When Fighting Back Becomes a Crime: Ansur, the Emperor, and Fictional Racism in BG3
As someone who did not grow up in a Western cultural context, there was a specific moment in Baldur’s Gate 3 that left me deeply uncomfortable. It wasn’t the fact that we had to kill Ansur, or even the tragic history he shared with the Emperor. It was the moment when Ansur fails to kill the Emperor in his sleep and then, incredibly, condemns him for the act of fighting back.
That reaction stayed with me because it reveals a moral logic the game seems willing to accept. It is the idea that some beings are not only killable, but actually blameworthy for refusing to die.
I can understand Ansur’s fear. I can understand his desperation and his grief. What I cannot accept is the judgment that follows. When Ansur attacks the Emperor, he is not responding to a crime. He is responding to a fear of what might happen in the future. Yet, when the Emperor chooses to survive, the narrative frames his self-defense as a betrayal. It becomes something that needs explanation or even forgiveness.
This framing matters. Being attacked and defending yourself should not require a moral justification. Survival is not a crime. When a story suggests otherwise, we have to ask a difficult question. Who is expected to accept death without resistance?
This is not a hypothetical. The game offers a clear point of comparison in Gale. When Mystra asks Gale to die so that a future catastrophe can be prevented, the players overwhelmingly criticize her. She is seen as cold, manipulative, and controlling. That reaction is important. It shows that players are not actually comfortable with the idea of one person dying for the greater good.
So why does that reaction change so dramatically for the Emperor?
The answer is uncomfortable but clear. Gale is treated as a person whose right to live is a given. Even after he makes catastrophic mistakes in his pursuit of power, and even when the magical artifacts he consumes to stabilize his condition start to fail, he is never treated as a mistake. He becomes a literal ticking time bomb, yet his existence is never something that should have been erased in advance. (For the record, I actually like Gale a lot. He is my favorite companion.)
But as a mind flayer, the Emperor’s existence is treated as a problem to be solved before he has even committed a single harmful act. His potential for harm alone justifies preemptive violence. More disturbingly, his refusal to die makes him look morally suspect.
The standard quietly shifts here. The question is no longer what he has done. It is simply what he is.
This leads to what I call the trap of retroactive justification. I often see players defend Ansur by pointing to the Emperor’s later actions. They mention his secrecy or his manipulations to excuse the original attempt on his life. But this move itself reveals the trap. Once a character is marked as part of an evil race, they are no longer judged by their actions at the moment of violence. Instead, they have to prove they deserve to survive at all. They have to be better than everyone else. They have to be more honest and more restrained just to earn the basic right of self-defense.
This is not how we judge characters like Gale. We don't retroactively decide Gale should have died because he is flawed. But for the Emperor, every imperfection is used as evidence that Ansur was right from the start. On the night Ansur tried to kill him, the judgment wasn't based on a crime. It was based on his tentacles.
When a character is condemned before they act, the issue is no longer about individual morality. This is fictional racism, or perhaps lookism, though in this game they effectively function as the same thing. It is the kind of structural prejudice that makes entire groups disposable by default. If you are a mind flayer, your right to live is conditional. You may be tolerated, but you are never fully innocent and you are never fully entitled to fight back.
This logic is even harder to ignore in Act I. The game frames the safety of the tiefling refugees as a moral imperative and pushes players to eliminate the goblin camp to achieve it. Even though the story suggests only killing the leaders is necessary, the mechanics tell a different story. Once the leaders are dead, the entire camp becomes permanently hostile. There is no negotiation and no retreat. Success is defined as eradication.
Many players don't hesitate because the game rewards this path with experience and loot. Violence is not just permitted, it is structurally encouraged. What makes this troubling is that the game acknowledges both groups are capable of cruelty and kindness. Yet only the goblins are treated as collectively killable.
Averages are irrelevant here. Tieflings can be cruel and goblins can be peaceful. But when being born into a specific race functions as a death sentence before a crime is committed, we are no longer talking about ethics. We are talking about racialized moral superiority. It is a system where some characters are allowed complexity while others are expected to disappear quietly.
Because I did not grow up in a Western cultural context, this logic feels uncomfortably familiar. Not because it maps onto a single real-world group, but because the structure of the bias is so recognizable.
Baldur’s Gate 3 asks many questions about choice and consequence. But it seems unwilling to confront one truth. Who is allowed to fight back, and who is expected to die without protest? When the answer depends on race rather than action, it is not a tragedy. It is fictional racism embedded in the rules of who gets to live.
