Well yes, but if she only did them for the life extension that does open up the question if they were truly good to begin with. Is a mercenary being paid to retake say K8P doing a good deed, or just doing that they were paid for?
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Well yes, but if she only did them for the life extension that does open up the question if they were truly good to begin with. Is a mercenary being paid to retake say K8P doing a good deed, or just doing that they were paid for?
Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I should also say that morality is pretty irrelevant if we start to get into discussion over whether we should cultivate Heidi as a contact. Of course we should. Heidi is one of our most powerful and influential allies and our connection to her gives us one of the greatest pulls in the future of the Empire that we could possibly attain. Regardless of whether or not she's a "good" person, which is an argument I'm not interested in, we have a vested interest in helping her out and maintaining her cover. The reason being that it's preferable to have a contact with that much power stay in power than attempt to cultivate another contact with the same level of reach and pull that we could use.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Would a hypothetical doctor that did medicine only for the money given be doing good deeds whenever they save or improve a human life? I would say so. Maybe it's less 'pure' than a doctor doing it out of wanting to improve human lives, but it's indisputably a morally good act nevertheless.
Of course, Heidi might well have just been dressing things up after the fact, which from my PoV she seems to do a lot. Like she describes helping Shallyans for life extension as the most obvious Ranaldite thing to do, but to me at least there is a huge dearth of Ranaldites doing deeds (of the level needed to qualify) for life extension if it really is as obvious as asserted.
Last edited:
Ok, at this stage, after reading through this a few times, I can't help but think you're using the Heidi Situation as a vehicle for an argument you want to have, rather than actually arguing the Heidi Situation.
Like, your responding with a lot more aggression and accusatory rederic than is being tossed back at you.
Like, no one here is defending misogynist Macbeth apologetic/ Lady Macheth blaming storytelling, just that Heidi doesn't really fall under the 'blame the woman, not the man' argument with a bit of scrutiny. but you're responding to counter-arguments like people are trying to tell you that.
There is debating a sensitive topic, and then there is baiting people to say something wrong with a sensitive topic, and I'm not sure where you are coming from at the moment and I've not seen enough of you in the thread to read through your intent.
Last edited:
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
That's basically the job of the Grey Order, it's an organisation using illegal means for good ends.
Euh, I'm sorry? I've never said it was wrong of wanting to marry someone of a higher status than her. Being able to marry someone without having to care about things like religion or social class is obviously very good. What I'm saying is that lying about her past to her future husband is wrong.
What are you talking about? That's just ridiculous.
Last edited:
[X] Bring in Regimand
[X] [SADDLE] Donate it to Stirland
[X] [SADDLE] Donate it to Stirland
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Sure, but I honestly cannot see how it would be less morally dubious than what she is presently doing. Certainly the grey order have a habit of doing a lot of morally dubious activities as a matter of course, and if the objective is to avoid ethically dubious activities I don't see how this would be fulfilled in a practical manner. At least the mercantile operations can be made unambiguously, or mostly unambiguously good.
Okay. My opinion is that the wrongness of that act, especially in that context, is negligible all in all and ultimately not worth considering.
She lied to an entire population for like thirteen years and also performed effectively a coup. She did, in fact, steal thirteen years of taxes for her own benefit. It's significantly more dubious than her other activities (especially the bit about the taxes).
Last edited:
I mean it is not like the literal blood drinker was legitimate either. As far as the Empire is concerned the whole of the nobility of Sylvania was in low key rebellion before Stirland marched in and even the ones who were not vampires, or vampire cultists were only accepted as lords on sufferance because of the lack of manpower to depose and replace them.
Last edited:
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
I disagree with that. If I married a guy then learned years later that he lied to me about his entire life before meeting me, from his religion to his name and former occupation, I'd be devastated.
The vampire was also a literal monster, so she got what she deserved. Also, the population wasn't married to her. The relationship between husband and wife is arguably a much closer one than between subject and ruler. On the subject of stealing the taxes I agree it's pretty dubious.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Luitpold, though, was operating in the context of a political marriage, not a marriage of love and mutual attraction. It would definitely be bad to lie to a future partner in just about any modern context imaginable, but in the political context that Luitpold operated in it would seem to me that material advantages, things such as reputation, connections and ability to produce children would be far more important and that marriages are founded in large part on that basis. More like a commercial transaction really.
Last edited:
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I mean sure, if you go from the moral standpoint that the very existence of a noble class should be a crime and that super rich people marrying for reasons other than love and using their property as leverage is self-evidently wrong then Heidi is always the good guy in any interaction she has with the despotic and patriarchal monarch that enriches himself off the backs of the working class. But IC neither Mathilde nor her friends and family of choice share that world view, except maybe certain aspects of Ranald sometimes.
From the view point of the traditional ruling class, their loyal followers and their secret police Heidi did an unforgivably bad thing.
I'm a big Heidi fan myself but that part is simply not true. Heidi is not simply not correcting people with false assumptions. She deliberately appropriated a fake name and backstory. I'm not faulting her for it because I'm not trying to view her through some kind of moralistic lense and have no problem with her defrauding the Empire for the good of herself, her friends and her religion, but fraud is in fact what she is commiting. Textbook even.
Heidi didn't steal the taxes, by the way. She paid them to the Empire—or at least, she paid them often enough that no one bothered making a fuss over it.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Like all nobles of the Empire, a portion of the taxes is paid upwards to the noble above her (in this case the Elector Count), and a portion is maintained in her personal coffers as her "right" as a noble, because that's their job. Leasing land out for money. Except in this case the personal coffers are Heidi and not an actual noble, so by the perspective of a noble, she "stole the taxes". Because she wasn't the rightful individual who should have ruled over the area or whatever.
- Location
- Earth
Ah. Uh, not quite. At least, if she did pay taxes over the duration, she also stole thirteen years' worth.
There was no rightful individual, the person she stole the identity from was a vampire while also being the person who was registered in Imperial records as the countess. As being a vampire is disqualifying that land was basically ungoverned as far as Imperial aw was concerned and since Heidi was doing the job of governance and passing at least some of her taxes on... I do not think you would find a judge or noble in the Empire who would try to get her for fraud on those grounds.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
That's thirteen years of taxes that didn't go to funding an army to attack us from behind at Drakenhof. If we're going to accept Ranaldite followers stealing Stirlandian League assets as keeping them out of enemy hands, the same principle should probably apply here.
- Location
- Earth
I mean, if we're going to talk about tax theft, Mathilde's denial is not very convincing
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Depends which taxes it refers to. Thirteen years worth of all accumulated taxes? Thirteen years worth of that part of the taxes that went to the noble minus what the noble owed to Stirland and Empire? Some amount in between?
- Location
- Earth
Ah, I think I've found what @Nerdasaurus Rex was referring to:
So probably the second or third option.
- Pronouns
- They
Looking at Ulgu arcane marks and I'm kinda unsure about the details for Aspect of Ulgu. Does anyone have a better context for how "your frame tightens" affects the body? Does that imply greater/less agility?
Last edited:
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
In the RPG, this arcane mark carries no mechanical consequences, positive or negative. No guarantee that Boney will keep that the case if we get this mark, but I think it's just going to be "you're thinner and grey-haired but your physical performance is the same."
I am, however, quite sad that we got the Mark we did and not Aspect of Ulgu, because we just came off a conversation with Belegar where he said this:
and I really want to come back to him with grey hair and call him a beardling whelp who needs to get off our lawn.
While true the fact that she did Mandred's dedication to Ranald in secret I think there is a pretty solid case that she did not even mention her status as a priestess of Ranald, but less the fact that she married him under a false name. It is very solid sort of speculation of the sort Mathilde shares IC.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
It is the entirety of the moral case against her though, and I'm saying it is unproven.
Overall, I think people are overestimating how unusual this is. Any system with birth-right based classes is going to have people lying to move up frequently. There's a reason it was a standard scam that Heidi could reference. And tbh, with the emphasis on male bloodlines carrying inheritance that IRL nobility has ground into it, the wife's actual origins being a lie don't upset any legitimatcy or inheritance claims anyway- if it's a legal marriage, then that flows from the father.
So it seems like the main claim is that getting married under a false name invalidates it, and I'm suspicious of that.