Official Legacy of the Force: Betrayal Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

But that doesn't mean we completely suspend our moral presumptions, whatever they may be from person to person. If that were the case we could argue in favor of Anakin Sr.'s raid on the Temple. We could argue for Palpatine's rise to power. And some probably would, but I can't imagine the disparity would be as big as this Jacen situation.

We as readers, and Allston/Traviss/Denning/whoever as authors, have to be able to grasp the story in terms that we can understand, otherwise what's the point? If your readers conclude that your work doesn't make any sense whatsoever, they'll walk away. If there are aspects of Nelani's murder that have no analog in real life at all, then why would we be able to understand it in the long run any better than now?

Yes, the ultimate consequences of Jacen's choices, and the ultimate fate of Jacen's soul, still hang in the balance, but Nelani was innocent, and Jacen knows that the future is always in motion, and he knows that if anyone has what it takes to alter it, then he's among that number. He's also eager to learn what Lumiya's hinting at, and what this all has to do with Vergere. So would I. And maybe I'd even kill Nelani if I were under the same stresses of the moment. Maybe a lot of us would. But that wouldn't make it right, and even if people forgave us later it would be bad to forget where we faltered.

 

Purposely murdering an innocent is ALWAYS evil. If someone asks "why" and really believes that, get help. Seriously. There is a line between good and evil. It might sometimes seem blurry, but it's still there. And killing an innocent person is always on the wrong side of it. Morality does exist in Star Wars, it's possibly the most important thing in it, Star Wars is "modern myths" telling stories of good and evil. No "logic" can justify killing an innocent, good and evil are probably beyond reason anyways, they really just are. Only sacrifice what is yours, and nobody's life belongs to anyone else. Period.

 

I never said logic could justify killing an innocent. But outside of murder and rape, the answers aren't always as clear. Euthanasia? Abortion? Capital punishment? Drug legalization? People argue about all of those. A lot. People don't argue about murder as a concept; they argue about whether or not a specific killing was a murder, whether or not a specific killed person was innocent.

I'm sorry if I've been blurring the two issues I've been arguing about; I'll try to make it clearer:

When I'm talking about morality being complicated, I'm talking about Vergere, Jacen's path hitherto murdering Nelani, and the whole "there is no dark side" thing generally.

But I've repeatedly said that I think Jacen was wrong to kill Nelani, and that neither my professor nor myself is denying the existence of objective morality. I know SW is a modern myth, I know Lucas has built the Force around multiple religious/spiritual belief systems that all share a good-evil axis, and I'm not arguing with that. Big myth fan here. I'm not even saying that Jacen was A-OK. I'm just saying that Vergere shouldn't be dismissed. I know that's sort of been left in the dust in this thread, but this has been my first posting in awhile and I just wanted to get that out of my system. Again, sorry for any confusion.


And there are logically expressible reasons for why killing an innocent is wrong. You're depriving them of a future of potential joys and interesting experiences when nothing they've done or might do has any negative bearing on you whatsoever, and you wouldn't want someone to deprive you of those joys and experiences when you've done nothing to hurt them. That alone is a stronger argument than "killing is wrong because I say so." I realize that you're in all likelihood very aware of this argument and that it's already implied in what you're saying; I'm just saying that at this point some people may take even something this relatively simple for granted. I've read more complex arguments than this that I couldn't grasp quite as well, but my point is just that you don't have to stop at gut feelings to condemn murder. And yes, I'm agreeing with you, murder is just that: condemnable. If that's a word.

Just food for thought, though: ancient Greek morality didn't really have anything to do with a cosmically objective Good and Evil. The essence of justice was: "Help your friends, harm your enemies." It was all personal. Modern morality came into being, I suspect, because people started to realize that it worked better for society, and in turn, for them. If you're too busy watching your back because people don't think murder is wrong, you're not going to live quite as peaceful and happy a life as you would if people did assume that murder was wrong. If you were constantly defending what you had, you couldn't acquire more. Like I said, just food for thought. Our conception of good and evil is very, very old indeed, but it doesn't go all the way back.

 

What Jacen did was not evil, it was wrong, but not evil. He didn't want to murder her, he felt he was forced. And not through half baked hallucinations, but through something that has a nasty tendency of being true.



See it like this:

Imagine someone you love very much, someone you would do anything for. Then imagine another very good person, who is certifiably good and innocent, you don't know them, but that is a fact. Now imagine if if someone came with a gun and told you that you had to choose who would die, one of them would have to die, no options, and you are not an option either. So who would it be??

It's like that, the difference is that Jacen did it himself physically, but it was not the will, it was the "will" of the force, if you may, that dictated that either Nelani or Luke would die by Jacen's hand, and that there was no option. Jacen didn't kill her in hate, it wasn't an act of the dark side, it was wrong, and he knew it was wrong, but for all that he tried he could not see a solution that would save Luke from dying.




No one is condoning the murder, but there are things in this case that do not and will never apply to real life (more so than how I put it up there).

Nelani's murder was wrong, but it was not evil.

 

Now I think you're entering completely different argumentative territory, and I personally find it very interesting, but if others don't want to continue with this, I won't, after this post.

Adam Morton's "barrier theory" of evil:

?A person?s act is evil when it results from a strategy or learned procedure which allows that person?s deliberations over the choice of actions not to be inhibited by barriers against considering harming or humiliating others that ought to have been in place.?

An act under Morton's theory is "merely" wrong if it hurts or humiliates someone but without having had to overcome the aforementioned barriers. I forget the details at the moment, but he makes some distinction about the Hiroshima bombing being wrong but not evil. Under Morton's theory, an action that is "wrong" but not "evil" may still cause more harm or humiliation than an evil act. What makes the difference, to Morton, is intent. Both are bad. I forget whether he believes a small "evil" act is worse than a massive "wrong" act.


I'll concede that there may be a difference between wrong and evil, but I still think killing Nelani was, at the very least, toeing the line.

I'm pretty sure the act was evil. Whether or not this means Jacen is ultimately evil, I don't know, and somewhat doubt, and hope isn't the case.

There is something to be said for separating agents from their actions, in somewhat the same way arguments are supposed to be attacked rather than the people who make them.

But even if Jacen's killing Nelani wasn't "evil" (by Morton's definition), I don't think that makes it any less a moral stain. I don't think anyone's too interested in such semantics here, at any rate. We've been using bad/wrong/evil more or less interchangeably; the point is that an innocent is dead dead dead at Jacen's hand. If you prefer, rather than "evil" we could call it tremendously unfair. And yes, yes, life is unfair, but the point of society, justice systems, and the people upholding both - in this case, the Jedi - is to make it as close to fair as possible. Jacen's immensely powerful and skilled, so if anyone short of Luke can reasonably expect to exert his will upon an unfair universe to make it play nice, it's him. He should have tried at least a little harder to find another way, or if nothing else, he should've waited. He could've tried to convince her to keep quiet, as he considered. If later he found that she was going to spill the beans anyway, then maybe he'd be more justified in silencing her. I wonder if he couldn't just wipe her memory instead of killing her, though. It would be interesting to know where Nelani stood on a relative power scale.



In any case, your argument about doing anything for someone you love does make a lot of sense. Like I quoted Nietzsche earlier, "What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil." Less hard-and-fast than Morton. But then, Nietzsche's less hard-and-fast than almost anyone. I personally think he's great, but that's beside the point. I do think Jacen still loves Luke. Like I said, just because he isn't gushy doesn't make him incapable of love. So I might be able to entertain the idea that killing Nelani wasn't evil. But it was still ugly, awful, unfair, horrific. I still think there was a better way. She did not deserve to die, and because we see things from multiple perspectives and not just Jacen's, it's very difficult to ignore the fact of her innocence and fully embrace his point of view. This is probably a good thing. No matter what you or I or anyone else concludes from it all, it's made us think. And like Mara told Ben, many people just don't like doing that, which hurts them in the long run.

Han would probably agree with the Nietzschean statement, and I don't think anyone would fault him for it. But some might argue that Jacen, with all his power and insight, has an obligation to the long view. To the Unifying Force, perhaps? What happens when someone as powe

 

Hey everyone--

I'm newly registered here and have been visiting the site and reading Star Wars constantly for years. I just finished reading Betrayal, and, quite frankly was very disappointed. I thoroughly enjoyed Aaron Allston's other books in the SW universe, but Betrayal was a bit bland and too matter-of-fact for me. Although I liked the basic story told and it was a bit dark, however, I think Mr. Stover's literary style would have better put us in the emotions and mindset of the characters (trying not to drop any spoilers for those of you who haven't picked up your copies yet), and made it an exponentially more enjoyable read. The point of my ramblings here are a couple of questions. Its obvious that the series is going to get darker and I was wondering if Del Rey and Star Wars were holding Mr. Stover in reserve for a darker Legacy book? I apologize if this is a redundant question, I really didn't feel like rummaging through the 110 previous pages. Has anyone felt the same way that I feel about Betrayal?

 

The 9 book sof the Legacy of the Force series is authored by Allston, Traviss and Denning, each publishing in that respective turn. 3 are criminal hardcovers.

 

"Again, seperating real life from fiction".

The only one who have trouble differing real life and fantasy it´s you.

 

Stover is also still in the process of writing his third Caine/Overworld novel. He says it's not impossible that he might write SW again, though.

I love Stover too. But I'd rank Karen Traviss as his equal. They're pretty different, stylistically, but both are generally grittier and harder-hitting than pretty much any other SW author. Unless you have a particular aversion toward Mandalorians, Bloodlines will not disappoint. I will say that Stover writes more descriptive action sequences. Traviss' action seems to rely more on impressions and imagery than choreography (not that Stover's all choreography, of course - far from it!); I personally find it quite effective in its own way, but I think most prefer Stover. I love the way Traviss writes the Force, though.

As for Betrayal, I thought it was pretty great. My ideal trio of authors for a darker, rougher series would've been Traviss, Stover, and Keyes, but all are pretty busy with original fiction. Traviss just writes a lot faster than the other two.

 

I admit Allston wouldn't have been my first choice - I've frankly hated some of the previous books, such as EL - but he pulled it off well imo.

 

this is not now, and will never be, a plausible situation. there is ALWAYS another option. why not just not participate? Why was Jacen so arrogant that he thought he couldn't just walk away? What makes Luke's life any more important than Nelani's?

in your example, some idiot with a gun...okay, I won't say an answer. then what? he shoot's me? so...at least i didn't make someone else die...but wait, you said i wasn't an option, so then what, as long as i don't answer, the guy with the gun can't act? is it some kind of eternal stalemate? you need to come up with a better hypothetical situation. I won't even get into anything else like the different choices he could make, like trying to take the gun. I won't get into the differences between your example and the situation in the book.

Even in no-win situations, there are ways to lose without becoming evil.

 

It is plausible, if you don't say the answer he kills both the people in question. You lose more than you had to. I didn't think I actually had to point the outcome of not answering out.

 

Jacen could walk away and not become a Sith, Luke and Nelani would have live.

 

Jacen's own doings were irrelevant in the vision, it was Luke or Nelani, one would die.

 

But in the timelines where Luke lived, Jacen saw other, shadowy tragedies around him, but didn´t bother or able to see what they where... Jacen did see only a part of the possible futures, decided his action based on an incomplete knowledge of what would happen.

 

And one of them didn't necessarily have to die right then and there.

I'm gonna have to say it's still better to attack the gunman than make either choice. If someone's inevitably dying, then at least innocent blood isn't on my hands.

I don't think the choice to walk away would've been that easy, honestly. Dropping Vergere's line would've gotten my attention, too. And if Jacen suspects that she knows more about the Corellian conflict, or anything else for that matter, it's probably unwise to axe her. It occurs to me that Nelani would've probably physically interfered, and I'm not sure if any outcome would've been pleasant. Lumiya might've killed her. Or Jacen might've killed her while defending Lumiya from her attacks, which might've been a somewhat more defensible position than killing a fleeing victim. Or he could just disable her. But then she could still talk.

Nelani shouldn't have died. But I also think Lumiya could prove a valuable resource, even if she needs to be eliminated later. I don't think there was any happy ending coming along, no matter what. I think Jacen is entitled to know more about Vergere, and I think he's entitled to defend that right.

My take? It would have hinged on how far Nelani took it. But if she chose inaction, Jacen should've let her walk away and dealt with other threats as they came. I think Luke would've been understanding, and probably almost as curious as Jacen; of course he'd want answers too. He just wouldn't let it compromise his other values. Compassion versus knowledge again. Lumiya could be restrained by the combined powers of Jacen and Luke, I'm sure, and there are many others to help if necessary. Jacen and Nelani could've almost certainly taken her in too. I doubt Luke would've killed her on the spot. Then she could be interrogated, and the asteroid and the Sith library explored, and if nothing else Jacen wouldn't have qualms about prying her mind open.

 

" Jacen's own doings were irrelevant in the vision, it was Luke or Nelani, one would die".

Wrong. Jacen becoming a Sith is why he and Luke are going to war. Nelani´s life or death only changed the beginning of that war.

 

You don't know that, none of us do, in fact it was probably the exact opposite. If Jacen let Nelani arrest Lumiya (Lumiya dies), then that would lead to Luke's death. If Jacen killed Nelani, then he would not kill Luke in the future.

 

Jacen was the one who killed Luke in all his visions. How is that irrelevant?

 

I mant the present ones, whether he joined the Sith or the Jedi.

 

See, I'll agree that we don't know where all of this is going. But if Nelani hadn't died and Jacen had killed Luke, that leaves us with two possibilities: Luke deserved it, or he didn't. If he deserved it (highly unlikely, of course), then no worries. If he didn't, Jacen makes another wrong choice.

But not more wrong than killing Nelani.

More momentous, of more consequence, almost certainly. But not more wrong or more evil. This, considering both murders as isolated events unconnected to each other. As for if they are connected, I'll get to that at the bottom of this post.

***

Luke might still die. Maybe not at Jacen's hand, but his life isn't necessarily in the clear. Jacen can't know that. The future isn't fixed except in circumstances when Jacen flow-walks. If later he'd faced the kill-Luke choice, then given his self-confidence he should trust himself enough (in the Here-and-Now) to conclude that he would only kill Luke were it necessary. (Sacrificing what means most to you...) And if he killed Luke unnecessarily, it would mean he had fallen, and it wouldn't be the Jacen he is Here-and-Now. He should strive to avoid becoming a Luke-murdering Jacen, yes. But that's on him, not Nelani. So in light of the future's mutability, I personally don't think he should have made his choice based on such a cloudy vision. Remember Qui-Gon's advice at the beginning of TPM. And who says there aren't other futures Jacen just wasn't capable of seeing?

***

Nelani's innocence doesn't mean Jacen is doomed to have an evil soul. This was one action. One terrible, life-ending action that should never be forgotten, yes. But Jacen himself isn't yet irredeemable. Agent over action.

***

I guess the unsettled question for some is, if Nelani's death turns out to have been necessary to prevent Luke's, if Jacen's conclusion was right, then was he still wrong to kill her?

I think the answer comes down to your personal moral code. A Kantian, rights-based code will say that abridging any other rational being's rights is always wrong, no matter what comes after. John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism, which I think someone brought up earlier, will say hold on, by saving Luke's life did he save countless others, too? And if so, then a utilitarian might be willing to step on Nelani's rights, for the sake of everyone else's. Utilitarianism isn't just pick-a-way-that-has-more-happiness-than-pain. It's about picking the most possible happiness for the most possible people, even if the answer is unpleasant, the way war is unpleasant, and capital punishment is unpleasant, but both are sometimes necessary or at least justifiable.

 

"You don't know that, none of us do, in fact it was probably the exact opposite. If Jacen let Nelani arrest Lumiya (Lumiya dies), then that would lead to Luke's death. If Jacen killed Nelani, then he would not kill Luke in the future".

No, Jacen didn´t saw Luke die till after he chose become a Sith.

 

Look, here were the two choices, and why Jacen's choice to be a Sith is not responsible for Luke's possible death:

*Dead Nelani:If Jacen does that, he becomes a Sith and doesn't kill Luke.

*Live Nelani:If Jacen lets her live, she kills/captures Lumiya, he doesn't become a Sith, he kills Luke.


If anything, it's the fact that he doesn't become a Sith that kills Luke.

 

Third choice: Jacen kills himself, Nelani lives, Jacen doesn't become a Sith and doesn't kill Luke.

Alternatively, I'd suggest that Jacen just, you know, try not killing Luke, but I guess that's too difficult since he doesn't even consider it.

 

He (Jacen) is acting very much like HIM.. with all his stock in visions.. "I have forseen It" (heheh, you didnt forsee the need for reactor shaft covers did ya?)

Always in motion the future is.. and he only saw a few possible outcomes, there could be an outcome where he kills both Luke, and Nelani.. there could be an outcome where Luke kills him..