#honestly i think i've just realized that historia's character triggers my ocd about self-sacrifice and altruism a little

[humanitysought]

thinking about exploring historia as a villain + her motivations for staying silent about eren's plan some more. as always. under the cut for potentially triggering content, discussions of genocide, etc

i honestly think a big part of her motivation for everything was a desire to not sacrifice her children to a life of being used/sacrificed, and seeing themselves as worthless, having no right to live for themselves. which is an understandable thing to want to prevent, but she literally let millions/billions of innocents die for it... so nonetheless incredibly selfish and horrific. if it was just her being sacrificed, i think she might've hesitated more, but sacrificing her children was too much for her.

but i think another part was that she believed that even if the 50 year plan worked, and the paradisians were safe, the hatred for them would never actually go away. of course, she's not stupid - she knows that wiping out everyone outside of paradis isn't going to end hatred, either. but in her mind, regarding any new hatred that rose between those who were for and against the massacre, for instance - at least the yaegerists (including herself, even if she doesn't fully share their beliefs/values) would actually deserve that hatred. (that's how she sees it, at least.)

it's all just very twisted. her only redeeming feature is really that she knew her actions were selfish and never tried to excuse them - but in some ways, that just makes it worse. she tries to do her best to "atone" through the rest of her life, attempting to bring peace and help the survivors of the genocide that she helped enable, but she's very aware it'll never be enough.

i'm undecided on whether she ever fully comes to regret her actions, as in "would make a different decision if she was capable of going back to the past" type regret specifically. i want to explore themes of like... the conflict between her beliefs that people have the right to live for themselves and fight for their own happiness, but also that they don't have the right to do what she did and sacrifice others for it. similarly, themes of "what should you do if you know you've committed an inexcusable sin? do you just die? try and make things better? what about if you'd do the same thing again, given the chance?" are all things i'm interested in. i'd like to think that, at the very least, she comes to be someone who is stauchly against justifying eren's (and arguably her own) massacre or villanizing the victims of his actions. of course, that arguably makes her the worst type of hypocrite, but. she wants other people to be better than her.