Their 'weird angle' is blatant contrarian trolling.

The Garleans are ultimately supremacist totalitarians, and any arguments they make are at the end of the day only to justify their pre-existing desire to be on the top, rather than in any way correct. Even before we learned Solus was an Ascian (which I do still think greatly cheapens the Garleans), they were very clearly wavering between old-fashioned Roman imperialism and straight-up fascism, so it's not at all surprising that the Empire's origin point was supremacist strongman politics.

But I think the most crucial, understated part of their story is actually Lakshmi. It shows that, for all the Garleans' strongman posturing and iron fist rule, it's not even succeeding at their pitch. Primals are still a problem, and they're a problem in their lands specifically and only because of the Garleans' oppression. Lakshmi shows, clear as day, that either the Garleans can't stop the disasters they're claiming to, or that they actively won't.

And of course, this is all without getting into the absolute disaster that is actual Garlean politics, because a violent, supremacist outlook is basically predestined to produce the worst possible leaders. Zenos isn't just a bad ruler, he's also the inevitable endpoint of the Garlean outlook: if all a society values is racial purity, cruelty and violence, then it's inevitably going to end up promoting someone whose only credits are being cruel, violent, and the right race.