Where do these ships come from?

Question

Spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of Star Trek: Picard!

In Star Trek: Picard's season finale, "Et in Arcadia, Ego", we can see a huge Romulan fleet pursuing the main characters to the planet of the Synths.

It has been established that the Romulans are living in constant fear of "The Destroyer", so I can believe that they threw everything they have at their enemy.

However, the Romulan fleet is huge, and to me, it looks like most of the ships are actually war ships. In fact, the fleet is so big, that during the final stand off with Riker, both fleets look comparable in size to me.

But it has been established throughout the series that the Romulan Empire seems to be pretty much gone. How does that fit together? Where do the ships come from, and the crew, and how where they able to keep all the ships ready for battle without anyone noticing?

Answer 1

Even though Romulus and Romulan Empire is gone, Romulans were not.

According to wikipedia

"At least two groups of Romulans survived: one group formed the Romulan Free State, while the other group was evacuated to the planet of Vashti."

Memory Alpha says that:

"After the destruction of Romulus, some of the surviving Romulans were politically organized as the Romulan Free State."

Also, it is clearly established throughout the series that Tal Shiar is very much active.

They would possibly have a large fleet of warships out in the galaxy and not all of them was destroyed with their planet.

So, it's not impossible for Romulans to assemble a fleet of 218 ships to wipe out Synths.