Is Fordola the monster Lyse says she is?

[YianKutku]

Until then, there is absolutely no basis to claim that the Alliance will impose "victor's justice" on war criminals like Fordola.

Important note: the Alliance is not the Resistance. And we have no idea how much influence either, or both, or neither, will have on the new government (and judiciary) of Ala Mhigo.

A member state of the Alliance can certainly have committed atrocities. The end of 2.55 certainly leaps to mind, for something directly affecting us. The Au Ra massacre by Ishgard is another. The Lominsan breaking of treaties with the Kobolds is arguably another.

As for the Resistance, the younger members welcome the Corpse Brigade back into the fold of "people on our side", to the consternation of the older members. The older members remember when the Corpse Brigade commit atrocities in the name of the King of Ruin. The younger members, for some reason, do not remember the atrocities the Corpse Brigade committed while they were bandits. But it's implied the Corpse Brigade are in the process of becoming members of the Resistance anyway. They may not have committed any atrocities while as Resistance members, but that does not erase the ones they did commit (and are apparently unapologetic about, as with Ishgard and the Au Ra) before then.

So after Fordola is punished (somehow or other) by the new government headed by Lyse, how should the Corpse Brigade be handled?

[TinyRedLeaf]

Important note: the Alliance is not the Resistance. A member state of the Alliance can certainly have committed atrocities. The end of 2.55 certainly leaps to mind, for something directly affecting us. The Au Ra massacre by Ishgard is another. The Lominsan breaking of treaties with the Kobolds is arguably another.

Fair points, but they're not directly relevant to the issue at hand: That of whether Fordola is a monster.

It's certainly true that injustices in various degrees exist in all the city-states of the Alliance. But the injustices there are not equivalent to the crimes committed by Fordola and her Skulls, and discussing them would take all of us off-track.

Fordola stands accused of turning against her own people. Even more specifically, she is accused of knowingly giving the orders to fire on her own soldiers, Garlean-educated and Garlean-trained Ala Mhigans whom she considers kin.

These are the specific charges on which she's accused of being a monster.

Now, the "victor's justice" argument contends that Fordola will not be seen as a monster, had her actions allowed the Garleans to win. The logic being that, the winner gets to write history, and the record would presumably put Fordola in favourable light.

That's an absolutely fallacious argument, because it confuses the record of fact with the fact itself.

It's absolutely irrelevant how the Garleans — had they won — would choose to portray Fordola. Regardless of the subsequent narrative, Fordola did in fact give the order to fire upon her own troops. She did not belay the order even when she was challenged by a subordinate. She did not deny any of this in front of Lyse and other witnesses.

Categorically, that makes her a "kinslayer".

Any fabricated history that tries to portray her otherwise would be a lie that only serves to further compound the crime.

========

Now, in order for the "victor's justice" argument to have any relevance to these specific charges, we need to consider:

1) Whether the Alliance and the Resistance committed comparable atrocities during the campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo. (Answer: No.)

2) Whether the Alliance or the Resistance will attempt to cover up any such atrocities, should they emerge. (Answer: We don't know, yet.)


So, it's entirely premature to imply that the Alliance would be unjust in their handling of Garlean sympathisers like Fordola. There's no evidence yet to make this call. If the story does indeed take a dark turn like this, then we would certainly have a lot to talk about. But until then, it's completely unfair, not to mention irrelevant, to suggest otherwise.

There's certainly no basis, in any case, to accuse Lyse of being a "butcher". That's a lie that Ala Mhigans who remain loyal to the Empire may want to spread. Whether or not this is in store for future, we'll have to wait and see.

[Quor]

I find all this persecution of Fordola very interesting. History is written by the victors and I can only imagine how it would paint a butcher like Lyse. A violent, self righteous barbarian who butchered her own countrymen in the name of her radical ideaology.

Put simply, it doesn't because it won't. The Ala Mhigan Resistance won.

Perhaps I'm a bit different from others in that, at least as far as the Eorzea/Doma and Garlemald dichotomy is concerned, I don't see a lot of grey area. For me, it comes down to a few basic concepts when determining "rightness" of action.

Do sovereign people's deserve to self-determinate?
I believe they do. I think most people would agree.

Does this apply to Ala Mhigo? Or Doma? Or Eorzea? And does it apply equally to the Garleans?
Yes, to all of them.

Does this give any nation "rights" to invade, with intent to subdue and control, another nation and it's people?
I think no. To that end, both Ala Mhigo and Garlemald have fucked up. Of course, in their defense, Ala Mhigo was being run by a madman who was eventually overthrown. The people saw a tyrant, and took him down. This, unfortunately, left them vulnerable to the whims of another tyrant, and they were unable to defend themselves in this third consecutive war. Of course, this doesn't mean Garlemald was "justified" in what they did, at least not on a moral level. Sure, the Garleans believe they are doing what's best for the world, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and this "Eorzean nation-building" that the Garlean Empire is so keen on doing directly violates my first principle above. All people's should be able to self-determinate, and as much as the Skulls - and Fordola - believed that they were acting in the best interests of their people, there were quite a lot of people, both those active in the Resistance and people living directly under the yoke of the Empire, who didn't see things the way the Skulls did.

However, most of the time, my standard for "right" is much simpler; am I on that side? If so, then that's the right side. All's fair in love and war. Luckily the situation in Ala Mhigo was pretty cut and dry. The Garleans were an occupying force who were benefiting directly off the backs of near-slave labor, while outright abusing their power against the locals. There are at least 2 or 3 separate quests that discuss how the Empire would purposefully leave security threats to be dealt with by the locals, while simultaneously either gutting the ability of the locals to defend themselves (via conscription or confiscation of weaponry) or else by actively punishing anyone who attempted to deal with the issue. Sure, I'm not allied with that guy holding a gun to your head and telling you to give me all of your money, and I certainly don't endorse what he's doing, but you should probably listen to him.

Hell, wasn't there a quest in Ala Ghirri where you have to go put down some local beasts because they threaten the townsfolk, and the Garleans specifically hadn't addressed the threat because of some bullshit bureaucratic reason? I mean, Fordola says she's doing it for "her people" yet there's loads of evidence that her actions - or lack thereof - either did not directly benefit "her people" or else actively made their lives harder.

Sometimes I think that Lyse calling Fordola a monster at Abania was just the straw that broke the camels back. She had seen Fordola and her men extort, physically abuse, and leave helpless "her people." She, and the WoL via side quests, had witnessed the actions of the imperials, both in Yanxia and Gyr Abania, purposefully make the local peoples helpless, with Fordola and her Skulls playing an active part in enforcing this helplessness throughout Gyr Abania. All for "her people" of course. Because she totally knows better.

Yes, if things had gone differently then things would have been different. But they didn't go differently. And beyond that, that's an entire side questline in Ala Ghirri dedicated to the townspeople running cover for an imperial Centurion (I think) who they had grown fond of because he had treated them well, with one of the local J tribe members even pledging to wait for him until he gets out of prison, saying that he will always have a home among the people of Ala Ghirri. How was it that an imperial of such status was able to do that much for the people in occupied territory, yet a native Ala Mhigan like Fordola couldn't? Both were just as subject to the whims of Zenos as the other. Yes, Fordola had more face time with Zenos, but it's safe to say that if word got back to Zenos that an imperial officer was being soft on the locals, he would have introduced that officer to one of his three good friends.

No, the more I think about it, the more I have to say that Fordola, as much as she talked about it, was not doing this for purely altruistic "my people" reasons. She had a great deal of skin in the game, and not just in terms of her life or the lives of her Skulls. She, and they, had relatively cushy lives. Sure, they "suffered" under imperial scrutiny, but they received the education, the chance at citizenship, and most importantly for many Ala Mhigans, didn't have to worry about going hungry on a daily basis, or watching a loved one wither away and die from the wasting sickness, or hear about how your husband/wife/father/mother/brother/whatever died on the way back from tributum to beastman bandits or rabid scorpions or magicked moving rocks or whatever horror the wilds of Gyr Abania decided to hork out that day. Fordola lived a life of privilege, and she wanted to preserve that for it's own sake as much as anything else.

So like I said, Abania was just the last straw for Lyse. She had seen enough to know that, for all of Fordola's talk about how what she was doing was for "her people" it rang hollow. By this point you had seen simple farmers, beaten and broken in Yanxia, finally stand up for themselves after over two decades of imperial rule. You had seen people in Radiata, ostensibly broken, subvert and fight against the Empire in any way they could, relying on one of them to smuggle you and your party into Castrum Abania to take out the cannon. In short, you and Lyse had seen otherwise, so to hear Fordola talk about "sacrifice" and doing it for "her people" Lyse, being Lyse, called it out for the bullshit it was.

[YianKutku]

Fordola stands accused of turning against her own people. Even more specifically, she is accused of knowingly giving the orders to fire on her own soldiers, Garlean-educated and Garlean-trained Ala Mhigans whom she considers kin.

These are the specific charges on which she's accused of being a monster.

I actually agree with this, although I'm highly reluctant to use the word "monster", since it's entirely too vague and has too many degrees of monstrosity. I do accept the general gist of it, though.

What I was nitpicking at were two points:

Categorically, that makes her a "kinslayer".

Yes it does. So would a lot of other actions done by other people, throughout the game's story, on all sides. For a villainous example, Gaius did order his XIVth Legion to execute any members of the VIIth Legion still around in Castrum Novum (now Castrum Centri), which I think would count. For a heroic not-quite-example, the only reason Aymeric isn't actually a kinslayer is because of the fear of Tempering, and in the days that followed those who opposed him did level that charge (specifically patricide).

(I'm not even going into the tangle of Ilberd's actions.)

So any fabricated history would probably not deny that Fordola killed her (metaphoric) kin. It would probably be more about whether doing so was justified. It's undeniably evil, but was it a necessary evil?

Of course, outside of the game, we all know that it's absolutely unnecessary and thus just evil. The question thus is that at that point of time, did Fordola believe that?

The second point is this:

1) Whether the Alliance and the Resistance committed comparable atrocities during the campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo. (Answer: No.)

The part I'm quibbling with is "during the campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo". Because we've only seen Fordola during the campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo, so restricting the timeline to just that portion seems a little unfair. It implies that the Alliance, Resistance, and their component members (recall that the Masks of the Griffin were technically still Ala Mhigan Resistance; the Empire certainly would not see a difference) will only be judged by their actions during that time, and any other actions would be considered irrelevant, be it for good or ill.

There are cases of Victor's Justice already applied, although I concede that they're not really as dramatic or consequential as Fordola's case (present or hypothetical). How does the average citizen see Lolorito Nanarito?

(I'm going out for a bit, but when I return I'll add on a few more things unrelated to this particular point.)

[Wyssahtyn]

As for the Resistance, the younger members welcome the Corpse Brigade back into the fold of "people on our side", to the consternation of the older members. The older members remember when the Corpse Brigade commit atrocities in the name of the King of Ruin. The younger members, for some reason, do not remember the atrocities the Corpse Brigade committed while they were bandits. But it's implied the Corpse Brigade are in the process of becoming members of the Resistance anyway.

Source that, if you would. I don't recall anything about the Corpse Brigade being remotely mentioned in SB content.

[Anonymoose]

Source that, if you would. I don't recall anything about the Corpse Brigade being remotely mentioned in SB content.

There's an NPC named Hremfing who nurses quite a grudge against the Corpse Brigade. Depending on where you are in the story, he'll pop up and talk smack about them. He even hints that they will be among the factions most probable to cause trouble the the all-but-certainly upcoming fight for liberated Ala Mhigo's soul.

A ways northeast of here you'll find the Sepulchre─a frightfully named place, no? Fitting, though, seeing as how it's best known as home to the villainous Corpse Brigade. To think that the erstwhile kingsguard of Ala Mhigo could end up a band of murderers and thieves. Mind you, they had a less-than-pristine reputation in the old days as well.

It's all well and good that the Resistance is gaining new recruits, but we could do without the help of the Corpses. I've not forgotten the crimes they committed in the name of the King of Ruin. Nor have any of the older generation. But these young ones, they're all too happy to let bygones be bygones...

No one is happier than me to see Ala Mhigo liberated, of that you can be certain. However, it is too early to be patting ourselves on the back. The Empire still has plenty of troops in reserve, and we do not yet know if the Corpse Brigade will attempt to reclaim power. The other day, I stumbled into a body between here and the Sepulchre. Done in by the Corpses, most like. Don't know who the poor sod was, but he was Ala Mhigan, far as I could tell. Couldn't well just leave him there, so I took the liberty of burying him.

Last one's a little ominous, no? On my list of dots to try to connect.

[TinyRedLeaf]

I actually agree with this, although I'm highly reluctant to use the word "monster", since it's entirely too vague and has too many degrees of monstrosity. I do accept the general gist of it, though.

Well, I have said that I wonder about the degree of Fordola's culpability.

There is at least one way to argue for Fordola's innocence, with respect to her specific actions in Castrum Abania, but that wasn't the argument used in this case.

More importantly, the common argument that "history is written by the victors" is an inherently flawed defence for atrocities.

If we follow the argument to its logical conclusion, it basically means it's never justified for the victors of a fight to prosecute losers for wrongdoing.

Obviously, that cannot be the case. If a crime can be proven, then the ones responsible have to answer for their mistakes. It's actually irrelevant whether they were the winners or losers of the fight, if we're truly interested in justice.

Of course, it has to be noted that if you're the loser, you'd hardly be in the position to prosecute, but that's another matter. The key point to remember is that as long as a proven crime is left unanswered and unpunished, then justice is not served.

==========

So any fabricated history would probably not deny that Fordola killed her (metaphoric) kin. It would probably be more about whether doing so was justified. It's undeniably evil, but was it a necessary evil?

As I said, you raised fair points about the long list of injustices committed in other places and situations.

But the reason they should not be conflated with the issues around Fordola is that every case is a product of different circumstances. We can draw broad comparisons, and highlight general similarities but, in the end, Fordola's specific circumstances are different from those of Ilberd and the Corpse Brigade.

In short, each defendant has crimes of his or her own to answer for, but we can't prosecute them on generalities. That wouldn't be fair. And it wouldn't be just, if the process isn't fair.

The part I'm quibbling with is "during the campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo". Because we've only seen Fordola during the campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo, so restricting the timeline to just that portion seems a little unfair.

It is indeed arbitrary. But let me flip the coin and throw it back at you: Where do we draw the line, when it comes to using the examples of others to defend Fordola's actions during the liberation of Ala Mhigo?

If we don't stop specifically with the actions of the Alliance during the revolution, then where do we stop?

For example, you want to include the actions of Ilberd and the Corpse Brigade. I would ask, why stop there? Why not bring in several generations' worth of grievances as well, going back as far as the Autumn War?

It seems to me that, if we want to be fair, we have to compare apples with apples, oranges with oranges.

Fordola's actions were all conducted in the context of her being a product of Garlean upbringing. On this basis, her "monstrosity" is different from that of Ilberd or the Corpse Brigade, simply because they did not undergo her circumstances.

Again, I should stress that none of this is meant to excuse Ilberd's crimes. In the end, the man had become a twisted husk, a mockery of the ideal he once cherished.

We may quibble over the "necessity" of his evil, but I don't think any of us are in disagreement over his actual evilness.

And that is the key difference at the heart of our apparent disagreement.

[PArcher]

Source that, if you would. I don't recall anything about the Corpse Brigade being remotely mentioned in SB content.

There is something in little Ala Mhigo about it post-season, because I remember reading this in game as well

[Kallera]

I think I find Fordola more sympathetic because we also see she is shown as a character that has to work for her position. Lyse just...isn't that interesting. Her flaws are too minor, her road too easy. She just "rawr, freedoms tho!" and everything falls into place.

[LineageRazor]

I think a lot of folks in this thread have very different concepts as to what makes an individual a monster. For some, actions are enough. Someone who performs monstrous actions, regardless of the reasons, is a monster. I, personally, think that the individuals motivations and reasons for doing those actions are an important factor, as well; depending on one's headspace, one can perform monstrous actions without being a monster.

Fordola's headspace is complex, to say the least. I think she knows that the things she's doing are evil - but believes that they are justifiable, necessary evils leading to a greater goal down the line: Ala Mihgo being accepted as a worthwhile and valuable part of the Empire. For this reason, she's okay with allowing her Skulls and the Garleans in general to beat every last bit of resistance out of the Ala Mihgan people. Once they'd been broken down to the point where all thoughts of rebellion or freedom were out of their heads, they could be rebuilt into loyal and happy Garlean subjects, many of whom could opt to try for Citizenship, just as she and her Skulls had.

At the same time, though, I think the underlying reasons she has for wanting this acceptance are very ugly and personal: she wants Ala Mihgans to be accepted so that SHE can be accepted. It's quite clear to her that her Garlean peers and countrymen both hold her in contempt. She sees the continued stubborn resistance of her fellow Ala Mihgans as a big contributor to this contempt. Once Ala Mihgo falls into line and become happy Garlean subjects, she'll no longer be a traitor to them, but instead a shining example of success. For now, though she's angry at her marginalization, and of the two targets of her anger - her Garlean peers and her countrymen - only one provides a viable outlet for her rage. I think that the day the WoL and Lyse walked into her life was, perversely, a very good day for her, as it gave her a LEGITIMATE target to hate and lash out at.

I highly doubt that ANYONE in this thread actually feels as though Fordola is in the right, that her actions really are justified. If agreement that her actions are not justified is enough to brand her a monster, than there is nothing left to debate. However, if we are allowed to factor Fordola's motivations into the equation, I think things become a lot more grey. She wants to build a better future for Ala Mihgo. However, a large component of why she wants this is in order to build a better future for herself, since she is Ala Mihgan. It's a selfish desire, certainly, but not an monstrous one. I think pretty nearly everyone wants to feel as though they belong, as though they are valued by other people. Heck, it was the sole softening, non-monstrous aspect of the obvious monster of this expansion: Zenos, ultimately, was looking for someone who could appreciate him for who he was.

I definitely think that Fordola was the most interesting, nuanced character of this expansion. Perhaps it is for this reason that I'm reluctant to simply brand her with a label like "monster", that carries so many unfortunate connotations.