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I totally disagree with some of the arguments here. Ultimately, the Uncrowned were in a pitiable position but they were the aggressors here. Yerin didn’t kill Sesh “on a whim”. She already knew the dragons were savage and brutal and generally a menace to society. Yerin bullies Redmoon Hall, but they deserve precious little pity, given their own proclivity for murder and plunder. She was relatively nice to them, all things considered. Ziel slaughters the Stormcallers for damn good reasons. They generally deserve what’s coming to them. Also, even if you want to argue that the younger members deserve mercy, remember that Ziel has not permanently killed any of them. Mercy was too nice to those snakes in the Li clan. She would have been justified in simply leaving them alone after the runaround they gave her. Lindon will almost certainly find a system to replace the status quo in the last book etc etc.
The long and the short of it is, the gang are at least somewhat morally ambiguous by our standards. They are downright saints by the standards of their world, and most of what they do is either good or largely justifiable. I’d be scared of them if I had to deal with them, but that’s because dealing with people who could annihilate you is always at least a little scary.
I agree they are from the readers point of view morally ambiguous and just. I think Will has done a great job expressing that in the story but the TLDR summary is that the gang from an outside perspective with limited information could easily be seen as monsters and that Will has done such a great job of shielding us from even thinking of that perspective.
Malice, looking at it from the a different perspective outside with total control of knowledge of all the politics and micro conflict, was able to take the actions that are occurring and create a easy PR campaign as villains. It's definitely a very viable perspective and one i think that resonates with a lot of the population.
He obeyed the rules of war between artists.
There's no guarantee they were younger than him. Anyway, I'm pointing out his restraint as a comparison to the strike team in Wintersteel, which didn't follow the rules yet OP condemned Lindon for ripping through them.
I agree about the point as a whole, but it’s a safe bet that golds are younger folks in Dreadgod cults. Maybe not Truegolds. I wonder if Ziel wouldn’t have lost his temper if he knew, for certain or with confidence, that those guys were among the cohort that tore through his sect. Just a thought, though.
> golds are younger folks in Dreadgod cults.
It makes sense for everyone honestly. But there are a few stages to reaching lord that not everyone can clear. Even being in a DG cult doesn't guarantee the insight.
I'd also bet that psychopaths who enjoy the slaughter tend to lack the introspection necessary to advance.
Intellectually, I’m inclined to agree. But a lot of the major Sacred artists are pretty psychopathic. The Sage of Calling Storms seems particularly twisted.
But yeah, some of those golds might have been old timers. Ziel was being very restrained.
I disagree that there's any perception among people that the deaths surrounding the Uncrowned King tournament were anything but justified, or at least expected. Half of them were Dreadgod cultists, who are near-universally demonized, and not entirely without justification for it.
Sure Lindon is a potentially terrifying figure to those that don't know him for all kinds of reasons. But so are the Monarchs, Heralds, Sages, and just about anyone else with any power on a level beyond your own. That's just how Cradle works, and seems designed to work.
I understand the argument but Cradle has so many different populations. We as readers are aligned to our group but looking at it from another clan or even the Akura, you can easily see how they could be seen as absolute terrors. How Will has allowed their actions to seem evil. I just think it's really well done story telling and world development.
Like I said, I don’t disagree with the thesis necessarily. Lindon especially at the end is obviously a legendarily notorious figure now. But I just think there’s probably some desensitization among much of the population around this kind of thing.
I gotta say i prefer this approach over the cliche where good guys always sandbag and let enemies survive over and over only for them to come back and do more damage.
Although the whole thing with being forced to fight can be true with any story with armies/soldiers/fighters being ordered to fight but in most of those cases we rarely get to see the alternative perspective and good guys always get painted in the brightest colors. I love how Dross kept giving Lindon reality checks when he is draining his foes so he doesn’t delude himself with false beliefs like he is the good guy or doing it for justice.
Will does an awesome job showing how gray everything is, everyone has their own goals and ambitions and they are willing to kill/be brutal over them.
(Have to point out Yerin merged with Ruby, not consumed her. Longhook consumed his BS and iirc it was a wholly different process with different results)
Also, if you think about it, the gang look like bad guys on the surface, especially earlier. Lindon has that glare like he wants to beat up everyone and take their lunch money. He is missing and arm and had a creepy skeleton prosthetic. His eyes turned freaky when he would practice the arts made infamous by mad monarchs. Yerin was covered in scars, is ill-tempered, and emanated a feeling of slaughter (blood and sword). Later, she had sword spider legs coming out of her back. Mercy dresses in black, has creepy black gloves for gold signs, and practices a shadow art. Orthos looks like a demonic turtle and used to go on insane rampages. By appearance, this group would tend to be in the adversary category of most fantasy books.
holy shit, when you put it all together like that it really makes them look like villains!
one piece at a time and reading from their perspectives, that show how nice they are, really helps tint everything with the color of roses. thinking back, i always brush off the negative reactions of people they interact with almost immediately. that’s some uber reader bias
> Have to point out Yerin merged with Ruby, not consumed her.
Absolutely. And she was willing to let Ruby hollow her out if it meant victory. Instead they combined.
It absolutely is!
I can already see how your observations will upset some of the more adamant and loyal readers. As readers we have some really nice access to the events going on and makes it easy to love our MCs.
How dare you be unbiased and not justify all their actions!! /s
I do think you make a solid point tho, and i believe that’s precisely why Will chose to include those alternate perspectives. The Cradle word has so much more depth and is much richer for the inclusion of those more ambiguous views.
Correction: Lindon didn’t bother killing Yan Shoumei. He just drained Crusher and moved on. The rest of the “enemy” uncrowned he certainly destroyed with brutal efficiency.
Also, I'm pretty sure in general Lindon doesn't drain people to the point of death and leave them crippled in the Cradle sense. He's definitely not above doing that, but he mostly seems to drain people to the point of quite not crippling them permanently, letting them have some degree of chance to continue their path (after some extensive healing and retraining etc).
> Ziel goes into blind rages on the stormcallers and never leaves them alive. Always kills. Can't say that's a good sign.
Ah yes, the faction that thought it was funny to slaughter his school then cut his core up and sew it back together.
Honestly, I have to disagree with most of this post.
>After this we still see Lindon and Yerin murder the entire younger generation that opposed them.
We see Lindon and Yerin murder the group of people who teleported in specifically to kill Mercy and Pride, and anyone else in their way. That's not just "oppose."
*Charity* was planning on murdering someone who opposed her. Lindon and Yerin killed people in battle, and weren't even the aggressors.
>We understand now that those people did not have a choice.
Granted, but the point stands.
>We even see Yerin destroy a monarch based on the petty whim that they had the audacity of attacking one of her own.
Yerin kills Sesh because he's going to kill Malice and take over the Blackflame empire, and she still takes the time to think about who needs killing most first. Had Lindon not had Sophara under control, she likely would have used Penance to save her friend, not as a political act.
>Lindon goes on to drain sacred artists to the brink of death, which if you think about is a fate worse than death.
And also continuously remarks about how they'll survive and will just need some resources to get right back to battle. I never interpreted Lindon's Consume as being a zero-sum thing. He takes their current resources, not their total level of advancement. He's not going to drain an Overlord and then suddenly they're back at Underlord and need to advance again, they're just going to need a ton of medical resources and then they'll be fine.
>o top it off, when Lindon did have the chance to be merciful and end Daji's life, he left him to be tortured for what we can assume to be eternity based on a monarch's and sage's power.
I mean, in any other world we'd be arguing about how he killed Daji when he could have just brought him to justice.
>Ziel goes into blind rages on the stormcallers and never leaves them alive. Always kills. Can't say that's a good sign.
I.. don't really think "PTSD" really describes the depths of Ziel's pain here. And remember that he was even going to just give up and let someone go before that person specifically indicated to him that he was present on the day Ziel's sect was destroyed. And he *did* stop chasing a bunch of Stormcallers when he heard that they were just Golds.
>Dross has been noted as mentally torturing artists even some that were in the same team.
This one, granted. It's played off as a joke, but if it's going on once it's going on multiple times.
Granted that things look like how you're saying from an outside perspective, and that's why Malice's pronouncement at the end of Dreadgod will probably work.
But we know better, because we're not just hearing about it after the fact. Nothing anyone on the team has done in Cradle is monstrous.
As you said, Cradle is a brutal world to begin with. It is pointed out many many times, on most sides. From making coppers slaves just because they can. The skysworn returns slaves to the mines. The black flames rule by last man standing, redmoon hall and how they work, Harmony killing Renfei for no real reason, The dragons in general, talking about the slaughter of the army in the night wheel valley, and so on and so on.
I think the key thing to remember here is that pretty much everyone the group has killed, would have killed them had they chance. Just the nature of the brutal world they live in.
Two things: one, lindon and gang usually try take every path other than killing their enemies unless pushed to a point where they have no choice. Also, keep in mind most everyone on cradle doesn’t have the same set of morals as we do. They value power. Killing a bunch of people is often brushed off if it advances their path. Even if people do see the gang in the bad light your describing they may not see it as a bad thing. On top of all that, the brutality and “might makes right” mentality of cradle is what eithan is trying to fix.
There are "rules" for sacred artists. That's why every conflict doesn't start with a mass slaughter of lower ranked artists by a lord or monarch. Ziel obeys that, even with the stormcallers. He was all set to slaughter when Mercy told him they were Golds.
That rule was broken by Reigan and his group. Red Faith was going to slaughter an overlord. The overlords and uncrowned in his group were going to murder a bunch of underlords. And they weren't even fighting one on one. Pride was fighting *two.*
Yerin combined with Ruby after offering to let Ruby absorb her. That's different from the burn thing other emissaries do. A blood spawn is what forms when you spill blood near the Phoenix.
I think you're projecting the void thing. In the novel style Will copies, void and nothingness are just concepts, the same as truth, love, or sword. Sacred artists who advance having to kill is normal. Everyone there knows it. A delivery driver would not be expected to kill.
Gold signs are just that, gold signs. Some are more disturbing than others, but hers are just swords. They're not segmented like a bug.
Yerin killed Sesh because he wanted to take over BFE while Reigan played with dreadgods in sacred valley. That's bad. But when did she and Lindon murder an entire opposing generation?
Yes dross is being a dick threatening courage or douji, in revenge for them beating the crap out of Lindon because they were frustrated over his selection.
Daji was a traitor. He attacked Lindon more than once. You condemn Lindon for killing, and for when he doesn't kill. Arguably letting Daji live saved the seishen king and gardener. He was the only guilty one, and without his testimony it's possible the others would've been tortured and eventually executed too.
I think you're misunderstanding the group and the world like people misunderstand Goku. Generally well meaning and a force for good, but won't hesitate to wreak your feces, or allow a galactic evil to live to get stronger so he can fight them again...
Wait, I think the Xianxia genre is a better reference. It's a dog eat dog world where only the strongest survive. Literally. They make pills out of people for their power. Compared to that and other horrors in that genre, this is like the PG-13 version of it.
Going off that, they're darn near saintly. Although I guess "anti-hero" might be more accurate? If I can go off your points:
Everyone has a choice, it's just that there's no good ones. At any time they could have broken away from that bad idea, defected to Malice's side, disappeared and hope the Monarch would have been too busy to look for them. They instead decided to "follow orders", and kill people arguably weaker than them. Which is Cradle in a nutshell, the establishment that the team is trying to change, ironically enough.
Speaking of the establishment, there is no mercy (heh) to be had for enemies. This is a lesson drilled into each of their heads, and the main reason they've advanced as much as they have. No one, not even the lowest SA can afford to ignore it.
Yerin killed the Dragon King because not only was he a threat to Lindon's home, but his representative ALSO made the wrong choice to be petty and go after her friends/boyfriend. That's more than enough motivation to take him out.
Lindon's all about his advancement. If they didn't want to lose theirs, they shouldn't have challenged him. It's not like he's kidnapping them from the streets.
Ziel actually almost considered letting a Stormcaller go once. Until he found out he was there when his sect was destroyed... The fact that he hasn't gone full Frank Castle is a bit of a miracle..
All that said, you're probably right about how they're viewed by the populace in general (which the Monarchs are taking full advantage of now). Probably how people in The Galactic Empire views the Rebel Alliance scum! At least the ones not quietly hoping they succeed.
I do think a plan will be put in place that's better than the current status quo, but they have to get there first, and it's not going to be pretty.
I think you make an interesting set of points but the one about Yerin killing on a whim is off base I think. It's not a whim, it's the fact that he will destroy her lover's home and family, Yerin herself, and her whole team, and conquer and obliterate all human civilization which Yerin has ties to, in all likelihood if left unchecked. Simple matter of siding with her species or a king actively trying to conquer them, who is know for being brutal to the point of sadism and actively opposing the rule of law. Nothing petty whatsoever there.
> He then becomes a dreadgod while being known to have killed every single uncrowned that he didn't like.
He only killed 3. Yan Shoumei is still alive. I don't think he liked her better than the others.
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I totally disagree with some of the arguments here. Ultimately, the Uncrowned were in a pitiable position but they were the aggressors here. Yerin didn’t kill Sesh “on a whim”. She already knew the dragons were savage and brutal and generally a menace to society. Yerin bullies Redmoon Hall, but they deserve precious little pity, given their own proclivity for murder and plunder. She was relatively nice to them, all things considered. Ziel slaughters the Stormcallers for damn good reasons. They generally deserve what’s coming to them. Also, even if you want to argue that the younger members deserve mercy, remember that Ziel has not permanently killed any of them. Mercy was too nice to those snakes in the Li clan. She would have been justified in simply leaving them alone after the runaround they gave her. Lindon will almost certainly find a system to replace the status quo in the last book etc etc. The long and the short of it is, the gang are at least somewhat morally ambiguous by our standards. They are downright saints by the standards of their world, and most of what they do is either good or largely justifiable. I’d be scared of them if I had to deal with them, but that’s because dealing with people who could annihilate you is always at least a little scary.
I agree they are from the readers point of view morally ambiguous and just. I think Will has done a great job expressing that in the story but the TLDR summary is that the gang from an outside perspective with limited information could easily be seen as monsters and that Will has done such a great job of shielding us from even thinking of that perspective. Malice, looking at it from the a different perspective outside with total control of knowledge of all the politics and micro conflict, was able to take the actions that are occurring and create a easy PR campaign as villains. It's definitely a very viable perspective and one i think that resonates with a lot of the population.
That makes sense
> Ziel has not permanently killed any of them. He was all set for some slaughter until Mercy said a group of then were merely golds.
So, he exercised some restraint for the newer initiates.
He obeyed the rules of war between artists. There's no guarantee they were younger than him. Anyway, I'm pointing out his restraint as a comparison to the strike team in Wintersteel, which didn't follow the rules yet OP condemned Lindon for ripping through them.
I agree about the point as a whole, but it’s a safe bet that golds are younger folks in Dreadgod cults. Maybe not Truegolds. I wonder if Ziel wouldn’t have lost his temper if he knew, for certain or with confidence, that those guys were among the cohort that tore through his sect. Just a thought, though.
> golds are younger folks in Dreadgod cults. It makes sense for everyone honestly. But there are a few stages to reaching lord that not everyone can clear. Even being in a DG cult doesn't guarantee the insight. I'd also bet that psychopaths who enjoy the slaughter tend to lack the introspection necessary to advance.
Intellectually, I’m inclined to agree. But a lot of the major Sacred artists are pretty psychopathic. The Sage of Calling Storms seems particularly twisted. But yeah, some of those golds might have been old timers. Ziel was being very restrained.
I disagree that there's any perception among people that the deaths surrounding the Uncrowned King tournament were anything but justified, or at least expected. Half of them were Dreadgod cultists, who are near-universally demonized, and not entirely without justification for it. Sure Lindon is a potentially terrifying figure to those that don't know him for all kinds of reasons. But so are the Monarchs, Heralds, Sages, and just about anyone else with any power on a level beyond your own. That's just how Cradle works, and seems designed to work.
I understand the argument but Cradle has so many different populations. We as readers are aligned to our group but looking at it from another clan or even the Akura, you can easily see how they could be seen as absolute terrors. How Will has allowed their actions to seem evil. I just think it's really well done story telling and world development.
Like I said, I don’t disagree with the thesis necessarily. Lindon especially at the end is obviously a legendarily notorious figure now. But I just think there’s probably some desensitization among much of the population around this kind of thing.
I gotta say i prefer this approach over the cliche where good guys always sandbag and let enemies survive over and over only for them to come back and do more damage. Although the whole thing with being forced to fight can be true with any story with armies/soldiers/fighters being ordered to fight but in most of those cases we rarely get to see the alternative perspective and good guys always get painted in the brightest colors. I love how Dross kept giving Lindon reality checks when he is draining his foes so he doesn’t delude himself with false beliefs like he is the good guy or doing it for justice. Will does an awesome job showing how gray everything is, everyone has their own goals and ambitions and they are willing to kill/be brutal over them. (Have to point out Yerin merged with Ruby, not consumed her. Longhook consumed his BS and iirc it was a wholly different process with different results)
Also, if you think about it, the gang look like bad guys on the surface, especially earlier. Lindon has that glare like he wants to beat up everyone and take their lunch money. He is missing and arm and had a creepy skeleton prosthetic. His eyes turned freaky when he would practice the arts made infamous by mad monarchs. Yerin was covered in scars, is ill-tempered, and emanated a feeling of slaughter (blood and sword). Later, she had sword spider legs coming out of her back. Mercy dresses in black, has creepy black gloves for gold signs, and practices a shadow art. Orthos looks like a demonic turtle and used to go on insane rampages. By appearance, this group would tend to be in the adversary category of most fantasy books.
holy shit, when you put it all together like that it really makes them look like villains! one piece at a time and reading from their perspectives, that show how nice they are, really helps tint everything with the color of roses. thinking back, i always brush off the negative reactions of people they interact with almost immediately. that’s some uber reader bias
> Have to point out Yerin merged with Ruby, not consumed her. Absolutely. And she was willing to let Ruby hollow her out if it meant victory. Instead they combined.
Exactly! Will is so good at the gray area and I love that he's using it as a device to push more conflict into the story. Its amazing.
It absolutely is! I can already see how your observations will upset some of the more adamant and loyal readers. As readers we have some really nice access to the events going on and makes it easy to love our MCs. How dare you be unbiased and not justify all their actions!! /s I do think you make a solid point tho, and i believe that’s precisely why Will chose to include those alternate perspectives. The Cradle word has so much more depth and is much richer for the inclusion of those more ambiguous views.
Correction: Lindon didn’t bother killing Yan Shoumei. He just drained Crusher and moved on. The rest of the “enemy” uncrowned he certainly destroyed with brutal efficiency.
Also, I'm pretty sure in general Lindon doesn't drain people to the point of death and leave them crippled in the Cradle sense. He's definitely not above doing that, but he mostly seems to drain people to the point of quite not crippling them permanently, letting them have some degree of chance to continue their path (after some extensive healing and retraining etc).
> Ziel goes into blind rages on the stormcallers and never leaves them alive. Always kills. Can't say that's a good sign. Ah yes, the faction that thought it was funny to slaughter his school then cut his core up and sew it back together.
Honestly, I have to disagree with most of this post. >After this we still see Lindon and Yerin murder the entire younger generation that opposed them. We see Lindon and Yerin murder the group of people who teleported in specifically to kill Mercy and Pride, and anyone else in their way. That's not just "oppose." *Charity* was planning on murdering someone who opposed her. Lindon and Yerin killed people in battle, and weren't even the aggressors. >We understand now that those people did not have a choice. Granted, but the point stands. >We even see Yerin destroy a monarch based on the petty whim that they had the audacity of attacking one of her own. Yerin kills Sesh because he's going to kill Malice and take over the Blackflame empire, and she still takes the time to think about who needs killing most first. Had Lindon not had Sophara under control, she likely would have used Penance to save her friend, not as a political act. >Lindon goes on to drain sacred artists to the brink of death, which if you think about is a fate worse than death. And also continuously remarks about how they'll survive and will just need some resources to get right back to battle. I never interpreted Lindon's Consume as being a zero-sum thing. He takes their current resources, not their total level of advancement. He's not going to drain an Overlord and then suddenly they're back at Underlord and need to advance again, they're just going to need a ton of medical resources and then they'll be fine. >o top it off, when Lindon did have the chance to be merciful and end Daji's life, he left him to be tortured for what we can assume to be eternity based on a monarch's and sage's power. I mean, in any other world we'd be arguing about how he killed Daji when he could have just brought him to justice. >Ziel goes into blind rages on the stormcallers and never leaves them alive. Always kills. Can't say that's a good sign. I.. don't really think "PTSD" really describes the depths of Ziel's pain here. And remember that he was even going to just give up and let someone go before that person specifically indicated to him that he was present on the day Ziel's sect was destroyed. And he *did* stop chasing a bunch of Stormcallers when he heard that they were just Golds. >Dross has been noted as mentally torturing artists even some that were in the same team. This one, granted. It's played off as a joke, but if it's going on once it's going on multiple times. Granted that things look like how you're saying from an outside perspective, and that's why Malice's pronouncement at the end of Dreadgod will probably work. But we know better, because we're not just hearing about it after the fact. Nothing anyone on the team has done in Cradle is monstrous.
As you said, Cradle is a brutal world to begin with. It is pointed out many many times, on most sides. From making coppers slaves just because they can. The skysworn returns slaves to the mines. The black flames rule by last man standing, redmoon hall and how they work, Harmony killing Renfei for no real reason, The dragons in general, talking about the slaughter of the army in the night wheel valley, and so on and so on. I think the key thing to remember here is that pretty much everyone the group has killed, would have killed them had they chance. Just the nature of the brutal world they live in.
Two things: one, lindon and gang usually try take every path other than killing their enemies unless pushed to a point where they have no choice. Also, keep in mind most everyone on cradle doesn’t have the same set of morals as we do. They value power. Killing a bunch of people is often brushed off if it advances their path. Even if people do see the gang in the bad light your describing they may not see it as a bad thing. On top of all that, the brutality and “might makes right” mentality of cradle is what eithan is trying to fix.
There are "rules" for sacred artists. That's why every conflict doesn't start with a mass slaughter of lower ranked artists by a lord or monarch. Ziel obeys that, even with the stormcallers. He was all set to slaughter when Mercy told him they were Golds. That rule was broken by Reigan and his group. Red Faith was going to slaughter an overlord. The overlords and uncrowned in his group were going to murder a bunch of underlords. And they weren't even fighting one on one. Pride was fighting *two.* Yerin combined with Ruby after offering to let Ruby absorb her. That's different from the burn thing other emissaries do. A blood spawn is what forms when you spill blood near the Phoenix. I think you're projecting the void thing. In the novel style Will copies, void and nothingness are just concepts, the same as truth, love, or sword. Sacred artists who advance having to kill is normal. Everyone there knows it. A delivery driver would not be expected to kill. Gold signs are just that, gold signs. Some are more disturbing than others, but hers are just swords. They're not segmented like a bug. Yerin killed Sesh because he wanted to take over BFE while Reigan played with dreadgods in sacred valley. That's bad. But when did she and Lindon murder an entire opposing generation? Yes dross is being a dick threatening courage or douji, in revenge for them beating the crap out of Lindon because they were frustrated over his selection. Daji was a traitor. He attacked Lindon more than once. You condemn Lindon for killing, and for when he doesn't kill. Arguably letting Daji live saved the seishen king and gardener. He was the only guilty one, and without his testimony it's possible the others would've been tortured and eventually executed too.
I think you're misunderstanding the group and the world like people misunderstand Goku. Generally well meaning and a force for good, but won't hesitate to wreak your feces, or allow a galactic evil to live to get stronger so he can fight them again... Wait, I think the Xianxia genre is a better reference. It's a dog eat dog world where only the strongest survive. Literally. They make pills out of people for their power. Compared to that and other horrors in that genre, this is like the PG-13 version of it. Going off that, they're darn near saintly. Although I guess "anti-hero" might be more accurate? If I can go off your points: Everyone has a choice, it's just that there's no good ones. At any time they could have broken away from that bad idea, defected to Malice's side, disappeared and hope the Monarch would have been too busy to look for them. They instead decided to "follow orders", and kill people arguably weaker than them. Which is Cradle in a nutshell, the establishment that the team is trying to change, ironically enough. Speaking of the establishment, there is no mercy (heh) to be had for enemies. This is a lesson drilled into each of their heads, and the main reason they've advanced as much as they have. No one, not even the lowest SA can afford to ignore it. Yerin killed the Dragon King because not only was he a threat to Lindon's home, but his representative ALSO made the wrong choice to be petty and go after her friends/boyfriend. That's more than enough motivation to take him out. Lindon's all about his advancement. If they didn't want to lose theirs, they shouldn't have challenged him. It's not like he's kidnapping them from the streets. Ziel actually almost considered letting a Stormcaller go once. Until he found out he was there when his sect was destroyed... The fact that he hasn't gone full Frank Castle is a bit of a miracle.. All that said, you're probably right about how they're viewed by the populace in general (which the Monarchs are taking full advantage of now). Probably how people in The Galactic Empire views the Rebel Alliance scum! At least the ones not quietly hoping they succeed. I do think a plan will be put in place that's better than the current status quo, but they have to get there first, and it's not going to be pretty.
I think you make an interesting set of points but the one about Yerin killing on a whim is off base I think. It's not a whim, it's the fact that he will destroy her lover's home and family, Yerin herself, and her whole team, and conquer and obliterate all human civilization which Yerin has ties to, in all likelihood if left unchecked. Simple matter of siding with her species or a king actively trying to conquer them, who is know for being brutal to the point of sadism and actively opposing the rule of law. Nothing petty whatsoever there.
> He then becomes a dreadgod while being known to have killed every single uncrowned that he didn't like. He only killed 3. Yan Shoumei is still alive. I don't think he liked her better than the others.