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Well, right after I asked the question (sorry forgot to sign in) I immediately reinstalled XCOM 2 and made this poster. Also an extra one about a joke on the XCOM reddit about where the medkit duplication bug came from.

Others : ew Viren sucks a••, have a bunch of posts that just call him ugly and shitty in meme form

Me :

Aanya is a great and interesting character, and she deserves all the fans she can get. But I do think that, in the middle of all the jokes about how she burns Viren and how awesome her moms were, it is important to acknowledge that, for as far as we can see, she is not a good Queen. She is actual living proof of why we don’t allow kids in government. 

So let’s go over her decision. First some basics:

Nobody questions that there are elves congregating at the border, dragons in the sky or that their intentions are pacific.

Viren only asks for support to push the Xadians back over the border, not for an invasion.

Aanya says the reason she doesn’t want to help is because many people will die

So there are three possible scenarios, 1. The Xadians don’t attack, they are out for a stroll and got a bit carried away, idk. 2. They attack and invade all the human kingdoms. 3. They only attack Katolis, after which they’ll leave or maybe occupy.

If they don’t invade, sending soldiers would not result in any loss of life. Unless some soldiers fall in a river or something. So why not repay the debt of Duran to Katolis?

If they are going to invade everything, much better to stand together, and, in addition, better for Duren that the battlefield be in Katolis.

Only in this case does not sending soldiers reduce loss of life. Or, to be specific, Duren life, the people of Katolis are definitely going to die.

So we can draw two conclusions about Aanya’s decision.

Her decision is completely selfish. She is exclusively thinking of the well-being of her own people. When we take into account what happened in the flashback, it is honourless. It throws Katolis’s sacrifice, the death of Sarai, right back into their face.

Her decision is stupid. She is betting everything on that the Xadians will be happy just with Katolis. This is called appeasement and it is what the UK and France tried with Germany. Didn’t go too well. So far the elves don’t seem particularly nuanced when dealing with humans, I don’t think they care much about how they have politically divided up their territory. And Duren is in the north of Katolis, next to the border with Xadia as well. If the Xadians continue after Katolis, Duren would be next.

To sum up, her decision is wrong, although you could consider it practical, it is short-sighted. She is saving her soldiers in the short-run while gambling with her entire population’s survival in the long-run. 

Now, I don’t blame her. She’s a kid. Quite literally, the part of the brain that is in charge of thinking about long-run consequences doesn’t finish developing until you are in your twenties. She isn’t fully capable of making an informed decision. I blame whoever allowed her to be in the position to make that decision in the first place. 

This isn’t true, btw, for the other three rulers. Nothing is stopping them from sending support to Katolis on their own. They don’t have the excuse of age to justify their decision.