Talk:Dettlaff van der Eretein/@comment-91.67.95.240-20160727084255/@comment-193.39.5.10-20190320113824

@Faul and fair a day:

"Don’t you think it’s too simplified ‘alive=good, dead=bad’?" No, I don't. Self preservation is a basic part of any creature's thinking and sapient beings can understand that other creatures feel the same. References to holy wars and the like do not apply here, as the citizens of Beauclair had done nothing to harm or offend Dettlaff, he killed them for no reason than his own anger.

I still don't accept the idea that he can only comprehend human life as having value if he knows them and likes them. If he can care about them then he can understand that human life has value. If he really thinks that only humans he knows would care if they died then he's not alien in his thinking, he's just an idiot. If he only cares about the life of humans he likes then he's not alien in his thinking, he's just a terrible person.

Also worth noting is that it's not even limited to humans. While the vampires are getting the best of it in the attack on Beauclair between the knights, city guard and Geralt a fair few of them die as well. Dettlaff shows no more remorse for them than he does for the humans. And those would be part of his "pack" to use your term. This suggests very much that he's just caught up in his own temper tantrum and only cares for his own hurt feelings, screw the effects on anyone else. Hence immature rather than alien.

Dun Tynne is not a fair comparison but does actually help me make my point. The men there were armed and enemies of Dettlaff, Regis and, for that matter, Geralt. Granted the situation was more complicated then that but they didn't know that at the time. Now of course they stood no chance at all but they were people Dettlaff had legitimate conflict with. The citizens of Beauclair are another story. They did nothing to him and are not standing in his way. He's just murdering hundreds of them in a childish tantrum because he's not getting what he wants.

You may be misunderstanding what most law codes say with regards to mental illness (and indeed underage criminals). Such people are still responsible for their actions, they just receive different punishments. An insanity plea is pleading guilty with extenuating circumstances. The same goes for Dettlaff. Even him being non-human doesn't excuse him; in British law (the one I'm most familiar with, being British) the law applies to any "thinking being" (meaning sapient in this context), not to "humans." So yes, Britain is ready for aliens commiting crime! Given the number of sapient species in the Witcher world I'd be very surprised if they don't have a similar setup. And if Detlaff doesn't want to have human laws apply to him he shouldn't interact with, live in the cities of, sleep with and murder humans.

As to his motives while as I've noted I don't accept that he doesn't understand what he's doing. But even if I did I wouldn't care all that much. Nor, I would imagine, would the orphans, widows, widowers and bereaved parents of Beauclair. He came into a human nation and started murdering their loved ones. He is guilty, he should be punished. His motive is broadly academic at that point.

Sidenote: sorry for not having a proper username to respond to, I'm doing this during quiet moments at work.