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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5685509" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think you have to be very careful in assigning the Paladin the blame for the moral agency of others.  It's the evil ruler here who makes the choice to be wrathful and vengeful, not the Paladin.  And in particular, the evil ruler is not constrained to make that choice regardless of the Paladin's action.  You could easily get into a Catch-22 situation here, where because you are blaming the Paladin for the evil doers actions and because being an evil doer the evil doer does evil all the time, regardless of what the Paladin does you blame the Paladin for it.  This is actually an ugly special case of 'no one is accountable for their own choices because its societies fault'.  We've now gone one step uglier, 'no one is accountable for their own choices because its all the fault of those within the society championing righteousness for not making it all better'.  The Paladin can't be blamed for the existance of evil, or if rectifying the problem of evil in the land is at times an ugly process.  In my opinion, the Paladin can only be judged by what they do given the choices available to them.  If someone else decides to act immorally and brutally and makes terrible choices, that's not something you can easily blame on the Paladin.If you can be judged for someone else failing a moral test in response to jealous, anger, or hatred of your own righteous action, then yes, doing good is a moral minefield.   Do you really think it is a valid criticism to counterfactually claim, "If you had only not freed those persons from unjust bondage and showed them kindness, then the oppressor would not have been provoked to kill another innocent in a fit of embarassed impotent rage.  All the deaths that they have caused are on your hands!"?   Under those terms, you run the risk of suggesting that its wrong to resist evil because look what they'll do if you do.</blockquote>

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