Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-4623180-20121103100513/@comment-5102537-20130726112353

Imagine, your loved one - husband, wife, child, sister, brother, parents, partner, whoever - entered the property of someone who has the right to shoot the "invader" immediately without asking (which is indeed the case in some parts of the USA and most certainly in some other countries too).

Your murdered loved one is being sent home to you, beheaded or without arms and legs or whatever. You watch the body and know that the one who shot your loved one wouldn't have had to do it.

You're not only outraged but also in grief and you prepare to attack the killer of your loved one. He or she comes to you and apologises. Then you agree that he and one of your best fighters in your group go to battle. The killer wins but refrains from killing your fighter too.

Would you forgive the killer and would you even praise him only because he or she apologised and refused to kill another one? Would your grief be unimportant all of a sudden and would you forget about it all and even become friends with the killer of your loved one? If this was all so easy, then Uther, had he wanted to, could have gone the families of those he killed and apologised. The magic users and sorcerers who harmed him and his loved ones, and Nimueh, who killed his wife, simply could have visited him and apologised. No war on magic, no Great Purge, everyone would have been friends. Mordred could have easily forgiven Arthur for killing Kara and Uther for killing his master, Arthur could have easily forgiven all magic users who he made responsible for his mother and father's death, Odin could have forgiven Arthur for killing his son if Arthur had apologised. And a shiny happy world would have been the result. This would have been great, alas it's not that easy.

If so, why is it such a big crime to kill a human being when actually it's all so easy to make it all fine again? Just a little talking, avoiding a big fight (a war in this case) and everything is alright again?

I truly doubt that. It would have been totally okay if Annis agreed to not go to war in order to save countless lifes. A truce would have been okay too, in regard to the political and strategical situation. But forgiveness so quickly, even praising Arthur anda following friendship - that was completely unbelievable.