Vigilantism and the Lawful Alignment in OotS

[veti]

Lord Hinjo may WANT to be a good Redcloak, but what he wants and what he'll actually be are not necessarily the same thing. He's only one man, after all.

The way I see it, he's got the time to be a good paladin OR a good king, but not both. If he's going to be a good king, he's going to have to find a general -- O-chul, say -- to run the sapphire guard for him while he runs the city. If he's going to be a good paladin, then he's going to have to appoint a darn good prime minister to run the show while he's off riding his wolf and slaying dragons and what not.

Hmm. Seems to me that the SG doesn't really need a general right now, and what's left of "Azure City" doesn't really need a prime minister so much as a war leader.

That's pretty much how I expect Hinjo to rule, because that's how ANY human running any organization larger than a school classroom rules. There's simply no other way to do it, because humans have finite time and attention spans.

Umm. Not entirely. You're thinking of a modern organisation, which is several orders of magnitude larger and more complex than anything that existed in Azure City even before its conquest. If you look at historical generals of even comparatively modern times - Napoleon's day, say - you'll see the good ones did pay enormous attention to detail. Not that they micromanaged every decision, of course, but they certainly expected their orders to be followed, and any officer who 'dragged their feet' as you describe elsewhere could expect to be given a very uncomfortable time.

That's just my read of his character. I read Lord Hinjo as a hero and a warrior, not a shepherd or an accountant or an administrator. He may make a good king when he's in his 50s or so and has got all the heroing out of his system. But not now.

But 'now' is precisely when Azure City needs a hero for a shepherd. Assuming (best case) the Azurites can regroup, reinvade, and boot Gobbotopia out within the next year, I would still expect there to follow at least 6-8 years of 'emergency' administration (basically, martial law) while the city rebuilds and repopulates. Hinjo just happens to be in charge at a time that gives him a chance to shine - and maybe redeem his catastrophic mishandling of the first Battle for Azure City.