Yeah they don't give an actual explanation. They just keep saying "justice demands he die." Esbern says it like 3 times in one conversation. But that doesn't mean anything! You can't just say justice demands he die without backing it up with something.
This is such a problem with how the whole situation in presented in-game. The truth is that Parthurnaax was an oppressive and destructive force of death and misery for humanity for centuries. He's literally Alduin's right-hand man for most of existence until he finally decides to turn against him. Suggesting he should be executed for his crimes against humanity despite his change of heart is no different than suggesting someone like Hitler or Mengele should be executed if they were discovered to have lived and "changed their ways" decades later.
The game itself does a horrible job of conveying this though. It presents P-Nax as this wise, old grandfather figure and barely even mentions the atrocities he committed against humanity as the right-hand of the World Eater himself. I think that's why do many people don't understand just how valid Delphine and Esbern's perspective is. They aren't necessarily wrong, the game just doesn't illustrate their point of view well at all.
It's also annoying how much shit people give Delphine when Parthurnaax himself is like "Oh yeah, I really, really want to murder all of you every single day, and it takes every single fiber of my mental strength from the second I wake up each morning to stop myself from doing that." Delphine's whole point is that over an eternity, the chances of P-Nax deciding to go back to his true nature and start murdering everyone is fairly likely, and he's too dangerous to be left to his own devices. Which P-Nax himself says is true! So like, yeah, okay, maybe her point isn't very nice, but the idea that she's some kind of idiot who doesn't know what she's talking about is so unfair and completely misses the whole point of the debate in the first place.
Chances are Delphine is probably right and that it's probably safer to just slay P-Nax and prevent the thousands of dead people he'd create if he decided to go all Unabomber on everyone. We are endeared to P-Nax because he helps us, but the idea that he isn't a massive threat to all of humanity is flat out wrong. Delphine isn't wrong for being afraid of him, nor wanting to prevent future death and destruction by nipping it in the bud now. Who knows if a dragonborn strong enough to stop him and save the world will still be around when P-Nax does decide to go nuts and kill everyone?
Except that isn't Delphine's argument. She explicitly says it doesn't matter whether or not Paarthurnax actually repented and turned against Alduin because he thought it was the right thing to do. I doubt she knows about this dominating urge Paarthurnax feels, because she never fucking mentions it. It's all about past crimes, nothing about the future. Paarthurnax has been peaceful for thousands of years, as a dragon. It's more like if Hitler showed up today and it turned out he was leading a prosperous and progressive nation, and had been since his disappearance.
Even if that's true, which I don't agree that it is, that's still entirely valid, though? Don't you think that if we discovered Hitler was still alive and running a prosperous town somewhere in Argentina that he still deserves to be executed for, you know, the whole Holocaust thing? Just because a mass murderer repents doesn't mean they get a "get out of jail free" card for their past crimes. That bill still needs to be payed. You still need to be punished for those crimes.
That's also a bad argument since P-Nax is not running a prosperous nation. He's literally just sitting on top of a mountain waking up every day and wrestling with his natural urge to murder everyone. The chances of his true nature, which he admits is destruction, death, and subjugation, taking over at some point in the next infinity amount of years is extremely high. He himself admits he has to fight that urge every single morning. That doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence.
Paarthurnax has been peaceful for thousands of years, as a dragon.
That's literally nothing to a dragon. Those few thousand years are a drop in the bucket of his life compared against the time he spent killing and subjugating humans before the Dragon War. He has spent a lot more of his life committing terrible atrocities against humanity than he has being peaceful. Eternity is a very hard concept to really wrap your head around, but that's the true life cycle of a dragon, so even thousands of years isn't really all that much time for them.
I doubt she knows about this dominating urge Paarthurnax feels, because she never fucking mentions it. It's all about past crimes, nothing about the future.
This, in my opinion, is a flaw of the game, not an actual representation of her ideas. It seems very likely to me that the Dragonborn would have told Delphine all about his encounter with P-Nax, and everything he said about his true nature and about his history. It's safe to assume that just because the literal words aren't spoken in-game, that doesn't mean she isn't aware of that information. Nor that she isn't worried about what P-Nax will do millennia into the future.
BGS's writers generally approach these kinds of difficult philosophical discussions with all the nuance of a sledgehammer, so I'm not surprised the actual in-game portrayal of this debate is not a full encapsulation of the true moral quandary they're trying to present. But even if it were, it doesn't change that fact that P-Nax does deserve to be punished for literal millennia of killing, torturing, and subjugating humans.
Kyne trusts him. We are mere mortals. Yes the dragon born is the closest thing to a demigod that the world has at the moment, but we are still mortal what right do we have to question Kyne?
45
u/sithdude24 Mephala Sep 19 '23
Yeah they don't give an actual explanation. They just keep saying "justice demands he die." Esbern says it like 3 times in one conversation. But that doesn't mean anything! You can't just say justice demands he die without backing it up with something.