#one psychic space wizard needs 4x villages of 150 people supporting them in lazer swording evil wizards to death????

[other-peoples-coats]

I think. Mandalorian view on war crimes tends to vary wildly? I would say uhhh backstabbing tends to be bad, but then I remember the whole ‘combat determined ruler’ thing and challenges have to start somehow. Most of sw tends to have a different idea of war crimes anyway but if you think Mandalore follows the Yavin Code then you’ve got all of one rule, which I’m p sure is you can’t execute people without offering a blindfold, and the YC doesn’t even seem to be treated very seriously by most people? It’s mentioned like once? If there had to be a hard answer I’d say the Star Wars universe generally doesn’t hold war crimes to the same weight we do/have such varying ideas it doesn’t come up much? The Jedi probably have something bc of like sai tok being “frowned upon” (what wookipedia says) but that appears to stem from “what would the sith do” and then noping the fuck out of that, which. If you say is the entire galactic basis of a war crime stuff probably gets very awkward bc A.) Mandalore you know. Worked with those guys. B.) a chunk of current republic space used to be ruled by those guys and C.) at one point, has spent 20 years under those guys in what we know was an information suppressing regime

Oh also if we’re going off the 8 year old thing v the demagolka thing, I could see a mandalorian viewpoint that one scenario is like.,, rightful training/revenge, whereas a demagolka would be doing stuff against the will of the child? Like good parenting could be “take the kid out to fight where they’re surrounded by fam/friends, but not where we’re going to be clearly outnumbered” + To us helping an 8 year old kill people is obviously bad and they can’t really understand quite what they’re doing, but mandalorians probably have a very different view on death and Learning to Murder n stuff. In that vein I also think the mandalorian version of protecting a child is probably, at some level, teaching them stuff like shooting anyway

Yeah! I mean, I think you're kinda bang on, anon; starwars likely doesn't have a set definition of war crimes, at least on a 'We All Agree [x] is Too Far' level; any given group likely does have lines, but I'd assume those very much vary widely. Even the idea of war crimes as we think of it is pretty recent, though there's been some sort of 'you can do [This] in war but [Not That]' from various cultures since ~2000 bc (code of hammurabi, which is where we get 'an eye for an eye' from! that shit is very old); a lot of those older laws are very practical, for a level of practical that includes 'you have to offer the option to surrender (and become your slaves) First, then you can slaughter the shit out of people' and 'Don't go scorched earth (because You could own that once you win)'. A level of morality, in that those things are bad, but also, a very practical level of 'war is expensive, don't fuck up your ability to profit or hold what you take'.

I suspect in star wars there's some things that are horrifying, but mostly a 'oh my god' rather than a 'you can't do that'; there's certainly enough 'and Then We Blew Up A Planet' to show that, while that might be logistically difficult to pull off and existentially horrifying and thus basically only something Evil Shitheads do, it's not actually something star wars has, like, got laws (or even widespread agreement) about; I assume if there was laws at least someone might have, uh, mentioned it, like literally ever. Concord dawn is half a damn planet, surely it would have come up (we don't talk about alderaan; genocidal empires don't usually give a shit about war crimes).

Interesting about the yarvin code; as far as I know, firing squads in real life often use blindfolds for the benefit of the firing squad members, rather than the person being executed. (also like varying ideas of honor/respect/etc; that gets pretty complicated quick and I'm a star wars blog, not a history/anthropology blog). I guess given star wars is much closer to a medieval level of legal vibe, that's probably actually a groundbreaking civil rights law; were it not for the whole 'children's media etc' we'd probably be seeing a lot of breaking on the wheel or other super horrifying Ye Olde Execution Methods.

I assume the Jedi have very much a list of 'these are Unacceptable Tactics', and likely even more pre-rusaan reformation (army of light! god I wonder what chivalry looks like when your knights are space wizards; take the 'local attack tank' of a knight/lord and turn it up to 11), but that's less 'war crimes' and more 'organizational/cultural norms and morality'.

God, thinking about the whole 'used to be a full out sith empire' thing just drives me bananas; the logistics and legal issues in the star wars universe have to be fucking insane.

And yeah, hard agree on the mandos seeing it as a 'this is Good Parenting' vs, y'know, us being like 'uuuuuuuuuuh'. I tend to assume, tbh, that star wars as a whole leans very much on the 'children are Little Adults' concept that, again, you see in very much medieval (and up to the victorian era) times. so you have 14 yr old queens and 8 yr old bounty hunters and 10 year old generals, etc.

Which tracks with the 'doing stuff against the will of the child'; a kid can learn Life Skills (like murder), but experimenting on anyone without their consent is Bad.