Res Stuff

Some basics to start: Gyr Abania is the sole land route between the continents of Aldenard and Ilsabard. This historically made it the most powerful trading center in the world as well as a perpetual battlefield. The region is lacking in resources as well as mountainous and arid. The wealth of Ala Mhigo was therefore entirely derived through its control of the trade routes between east and west. All of which is to say: Ala Mhigo has always been in a precarious state where the land itself is worthless except for its strategic location. The only true resource Gyr Abania has ever possessed was its people.

Because what they lacked in arable land and mineral wealth they made up for in extraordinary skill. There's an occasional note here and there in the Encyclopedia Eorzea about the nation having "engineering prowess" but we don't get to see a lot of it in game because the Empire has mostly demolished the evidence of it by the time we arrive. Rhalgr's Reach is an architectural wonder. Like, I know this is a setting with magic and floating continents, but do you know how friggin hard it is to make stone cantilever or span a distance without cracking? There are remnants of elevated stone bridges everywhere in the Peaks, the ruins of the Highroad which made land travel through the otherwise treacherous mountains easy for trade caravans for hundreds of years. You used to be able to just walk up the cliffs and across the chasms. These people used to be structural engineers and master craftsmen.

We don't hear a lot about it beyond an occasional mention that the Ultima Weapon was found here, but this was probably where a lot of Amon's engineers who built Dalamud lived. The Ananta we meet in the Stormblood quests are pretty obviously descendants of the Lamia made by Allag, whom we otherwise only ever find in high tech research facilities like Azys Lla and the Coils.

The well-known story that the highlanders were led to these mountains by Rhalgr's comet to save them from the Calamity of Water... kind of never states how anybody else got there, or where the hyur were before the Calamity. But we know the Allagans enslaved Miqo'te tribes, and there's at least three, possibly four in this region, even if we only meet the M tribe. X'rhun's X tribe, as well as the J and possibly the P tribes all must be in this area somewhere. Most likely inside the capital.

All of these people were probably left fighting over the scraps of what was left after Allag fell, which only got worse after the Calamity of Water drowned most of the region. Which explains why the lorebooks make mention of Ala Mhigo having spent as much time and effort fighting within its borders as it has defending Ghimlyt, which was constantly being invaded from the Ilsabard side. Historically, none of these clans and tribes got along, and they were only unified through force by Anselm Cotter three hundred years ago. Apart from holding the most important trade route on two continents, Ala Mhigo's other main source of wealth was the export of mercenaries. They are renowned for being warriors, and they've had a lot of practice. Even their religion is based around perfecting martial arts. This was the undisputed greatest military power in Aldenard.

And eighty years ago, it attacked Gridania.

It's hard to overstate how important this war was to the history of Eorzea. The Autumn War was the event that originally inspired the founding of the Eorzean Alliance. Ala Mhigo was the overwhelming enemy they all banded together to fight, before the Garlean Empire even truly existed. In addition to founding the Alliance, the Autumn War ended the use of local currencies and brought about the use of gil. It re-drew the borders of every nation. Eorzea is the Eorzea we know because of this conflict that almost nobody talks about.

Within Gyr Abania, the Autumn War made the already unpopular king's power incredibly unstable. The Fist of Rhalgr rose out of the unrest as the major political player in the region, and the king at the time chose to try to stabilize his position by bringing the monks into high ranking places in his government. By the time Theodoric took the throne, they were deeply ensconced in the military and the government and held a position of authority in the eyes of most of the people that was greater than that of the crown. The Empire's agents exploited Theodoric's paranoia and fear of losing power to drive a lot of his descent into madness. And he effectively declared war on Rhalgr, naming Nymeia his patron (maybe hoping that Fate would protect him from Destruction) and slaughtering every last monk and priest of the faith.

So here's what all that boils down to when we start ARR:

The strongest military power on the continent has fallen.

Garlemald didn't overwhelm them in a straight fight, they manipulated them into a brutal civil war and then waited until Ala Mhigo was weakened to swoop in.

Meaning that Ala Mhigo was taken down while its people were still fighting each other and not the Empire.

Everyone in Eorzea is both pleased and horrified by this development.

On the one hand, hooray! Our oldest enemy has fallen.

On the other hand, there's now something worse in Eorzea than Ala Mhigo.

The only value for the Empire in taking Gyr Abania is in having a staging point for a future invasion of Aldenard. So they're definitely coming for everyone.

It's been twenty years since the invasion, and there are still Ala Mhigan refugees. A whole generation of kids, like Arenvald, Fordola, and Wilred have grown up with "Ala Mhigan" being the lowest possible level you can hold in society, and they have never known anything else. The deep-seated hatred of Ala Mhigo is clearly still prevalent in Gridania, for instance, where in the Carpenter quests we see every small attempt to express or share Ala Mhigan culture met with hostility. Those who have tried to assimilate into the populations of Gridania and Ul'dah are constantly viewed with suspicion by Eorzeans and disdain by other Ala Mhigans. Those who don't assimilate are living in abject poverty either inside or outside the cities. The largest settlement of Ala Mhigans is a permanent refugee camp situated right on the edge of Amal'jaa territory where it is largely unprotected from anyone and left to be preyed upon by the remnants of Theodoric's loyalists. No one has even attempted to push the Empire out of Gyr Abania because it's functionally impossible. The single strongest military in Aldenard is gone, and the force holding its territory is obviously going to attack at any moment. In fact, they did, and were only stopped by dragons. Cue further Ishgardian retreat into paranoia.

In the story, Ala Mhigo is overwhelmingly tied to themes of alienation and loss of identity. Raubahn, the first Ala Mhigan character we probably meet in the game, is a member of the Syndicate and the Sultana's right hand, and he's still called the Bull of Ala Mhigo. The physically largest and strongest of the Alliance's leaders had to be rescued by the smallest and weakest one. Nanamo props up him up as much as he does her. Is he a solider, or is he a gladiator? Is he an Ala Mhigan or an Ul'dahn? Who and what he is is constantly in question. It's not even subtle. In Heavensward we have to rescue him from Halatali, the training ground/prison he was probably kept in after being arrested for being a suspected spy. He's literally and figuratively been trapped by Lolorito--representing Ul'dah's most conservative interests--and Ilberd--representing Ala Mhigan Resistance--and both hate him.

Lyse is practically the poster child for Ala Mhigan alienation. Her sense of identity is so poor, she has literally been pretending to be someone else for as long as we've known her. She doesn't have her own name, her own face. She is Ala Mhigan, but has spent the majority of her life in Sharlayan, making her a foreigner twice-over in Eorzea. And even when she does reclaim her own name and identity--or at least attempts to--she is recognized mostly for her father.

Which is another recurring element for Ala Mhigans: They came from greatness and now it's gone. This... is pretty good foreshadowing for the Ascians, honestly. There's both deep pride in what they used to be, indelibly fused to anger over its loss. And that anger is overwhelmingly aimed not at the Empire or Eorzea but at themselves. Ala Mhigans mostly fight other Ala Mhigans throughout the story. Theodoric vs. the Fist of Rhalgr and also Everyone else in Ala Mhigo. Ilberd vs. Raubahn. Fordola vs. Lyse. Little Ala Mhigo vs. the Corpse Brigade. They lost everything, mostly to their own internal conflict, and to grind salt into the wound, the rest of the world thinks they deserved it. The villains got what was coming to them. A whole generation has grown up hearing and possibly believing that.

When we see the Gryphon's spokesman make his speech to the refugees in Thanalan, his entire sales pitch is built on guilt. He isn't trying to convince them that fighting for Ala Mhigo will make their lives better, or secure a future for their children, he tells them that they owe it to the people still there. "We abandoned them," is the repeated refrain. Made to people who live in tents in the dirt and have nothing. The refugees effectively have no identity even to their own people. They are neither true Ala Mhigans, fighting for the cause, nor citizens of the lands they live in. Just as their homeland's value was mostly in being a place the Empire could attack from, their value to the Resistance is mostly to die for Ilberd's plan.

And these are the Ala Mhigans who end up driving events in Stormblood. Every last one of them is deeply alienated from their culture in one way or another. Raubahn tried to move on, became a major figure in Ul'dah--he's a traitor. Lyse, daughter of the nation's greatest revolutionary, hasn't lived among Ala Mhigan people at all. She's foreign to her homeland, and to her fellow refugees, her safety bought for her through her sister's hard work and sacrifice. Arenvald is the product of a war crime. His own mother thought he was too Garlean, and tried to mutilate him before casting him out. Any Eorzean who looks at him sees another filthy Ala Mhigan, but he can't even claim that identity. Fordola has lived her entire life under the occupation. Her pivotal, inciting event is that her father is murdered for betraying his countrymen to the Empire, but the Imperials stand by and watch, uncaring, because he's just another Ala Mhigan. She can never belong to either, and tries to force those around her to see her as a person at all.

Every one of them endures belonging nowhere, torn between clinging to pride in being Ala Mhigan and hating being Ala Mhigan.

The fact that we have the parley between Varis and the leaders of every single world nation we have met at that point on a battlefield in Ghimlyt is the most thematically and symbolically on-point place we could possibly have been for the turning point of the game's overarching plot.