#and of course s3 turns alder around so she's sacrificing herself for others instead of demanding they sacrifice on her command

[arbitrarygreay]

I'm back on my "defending Alder" bullshit, but to be fair, the show is on my side! Eliot says in After The Storm 2x6 that he retains empathy for Alder's decision making, that he is still Team Alder. That bears out in the writing for the show, in that we see all of the characters basically concede all of the points Alder made to justify herself. (And let's not even get into the potential consent ethics around the Mycelium making everyone witches. We'll allow that feel-good hand-wave.) Obviously, the most important characters to consider on who compromised are Tally, Petra, and Anacostia, the characters who had the most stake in condemning Alder's actions. Khalida, too, but her turn is already quite obvious. Tally, of course, made the call to kill Penelope, and then embraced receiving training from Nicte. Don't quite remember if she was present for Scylla controlling people with crows, but everyone else just accepted it, so I don't see her suddenly finding that a crossed line. Of the three, she does the least to concede Alder's points, but she's also quite far from being a part of military authority for most of the season, so. Anacostia murders Vira for Pushing Sterling, and then uses (Spree-specific!) Pushing herself to have the Camarilla surgeons murder each other. The only Spree tech Anacostia doesn't eventually use is the delayed-charge bottle/balloon burst. Petra, meanwhile, is subject to that old TV chestnut of "fuck Civilian Oversight" (second only to "we love prosecution attorneys, defense lawyers are scum"), and Petra doesn't even have the excuse of immediately necessary self-defense that Anacostia had. Preceding that, Petra had to sacrifice the conscripts in order to delay the Cession invasion (which, sidebar, mirrors the Battle of Juarez, where Jem Bellweather led a "disastrous" cover charge to give the Swythes time to create a storm). Not to mention that the show kind of hand-waves Willa's complaints against Petra's leadership in the field, though perhaps Petra's "they're killing my soldiers" moment in S3 was meant to be a contrast in attitude to that past. This all goes back to that campfire conversation in 1x10.

Tally: How are we any different from the Spree if we just puppet whoever gets in the way? Alder: Taking the body and will and voice of another is a violation. It is against our code. But I had no choice. If you knew what was at stake, you'd understand.

When we slice away the actions that everyone eventually shared with Alder, only a few unique transgressions remain: 1) The Liberian Martyrdom. Balanced by their kid-gloving of Nicte and Scylla having done way more of it. 2) Alder's puppeting and pushing of Wade. What differentiates this from the cases above is that Alder did it to a nominal ally, not an established enemy, in reaction to the threat of retirement, and against The Spree instead of the Camarilla. Alder's true sin is that she kept going it alone. We see what she could have done instead through how Wade is treated in S3. In 2x10, Petra was actually following Alder's footsteps in trying to intimidate Wade. That relationship was by no means destined to be productive. However, in S3, Petra invites other people to the table. She states that she would bow to Anacostia serving as her conscience. Then, she has M build an honest relationship with Wade, keeping Wade in the loop of information. And most importantly, Minerva speaks of how they got over themselves and the power-jockeying games to find common ground, instead of holding onto that military-civilian divide, which Alder could never let go of. Petra's growth over the course of the show is mirrored in her relationship with Abigail. It may well be the case that if she had pulled off the coup in S1, she wouldn't have done any better, still trying to be controlling to the expectations she had for herself and others, the "her high haughtiness" that Willa loathed. By later S2, Petra has become much more sensitive to the personal over the abstract, allowing her to decide that she would fight alongside Nicte, and then let her go on the run. But still. Petra's murder of Colonel Jarret is quite a blurry line from puppeting Wade. Just who gets to decide who is the enemy of the nation, foreign or domestic? It's really easy to interpret Wade's actions in S1 to be what Jarret did in that office. Tying her hands, threatening her power. Having the audacity to ask that there be some accountability to non-witches. If the Camarilla didn't have protections for Silver, should they have just permanently puppeted the man?