I appreciate your insight here, as it is more in depth than what I've read from some earlier posts regarding Elric. It does lead me to ask more questions, however.
More Wikipedia: Strombringer
Is it Elric himself who commits to the Evil acts, the influence of Stormbringer or a combination of both that make him not Good. If he is conflicted he is at least Neutral in terms of Good vs. Evil.
I didn't say he was Evil, only that he's strongly anti-heroic and almost certainly not good. Think of his final volitional act:
Stormbringer said:
It took Jagreen Lern over an hour to die, and then only because Moonglum begged Elric to finish him.
Does this mean the Gods of Law are Good? If he doesn't hate them, they must be doing something right (at least in his eyes).
They are, in the sense that they are assisting Elric and his allies to stop Chaos from engulfing the world entirely. It's more a Balance thing than a "preference for Law" thing.
Again, I think that Moorcock messes up his own cosmological identity by presenting Chaos as the adversary, and Law as the ally, in practically all his books. It has the effect of blunting his blanket statements to the effect that the Balance is the ideal or preferred state.
If the sword is actually a lifestealing demon as described above, it's Evil. A demon forged by Chaos! Definetly sounds like Chaos is very much like Evil to me.
A demon forged by
something, yes, but not clearly
of Chaos, since it's an aspect of the Black Sword, which belongs neither to Law or Chaos. It is, however, Evil, and insofar as Stormbringer's aspect is strongly Chaos-influenced (perhaps by virtue of thousands of years' association with the Nihrain and Melniboneans) it is BOTH Chaotic and Evil (something that is certainly possible in, say, D&D,
ne c'est pas?
If Elric did not turn against the Lords of Law, did he just reject them? A previous post suggested he turned against them (perhaps only in spirit, not actively), or at least he grew to hate all the gods.
He seems to hate his patron Arioch, but there's no real evidence of animosity for any of the other gods out there, except insofar as they're Arioch's allies and/or attempting to destroy the world.
I apologize if I'm starting to get out to leftfield here. I haven't read the books in at least 15 years, and i'm not sure if I even finished all of them. From what I've been reading here, there still seems to be more similarities between Chaos & Evil, and perhaps some between Law & Good (or maybe more Neutral than Good in Elric's world). I suppose I'll have to read the books again in order to make a proper comparison.
Well, we're probably way off topic by now, so I'll try to complete the hermeneutic circle here:
I do think that D&D has a long history of equating Chaos with Evil, often unconsciously, although 3e makes it explicit with the slaadi (who come off as too sinister for CN in my book). B/E/C/M/I D&D pretty much directly equated Chaos with Evil, since there were three alignments (Chaotic, Neutral, Lawful) and all the "good" creatures (archons, gold dragons, etc.) were Lawful while all the "evil" humanoids, undead, and demons were Chaotic. So yes, it's a pretty long-standing tradition.
IMO, rejiggering demons to come across as explicitly more "chaotic" in form and appearance is an excellent idea; I've always been bothered by the highly crowded field of evil outsiders, and especially by the fact that demons and devils were often quite similar in form and function while the only truly "chaotic" seeming evil outsider (the hordling) was in fact NE! The FC1 demons, especially the obyriths, are IMHO a good start to this. I'd prefer not to go TOO far with the reshuffle (for example, I think that the balor, a raging, explosive terror of uncontrolled fire, can easily remain a CE demon!), but certainly some lines can be drawn. One way to go is to emphasize the hybrid/bestial nature of many demon forms (pretty much all the old-school Types I-VI as well as Demogorgon, Baphomet, Orcus et al); while animals per se are not chaotic, combining animal elements results in a being that strikes me, at least, as being more "chaotic" than "lawful," just as a being that is more "civilized" or mechanistic in appearance seems "lawful" to my mind. But that's just IMHO.