A point worth noting. The ’hero’ denounces the heroine for having killed humans when she was fighting in a war. But he is proud of having killed heaps and heaps of demons. That double standard is the point.
The humans probably didn’t start the war. They may not have escalated it. But they have chosen to treat demons as literally inhuman, and therefore get to hate them and have the fun of murder, abuse, you name it, without guilt.
This is the subject. Not a plot twist, but a demonstration of the very human tendency to congratulate ourselves on doing exactly what we condemn in others. People who want vengeance, not impartial justice, are monsters regardless of how they express it. The human / demon divide just helps make it more explicit (as does the fact that the human characters all behave like entitled children, whereas the demons seem rather more adult).
Yeah, dehumanizing bigotry sucks no matter where it's coming from and an endless cycle of retaliatory violence isn't the answer. I don't disagree that that's human nature, either.
BUT. Unless the story so far is lying to us, the hero's kills have been in service of defending against an
invading enemy that is explicitly
genocidal, killing all humans in the territory it takes. Including everyone the hero knew.
Killings done in furtherance of and in defense against genocide are absolutely NOT morally equivalent.
On balance, the hero comes out morally ahead of the demon king's daughter for me, at least so far. He may hate demons, and hate her specifically for the lives she's taken as both personal combatant AND commander, but he's still willing to set that all aside in the name of ending the killings.
The demon king's daughter, on the other hand, has shown no regret for her role in the invasion or any hint at an excuse for (presumably) enthusiastically participating in it. She's shown no indication that she believes human or demon lives have any value. Her only shown motive is an entirely selfish one: She's willing to stop the conflict so that she can marry the hero, whom she loves.
He cares about peace and preserving lives more than he does about revenge.
She cares about pursuing her love more than she does about either peace or war, humans or demons.
She doesn't get a pass just because she's cute and clumsy and getting worked over by a bitch of a princess.
She'll get a pass for reasons yet to be revealed, I'm sure, when her history's explained away and she's revealed not to be a murderous monster or leader of an army that takes no prisoners. Because otherwise she'd be irredeemable.
I know you're getting out in front of the expected twists, but given what we see, let's not "both sides" genocide.
