during that conversation van brought up the point of the ghouls and heinz more or less ignored it. heinz's team was more shocked about it then him. as a team member you leave a lot of the thinking about the direction you go to the leader, so their shock is somewhat understandable but Heinz not being shocked means he already had thoughts in that direction and jet he didn't do anything to look into it. did van mention by how much it is not worth it? in my opinion, for something to be forgiven the person who caused the damage needs to, first be sorry and apologize and really mean it, second somehow repair the damage they have caused. the second point depends on the person that was wronged and can vary from "not needed" over "the damage that started to problem" to "including all the damage that was caused as a result of the thing that started it". to me Heinz is a wannabe hero that is to scared of his actions turning out to be wrong that he won't accept anything that might go in that direction. his conscience is at least good enough to understand that being celebrated as a hero for handing over a woman that was then burned on a cross is not something to be proud of. But when van pointed out some of his mistakes, he cut in and accused van of making problems for the people, ignoring what van did exactly, the titans and the duke (I will leave out the fact that van gave the people money to deal with the problems, as he did not necessarily know about it). the point I want bring across is that Heinz in his believe that a hero needs to be free of mistake in the eyes of the public and his desire to be one, is not able to take the steps needed to take to prevent the confrontation with van.
But he does kill humans in favor of Vida's children. Typically mercenaries, slavers and bandits. What he doesn't do is stop to examine the situation at hand at more than a superficial level. He just sees "Ghouls killed adventurers" and doesn't consider the "because they by definition invaded the ghoul's home and probably attacked first" part of the equation. The fight wasn't going to be avoided because Van didn't want to avoid the fight and yeah, Heinz was defensive after being put on the spot like that and the kneejerk response there for pretty much anyone is to instantly deny what the person attacking you is saying. His party members, Edgar and I suppose Delizah aside, showed willingness to consider their views and afterward he also showed an acknowledgement that he was in the wrong. Seriously what is with Edgar the rest of the party comes across as at least understandable and then you have a literal baby murderer who pats himself on the back for a job well done. It's absurd. I get that he's meant to explain why Heinz is such a failure but still. I realllly don't think conceding the point about ghouls was off the table at the very least. That accusation hit Jennifer and Diana hard because it was the most point blank exposure of their hypocrisy. But this is sort of what I mean. We don't actually know concretely what Heinz is trying to do. We know he's advocating for the right of at least some of Vida's races and it can't just be the likes of titans and dark elves because otherwise no one would probably give a damn, but also that it doesn't include (at time of conversation) ghouls and probably not majin either. We know for sure it doesn't include undead and it's safe to assume it does not include noble orcs because even Van didn't include intelligent monsters at first, so why would Heinz? And we know Heinz actively kills slavers and mercenaries who break the law or are basically indefensible, but we don't know what he does beyond that apart from not condoning terrorism. Side note, I think he probably does have the support of quite a few of Vida's children who haven't heard the Word of Van lately. The point opposing that is that that most likely amounts to like 99% beast people and titans, a handful of dark elves and like maybe a village of lamia he actually helped at some point when the wind was blowing right to make it hard to portray them as the aggressor. In my mind the two are like MLK if MLK was kind of a hypocritical douchebag and Malcolm X if Malcolm X was also a murdering cannibal. They've both got similar goals and they're both getting stuff done, but Malcolm Van has said Enough is enough, why should I wait for your gradual change when people have been murdering us for a hundred thousands years because of some cranky old man god and his obsession with things the people of this world don't actually value because they've never seen it or even heard about it. The thing about Heinz is actually a bit misleading. He felt defensive and ignored the point when pressed on it, but admitted the point afterward when it was completely useless to do so and was like Why am I such a failure and mama Mill was like Shhh baby never question yourself, just genocide like a good little puppet and everything will be fine. Honestly, the implication was that APF didn't really offer nearly enough to satisfy Van without an apology from Heinz, speaking from a purely practical viewpoint. The scales were weighed really heavily in favor of murderdeathlaser to start with and Heinz didn't do the two basic things he needed to help balance things out: Admit his personal failings and explicitly state that his views were subject to change. The only one of these two he got close to was the latter where he acknowledged his bottom line - no coexistence with the undead - and this was unfortunately a deal breaker in itself. But! Just because complete collaboration is impossible doesn't mean a ceasefire is off the table or even some broad form of cooperation. For me, Heinz is genuinely a hero... who is doomed to failure because he does not work to account for his flaws and instead allows himself to be misled by people who tell him those flaws don't exist. I don't think you're supposed to think that Heinz is actually evil or completely insincere because the story is meant to be a kind of gray and gray morality rather than simple black and white. Van is the demon king typical to fantasy and Heinz is the hero that rises against him, sure. But then the author says "What if the demon king actually has a point and the hero isn't actually as good as he thinks he is?" without actively denying their good or bad sides. You're definitely meant to side with Van, but also meant to see that Heinz is still a fantasy hero and not just secretly eating babies when he thinks no one is watching. Though that may not be the best example. To be honest, I've been assuming since I got to like chapter fifty that Heinz was going to last just long enough to meet Amemiya whenever he gets off his ass and gets isekaid over to the main plot. Then he mentors him for a bit, dies dramatically in front of him and now Amemiya and Van can be proper enemies with Amemiya probably being the final boss or close to it.
Not just you, there are a lot of people thinking there was some magical "Martha" answer Heinz could have said that would save him from Van's anger, and there isn't. Van can't really think tactically when he includes Heinz in the equation, every fiber of his being wants revenge. Heinz giving "wrong" answers just makes it easier to justify after the fact. Probably the only thing that anyone could ever do, that could save them from Van's wrath, is to start praising Darcia, and even that wouldn't work for Heinz. No, Heinz will die painfully, but if the APF were more useful in the long term, then Van might have been conflicted about it. It's like when you shoot yourself in the foot, in a strategy game, because you blew your resources on something you like the idea of (or its aesthetics), rather than something practical you knew ahead of time that you needed. Maybe if they had some value to them, Van would consider making a puppet out of Heinz' corpse, to keep them pacified and working towards the future. Yeah, that sounds like the way it should go, but with all the spoilers people keep posting, who knows. Could even go the other way, with Hiroto becoming the people's champion, and then joining Van's side.
No, I actually don't think there was an in character way for peace to come out of that meeting. I've actually written a paragraph multiple times that contained exactly what Heinz would need to do in that situation and it's frankly ridiculous so I deleted it each time. Van is too hostile to give Heinz a fair chance and Heinz is too... Heinz... to actually say what would need to be said there. There were magic words that could have made that meeting work but neither party would actually say them. Basically, I don't feel their positions are nearly as irreconcilable as Van believes, but it doesn't matter because on a personal level they cannot cooperate. And honestly it doesn't matter because while Alda would extend an olive branch to dark elves, merfolk and so on he would never agree to tolerate arachne and majin let alone undead and noble orcs. I've been carefully avoiding saying Van would actually forgive Heinz. I felt like maybe he could tolerate him for awhile so long as he was A. useful and B. contrite. Even Riley and Gordan almost got a pass because of being useful but a lack of sincere self reflection doomed them. That being said, I admit that it's not beyond Van to knowingly employ self defeating strategies because of a lack of emotional control. I mean, it's why he lost the Sauron duchy: Without Ray and Rick Paris there is no one that Orbaume felt they needed to work with, so they just bulldozed in and made up whatever story they wanted. As far as Heinz's future goes, I also assumed Edgar and Delizah would be gone by that point. I mean, I know the spoilers, but setting those aside they make Heinz look bad and I think Amemiya is going to see Heinz at what at least seems like his best so that he can think of Heinz ONLY in terms of what he sees right before Heinz finally snuffs it.
I don't think he could even tolerate him that much. Van broke when he found his mother's ashes, and he's had ten years nursing this hatred for Heinz, it was bad enough in Hartner that Van blacked out, just from coming close to the colored blades, hearing them mention his mother....
Well, we'll never know now and I'm not surprised. Going back to the 'too meta for this conversation' I don't think the author has any intention of portraying Van as unsympathetic in that particular way. Cause that would basically be refusing forgiveness to the penitent and committing cold blooded murder. Whether or not you agree it's justified it is at least something people would argue about and I don't think the author wants you to feel genuinely conflicted about his actions. Okay, changing the subject, I have a question about spoilers that I wasn't really sure where to ask because it seemed like every thread was wrong. Did the True Ancestor ever come up again in any meaningful capacity? They foreshadowed like two hundred chapters ago that they'd be revived and then not much really ever came of it.
but do not praise her to much or he might think you are trying to get with her... The problem there is that Amemiya actually tries to correct his mistakes when he becomes aware of them, where as Heinz runs aware, or does effectively nothing by just making token gestures. The thing is Amemiya would not need to be mentored by Heinz (unless he suffers serious manipulation during his transition over to Lambda), since he already knows more, and has a better understanding about the dark side of human nature. Plus comes from a more enlightened society that has seen examples of the flaws of a Theocracy. If anything Heniz needs to learn from Amemiya. Races with out Ranks only IIRC. They tend to be the ones created with the assistance of Lambda gods, as opposed to the Ranks which tend to be the races born from Vida and the "Evil" (Foreign) gods who switched sides to Lambda. C. runs away and is no longer a threat. van hates him, but would not bother to track him down is there were other real threats and he had been neutralized.
This wouldn't make any sense and it's kinda contradicted by Heinz's statements anyway. First, it wouldn't make sense because it's being treated as a Big Deal and quite revolutionary. Especially when you take into account he is primarily active in Orbaume, which already extends rights to titans and so on. Alda wouldn't allow Heinz to succeed in the full range of his goals because he actually does have a reason he won't accept those with Ranks, but Heinz doesn't know that, so he's trying for things he can't achieve. And the contradiction comes in Heinz saying 'Just cause we want to extend rights to Vida's races doesn't mean we won't defend ourselves from them' when pressed on the ghoul issue. Meaning that if self defense isn't required then resorting to immediate force is (supposedly) not the plan. I guessss we can assume Heinz wants to extend rights to the Scylla? Even in Orbaume they're written into the laws as second class citizens But the reaction to Gizania kinda implies he isn't trying to do anything for Arachne or at least that it isn't catching much support yet. Mebbe he's also working for Lamia/Centaur/Harpies and so on since they don't have quite as bad of a reputation. Empusa and Arachne have horrible PR.
Not really, some duchies treat them well, but they are 2nd class at best in most. It also depends on how strong the Vida church is in that dutchy, Sauron had a strong one, and they were treated well there, but were not the norm. You also need to remember that the Peaceful faction is within Alda's church, and the churches standpoint is none of the Vida races have any rights, period. Also, Alda's goals require that All vida races die, because he wants both the DK and Vida reincarnation cycles gone as they are not "perfect" like Rod's. There is a way to move some of the races over and those tend to be the non-rank ones, but that requires Vida's blessing which Alda is not getting.
If Alda's default stance is that only the races that existed before the invasion of DK forces are good, then it's already revolutionary, and even radical, to treat Dark Elves and Titans like exotic (borderline feral) pets. Keep them fed, somewhat healthy, and away from normal people. They wouldn't be tolerated at all by other Alda followers if they try for anything more extreme than that, they would be labeled as terrorists, and even Heinz wouldn't get a pass for questioning Alda that far.
Yes, some duchies discriminate, but it is simply not a radical position to say that titans are okay. There was already a faction for that: The moderates, who were already the more common demographic in Orbaume. Heinz actually represents a group of radicals, though from the standpoint of Vida's church they're more moderate because they're attempting to bridge the gap between the two churches. Yes, Heinz's goal and Alda's goal are not compatible. Heinz wants to know why. His intention is to ask Alda why things are the way they are and if they can change. He takes Alda's continued divine protection to be an affirmation that it is right to question. This doesn't really have anything to do with Heinz directly, however, because he does not know this and we do not know what he'll do when he's told that ha ha just kidding he will embrace the genocide because the story would get too complex otherwise, but that's not relevant yet. No, that's the moderate position. Heinz's position is more like "Dark elves are cool in my book, and I guess we can allow those miserable peasant arachne to exist so long as they don't offend their betters or drop the local property value like those smelly majin." It's better than NOTHING but absolutely not enough for Van. And that is another deal breaker for Van. Deal breaker one: No rights to the undead or monsters. Deal break two: Built in second class citizenship. Maybe Heinz assumes this will improve with time if he even recognizes it, but that is simply not good enough for Van because his people have been suffering for an absurd amount of time and the idea of 'compromise' when he's fully in the right is kind of absurd. But yes. Heinz will not be able to succeed beyond extending rights to merfolk and stuff because giving rights to vampires and ghouls is a dealbreaker for Alda: Anything with a rank produces foreign, corrupt mana and this mana taints the land, which creates devil's nests and dungeons. Alda wants all that crap gone so Lambda can be nice and peaceful again. Alda has no problems with dark elves and stuff at all. The sticking point is not how they live or how they came to be, at least not directly. The problem is that they are fundamentally incompatible with the way he wishes to shape Lambda. And also he thinks vampires are gross parasites. Don't remember if he has any particular issues with the other races beyond the aforementioned.
I feel as if Van limiting his revenge to the original perpetrators of his mothers death to be a significant display of self control. He could quite literally raise a disposable army by creating strategic high level dungeons linking the entrances of major cities to them and causing simultaneous outbreaks. whether or not heroes or powerful adventurers are present he would essentially decimate an entire country then reanimate the dead. Wash rinse repeat, Vanapocalypse. But, no he only wants peace for his people and retribution for his mother.
Actually i do think that their positions are irreconcilable as Van believes and that is due to how Heinz acts when dealing with things against his believes. Till now the only reaction Heinz ever showed when dealing with things/people which doesn't fit in his believes were: 1st ignoring or negating their words/existence 2nd running away 3rd killing As soon as he confirmed that Van can and do create undead Heinz would never try to understand that undead isn't a evil thing he would either attack Van or run away from him if he believes Van is impossible to win against. I can believe on the other hand that if Van actually tries to he could work with Asagi, mage masher is the exact same type of person as Heinz but unlike him, Asagi's first reaction to things which doesn't fit his believes isn't to kill it, but to force it to fit on his believes, which is why Asagi doesn't want to kill Van but find a way to seal his powers. I am 100% sure that Van would never forgive ketchup (joke intended) I mean let's be sincere? No one would ever forgive someone that intently captured their mother to send her to be tortured and executed But I am sure that Van could have tolerated ketchup if Heinz had actually promised to not attack him or his family. The main problem is that ketchup is a self-righteous person and not a real idealist person. For him, he can give some rights for other races but they can defend themselves, but he doesn't believe the contrary is okay. In fact he probably doesn't even think that ghouls attack "normal races" because they ARE defending themselves, and how ghouls had suffered centuries of attacks being hunted, killed, slaved by "normal races" He doesn't even try to think of a way to pacify the relationship between the sides, he just justifies that killing ghouls is right because ghouls kills "normal races", besides he doesn't consider that at least 90% of those killed are actually adventurers that invaded ghouls territories exactly to kill ghouls.
Yes, there are irreconcilable differences between their positions. Dealbreakers. The undead are a dealbreaker on both sides because Van knows for a fact that they can be adjusted/modified in such a way that they are functionally indistinguishable from the living. Heinz, on the other hand, is a devout follower of a god who is 100% opposed to them and Heinz is not even really willing to argue on this. I mean, if Van had raised arguments, Heinz would have responded, but there is simply no way that he would actually be convinced to change his core beliefs on undead without putting in massive amounts of time and effort. But. There are less dealbreakers than Van is assuming. I do not believe that ghouls are one for Heinz. The implication is that he and his party would probably adjust their platform to some extent to accommodate them. Ghouls aren't undead and they're known for being reclusive, so there isn't really much of an issue there. I do think that even if they had tried to negotiate in good faith these irreconcilable differences would have eventually led to conflict, but it needn't have been immediately. For example, the USSR and the US had a common opinion that Nazis Are Bad and they worked together to solve that problem. Afterwards things didn't go too well for this budding friendship, but until then cooperation was possible. Honestly, a lot of Heinz's problems are born of ignorance. This does NOT fully excuse his behavior, mind you, but it does contextualize it. Heinz didn't know that killing ghouls had all the problems Van went over. Should have, but didn't. When this point is brought to his consideration two party members realize that they're hypocrites immediately and he acknowledges it later as well. So Heinz is actually capable of modifying his beliefs to an extent and discussing things. Just not to an extent that Van is willing to accept. You know what just occurred to me? Yeah, Heinz is racist, but worse than the racism is that he's kind of a coward. He won't face difficult truths until he's forced to and whenever that situation occurs he relies on comforting words rather than make hard choices about what to do going forward.
Dealbreakers means that there was a possibility of a deal, and it has failed. The only way out for Heinz is to disappear.
Ok seriously late to the conversation again. Mine eyes could not believe there was a discussion on “ ways Van might forgive Heinz vs the author might try to make Heinz a sympathetic character.” Have we all forgotten that Van got carte blanche approval from Vida and her two “brothers” for any and all revenge he wants to take. Their one request was that he didn’t destroy too many gods or else he’d destroy the world in the process. But even then they agreed that it might be something he can’t hold back from. They freaking agreed to God-murder!!!! And then they told him that all the morals of his past lives mattered for exactly Jack and Squat. So no, I see no way author holds Van back. The telegraphed hit has already been launched in Vida’s divine realm.
That's lowballing it. To the extreme. If Van was as Guduranis level evil as Alda's bunch is desperate to paint him, he could launch a mana-bomb of death-attribute and nuke every living thing in Amid, as he himself states if he had affinity to fire, he'd be able to pump a normal fire-ball with enough mana to make a miniature sun and reduce the entire planet to magma. After all, the head god of Lambda is a genocidal nut-bar, and the humans of Amid worship him because he's a genocidal nut-bar. Van could easily justify killing them all and saying they don't have a right to live, as enlightened, preemptive self-defense. Context and nuance are very important. The gods in the border mountains agreed that Alda's bunch are clearly antagonistic and their acts are clearly inexcusable and indefensible. All they ask is that Van give them a chance to surrender and stop hostilities because it would be near impossible to keep the world running if all of Alda's bunch die off at once, but if they keep being antagonistic after being given that chance, they're fair game. It's not "murder" if you respond with lethal force against a bunch of yahoos that have made it clear that they view you as a death-row criminal for the "crime" of being born and relentlessly hunt you down, trying to kill you everywhere you go. As for Heinz, there is no magic formula that would get him off the hook, and there never will be, but his chances would have been much better if he kept his promise to himself, that he's been spouting for hundreds of chapters and several in-universe years, that he'd apologize for killing Darcia, admit fault, and ask forgiveness, the moment they met, rather than going "let's try and claim it wasn't my fault by throwing every excuse I've got at him and see what sticks." And it isn't "all of a sudden" for Heinz either, as he's been spending years cutting through Curatos controlled Van-puppets, and Van's been forced to feel it. Which is yet another example of Heinz failing to comprehend "cause and effect" as the foray into Belwood's dungeon started with Alda's "Heroic Spirits" outright mocking him for wanting to make peace with Vida's races. Then it's been "safe towns" with humans far more noble than anything Heinz has seen. Vida's races encounters with no ability to talk things out, just one battle to the death after another, and this dhampir kid throwing a bunch of bizarre spells and using a multitude of Demon king fragments, getting progressively worse each time. Then when Heinz and crew got the "Holy Mother Killer" title, Heinz decides the best way to find out what's going on is to head to the bottom of the dungeon, to speak with something that's been down there incommunicado for years and ask. WTF? Edgar... He just makes no sense. He tells himself that it's the height of righteousness to strike down the helpless women and children of Vida's races like wild animals "to spare them unneeded suffering" when the addendum of volume 9 reveals that he grew up with them in the slums and "sympathizes with them a little." In other words, he knows they're people, they don't like to be treated like animals any more than he would, and would very much like to live, and yet he still thinks he's doing them a favor by killing them. smh. As it now stands, things are not going to end well for Heinz. The only question is how bad is he going to make things for himself before he meets said end.
Just because it won't happen now doesn't mean it was totally impossible from the start, at least not from an in story point of view. Heinz is absolutely toast because he can't accept responsibility for his actions or truly admit fault. Honestly, at his core I think he's a genuinely good person who just lets people influence him too much. His heart is in the right place, but his brain is not and he lacks the strength of will to let one straighten out the other. Actually, your 'What if Van was a total psychopath" first paragraph makes me wonder what death magic would do to HIM if used by someone else. Because as a living being shouldn't it kill him too if he can't negate it like he does other magic? I assume it wouldn't though Because Reasons. Also I suspect Vanpocalypse would probably be more like swarms of the living dead rather than directly applying death to people. Remember, Pluto's death fog only covered the pentagon before being halted. Even if you assume Van's version of that would be 1000x more powerful, that still isn't a very large area plus there are a lot more powerful people who can deal with it, including gods. The Bravers aren't actually that strong by Lambda standards and they mostly handled the Pluto fallout by themselves. Alda is capable of personally getting down on the surface and getting to work himself, it's just that the consequences of doing so would be pretty drastic for him. Like, "Great, we won this battle, now racist grandpa god is going to have to go take a nap for ten thousand years so the sun is going to turn off" level bad. Heinz has only been there for like six months hasn't he? There's less of a gap between novels as the get further along. It's long enough that people outside are starting to get worried about them and to build up a small town, but that's about it. I reallllly don't get Edgar. He just seems so badly written given his role. There's bad influence from your friends and then there's friends who openly encourage you to murder babies. Heinz is supposed to represent a kind of stock fantasy hero and such a person should never tolerate working with someone like Edgar.
Ok i'll bite, the heinz thing has been discussed to ad nauseum. The only chance he had in the entire story was through Darcia's forgiveness. Which he lost that sole chance when Darcia declared her hate toward him and the 5 colored blades in alda's dungeon. That was it, his one and only shot. There is nothing else he could've done to save his soul. Honestly instead of destruction I want van to make a clumsy golem with his soul and have it clean toilets with it's hands for eternity. Now on to a more interesting topic to discuss. Edgar and his new found D.K. soul upgrades. obviously the soul will affect Edgar and make him more antagonistic against Van, the question is what will Van do about it.
There is a reason Alda freaked out about disease after the failed invasion of Taloshiem, Van could easily wipe out the Amid Empire with one like that just needs to extend the incubation/contageous period and it can be passed to more people. The black death wiped out most of Europe, but it moved through the content very slowly and Van could make something worse. HE has a huge hero complex, he HAS to be the hero, and needs to be able to see himself as the hero. It will bit him in the A badly. Remember to them those babies are all murdeous monsters not deserving life, and an early death is a kindness as otherwise it is take them back to society and sell them to someone as a slave, or leave them to starve to death with no parents. Edgar is not saying murder human babies, which would be the line, but sub-human races with no rights in their minds. And Heinz is the stock fantasy protagonist of a Black and White novel where you are either "good" or "bad" based on race alone. As Much as WotC has been over correcting on their D&D races the last little while, their novels have never really depicted races as universally good or evil, hell one of the more popular characters for the last 20+ years is a Good aligned member of a very evil race. IT was not his last chance at survival, but maybe his last major chance at it/ chance for a "happy ending". Spoiler There is like 2 or 3 more chances if I remember right, but he will ignore and charge on.