Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
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.
In fairness to Hinjo, I'm not sure it's entirely his fault that the battle was lost. He is unprepared, but a lot of the blame for this can be laid at Shojo's feet, and some even at Soon's.

Soon creates the Sapphire Guard (SG) to protect the gate. However, when he retires he decides to hand leadership over to Shojo's father (the current Emperor). It's unclear whether or not Shojo's father was a paladin, but by doing this Soon has created a situation where two distinct duties (rule of Azure City and Protection of the Gate) have the potential to come into conflict. Using the glorious prescience granted by hindsight, it might have been better to leave control in the hands of another paladin, and clarify that while the SG may support the Emperor, it's first and foremost duty is always to protect the gate. He apparently saw no such conflict.

Shojo ascends to the throne and eventually discovers that he has to actually work around his oaths to the SG at times in order to rule the city. He begins feigning craziness both to fool the SG and to throw off the nobles (he makes comments as well that indicate that discontent and assassination attempts by the nobles are not unusual). He ends up designating Hinjo as heir apparent but realizes there's going to be issues because he's a paladin.

Spoiled for War and XP Bonus Content
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Bonus content in War and XPs makes it pretty clear that Shojo is intentionally keeping Hinjo in the dark about his own condition because Hinjo lacks the right political mindset, and that Shojo figures it will be another 10 years before Hinjo's had enough optimism knocked out of him to be effectively trained as an emperor. We can take this to mean that Hinjo's not getting much training in the "give and take" necessary for politics. Unfortunately, when Shojo's deceptions are discovered, he's not going to get those 10 years.


As a result Hinjo ascends to the throne, He's a good paladin and his heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, he hasn't been trained in politics. He's unable to come up with reasonable explanations that will convince the nobles to stay and fight, and won't break his oath and tell them about the gate (thus illustrating nicely the problem of consolidating the position of Emperor and leader of the SG). Therefore the nobles refuse to fight, and the remaining soldiers are now much more confused. No one knows for sure what happened in the throne room (remember, 442 shows that rumors indicate some people think Hinjo killed Shojo). As a result, when the battle gets tough many fail their morale checks and flee. (It's also important to note that Hinjo's assumption of the throne to start of the battle appears to only be about 24 hours).

To sum, I think Hinjo probably made reasonable decisions as best he could. Unfortunately his poor political training led to a situation where a (presumably) sizable chunk of his force was going to desert with no way for him to prevent it. (It's also unclear how much formal tactical training he's been given). As a result, he goes into this battle hamstrung before it's even started.

Given this, there's some basis for arguments that Shojo's methods ultimately led to the downfall of Azure City, although it wasn't his intent. If we just had the attacking army and not the change in leadership caused by Miko's actions, it's certainly more likely that Shojo would have been able to come up with explanations that would have kept the nobles fighting. And you wouldn't have had the uncertainty and confusion in the ranks. Likewise, if you just had the change in leadership but no attacking army, Hinjo might have had time to become an effective leader and deal with any crisis caused by his nobles. Unfortunately, Murphy shows up and both happen at the same time. Shojo's methods may have benefited AC for most of his reign, but when they fail they fail spectacularly by causing substantial distrust/concern among common soldiers (who now don't aren't sure what actually happened), discord among the nobles (who appear to always seek their own advantage anyway and are going to want a reason to fight that Hinjo can't provide because of oaths), and allowing everything to hinge on a poorly prepared leader (because you've been lying to him about your own methods all along).