So, There's No Hope. (Unhinged And Unwarranted Speculation)

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, ParaTulip said:

Not sure how we got to the topic of how the Human characters ought to be treating the Singers, but since it is being discussed:

I feel like the Vengeance Pact is the exact sort of things that should be brought up as an example of an oath that needs to be broken and discarded. I think everyone has forgotten about it, but it was Elhokar's worst crime against the world and he died before coming to terms with it.

I assume Rlain and Renarin are going to sit down and talk about it during some kind of dramatic moment after Renarin meets Adolin again and the idea of how oaths can be good or bad needs to be worked through.

How is: "Hey you killed the guy who treated you with nothing but kindness, and was in the middle of signing a treaty with you so we're going to war over it" an oath that needs to be broken, or a crime against the world?

[RedBlue]

4 minutes ago, Frustration said:

How is: "Hey you killed the guy who treated you with nothing but kindness, and was in the middle of signing a treaty with you so we're going to war over it" an oath that needs to be broken, or a crime against the world?

The problem is that the Alethi weren’t just going to war over it. They were planning to keep attacking until the entire Parshendi population was killed. Of course the regicide demanded retaliation, but genocide is unnecessary and disproportionate.

There’s also the issue of rushing in blindly with virtually no attempt to gather basic intel, which puts everyone at risk, including their own people.

[Frustration]

14 minutes ago, RedBlue said:

The problem is that the Alethi weren’t just going to war over it. They were planning to keep attacking until the entire Parshendi population was killed. Of course the regicide demanded retaliation, but genocide is unnecessary and disproportionate.

There’s also the issue of rushing in blindly with virtually no attempt to gather basic intel, which puts everyone at risk, including their own people.

Nothing in the text implies they wanted Genocide. At the Funeral all Elhokar says is vengeance, and by WoK they only really wanted Gemhearts.

As for basic Intel what more did they need? They had already visited the Shattered plains, the Singers had received their weapons from the Alethi, and they had openly confessed to being the ones behind the assassination.

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Nothing in the text implies they wanted Genocide. At the Funeral all Elhokar says is vengeance, and by WoK they only really wanted Gemhearts.

Okay, so "I started the war that lead to a people's genocide over the death of my father and that took things too far" would probably be the seed of a truth Elhokar would have gotten to eventually. I agree with @RedBlue. The War of Reckoning was still ongoing when the Desolation started.

Also, even if Elhokar and everyone else thought at the time that Gavilar was the best guy ever, we the readers know it is far closer to the truth to know that Gavilar was actually an abusive and corrupting force on all those close to him. Navani was abused by him, Jasnah went mad as a child in part due to his parenting, he craved immortality even if it meant causing Desolation levels of suffering for others.

There is a whole metaphor in one of the minor plots of WaT that is about how the chasm fiends going extinct and how that is bad? Everyone killed in a war is a tragedy.

[Frustration]

2 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Okay, so "I started the war that lead to a people's genocide over the death of my father and that took things too far" would probably be the seed of a truth Elhokar would have gotten to eventually. I agree with @RedBlue. The War of Reckoning was still ongoing when the Desolation started.

There is a whole metaphor in one of the minor plots of WaT that is about how the chasm fiends going extinct and how that is bad? Everyone killed in a war is a tragedy.

I can see the consequences of Elhokar's actuons being negative, but I do not see how Elhokar was supposed to know about this.

5 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Also, even if Elhokar and everyone else thought at the time that Gavilar was the best guy ever, we the readers know it is far closer to the truth to know that Gavilar was actually an abusive and corrupting force on all those close to him.

Yes but how does that make Elhokar's actions bad? He didn't know this he basically worshiped Gavilar.

6 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Jasnah went mad as a child in part due to his parenting,

Um what?

Jasnah's illness had nothing to do Gavilar or his parenting, she was sick.

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

I can see the consequences of Elhokar's actuons being negative, but I do not see how Elhokar was supposed to know about this.

Yes but how does that make Elhokar's actions bad? He didn't know this he basically worshiped Gavilar.

Um what?

Jasnah's illness had nothing to do Gavilar or his parenting, she was sick.

Well, Elhokar's actions produced the consequence of a genocide war in the name of vengeance. "Oh but he was responding to a regicide" is the kind of phrase that should inspire a republican ethos; no death can justify an extermination campaign against a whole people. Also, ignorance is a fault in a person. I think most everyone suffers from it, but it becomes really dramatic when that ignorance gets large numbers of people killed.

Jasnah's 'illness' seems to have been pretty psychological in nature. Hence all the allusions to what seem to be padded environments.

[Isilel]

@Aliroz-The-Confused:

I agree with you about one thing: we should have gotten a proper singer perspective from the singer/listener PoV instead of mostly through humans yet again. I hate how our only singer/listener PoVs never really became proper main characters and their limelight was usurped by Kaladin and Moash. 

In fact, much of what we see of the singers is entirely in the service of human characters development. Which is why Moash, as Kaladin's nemesis keeps sticking around and failing upwards, like a comic book villain.

This reminds me of Hollywood movies, which tend to insert American main characters (or anglophone ones if they are set before the founding of the US) into movies that take place in other cultures and of "white saviour" trope.

Concerning Scadrial, Mistborn was conceived as "a trilogy of trilogies" from very early on, so a definitive "happily ever after" after the end of Era 1 had never been in the cards, whether Era 2 in it's current form got written or not. It is not the consequence of changing times - Sazed failing in some way was baked in from the beginning. 

Edited January 10 by Isilel

[Frustration]

3 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Well, Elhokar's actions produced the consequence of a genocide war in the name of vengeance. "Oh but he was responding to a regicide" is the kind of phrase that should inspire a republican ethos; no death can justify an extermination campaign against a whole people.

Where are you getting the idea that the end goal was the extinction of the Listener people? That was never the Alethi's stated purpose.

3 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Also, ignorance is a fault in a person. I think most everyone suffers from it, but it becomes really dramatic when that ignorance gets large numbers of people killed.

I'm really not understanding your point here.

No one is omniscient, and really only Navani seems to show any idea that Gavilar isn't the person he appears to be, so it's not like he should have known that.

Only the Sons of Honor and Eshonai knew he wanted to return the desolations, but Elhokar was neither of those.

You're judging him for acting without information there was no possible way for him to obtain. He wasn't even aware such information existed.

Is Archduke Frans Ferdenan's driver responsible for WW1 because he drove the car right in front of the assassins? I don't see any way you could possibly argue that he was.

3 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Jasnah's 'illness' seems to have been pretty psychological in nature. Hence all the allusions to what seem to be padded environments.

Yes. And what does that have to do with Gavilar?

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Where are you getting the idea that the end goal was the extinction of the Listener people? That was never the Alethi's stated purpose.

I'm really not understanding your point here.

No one is omniscient, and really only Navani seems to show any idea that Gavilar isn't the person he appears to be, so it's not like he should have known that.

Only the Sons of Honor and Eshonai knew he wanted to return the desolations, but Elhokar was neither of those.

You're judging him for acting without information there was no possible way for him to obtain. He wasn't even aware such information existed.

Is Archduke Frans Ferdenan's driver responsible for WW1 because he drove the car right in front of the assassins? I don't see any way you could possibly argue that he was.

Yes. And what does that have to do with Gavilar?

Oh, do you cleave super hard to the "genocidal intent is what matters" idea of what makes genocide wrong? It is still an extermination campaign, which is morally reprehensible.

Elhokar was a king. I know he was crippling incompetent at basically every turn, just the most helpless and useless person possible, but being a monarch actually put him in a position of power and authority.

He should have used it better.

Like, WWI is actually best blamed on the ruling classes of the various states that fought in it, because that was where decision making power had been located.

[Immortal Platypus]

10 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Oh, do you cleave super hard to the "genocidal intent is what matters" idea of what makes genocide wrong? It is still an extermination campaign, which is morally reprehensible.

 

It was a war. what is a war besides an attempt to kill the people on the other side? and genocidal intent isn't what makes genocide wrong, it's what makes it genocide. It's a part of the definition, at least criminally

Edited January 10 by Immortal Platypus

[Frustration]

22 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Oh, do you cleave super hard to the "genocidal intent is what matters" idea of what makes genocide wrong? It is still an extermination campaign, which is morally reprehensible.

Genocide implies they were trying to wipe them all out.

Extermination campaign implies that that the Alethi were trying exterminate the Singers.

Neither has been demonstrated in the text.

The Alethi's stated goals were:

1. Vengeance for their dead King.

2. Gemhearts.

Neither of these have to do with genocide or Extermination.

As @Immortal Platypus said what they did do was a war. And Dalinar's peace talks are proof of this. When pursuing genocide or extermination you don't sit down with the ones you wanted to kill and discuss an end to hostilities, but you do in a war.

22 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Elhokar was a king. I know he was crippling incompetent at basically every turn, just the most helpless and useless person possible, but being a monarch actually put him in a position of power and authority.

He should have used it better.

How?

By knowing that Gavilar had scared the Parshendi in a secret conversation between only Gavilar and Eshonai?

What could he actually have done differently in that situation?

Edited January 10 by Frustration

[Returned he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

1. Vengeance for their dead King.

Let's leave aside the validity and morality of vengeance at all, or a war to achieve it. How do you define this operationally, as of WoK and WoR? Dalinar's speech about seeking a decisive victory during WoR seems to have shocked the Alethi. The idea of killing or capturing/executing the Parshendi leaders seemed to not be on their minds at all.

You're right to point out that they were at that point entirely focused on gemhearts, changing the nature of the conflict, but the initial Vengeance Pact seems to have been mostly about "kill a whole lot of Parshendi" with no particular end state. Which can easily (maybe not necessarily) be the same as "kill them all", as not having any other end state in mind at least suggests.

[Schizoposting]

@Frustration, I'm too lazy to dig up the exact quotes, but it's mentioned somewhere in WOK or WOR that, initially, when the Listeners tried surrendering after losing battles, the Alethi would massacre them, without taking any prisoners. Also, there's a conversation (in WOR I think) where Dalinar complains that the Alethi aren't depleting the Listeners numbers fast enough. 

Even if their goal isn't to kill all Listeners, the Alethi are clearly engaging in very severe war crimes, by our modern standards. (To be fair, Sadeas raped his way across Alethkar, and Dalinar massacred the Rifters, so this isn't exclusive to the War of Reckoning.)

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

@Frustration, I'm too lazy to dig up the exact quotes, but it's mentioned somewhere in WOK or WOR that, initially, when the Listeners tried surrendering after losing battles, the Alethi would massacre them, without taking any prisoners. Also, there's a conversation (in WOR I think) where Dalinar complains that the Alethi aren't depleting the Listeners numbers fast enough. 

Even if their goal isn't to kill all Listeners, the Alethi are clearly engaging in very severe war crimes, by our modern standards. (To be fair, Sadeas raped his way across Alethkar, and Dalinar massacred the Rifters, so this isn't exclusive to the War of Reckoning.)

Yep, I remember all of these, too.

And these aren't just atrocities by modern standards, massacring surrendering enemies is one of those things that, like cannibalism or killing messengers, is taboo in nearly all human societies (with notable exceptions) across history, and the instances of it are as historically well-recorded as they are because they are exceptions.

Modernity lessened the power of many taboos, to the result of great suffering, before it started to create structures to serve that same function of being the guard rails of human conflict.

This isn't "Oh, this is unacceptable by our modern standards", it's "medieval mercenaries would refuse to do this", it's "When this happened in Acre, Richard I's allies all agreed that he would go to heck for it when he died", it's "ancient peoples told stories about how doing this kind of evil heinous crap would get the gods cheesed at you and your fate would be the stuff of nightmares.  Even if you get away with it in this life, the next is waiting.".

It was not modern thought that first figured out "If I refuse genuine surrenders, then I cannot expect any of my genuine surrenders to be accepted, and that goes for my friends as well, and then nobody involved in this has the option of surrendering anymore".  If anything, it was modern thought that forgot it, figured it out the hard way, and had to invest significant effort into maintaining that understanding.

Not trying to derail the thread, I'm just pointing out that these are atrocities by modern AND pre-modern standards, and are likely against the Codes.

(I'd contrast with sieges, which, depending on interpretation and definition, are regarded as war crimes now but were regarded as standard war tactics for centuries in Europe.  I don't want to imply that there hasn't been change or progress (I certainly wouldn't chose a pre-modern society over the modern one in which I live), rather, I'm trying to be fair to what those changes and that progress was).

Edited January 10 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Isilel]

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

initially, when the Listeners tried surrendering after losing battles, the Alethi would massacre them, without taking any prisoners. 

 

That was explicitly Sadeas, though.

 

44 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

And these aren't just atrocities by modern standards, massacring surrendering enemies is one of those things that, like cannibalism or killing messengers, is taboo in nearly all human societies (with notable exceptions) across history, and the instances of it are as historically well-recorded as they are because they are exceptions.

 

It happened a lot, though. Just like fratricide, which was equally a taboo that historically got broken quite frequently.

 

[Frustration]

3 hours ago, Returned said:

How do you define this operationally, as of WoK and WoR? Dalinar's speech about seeking a decisive victory during WoR seems to have shocked the Alethi. The idea of killing or capturing/executing the Parshendi leaders seemed to not be on their minds at all.

You're right to point out that they were at that point entirely focused on gemhearts, 

Well you answered your own question there

3 hours ago, Returned said:

the initial Vengeance Pact seems to have been mostly about "kill a whole lot of Parshendi" with no particular end state. Which can easily (maybe not necessarily) be the same as "kill them all", as not having any other end state in mind at least suggests.

I wouldn't say kill then all so much as possibly conquer them.

Yes there are no clear objectives but that's because it was emotionally not logically driven.

2 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

@Frustration, I'm too lazy to dig up the exact quotes, but it's mentioned somewhere in WOK or WOR that, initially, when the Listeners tried surrendering after losing battles, the Alethi would massacre them, without taking any prisoners.

Sadeas specifically not all Alethi but yes.

2 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Also, there's a conversation (in WOR I think) where Dalinar complains that the Alethi aren't depleting the Listeners numbers fast enough. 

It was a complaint that the highprinces are more focused on wealth than war.

2 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Even if their goal isn't to kill all Listeners, the Alethi are clearly engaging in very severe war crimes, by our modern standards. (To be fair, Sadeas raped his way across Alethkar, and Dalinar massacred the Rifters, so this isn't exclusive to the War of Reckoning.)

By that standard the Parshendi committed war crimes against Alethkar first.

[Schizoposting]

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

Sadeas specifically not all Alethi but yes.

He's explicitly considered to be the archetypical Alethi; in fact, his war crimes are so unremarkable that they're never commented upon (even his betrayal of Dalinar is just seen as realpolitik). 

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

It was a complaint that the highprinces are more focused on wealth than war.

Well, yes, he's complaining that they care more about money than killing Listeners. 

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

By that standard the Parshendi committed war crimes against Alethkar first.

So? What does this have to do the topic at hand? One immoral act does not justify another by definition. Even if the assassination of Gavilar was heinous crime (it wasn't), it still wouldn't make Alethkar's war crimes any less immoral. 

[Immortal Platypus]

12 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

assassination of Gavilar was heinous crime (it wasn't

can you clarify that?

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

Oh, this picked up a lot while I was gone.

"Taking gemhearts" seems to be understood differently by various parties to this conversation. To me, this is effectively the same as "taking away the food supply for the Listeners of the Shattered Plains". The Listener agriculture model depends on having an emerald supply, but they are more efficient about using stones than the humans, so there is no risk of driving the Chasmfiends to extinction by their traditional methods. This is in strong contrast to how humans expend the emeralds for soulcasting and also how the Chasmfiends have been going extinct.

Depriving a population of the means to feed themselves by doing hideous ecological damage is, among other things, the kind of action that results in mass exterminations. It inflicts famine. This is abhorrent to me.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

By that standard the Parshendi committed war crimes against Alethkar first.

The children of Ashyn betrayed and imprisoned Ba-Ado Mishram at a peace meeting.  This was after violating the promise to stay in Shin Kak Nish.  This was also after Honor, Cultivation, and the spren all abandoned and betrayed the singers in favor of humanity, leaving them with only Odium and the unmade as gods.  This was after destroying their original homeworld and being accepted as refugees.

After imprisoning Ba-Ado Mishram, they invaded the rest of Roshar and kept the parshmen as slaves.  The only surviving singers we know of are the listeners, who, lived in an area called the unclaimed hills (as though the singers have no claim on them, which is just fascinating when you think about who came up with that name and what it implies) and did not have interaction with the children of Ashyn between the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram and meeting Gavilar. 

I don't know how much of the above the singers other than Eshonai and Venil are aware of at the point of meeting Gavilar, but if we assume they know very little or none of it, and forget all our knowledge of events that happen after Gavilar's death, and try to put ourselves in the minds of the council of five in those days...

Gavilar's expedition makes contact with the listeners.  Of particular note is the flashback chapter where Eshonai (or maybe Venli) is shown a map of Roshar, and learns that the humans claim everywhere else and there are no singer populations (other than the enslaved parshmen).

Then, after getting them to trust him, working out treaties (which, by the way, I think I remember as heavily favoring Alethkar over other kingdoms, but I don't count that as wrong because yeah, that's how being buddies and allies works) with them, and getting them to agree to become allies, Gavilar revealed that he was trying to bring back the evil gods and make the apocalypse happen.  If trying to do that doesn't count as attempted atrocity against the listeners, or some kind of crime against both singer and humanity, I'm not sure what does.

So, the listeners had him killed in an attempt to prevent that.

Attacking at parlay is one of the basic taboos that no sustainable society can afford not to regard as taboo, and the listeners did this.  It is a great evil, maybe an unforgivable evil, in how it destroys the possibility of future peace meetings.

However, there is another evil, perhaps like unto it, and that is to knowingly and willfully parlay in false faith, which makes it impossible to trust in good faith negotiation going forward.  Gavilar revealed his intentions with regards to Odium and the Unmade only after the listeners had agreed to ally with him and made treaties with him, only at the peace meeting after which the agreements and alliance would be binding... which means he made those prior negotiations without telling them that information, which means that the listeners did not know, which means Gavilar knowingly and willfully parlayed in bad faith, and anything the listeners had agreed to had been agreed to under false pretenses and cannot be regarded as legitimate nor binding.

Informed consent is not a modern idea.  Even the ancient cultures who most revered oaths as defining truths of reality which the gods enforced had concepts of a leonine contract, and had concepts of coerced oaths or manipulated oaths being invalid.  Part of why cultures have the tradition of having people witness such things is to have at least a layer of verification.  Those real-life cultures who believed that breaking an oath would mess you up forever also believed that trying to pass off illegitimate oaths as legitimate would mess you up forever.

I view it as an attempt to trap the listeners, luring them in and then locking the door behind them..  He seems surprised when they object, but I think that's got to be self-deception, because, deep down, he knew they wouldn't have allied with him if they had known his intentions.  If he truly thought they wanted the same thing he wanted, he would have STARTED WITH THAT or at least told them BEFORE accepting and making promises.

Gavilar violated the parlay first, placing him outside the protection it gives.  

The Listeners never explained any of this to the humans because LOOK OVER THERE IT'S A DISTRACTION!

Seriously, the best I can come up with to explain it is "Lol, I dunno" or "given that interaction with the children of Ashyn, historically, invariably ended up in apocalypse, betrayal, death, invasion, slavery, and to all appearances the extinction of all singers except these ones who did not interact; and given that Gavilar and Dalinar are atrocity-committing taboo-breaking invaders who became the royal family of Alethkar through killing all who did not submit and also killing a bunch who did submit (it's not implausible for the council of five to have learned at least some of Alethkar's recent history); and given that what seemed to be good-faith negotiation turned out to be a trap wherein the listeners were walled in by their own words and could only get out of it by simultaneously giving the Alethi an excuse to attack them and making themselves (the listeners) look like taboo-breaking monsters (and, if the listeners know about the betrayal of Ba-Ado Mishram at parlay, there's another element of messed-up-ness here in making the listeners reenact the crime that created parshmen); and given that Gavilar was in charge the fact that he was planning on something that big would seem to indicate that the rest of the royal family is in on his apocalyptic plans and given that the fact that none of the humans warned the singers about Gavilar would seem to indicate that the rest of the people in power in Alethkar are either unwilling/unable to oppose such behavior or are actively supporting it, why the heck would the singers think that their explanations would in any way change what's about to happen."

If you look at it with the wider context of Roshar's history, but without the context of the experiences of the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive, the humans come off as terrifying invaders, attempting to complete their invasion.  Similarly, if you look at it with only the context the listeners would plausibly have at the point of Gavilar's murder, the humans come off as terrifying invaders, attempting to complete their invasion.

In my view, the listeners did not commit war crimes against the Alethi first, because those negotiations were illegitimate.  As far as I understand it, promises extracted through intentional and willful deception, trickery, and withholding of critical and relevant knowledge on one party's end tend to be considered equivalent to promises extracted through force, which don't count.  The protections people are obligated to grant to negotiation do not apply when the negotiation is nothing more than a façade for coercion.

Or, at least, that's my two clips.

Edited January 11 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Schizoposting]

27 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

can you clarify that?

@Aliroz-The-Confused already said this, but quite frankly, Gavilar was a terrible person who wanted to bring about the desolations, just so that he could become a god. The whole treaty was a charade, with Gavilar planning to use the Listeners as tools bring back the Fused. This, as Nale notes, violates the treaty and gives the Listeners the legal right to fight back.

Even if you still think that the assassination was immoral, the Listeners still had a very strong argument for it being an ethical decision, which is not the case for genocide or other war crimes.

[Immortal Platypus]

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

@Aliroz-The-Confused already said this, but quite frankly, Gavilar was a terrible person who wanted to bring about the desolations, just so that he could become a god. The whole treaty was a charade, with Gavilar planning to use the Listeners as tools bring back the Fused. This, as Nale notes, violates the treaty and gives the Listeners the legal right to fight back.

Even if you still think that the assassination was immoral, the Listeners still had a very strong argument for it being an ethical decision, which is not the case for genocide or other war crimes.

interesting. I'll have to think some more about that

[Frustration]

3 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

He's explicitly considered to be the archetypical Alethi; in fact, his war crimes are so unremarkable that they're never commented upon (even his betrayal of Dalinar is just seen as realpolitik). 

He's the only one out there when he does a Plateau run, no one can call him out for that.

And technically he didn't betray Dalinar, Sadeas abandoned him. If it had been a betrayal, full on fighting Dallinar he would have had some pushback.

3 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Well, yes, he's complaining that they care more about money than killing Listeners. 

What on earth makes you think that killing Parshendi is his worry not the general war? His attempts at a peace talk are very clear examples of his intents.

3 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

So? What does this have to do the topic at hand? One immoral act does not justify another by definition. Even if the assassination of Gavilar was heinous crime (it wasn't), it still wouldn't make Alethkar's war crimes any less immoral. 

If you want to vilify the one party you have to acknowledge the wrongs of the other. Neither side is entirely wrong, and neither is without fault.

2 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

The children of Ashyn betrayed and imprisoned Ba-Ado Mishram at a peace meeting.  This was after violating the promise to stay in Shin Kak Nish.  This was also after Honor, Cultivation, and the spren all abandoned and betrayed the singers in favor of humanity, leaving them with only Odium and the unmade as gods.  This was after destroying their original homeworld and being accepted as refugees.

After imprisoning Ba-Ado Mishram, they invaded the rest of Roshar and kept the parshmen as slaves.  The only surviving singers we know of are the listeners, who, lived in an area called the unclaimed hills (as though the singers have no claim on them, which is just fascinating when you think about who came up with that name and what it implies) and did not have interaction with the children of Ashyn between the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram and meeting Gavilar. 

I don't know how much of the above the singers other than Eshonai and Venil are aware of at the point of meeting Gavilar, but if we assume they know very little or none of it, and forget all our knowledge of events that happen after Gavilar's death, and try to put ourselves in the minds of the council of five in those days...

Gavilar's expedition makes contact with the listeners.  Of particular note is the flashback chapter where Eshonai (or maybe Venli) is shown a map of Roshar, and learns that the humans claim everywhere else and there are no singer populations (other than the enslaved parshmen).

Then, after getting them to trust him, working out treaties (which, by the way, I think I remember as heavily favoring Alethkar over other kingdoms, but I don't count that as wrong because yeah, that's how being buddies and allies works) with them, and getting them to agree to become allies, Gavilar revealed that he was trying to bring back the evil gods and make the apocalypse happen.  If trying to do that doesn't count as attempted atrocity against the listeners, or some kind of crime against both singer and humanity, I'm not sure what does.

So, the listeners had him killed in an attempt to prevent that.

Attacking at parlay is one of the basic taboos that no sustainable society can afford not to regard as taboo, and the listeners did this.  It is a great evil, maybe an unforgivable evil, in how it destroys the possibility of future peace meetings.

However, there is another evil, perhaps like unto it, and that is to knowingly and willfully parlay in false faith, which makes it impossible to trust in good faith negotiation going forward.  Gavilar revealed his intentions with regards to Odium and the Unmade only after the listeners had agreed to ally with him and made treaties with him, only at the peace meeting after which the agreements and alliance would be binding... which means he made those prior negotiations without telling them that information, which means that the listeners did not know, which means Gavilar knowingly and willfully parlayed in bad faith, and anything the listeners had agreed to had been agreed to under false pretenses and cannot be regarded as legitimate nor binding.

Informed consent is not a modern idea.  Even the ancient cultures who most revered oaths as defining truths of reality which the gods enforced had concepts of a leonine contract, and had concepts of coerced oaths or manipulated oaths being invalid.  Part of why cultures have the tradition of having people witness such things is to have at least a layer of verification.  Those real-life cultures who believed that breaking an oath would mess you up forever also believed that trying to pass off illegitimate oaths as legitimate would mess you up forever.

I view it as an attempt to trap the listeners, luring them in and then locking the door behind them..  He seems surprised when they object, but I think that's got to be self-deception, because, deep down, he knew they wouldn't have allied with him if they had known his intentions.  If he truly thought they wanted the same thing he wanted, he would have STARTED WITH THAT or at least told them BEFORE accepting and making promises.

Gavilar violated the parlay first, placing him outside the protection it gives.  

The Listeners never explained any of this to the humans because LOOK OVER THERE IT'S A DISTRACTION!

Seriously, the best I can come up with to explain it is "Lol, I dunno" or "given that interaction with the children of Ashyn, historically, invariably ended up in apocalypse, betrayal, death, invasion, slavery, and to all appearances the extinction of all singers except these ones who did not interact; and given that Gavilar and Dalinar are atrocity-committing taboo-breaking invaders who became the royal family of Alethkar through killing all who did not submit and also killing a bunch who did submit (it's not implausible for the council of five to have learned at least some of Alethkar's recent history); and given that what seemed to be good-faith negotiation turned out to be a trap wherein the listeners were walled in by their own words and could only get out of it by simultaneously giving the Alethi an excuse to attack them and making themselves (the listeners) look like taboo-breaking monsters (and, if the listeners know about the betrayal of Ba-Ado Mishram at parlay, there's another element of messed-up-ness here in making the listeners reenact the crime that created parshmen); and given that Gavilar was in charge the fact that he was planning on something that big would seem to indicate that the rest of the royal family is in on his apocalyptic plans and given that the fact that none of the humans warned the singers about Gavilar would seem to indicate that the rest of the people in power in Alethkar are either unwilling/unable to oppose such behavior or are actively supporting it, why the heck would the singers think that their explanations would in any way change what's about to happen."

If you look at it with the wider context of Roshar's history, but without the context of the experiences of the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive, the humans come off as terrifying invaders, attempting to complete their invasion.  Similarly, if you look at it with only the context the listeners would plausibly have at the point of Gavilar's murder, the humans come off as terrifying invaders, attempting to complete their invasion.

In my view, the listeners did not commit war crimes against the Alethi first, because those negotiations were illegitimate.  As far as I understand it, promises extracted through intentional and willful deception, trickery, and withholding of critical and relevant knowledge on one party's end tend to be considered equivalent to promises extracted through force, which don't count.  The protections people are obligated to grant to negotiation do not apply when the negotiation is nothing more than a façade for coercion.

Or, at least, that's my two clips.

I've mostly ignored your attempts at condemning an entire species for the crimes of a few, but I'll try something else.

The ultimate perpetrators behind the crimes you so despise are not Ashynite, but Yolish.

Ashyn was destroyed because of the meddling of two of the Yolish.

The humans moved to Roshar at the bidding of the Yolish vessels.

The desolations occurred because of the Yolish Shards.

BAM was imprisoned in a power play of those same Yolish acters.

Spren are used in fabrials because the Yolish taught the humans how to do it.

The Ashynites you so hate, are the victims of their Yolish overlords.

2 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Oh, this picked up a lot while I was gone.

"Taking gemhearts" seems to be understood differently by various parties to this conversation. To me, this is effectively the same as "taking away the food supply for the Listeners of the Shattered Plains". 

That's called siege warfare. Up until you invent high grade explosives that's really what you have to do.

2 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

The Listener agriculture model depends on having an emerald supply, but they are more efficient about using stones than the humans,

No they aren't more efficient. The Alethi with their method can feed hundreds of thousands, the Listeners don't even have that many.

2 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

This is in strong contrast to how humans expend the emeralds for soulcasting and also how the Chasmfiends have been going extinct.

The Parshendi are ever bit as guilty of the chasmfiend hunting as the humans are.

2 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Even if you still think that the assassination was immoral, the Listeners still had a very strong argument for it being an ethical decision, which is not the case for genocide or other war crimes.

I still have yet to see the evidence for even attempted genocide.

Edited January 11 by Frustration

[ScadrianTank he/him]

Two Mistborn eras showed that the greatest threat of breeding programs and eugenics will always come from other Scadrians, not outsiders. It's the central problem of their magic systems, and we'll see them attempt to deal with it throughout the books and eras. In a similar way to how Rosharan magic naturally presents questions similar to animal rights. 

And I have to say, the continued use of the term "children of Ashyn" bugs me a lot. 

[therunner he/him]

3 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

 The only surviving singers we know of are the listeners, who, lived in an area called the unclaimed hills (as though the singers have no claim on them, which is just fascinating when you think about who came up with that name and what it implies) 

They are called Unclaimed Hills, because you know, as far as everyone on Roshar knows, no one lives there. Rosharans by this point don't even know that Singers even ever existed, it has been 2000 years since sealing of BAM.

So this is not a sign of humans of Roshar ignoring Singers claim, they just don't know about Singers at all.

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I view it as an attempt to trap the listeners, luring them in and then locking the door behind them..  He seems surprised when they object, but I think that's got to be self-deception, because, deep down, he knew they wouldn't have allied with him if they had known his intentions.  If he truly thought they wanted the same thing he wanted, he would have STARTED WITH THAT or at least told them BEFORE accepting and making promises.

No, Gavilar did genuinely think Listeners will be happy their gods are being brought back. If he didn't think that, he has no reason to tell it to Eshonai.

He didn't start with that, because believes in Knights Radiant and such are basically heretical, so wanting to get them back (through getting back Heralds and singer gods) would be considered heretical in his society.

He is still a piece of crem, but he was actually being genuine.

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Seriously, the best I can come up with to explain it is "Lol, I dunno" or "given that interaction with the children of Ashyn, historically, invariably ended up in apocalypse, betrayal, death, invasion, slavery, and to all appearances the extinction of all singers except these ones who did not interact;

Except for the 2500 years between Aharietam and False Desolation, where humans and Singers did both exist on Roshar, and were aware of each other. 

And notably, False Desolation only started when BAM decided to get high on Odium juice and start providing forms of Power.  Which is something LIsteners disagreed with, which is why they left the False Desolation.

Sealing of BAM was meant to only deprive Singers of Forms of Power, the lobotomization was unintended side-effect.

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In my view, the listeners did not commit war crimes against the Alethi first, because those negotiations were illegitimate.  As far as I understand it, promises extracted through intentional and willful deception, trickery, and withholding of critical and relevant knowledge on one party's end tend to be considered equivalent to promises extracted through force, which don't count.  The protections people are obligated to grant to negotiation do not apply when the negotiation is nothing more than a façade for coercion.

Gavilar though the summoning of singer gods will be a boon to listeners, so from his perspective the negotiations were valid.  Of course, he was wrong, and in fact it invalidated the negotiations.  But maybe the Singers shouldn't react by immediately hiring an assassin. 

Or if they did, maybe they should have tried and explained themselves, which they didn't. Elhokar even sent envoys to them and they still didn't explain, if I recall correctly. 

Ultimately, Listeners assassinated foreign head of state (illegal/illegitimate act no matter how you slice it), left 3 people who admitted to it, and then shut down any attempts at talks. Even non-Alethi would react with war to that.

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and given that Gavilar was in charge the fact that he was planning on something that big would seem to indicate that the rest of the royal family is in on his apocalyptic plans and given that the fact that none of the humans warned the singers about Gavilar would seem to indicate that the rest of the people in power in Alethkar are either unwilling/unable to oppose such behavior or are actively supporting it, why the heck would the singers think that their explanations would in any way change what's about to happen."

Instead of believing any such assumptions with no evidence, they could still try to explain themselves. 
If it won't work, their situation won't be worse, but if it does they can avoid war.