed up position and could basically not talk to anyone about it until then and like his entire life and the empire he loved was basically a lie.

I didn't really get the impression that the Garleans were just treated as racist monsters, especially not if you know the lore of the other races and how shitty they can be towards each other too.
From our pov we don't see much of it because we're the WoL and generally hang around good people.

Edit: When it comes to Ala Mhigo too there's the whole mad king thing.
There's some truth to the notion that Garleans offered stability even if it was oppressive, I think Eorzeans are portrayed in a pretty negative way quite frequently in the story too.
We saw that with how people trying to adapt were treated too ( Fordola's parents ).