Garon and Elincia's Similar lines and differing morality

[JimmyBeans]

During a recent replay of Conquest I noticed a familiar line from King Garon in chapter 14 after corrin had quelled to rebellion in Cheve...

Garon: When I heard that your group destroyed Cheve, I couldn't have been prouder. Rebellions are like seeds. One must salt the earth before they sprout.

There is a moment with similar context in the end of part 2 of Radiant Dawn with this exchange of lines
 

Spoiler

 

Ike:
“Good to hear. So what are you going to do about all the escaped rebel soldiers?”

Elincia:
“The rebel army will be eradicated. We cannot allow them to sow the seeds of discontent among the people of Crimea.”

Ike:
“That’s the right choice. Would you consider contracting my mercenaries for the job?”

Elincia:
“…No, Sir Ike. I’ll leave that up to the Royal Knights. I’m certain this task will create anger among the people, and the Royal Knights may be resented for their role in it… But my duty as queen demands that it be done. The people will have to learn to accept that.”

 

Both of these actions are morally grey, and both involve eradicating a group of people to establish order and control over each said kingdom, the main difference between these events is the light each game portrays the event in.

Now I'm not here just to bash Corrin and fates story because those are two very dead horses but I wanted to discuss what ways this scene could of had a better impact.

After reading the script of the event in both games the purpose of the Fates version is to establish how evil and merciless Garon is compared to Corrin, and how confused and disgusted he is with Garon's method of ruling. This is further assisted by the game beforehand showing Hans enjoying the job far to much and with the annoyingly transparent dialogue from Garon immediately after the quote. It went something along the lines of "I heard you enjoyed watching the light fade from their eyes" and how such an act was "very befitting of Nohr royalty" and all that junk.

While in contrast Queen Elincia's event showed her making a grey decision, she was willing to make that choice despite the involvement of killing her countrymen because she was up to task of ruling and had already displayed the ability to make those hard decisions before, like when she sacrificed Lucia and didn't release Ludveck (of course the greil mercs save her anyway). Both of those events were good for her character because despite her being a good person who hates violence and abhors death she was able to make decisions that went against what she wants.

Garon on the other hand doesn't have that luxury... Given what decisions he has already made and enforced in this game up to this point telling Corrin to kill his rebelling countrymen is no surprise at all, and even with that being a thing there is still a lot of ways this scene could of been better handled. I for one don't mind Corrin's bases as a character, my only complaint is that all opposing views are treated as either wrong or just plain evil, if this scene was handled as way to show Corrin a different point of view and show the flaws in his ideals, the game would of benefited immensely from it, giving corrin the option to accept of deny that decision while either seeing his own way thinking being to flawed to continue, or to accept the flaws in his ideals and keep striving for them regardless.

The tldr of this is that Elincia made an interesting decision, one that contrasted with her character, while Garon under the same context made a forgettable one. One situation is morally grey, while the other is black and white.

So my last question is how would scenes differ in Fates if it were handled in the grey area rather than black and white. What scenes would have a different impact?

[omegaxis1]

This just goes to show how much potential is wasted in Fates. 

Garon can easily be someone that can be considered brutal, but him being always shown as 100% evil and having evil people working for him, it just makes it worse. But if he was someone that did it because he has seen the horrors of these events understand that he's making a tough choice, he does it because he loves his nation. 

[GamerX51]

2 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

So my last question is how would scenes differ in Fates if it were handled in the grey area rather than black and white. What scenes would have a different impact?

It wouldn't be the same story anymore. The entire premise of the three Fates storylines is to illustrate the real-world consequences of Corrin's decisions and the effects they have on Corrin, the other characters, and the world around them. That can only really be done in a Black and White type of moral environment. Grey morality doesn't allow for the type of ethical contrast necessary for the style of storytelling that the writers were going for.

Grey morality worked in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn because the story of those two games was centered more around an overarching Political conflict, so there wasn't really much need for contrasting morality. In hindsight, it would definitely have been better for Fates in the long run if the writers had taken more time to illustrate what Garon was like before he was possessed by whatever it was Anankos was using to control him. That way, the player at least has some frame of reference for his cartoonishly evil behavior instead of having it slap you in the face right off the bat.

Edited January 30, 2019 by GamerX51

[thecrimsonflash]

honestly the decision to stamp out rebellion is far from morally grey, it is an obligation for a ruler to protect the order of the nation, context is irrelevant, the only thing that rebelion means is that there is a problem which needs to be addressed, it is your choice at that point to do as you see fit to prevent further incidents, in elencia's case she was too unwilling and sentimental to have ludvic taken care of and people died because of it, garon was too harsh a ruler and to aggressive in his desire to take over hoshido, this lead to people trying to overthrow him from all angles, the only mutual thing here is a ruler's obligation to not be overthrown.

[Flere210]

Garon was never intended to be a grey character to begin whit. The original Garon, sure(not that the games tell us much about him), but King Slime Garon is just a tyrant that as to be killed. The point of conquest story is that you dethrone him from whitin, even if this was done in the worst way possible and the game comes out as "this time you play Camus Emblem". 

Garon decision look evil because the morality of crushing a rebellion depend on whatever the ruler is legitimate or not and whatever they are benevolent ruler or evil ones. Garon is portrayed as a tyrant and rebelling againist a tyrant is a moral act. Sure, even evil people have a right to self defense, but Garon goes beyond that and order Corrin to even kill noncombatants. And we later find out that he even lack legittimacy because the true Garon was replaced by a literal monster. On the other end, Ludveck is the unjust one in RD case. Elincia was not a bad enought monarch to warrant a rebellion, so his actions comes out as greedy and selfish. The only reason Elincia is somewhat portrayed as grey is because she is a pacifist that normally would avoid conflict at any cost.

 

The fail of conquest here is in Corrin, not Garon. Garon is ok as an unreadeemable tyrant, because the point of the game is that he as to be put down. Corrin should be the morally grey figure that try to defeat him from whitin, but has to follow his orders untill there is a right opportunity to strike. In CQ you are intended to play Roy Mustang, but in the end you end up playing Suzaku.

 

Edited January 31, 2019 by Flere210

[JimmyBeans]

4 hours ago, omegaxis1 said:

This just goes to show how much potential is wasted in Fates. 

Garon can easily be someone that can be considered brutal, but him being always shown as 100% evil and having evil people working for him, it just makes it worse. But if he was someone that did it because he has seen the horrors of these events understand that he's making a tough choice, he does it because he loves his nation. 

100% agreed

4 hours ago, GamerX51 said:

It wouldn't be the same story anymore. The entire premise of the three Fates storylines is to illustrate the real-world consequences of Corrin's decisions and the effects they have on Corrin, the other characters, and the world around them. That can only really be done in a Black and White type of moral environment. Grey morality doesn't allow for the type of ethical contrast necessary for the style of storytelling that the writers were going for.

Grey morality worked in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn because the story of those two games was centered more around an overarching Political conflict, so there wasn't really much need for contrasting morality. In hindsight, it would definitely have been better for Fates in the long run if the writers had taken more time to illustrate what Garon was like before he was possessed by whatever it was Anankos was using to control him. That way, the player at least has some frame of reference for his cartoonishly evil behavior instead of having it slap you in the face right off the bat.

That's true, but don't you agree that, even if that isn't necessary in a story like this, this would of helped make the twist more subtle? Imagine if this event treated itself like a grey moral choice and made Corrin think... but the ruthlessness of his orders still harbored some suspicion, and as the game progress all the following events of him in front of his kids start to lose more and more subtly until the reveal that Garon is actually a monster with Azura and Corrin, and because of what Corrin has seen he has a lot of an easier time believing it. This would still show that Garon was evil and in the wrong all those times but tricked Corrin to get his nose off of his trail. I think it would of made the evil slime monster more interesting even though he was posing as the "king who makes hard decisions". 

3 hours ago, thecrimsonflash said:

honestly the decision to stamp out rebellion is far from morally grey, it is an obligation for a ruler to protect the order of the nation, context is irrelevant, the only thing that rebelion means is that there is a problem which needs to be addressed, it is your choice at that point to do as you see fit to prevent further incidents, in elencia's case she was too unwilling and sentimental to have ludvic taken care of and people died because of it, garon was too harsh a ruler and to aggressive in his desire to take over hoshido, this lead to people trying to overthrow him from all angles, the only mutual thing here is a ruler's obligation to not be overthrown.

What i'm talking about is the skewed sense of morality. Let me ask you this, say Elincia was queen of Nohr and she, for the same reasons as in radiant dawn, ordered Corrin to finish off the recently defeated Cheve army how would Corrin react? I think he would challenge her saying that "we shouldn't solve it with pointless violence" or something along those lines. If you put Elincia in fates and she did anything along those lines the games story and morality would place her in the wrong.

9 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Garon was never intended to be a grey character to begin whit. The original Garon, sure(not that the games tell us much about him), but King Slime Garon is just a tyrant that as to be killed. The point of conquest story is that you dethrone him from whitin, even if this was done in the worst way possible and the game comes out as "this time you play Camus Emblem". 

Garon decision look evil because the morality of crushing a rebellion depend on whatever the ruler is legitimate or not and whatever they are benevolent ruler or evil ones. Garon is portrayed as a tyrant and rebelling againist a tyrant is a moral act. Sure, even evil people have a right to self defense, but Garon goes beyond that and order Corrin to even kill noncombatants. And we later find out that he even lack legittimacy because the true Garon was replaced by a literal monster. On the other end, Ludveck is the unjust one in RD case. Elincia was not a bad enought monarch to warrant a rebellion, so his actions comes out as greedy and selfish. The only reason Elincia is somewhat portrayed as grey is because she is a pacifist that normally would avoid conflict at any cost.

 

The fail of conquest here is in Corrin, not Garon. Garon is ok as an unreadeemable tyrant, because the point of the game is that he as to be put down. Corrin should be the morally grey figure that try to defeat him from whitin, but has to follow his orders untill there is a right opportunity to strike. In CQ you are intended to play Roy Mustang, but in the end you end up playing Suzaku.

 

Yes that's true, but my point is the morality is so skewed in the black and white direction that, like I responded to another poster, just the face that she solved it with violence would of made her wrong and a bad person if she was in fates, no matter the reason. My issue is the game treated the act of killing countrymen who are actively rebelling against you as an evil and unforgivable sin. 

And yes the problem is most definitely Corrin, but a hero is only as good as his villain, so even they got what direction they were going with Garon as I said in this response earlier Garon could of used this moment to arouse suspicion more than making us face palm at Corrin and his siblings.

[Eryon]

The problem with Garon isn't that he's not "morally grey." The problem with him is that he's a silly villain who's too much of a cackling cartoon villain that we're supposed to take seriously. He can be a brutal tyrant, but he needs to be more pleasant around his children and don't make his intentions on Corrin's life too obvious.

Building on the above, Fates/Conquest's problem isn't failing to be "grey." Absent of a contrivance like amnesia to force in attachments to the Hoshidan royals, Corrin joining Hoshido is a matter of taking a stand against Nohr's imperialism. The trailers might have framed Da Choice as being between one's blood and one's bonds, but in actuality the Fates we actually got frames it as between one's justice and one's bonds. The 2nd could have worked if Fates had better writing that followed through what it was doing to the ultimate conclusion instead of chickening out.

It would've much been better to have the two lands be one full on noble kingdom like Gallia or Renais and the other a full on empire like past villains with the games reflecting it instead of the wishy-washy campaigns we get.  Nobody complained that Altea/Gallia/etc. should've been an grey countries and Nohr being a garbage dump looks more like it can be blamed on the inhabitants than their location.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Eryon

[JimmyBeans]

12 hours ago, Eryon said:

The problem with Garon isn't that he's not "morally grey." The problem with him is that he's a silly villain who's too much of a cackling cartoon villain that we're supposed to take seriously. He can be a brutal tyrant, but he needs to be more pleasant around his children and don't make his intentions on Corrin's life too obvious.

Building on the above, Fates/Conquest's problem isn't failing to be "grey." Absent of a contrivance like amnesia to force in attachments to the Hoshidan royals, Corrin joining Hoshido is a matter of taking a stand against Nohr's imperialism. The trailers might have framed Da Choice as being between one's blood and one's bonds, but in actuality the Fates we actually got frames it as between one's justice and one's bonds. The 2nd could have worked if Fates had better writing that followed through what it was doing to the ultimate conclusion instead of chickening out.

It would've much been better to have the two lands be one full on noble kingdom like Gallia or Renais and the other a full on empire like past villains with the games reflecting it instead of the wishy-washy campaigns we get.  Nobody complained that Altea/Gallia/etc. should've been an grey countries and Nohr being a garbage dump looks more like it can be blamed on the inhabitants than their location.

What i'm saying not that it's fails because it's not grey, I'm saying that adding greyness to that scene would of made it a lot better and like I said in one my replies it would of not only shed some light and what Corrin believes in and give him something to think about but it would of made Garon more subtle, which is what you said he should of been doing (bold).

My conclusion to this is me and you want the same things.

I agree with everything else you said

[Eryon]

Again, he doesn't need to be more "grey." He needs to come off as someone the royals in Nohr could actually trust. As he is now, he does little to show that his own children aren't only expendable but are one wrong word away from getting executed.

He can terrorize Hoshido since he wants their stuff. He can terrorize the Ice Tribe since they were caught petitioning Hoshido for aid. He can terrorize Chevalier since Hoshido was being proactive and were working with anti-Nohrian dissidents. None of it is really grey but is believable enough for a tyrant.

[eclipse]

We had quite a bit of backstory for Elincia, so she started out a lot more sympathetic than Garon.  We also knew of the rebel's actions against Elincia, which made her decision to stomp them out look better.  Garon, on the other hand, was depicted as ruthless.  Thus, the rebels look more sympathetic (because who'd want to be ruled by the likes of Garon?), hence why he looks like a jerk for wanting to stop the rebellion.

[X-Naut]

There's also the matter of how the rebellions are dealt with. Elincia would flay Geoffrey if he handled the rebellion in the manner Hans dealt with Cheve.

[JimmyBeans]

On 1/31/2019 at 10:16 PM, Eryon said:

Again, he doesn't need to be more "grey." He needs to come off as someone the royals in Nohr could actually trust. As he is now, he does little to show that his own children aren't only expendable but are one wrong word away from getting executed.

He can terrorize Hoshido since he wants their stuff. He can terrorize the Ice Tribe since they were caught petitioning Hoshido for aid. He can terrorize Chevalier since Hoshido was being proactive and were working with anti-Nohrian dissidents. None of it is really grey but is believable enough for a tyrant.

But that's what i'm pretty much saying, he's not really being grey because of his intentions, but treating that moment like it was would of added a layer to Corrin while dismissing the initial suspicion that the siblings and Corrin might have.

It just would of made the whole situation less stupid which I'm sure we agree on.

[Eryon]

That's not really "grey." That's just not being a cartoon villain.

Ultimately the key problem with Garon's interactions is not that he's a villain but that he treats his birth kids as disposable lackeys like Iago is instead of his children. And sure, you can chalk that up to Anankos but that's no excuse since Sacred Stones had a similar plot point with Grado's royals except Fomortiis/Lyon at least bothered to act like himself around Eirika when manipulating her.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Eryon

[JimmyBeans]

18 hours ago, Eryon said:

That's not really "grey." That's just not being a cartoon villain.

Ultimately the key problem with Garon's interactions is not that he's a villain but that he treats his birth kids as disposable lackeys like Iago is instead of his children. And sure, you can chalk that up to Anankos but that's no excuse since Sacred Stones had a similar plot point with Grado's royals except Fomortiis/Lyon at least bothered to act like himself around Eirika when manipulating her.

Well then I guess it comes down to what you consider grey, because killing an entire region of your kingdom that's rebelling to establish order and peace isn't a nice thing to do, but also not an evil thing to do.

You can argue that it's not grey in general, but for that game, especially with Corrin of all people representing to light, It's a lot better of a counter against Corrin's naive ideals than showing how evil he is right in front of his face.

[Eryon]

My ultimate point is that Fates as claimed in the trailers was never said to be "grey." It was open about how Hoshido were peace-loving defenders while Nohr were glory-seeking conquerors. The choice was framed as between blood or loyalty. The choice as it is now is between justice (you know Nohr is badwrong so you'll fight them even though you at least see the royals as family) or loyalty (Nohr is badwrong but it's where those you grew up with live). Little to none of the problems with Fates' narrative stem in the game not being muh grey. Like:

-Azura's obvious attempt to more or less be the Lewyn to Corrin's Seliph (that is, the dancer/singer who serves as an advisor/tactician who's not only more worldly but knows about the deeper elements of the setting) who fails at such since the plot needs to contrive a bubble curse for her to not just tell them all about the dastardly dragon trying to blow up humanity.

-Iago being such a disposable villain.

-Kaze not leaving Corrin when the Invasion Chapters start.

-Outrealm Babies.

-The game trying to make Takumi  once he's undead look like a threatening force who needs to be stopped ASAP but for much of CQ he's either losing or otherwise failing to get the upperhand AND it's iffy to say Corrin's posse is less of a threat to the world.

And so on.

Edited February 6, 2019 by Eryon

[JimmyBeans]

16 hours ago, Eryon said:

My ultimate point is that Fates as claimed in the trailers was never said to be "grey." It was open about how Hoshido were peace-loving defenders while Nohr were glory-seeking conquerors. The choice was framed as between blood or loyalty. The choice as it is now is between justice (you know Nohr is badwrong so you'll fight them even though you at least see the royals as family) or loyalty (Nohr is badwrong but it's where those you grew up with live). Little to none of the problems with Fates' narrative stem in the game not being muh grey. Like:

-Azura's obvious attempt to more or less be the Lewyn to Corrin's Seliph (that is, the dancer/singer who serves as an advisor/tactician who's not only more worldly but knows about the deeper elements of the setting) who fails at such since the plot needs to contrive a bubble curse for her to not just tell them all about the dastardly dragon trying to blow up humanity.

-Iago being such a disposable villain.

-Kaze not leaving Corrin when the Invasion Chapters start.

-Outrealm Babies.

-The game trying to make Takumi  once he's undead look like a threatening force who needs to be stopped ASAP but for much of CQ he's either losing or otherwise failing to get the upperhand AND it's iffy to say Corrin's posse is less of a threat to the world.

And so on.

I can agree with that and it wasn't designed to be a deep conflicting story. 

I just think that borrowing from that scene in Radiant Dawn would of been excellent for what was otherwise a very lame moment for the story and I don't think it would of detracted from the tone of the story.

But I do think what you're saying is right.

[Eryon]

A key problem is that Fates Conquest's plot is structured so that Corrin both opposes Garon and also comes into conflict with Hoshido. They need to resort to shameless contrivances like crystal balls and bubble curses so that Corrin can help crush Hoshido in a way that lets him not only defeat Garon but still be framed as a paragon of virtue (or an edgy dark hero at worst).

Edited February 9, 2019 by Eryon

[SRPG Tryhard]

That's not Garon, that's a slime monster from Valla imitating him that wants to spread as much destruction as possible in Nohr and Hoshido. This entire thread is wrong by premise.

Elincia is brutal and the only reason she isn't hated is because she is a pretty girl just like Micaiah. The fact that you just compared her to a genocidal alien monster proves that.

Edited April 2, 2019 by Nickdos

[SusanGamble]

I would break all of Garona's lines into quotes! My favorite: "Human or Orc ... an orc would say it is a human hand - too gentle to be useful, too little muscle to hold an ax or break through an enemy's skull, too pale, too weak, too ugly. My Orcs the commanders, and not only them, see the features of a human in me, but you see the features of an orc. I am both and nothing of this. I am sure that my soul also consists of two parts. "