@s3yang @Hoofan_1
We could also talk about "are any aristocrats
really innocent?" but there'd obvs be literal children and babies who wouldn't have had the time to do anything shitty yet, so that argument's pretty null from the start
But in the last chapter, the archduke is like "well, technically I'm royalty so the law states the entire family should be killed, but since I'm a branch member we can negotiate the severity down." Like, he literally says "we might feel guilty if even the innocent ones get killed", and even though Ebony immediately thinks "lol what a liar," she follows up with the direct quote of "though you are actually worried the innocent people will get mired in it."
If the archduke just handed Sedell off to the guards and then washed his hands of the whole thing, then the whole Sedell family would've been killed. But instead, he kept meddling to achieve the dual goals of a) getting Sedell to confess and b) not killing an entire family that might have innocents in it
*slams door open* OH SORRY LET ME JUST ADD: I don't think you're wrong about the archduke being a morally gray character, though. He's definitely not a Good And Righteous Hero, I just think that you're underestimating his level of ruth. I think he's a fairly ruthful man, who nonetheless acknowledges that when awful people in power are dragged down, they sometimes drag down some innocents with them