If you could kill off one of the scions...

[Fenral]

If I killed your sister, would you be obliged to forgive and forget? It's simply a matter of dragon lives being quite so long that makes this war as drawn-out as it is, but I cannot bring myself to disapprove of Nidhogg's fury and need for vengeance.

All the people he was mad at were long dead, and his "vengeance" after that was just giving the descendants of those people a legitimate reason to want to fight back, as people they knew were killed by dragons under his command. He planned to drag out the conflict in Ishgard indefinitely, deliberately seeding in them a hatred of dragons that he could then play as his moral justification. Without breaking the cycle, neither side could heal, but even knowing that he chose to persist in his vengeance, making things worse for his own kind as well.

Would you really ask another 1000 years of Ishgardians to simply hang in there and die so he can eventually sort out his issues, because killing him would be wrong? 1000 years of Dravanians to hang in there while they are killed in misdirected retaliation? The WoL has killed people for far less, and by the time we got there pretty much anyone who wanted to save him had tried and failed, Hraesvelgr included. If there was some hypothetical way to rehabilitate him without allowing him to cause further loss of life, that would be one thing, but in the absence of that letting him live would be the same as condemning all of Ishgard and a good portion of Dravania to die.

[Frederick22]

If there was some hypothetical way to rehabilitate him without allowing him to cause further loss of life, that would be one thing, but in the absence of that letting him live would be the same as condemning all of Ishgard and a good portion of Dravania to die.

You mean that his father would be the only one who could make him see reason?

[Tenkuu]

All the people he was mad at were long dead, and his "vengeance" after that was just giving the descendants of those people a legitimate reason to want to fight back, as people they knew were killed by dragons under his command. He planned to drag out the conflict in Ishgard indefinitely, deliberately seeding in them a hatred of dragons that he could then play as his moral justification. Without breaking the cycle, neither side could heal, but even knowing that he chose to persist in his vengeance, making things worse for his own kind as well.

Would you really ask another 1000 years of Ishgardians to simply hang in there and die so he can eventually sort out his issues, because killing him would be wrong? 1000 years of Dravanians to hang in there while they are killed in misdirected retaliation? The WoL has killed people for far less, and by the time we got there pretty much anyone who wanted to save him had tried and failed, Hraesvelgr included. If there was some hypothetical way to rehabilitate him without allowing him to cause further loss of life, that would be one thing, but in the absence of that letting him live would be the same as condemning all of Ishgard and a good portion of Dravania to die.

I don't agree that what he's doing is right, but I also don't think it's right for us to pick a side in this. Sure, the innocent Isgardians don't deserve to die, but then they should have found a way to work out their problems themselves, and in a way that would not further antagonize Dravanians. Handling it ourselves makes us look good, but what real reason does Midgarsormr have for trusting them at this point, other than simple faith? He is literally going on faith alone at this point, and not even faith in them, but in us. Essentially, what we've done is cement into everyone's minds the idea that if anything ever goes wrong again, they can call on us to fix it for them. The Scions, you'll recall, are generally not fond of meddling into others' affairs just for the heck of it. That's even the reason we moved to Mor Dhona.

I see people saying things like that the Warrior of Light is the Scions' gun to be pointed at what they deem a threat, but the Scions themselves have been used as guns by just about every nation, and often those nations were not even in the right, like Limsa Lominsa's conflict with the Kobolds and Sahagins. I think what was needed in this case was us providing solid assistance rather than doing all of the work, as was the case when we went for Praetorium. That was a joint effort and this was what was required this time too.