I mean in the trials defense, they just needed better judges who weren’t already ready to throw the case out and just give him life in prison/ repent for your crimes.
Do you know how pissed people would be IRL to find out that the judge actually already had a sentence in mind before the trial, and despite what was said was sold on said sentence.
People would mainly be pissed at how much time was wasted instead and probably think the accused had the judge in his pocket.
Aethas knew the Horde had used his status in Dalaran to steal the Divine Bell and did nothing about it. Him hoping that either Jaina doesn’t find out or that the consequences wouldn’t be too severe negates his neutrality.
He wasn’t innocent. The guards weren’t innocent.
Garrosh’s whole “trial” was a giant waste of time. The Celestials didn’t intend on doin’ any worse than just throw Garrosh in prison. Something something the dead can’t redeem themselves. It was stupid and blatantly showed that, just like military organization and tactics, Blizzard doesn’t know how legal systems actually work - whether it’s a modern day system or a medieval one.
You can have the job title ‘guard’ and be a non-combatant. You know, I think it’d still be a warcrime to kick open a door and start wasting mallcops.
Also, if you’re Jaina, and you have the power to take anyone alive with a flick of your wrist, with basically no danger to yourself? I’d say walking into a room and wasting everyone with a sword is still basically murder.
You’re misunderstanding that definition. A non-combatant would be someone who’s around the fighting but isn’t a valid target, such a reporter, a nurse, or a religious person.
The issue comes up were the Sunreaver neutral or were they Horde-affiliated. Considering that they offered refuge to Horde forces, they broke their neutrality. With that said, Jaina’s attack against them was still a violation. While the guards were ready to strike and defend Aethas, it was still a villainous act to just kill someone for no other reason than to get someone else to act.
Yeah, being able to play judge/jury/executioner is par for the course in most heroic narratives.
They can only work because we (the writers and audience) are supposed to have meta knowledge of who’s supposed to be in the right, who is supposed to be in the wrong, and what’s at stake. And we can kind of gloss over anything in the way of mistakes or unintended consequences except for the sake of drama. That’s part of what makes them heroic in the classical and more modern idealist sense.
It can be interesting when a narrative really explores the consequences of living in a world where nobody bothers with any real sort of law, but these tends to be deconstructions. And/or less action-y.
No, a non-combatant is a non-combatant. Being sympathetic, openly partisan, or even contributing directly/indirectly to a war effort- like working in a factory to produce arm or storing munitions stashes in your basement- doesn’t make you a combatant either.
If you’re not actually fighting, you’re not a combatant.
If we had to investigate all of our actions and if the law moved as slow as it does where I live we’d still be in Vanilla and I’d still be around level 37.
Why not? There’s no proof they knew about the Divine Bell.
Jaina used her status as the head of the Kirin Tor to hide the Bell in Darnassus. Why do people just leave that part out.
Can Blizzard just make Dalaran a full on member of the Alliance already? Seriously, the Horde needs to just pack up (psst, don’t forget to raid the vault) and y’all just come to Suramar. I’ll set out the arcwine.
Or they could have Aethas, beg the Kirin Tor for forgiveness. The same Kirin Tor that literally just orchestrated an ethnic cleansing. Who says Blizzard is tone deaf?
Cause the alliance was never gonna use it as a weapon
Because no one is arguing that Jaina was a neutral party.
This too.
I can promise you I’m not. I literally have to understand this concept definitively for my job.
They were neutral.
Not how neutrality works at all.
She’s the head of the Kirin Tor, a neutral damn organization. What?
An entire genocide was threatened on his already-low-populace race. He had little choice.
No, it doesn’t. He was literally being neutral by doing nothing to either Horde or Alliance. He didn’t meddle in the affairs of the war . That’s textbook neutral
He was.
You got proof of that?
If you were a blood elf, would you feel comfortable basing your life, the life of your children, on the trust that the Alliance, an organization whom you are actively at war with, one of whom tried to wipe you out because and for no other reason than because he didn’t like your kind very much, wouldn’t use a weapon that could wipe you out in an instant?
Going about your daily life, eating breakfast, knowing at every second that the only thing separating you and your family from horrendous death is the moral responsibility of your enemies?
Remember at this point in the story, varian in talks with the belves and this is before jaina ruined everything
Garrosh was using belves as cannon fodder
Jaina straight-up murdered all of Aethas’ guards, who were her own citizens. She kills two when she enters the room, the others stand there while she berates Aethas, and then she kills them as a kind of exclamation point.
And before you call them “combatants,” you actually have to be in combat to be a combatant. Even after she killed their co-workers, the remainder do nothing too Jaina. Who is, after all, their ultimate boss.
The narrative, of course, then completely ignores that this ever happened. But it is in game still and has never been retconned.
So yeah, not exactly what you would call due process. And we know that those guys were innocent. Just dudes assigned to guard a member of the Council.
But my favourite example in “The Purge of Dalaran” (the title tells you all you need to know about attitudes towards due process) is when the Alliance player is assigned to murderize a guy who is allegedly robbing the bank. Except when you show up it turns out that he is just trying to withdraw his own money, but the state has seized his assets and therefore declared him a thief for trying to make a withdrawal. So you murder him.
I would love to see what a judge and jury would make of that one.
Oh, and for those trying to avoid pinning blame on Jaina for what Vereesa did, I would also love to see that brought to a trial:
“So, Ms. Proudmoore, were you aware of any relationship between Vereesa Windrunner and the Sunreaver organization before you put her in charge of ‘security’ against them? Did you know they were sworn enemies, and that Ms. Windrunner had formed her organization specifically to oppose the Sunreavers? Did you know the the so-called Silver Covenant hated the Sunreavers, and that Ms. Windrunner personally held them responsible for the death of her husband?”
Okay. Let’s imagine this at a trial, since this thread is about due process.
Prosecutor: “Ms. Proudmoore, what evidence can you present that these guards, who let us remind the jury, were your own citizens, were “not innocent,” as you put it?”
Jaina: “Well, none specifically, but they were with Aethas and I strongly suspected…”
Prosecutor: “So it is accurate to say, isn’t it, that you had no specific evidence that these guards were guilty of anything, except of doing their job and guarding Aethas Sunreaver?”
Jaina: “Well, not as such…”
Prosecutor: “When you unexpectedly teleported into the room, how did these guards react?”
Jaina: “They raised their staffs and adopted a hostile posture!”
Prosecutor: “So the trained guards, when confronted by an angry, unannounced intruder who had magically teleported into the room to confront the man they were charged with guarding, raised their staves and adopted an aggressive posture towards you? Did they do anything else? Did they actually attack you, or attempt to cast a spell before you attacked and killed two of them?”
Jaina: “Well, no…”
Prosecutor: “And after you killed those two, how did the other three react? Did they attack you then, or while you threatened Aethas?”
Jaina: “No.”
Prosecutor: “And you are a very powerful mage, some would say one of the most powerful on Azeroth. Did these guards ever pose a realistic threat to you?”
Jaina: [scoffs] “No.”
Prosecutor: “You teleported Aethas to the Violet Hold for further questioning, but then you proceeded to kill the remaining guards. Could you not have teleported all the guards, also? Weren’t you later seen effortlessly teleporting many people to the Violet Hold?”
Jaina: “…”
Prosecutor: “And just to clarify, throughout this entire encounter, was any attack, however futile, made against you?”
Jaina: “No.”
Yeah, if there was due process and people weren’t above the law in this world? Jaina would be going away for a long time.
who would care that she killed his guards, he is evil and the lich king