Faerghus has a Famine problem, and I think that is related to their treatment of Duscur and Sreng's people.
So Faerghus has a famine problem. We don't deeply examine it in game, but it does show up through characters. Sylvain makes a comment on the meals, and how they couldn't eat like this at home, and Ingrid's Galatea home has severe famine going on.
I'm going to make some assumptions about Fódlan history. Andrestia is based on the Roman Empire, a conquering nation. It can be assumed that they conquered the continent and appointed the lords whose families appear in the game. The official church line says that the 10 elites were heros who fought against Nemesis, in truth they got their crests through the blood of murder victims. The elites were killed but their families were spared.
And so the continent was united in conquest. For there to have been conquest, there had to have been people there first. And that is where I think Duscur and Sreng come in. They were probably the original natives of the land, and their smaller sections of the map (and described condition of Sreng, rings some bells to me about residential areas)
(Hmm, I'm Canadian, and have made effort to learn about Native issues. I can't say I'm the most qualified person to talk about, but I attempt to at least have information. )
So the treatment of Duscur is reminiscent of treatment Native Americans have faced. Things like being blamed for crimes, the genocide their culture and people have survived (much was lost in the process), and sectioning them off to specific areas.
This is a result of colonialism, and in the process important knowledge is lost. It's not new to Japan either, if they had wanted to get a bit more nuance in the portrayal they could have considered Ainu.
But I am getting distracted. Important knowledge lost would probably include farming practices that sustain the land.
Or the locals probably have a good reason for doing something you consider crazy. Take for instance Australian Aboriginal burning practices.
They have knowledge of grass and how well it will burn, and they knew what type of fires to burn for each land,for how long, and how often to do it.
"Aboriginal techniques are based in part on fire prevention: ridding the land of fuel, like debris, scrub, undergrowth and certain grasses. The fuel alights easily, which allows for more intense flames that are harder to fight.
The Aboriginal people would set small-scale fires that weren't too intense and clear the land of the extra debris. The smaller intensity fires would lessen the impact on the insects and animals occupying the land, too, as well as protect the trees and the canopy."
The fires in Australia have been burning for months, consuming nearly 18 million acres of land, causing thousands to evacuate and killing po
It takes skill and knowledge, something that was diminished by colonizers, and while they are trying to recreate it, they do not have the same knowledge as the locals who did it for thousands of years. And global warming escalation is making it worse.
Or, new people have the land, and they don't know how to use it like the locals would, and don't want to ask because they are too busy looking down on the locals.
Sreng has been invading Gautier for over 200 years. The war of heros was over 1,000 years ago.
Faerghus rebelled in 747 and winning in 751, and Leicester rebelling from Andrestia in 801 leading to more war. The Kingdom intervened by occupying and annexing Leicester as a protectorate. The Alliance was formed in 901
101 was the formation of the locket.
1160 was the year of the plague, Dimitris mother died from it 2 years later. And 1668 was the invasion and Annexing of the southern part of Sreng.
So from what I can tell, Sreng has been fighting Gautier since the rebellion of Leicester. But exact timing is iffy.
Its harder to get a timeline for how long Faerghus has been occupying the lands. Fraldarius is one of the oldest nobel house on record, but I can't confidently say that they have had the land they live on for more than 500 years. Probably less.
I don't think that Duscur was driven off their land all at once so much as given a smaller and smaller land that is Duscar,as Faerghus annexed it. Or probably got annexed from both Faerghus and Andrestia on both ends as they established borders.
It's entirely probable that the nobles chased the locals off the lands and claimed it as their post rebellion, and in doing so gained land that they didn't know how to take care of like the locals would.
It could be they didn't properly balance the acidity in the soil from their crops. Or any number of issues they didn't address because they didn't ask, and assumed they knew what they were doing, and now generations later the descendents are doing as their ancestors did, and getting bad results.
Like, North America has a worm invasion. North America did not have worms before people came over from Europe (they died off in the global ice age, if there were any) , and decomposition was done by the forest leaves and such. So worms are spreading, and changing things like soil organizations, plant communities, erosion, forests ability to store carbon, and with the newest worm invasion reducing insects.
Ah, the point is the land is more fragile than you credit it for. Faerghus has a famine problem and I think that the driving out (and Genocide attempt) of its original inhabitants is related to that problem.
