I think the arrival of more refugees than the city can effectively handle (there simply is not enough gainful employment for so many people, and not enough opportunity for unskilled labor to translate into productivity in Thanalan due how arid and awful it is) has placed incredible strain on the culture, and the economy that culture has built.
No doubt there have always been winners and losers, but the hope of being a winner (or that one's children, or grandchildren would become winners) has sustained a sense of energetic stability in recent centuries. Their focus on material well-being as opposed to easy lives of pillage (Limsa) or defense against a constant terror at the very real dangers of an environment prepared to destroy them (Gridania) has allowed Ul'dah to become, by far, Eorzea's most successful city.
This very success is the kernel of their undoing, as it (in addition to physical proximity) is what drew the Ala Mhigan refugees, and now those of the Calamity that has followed.
In Ul'dah you always have a chance, however slim. In Gridania you only have a chance if the Elementals (through the seedseers) say you do. In Limsa you always have a chance if you are/were a pirate (and I think people really minimize just how terrible, awful, and evil piracy is/was). In Ishgard you're just screwed, unless you have pull with a noble house. Where would most people who have had their foundations swiped from under them want to be? Ul'dah, of course, despite being an inhospitable desert.Â
Meanwhile, the refugees will stab at the very thing that offers them hope. They would be treated no better in Limsa (where they could expect a 'whiff of grapeshot'), or Gridania (where we literally see them being rejected by the Elementals and told to go take a hike). Its an interesting situation, and one that speaks to the failings of human behavior where sentiment and immediate needs clouds the ability to reason and think about the long-term.
No doubt there have always been winners and losers, but the hope of being a winner (or that one's children, or grandchildren would become winners) has sustained a sense of energetic stability in recent centuries. Their focus on material well-being as opposed to easy lives of pillage (Limsa) or defense against a constant terror at the very real dangers of an environment prepared to destroy them (Gridania) has allowed Ul'dah to become, by far, Eorzea's most successful city.
This very success is the kernel of their undoing, as it (in addition to physical proximity) is what drew the Ala Mhigan refugees, and now those of the Calamity that has followed.
In Ul'dah you always have a chance, however slim. In Gridania you only have a chance if the Elementals (through the seedseers) say you do. In Limsa you always have a chance if you are/were a pirate (and I think people really minimize just how terrible, awful, and evil piracy is/was). In Ishgard you're just screwed, unless you have pull with a noble house. Where would most people who have had their foundations swiped from under them want to be? Ul'dah, of course, despite being an inhospitable desert.Â
Meanwhile, the refugees will stab at the very thing that offers them hope. They would be treated no better in Limsa (where they could expect a 'whiff of grapeshot'), or Gridania (where we literally see them being rejected by the Elementals and told to go take a hike). Its an interesting situation, and one that speaks to the failings of human behavior where sentiment and immediate needs clouds the ability to reason and think about the long-term.
![[Image: 21282370099_a814a08664_o.png]](https://farm1.staticflickr.com/590/21282370099_a814a08664_o.png)
