But how come Percy, after all he’s done, has been allowed to stay Neutral Good?
I don’t just mean all the vengeance stuff. Later, when he’s free of corruption, he tells Zahra to build the shrine under the ruins of the old house (the house he gave to Vex as part of being Baroness) and he tells her to take the bodies out of the crypt under the house and just like, toss them anywhere. Because Tylieri was a traitor.
I’ll grant you Tylieri’s body requires no good burial (not that it can be, being ash) but his ancestors? They didn’t do anything wrong. Why are their remains to be scattered?
That’s pretty nasty, even for Percy.
I know alignments aren’t super set in stone, and all the characters make questionable decisions. These are complex characters who can’t entirely be confined to the strict alignment, especially considering how personal a lot of this is and how long the show has been running. But I really question why stealing a broom from a necromancer they were never gonna see again is worthy of an alignment shift, but all the nasty stuff Percy has done and said and thought hasn’t been worthy of an alignment shift. It seems … unfair. To me at least.
(Please note I love Percy, he’s a great character. I just think a lot of the things he’s said and done really test or outright break from the ‘Neutral Good’ alignment, and no character should be above reproach or exempt from analysis.)
I’ve seen you debate this in reblogs, so first of all, the Raven Queen shrine is in the Anders family crypt, and has been put in there before he turned Vex into a baroness over it. The entire thing happens in episode 57. And yes, Vex is technically lady of the former Tylerie house, so don’t ask me how this works. A noble did it.
And I do agree that it seems really disproportionate for only Vex to get an alignment change for stealing a broom, something that was perfectly in line with her previous characterization even.
But when it comes to clearing out the crypt, uhm, well. Not to pull the historically accurate card on a setting with dragons and multiverses, but Anders fucked up pretty badly. Worse than Tylieri who just happened to be an enforcer. Anders was a confidante of the de Rolo family, and considering the fact his family had a crypt in Whitestone to begin with, he probably fucked over generations loyal Anders family members there, and this is just how things tend to work. You betray the rulers you have served this badly, your entire family is expunged. Might seem drastic by today’s standards and even more so depending on cultural background, but I think this holds water.
It’s also been said that alignments can only change after a period of acting against the previous one, and that Vex’s shift was also based on the aggressive haggling back in Vasselheim and other choices (even though it wasn’t her who escalated things with the potion merchant), so this one act, that was still technically motivated by good intentions, wouldn’t be enough to shift Percy anyhow. His actions during the Briarwoods arc should have gotten him shifted, no question, and he probably was – but that was the corruption and/or Orthax’s influence at that point, and he did come around from it on his own in the end, so fine.
And if anything, “I forgive you, but I can’t let you leave” would have put him back into good territory anyhow. So I think his case is debatable, and I also think Taliesin is a seasoned enough D&D player to figure this out for himself and play accordingly. Also, he and Matt probably talked about this constantly, so non-public shifts may or may not have happened anyhow.
So this is how I’d rationalize that. But the kind of weird way alignment changes are handled has been a pet peeve of mine ever since broomgate, really. Scanlan, for example, has I believe been good aligned for the entirety of the series, instead of being chaotic neutral like Grog. Now I agree he should be good aligned now, but uh, there’s been questionable shit in the first 40 episodes or so.
And since I don’t know how far along you are, I’m also just going to say that Vax and especially Keyleth of later episodes reeeaaaally might warrant a change towards neutral at this point. Though Keyleth has been nonchalantly sending woodland creatures to their death since episode 50 or so, sooo…
Overdressed & Underappreciated 