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He ran a clanup crew in ME2 with the sole purpose of reducing crime on Omega.
And in ME3 he was fighting Reapers with the Turian Military.
I will check the provided wiki article, thanks for helping out.
Okay, so turians have 27 citizenship tiers.
1 is client races and children.
3 is conferred after boot camp (turians have mandatory military service between the ages of 15 and 30)
It's unclear if 26 or 27 is primach. It really depends on if the turians still have an emperor/empress who would presumably be 27. Turians are still considered to have an empire, so there's probably one hanging around and ruling as much as the Queen of England rules.
Garrus is a weird case because he didn't finish his mandatory military service for reasons the games never go into (he's 25 when we meet him and working on the citadel, not with the turian military, and based on real life police forces, it takes a minimum of 5 years to make detective, so he left the military at age 20.) But at minimum he's rank 3 when we meet him. Possibly 4 or 5 assuming he gained some additional clout despite the lack of service.
At the end of the game, he is NOT primarch. That's a joke.
He is, however, an extremely high ranking general, which probably means the whole "Reaper Adviser" thing boosted him up to somewhere in the 21-23 tier. He does have other generals, *career* generals, deferring to him on Menae. And then he basically runs the turian defensive game for Victus on his own, which probably means he got boosted again as Victus's right hand man. Probably gets him somewhere on the 25th tier. Maybe only 24th. There will be other people with more seniority on the same tier, so no, he's not next in line to be primarch unless a lot of people die.
I know he has a higher rank than the first General you meet on Manae (he calls Garrus "Sir") but lower than Victus (as Victus becomes primarch after you discover Fedorian is dead)?
It's really just unclear and he's cagey about it. From the way he reacts, he's way higher up in citizenship tiers than he ever wanted to be, and he's still trying to find his footing in turian terms. Doesn't want to think about the societal side of things, just focus on winning the war.
If Turian military ranks are in any way similar to IRL historical human military ranks, the Primarch is closer to that of Supreme Commander for his/her specific colony, with Garras starting out as "Fleet Admiral Vakarian", and then becoming "Grand Admiral Vakarian". From what I gathered about Turian society and government on the wiki, each Primarch has absolute control over the military of their own colony. Because the military handles so many governmental and societal functions in turian colonies, the Primarch is essentially the ruler of the colony. Due to turians granting rank according to skill and capability, Garrus begins ME3 as essentially the third-highest ranking turian in the colony, and becomes the second-in-command during the game. All the other generals in his colony are lower-ranking than him.
So if this were human military ranks he would start as Fleet Admiral and then be promoted by the new Primarch to Grand Admiral?
If all this is the most accurate info we know of him then during the events of the trilogy his growth as a character is more bigger than I initially thought.
I think the rank of Primarch can't be compared to either a Prince or a Supreme Commander, as "Prince" is a political rank that's usually hereditary, and "Supreme Commanders" are usually subordinate to a civilian official. The closest it seems to get is the Shogun of the Japanese shogunate, since that's the only rank in human history that's comparable to the amount of authority that any given turian Primarch has within his or her own colony. Since turian government is only loosely centralized, there's multiple Primarchs, and they vote on how to handle issues that affect turian society as a whole. But issues that are just affecting one colony? Handling that is the responsibility of only the Primarch for that colony.
But, yeah, Garrus's rank progression within the Turian Hierarchy is really impressive, given that he started out as the equivalent of a Private, just like all the other turians. As turians give ranks based on merit, it just goes to show that there's a lot of capability and maturity within him, even if he doesn't ever realize it.
As much as I love Garrus, I have to disagree about his rise being due to "merit."
His jump in authority was due to his father's social connections to the primarch of the time and potentially Castis's notability as a detective on the Citadel.
It was also due to him having the only real first hand knowledge of the Reapers among the turians.
Now, he took that jump in rank and ran with it as best he could, and he was apparently damn good. But he didn't work his way up based on merit. He got huge boosts from other people.
Sorry, but turians don't do that. According to both the wiki AND the in-game codex, turian society is strictly meritocratic; they give promotions based on demonstrated skill and capability. In other words, the Primarch of his colony felt that Garrus had shown that he had the skills to do the job. Did his knowledge of the Reapers enter into that? Yes, but only partially. Did any boosts he may have gotten from other people enter into the equation? No, because that's not how turian society works. Humans give ranks according to social connections; turians do not.
Except that what I outlined above is exactly what happened in the game according to Garrus himself.
Additionally, you have to consider how turians measure merit. This comes up with Joker. If you read the comics, he was initially denied the right to pilot the Normandy because of his disability despite having the top flight scores in school. He then stole the Normandy to show off that he was the best pilot.
When he was caught, the turian who had been denying him the right to fly the ship not only backed down, but I believe said Joker was the only one he wanted flying his ship.
You also get this with Saren, who only spent 1 year in boot camp and was immediately made a spectre without working through the ranks like he was supposed to. He's the youngest turian spectre ever.
I think there's some nuance to rebellion among turians that we don't get in the main game or from the codex entries. If you rebel and go outside of the structure to take power, but then manage that power appropriately, you can skip having to do all the merit based work below it.
This is what Garrus and his dad did that got Garrus the jump in ranking.
Except that we don't KNOW that Garrus' father did that. From what Garrus tells us, his father's the prototypical "by-the-book cop", even by turian standards. Garrus mentions at one point in ME 1 that even though he was slated as being up for Spectre evaluation, he was one of a few hundred grunts who went through that evaluation, and that his father put the kibosh on that because the idea of anyone having "the laws don't matter for me" power made him uncomfortable. Therefore, it's logical to view using his own personal connections to get his son a high-ranking position as something he would NEVER do. As for Saren, why bring him up? He's not part of this discussion, and never was.