#didnothingwrong

So I just heard from Thorgi's top character countdown that people love Edelgard because she wanted to break down a whole system that was unjust, in order to protect people. And that's fine. I didn't watch playthroughs of her story route, but sounds like the same type of thing I loved about Code Geass.  Cool.  But if people are defending her by titling their arguments "Edelgard did nothing wrong", I'm going to have to take offense at that.  No one can be alive without hurting or killing something else to survive.  That's what eating is.  The only way to justify killing something else to survive, is to make your survival/existence worth it.  The only way to justify killing someone else in a war is to accept that the thing (people, ideals) you want to protect, are worth taking those lives.  (At least by samurai anime logic.)  But you accept that what you have done is a sin, evil, not "right" in and of itself, that in a perfect world, would not have been something that needed to be done.  You can't maintain the dignity of "committing evils to prevent greater evils" as Lelouch said, without fully accepting that you have conceded to doing evil.  Because the alternative is to try to say you "did nothing wrong", and that is a slippery slope that only marks certain things as evil/good whenever convenient for only your own individual purposes, and slowly erodes one's sense of empathy.  Now that's a true evil.  That type of subjective, self-centered thinking is what leads to those "greater evil" systems that must be broken down by the means of "lesser evils" (which are presumably a lesser level of subjective self-centeredness). People get hurt in war.  That's an absolute.  And trying to nullify that fact by saying those pains suffered by civilians/soldiers/enemies/people were negligible or "didn't count", leads to evils that invalidate the sacrifices from deciding to go to war, in order to stop greater evils. If something is so worth protecting that you have to hurt something/someone else to protect it, then take pride in that thing you’re protecting being WORTH it, but also don’t diminish your pride in deciding something was worth protecting, even at the expense of others, by deluding yourself into thinking that sacrifice wasn’t even a sacrifice.  If she's so sure that what she's doing is "right", and will dispel a greater evil, then I'm sure Edelgard is taking pride in what she is doing, by recognizing her methods are not kind, by not turning blind to the faults in her own methods, and by preserving her empathy by not deluding herself into thinking she "did nothing wrong".  

Utilitarianism in Anime by  Anime Philosopher

TL;DR: It's okay to like the morally gray character for the Power Fantasy, Revenge Fantasy, self-indulgence, "guilty pleasure" story, or angsty tragic melodrama. I promise, it's okay that they didn't "do nothing wrong". (In fact, a lot of their endearment can be that they did so much wrong.) We don't need to bleach the gray out of morally gray characters.

I'm pretty sure starting a war is a factual thing she did. "Condemning them for shit they didn't do" sounds like the opinion of the same people who "think they [El] never did anything wrong and get angry if you suggest otherwise". That's just a strawman of the people with actual, legitimate disagreements with her.

Thinking the war was necessary is a lack of imagination or a lack of Strength to do the hard work of negotiation, empathy, compromise, and persuasion, even towards antagonistic parties.

"All war represents a failure of diplomacy." ---Tony Benn

Though I will admit, I believe "imagination" also includes fighting with violence, in ways that don't cost hundreds of soldiers' lives, risking civilian bystanders, nor destroying the land resources civilians need to live, through war. Such as assassination. Or as FE3H reminds us through Claude, poisonings, deception, subterfuge, etc. Diplomacy is preferable, but if a situation comes down to dire constraints, there are other methods besides war.

"The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” ---Sun Tzu

Also, it's okay to like a character for being morally gray or even bad. I love Lelouch vi Britannia from Code Geass, because that series is a self-indulgent, guilty pleasure, revenge fantasy. It's okay to like El for tragically going to unnecessary extremes in her fictional fantasy world. But don't act like that's not what's happening.