#i haven't touched tataru's grand endeavours yet so idk if they touch it but i seriously doubt it

[fandom-geek]

just occurred to me but now i'm having feelings abt how ala mhigo got told “no charity, you’ve got to trade if you want shit” by ul’dah post-sb, while garlemald gets given a trade agreement as a concession to their egos after receiving a ton of charity.

especially with the in-game context that most ala mhigans have been refugees in eorzea for the 20 years of the occupation, that gaius was canonically enslaving ala mhigans to send off to the mines (mentioned in both 1.0 and 2.0), and that the people we’re seeing on-screen were wealthy enough to live in the imperial capital and would’ve benefitted from the proximity to the imperial family (see: forum solius).

like. idk, the msq is just trying to make you forget how every single garlean we see on-screen benefited from the empire and its crimes, even if they weren’t actively complicit.

stormblood was pretty good when it came to how it portrayed colonialism, but it feels like the msq writers have retreated from that because they want us to be sympathetic to garlemald. it feels like an extension of how gaius was morally whitewashed in shadowbringers despite never actually opposing what garlemald did, only that an ascian was using him for his own purposes.

i think it’s a shame we’ve never been able to ask gaius point blank if he would do what he did again if it wasn’t an ascian asking him to do it. both in terms of story potential and just sheer... why wouldn’t we?

#ffxiv #6.4 spoilers #ffxiv spoilers #garlemald #gaius van baelsar #obvs not saying that the garleans should've just been abandoned to die but like. it feels wild that no one's even acknowledging it #i haven't touched tataru's grand endeavours yet so idk if they touch it but i seriously doubt it #anyway i'm saying this as someone who adores cid and nero but the reason i like nero is bc he never *expects* the wol's forgiveness #he fully understands that most ppl will dislike him and frankly i respect that more than what was happening w gaius in shb #which is a shame because i want to find current gaius an interesting character! i certainly enjoyed him in arr #but it just feels like a very forced sympathy at expense of acknowledging what he's explicitly done in-game before #and that just makes it feel so disingenuous