Yes, he would be the one originally responsible, and the most directly responsible, at that. He deliberately sent the meteor crashing down, but that doesn't mean partial responsibility is not also shared by those who could have done something about it, but chose not to.

If Vivec had the power to stop the Red Year, knew the Red Year was coming because of being specifically warned about it, and then talked about how he was going to do nothing to actually prevent, just delay Red Year, that is a willful and deliberate choice he made, and he has to assume moral responsibility for that choice.

Asking Sheogorath to take moral responsibility for his actions is a little... well, insane, being as it's pretty much what you'd expect out of a comedic sociapath like him in the first place. He's basically what The Joker out of Batman would be if made a god (with the added bonus of having kooky, playful Joker being internally at war with the more Alan Moore type of Joker)- trying to reason morality with Sheogorath is pointless.

She warned the Dunmer to leave Morrowind before Red Year struck, but only a handful listened.

This I understand, but it may have been such an enchantment that could not be undone. It may have been out of Azura's realm of influence, and Vivec was only able to delay it, not to undo it entirely. But along this line of thinking, he could have given a warning to his people, had he been able to swallow his pride and admit there was a rock so big that a God cannot move it.

I seem to remember it being that she warned her followers to leave Morrowind. Granted, I have only played the quest once and my natural "check the CS" inclination isn't possible yet.

Not a great plan, but a great web.
Vivec is the anticipation of Mephala.

Crime is relative.
If a man purposely erupted the Volcano in order to gain power, that would be evil and a crime.
When a god lets an event happen I do not think he sees much difference between letting someone step on an ant and letting an Ingenium fail.
Blame is something that mortals assign to celestial events.

In this case the 'blame' lies on Vuhon.

Actually, I believe it is wrong to hold gods to a different standard of morality in this game, especially gods like Tiber Septim and Vivec, which were once mortal.

I haven't read the two books on the subject of Vuhon, unfortunately, although having discussed things on this forum today, I will certainly make an effort to, as this seems to be full of lore I want to catch up on, and am instead relying upon what the online resources will say about the matter.

However, when it comes to the likes of Azura, or Vivec, or Tiber Septim, I think it's actually better to look at their actions through the prism of the eyes of a player in the games of TES. I was lead to http://fallingawkwardly.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/the-metaphysics-of-morrowind-part-2/ from another thread, and it's set me to thinking about this... As players, we are "gods" who can choose the destiny of the mere mortals of the game worlds to our own liking. We are not accountable for our actions, except in the sense that the guards are going to try to kill us if we are completely blatant about our crimes, and even then, a sufficiently powerful player character can lay waste to any guard that tries to stop you. (You might want to use one of those "no essential character" mods first, though.) This is the sort of being the daedra are - you can kill them, but it's just a temporary nuisance to them (as you can respawn from your last save point, and they can respawn from the waters of Oblivion).

To requote this again, this is how I view a proper perspective on the morality of a deity like Azura:


Yes, to a god, mortals are insects and playthings... just as NPCs are the playthings of the player.

So then, are we to say that morality is an entirely alien concept to players? Only to players who play only for the furtherance of their own power.

Some players play specifically to break as many social norms as possible - They join the Dark Brotherhood and revel in inflicting pain and murder on any random target they can find. They giggle at Sheogorath's comedic psychotic fits, and revel in the chance to actually become a Madgod who can perpetuate not just murder but both province-smashing meteor drops and farcical petty pranks, all just for his/her own amusemant.

Then there are the players who actually stop and try to role-play being as moral a person as they possibly can be in a game like this, where it really isn't very easy at all. They will help the people they think are deserving of help. They will join the side of the civil war which they believe is the most morally right, to the best of their understanding in a rather subjective and uncertain limited set of hard facts on the ramifications of either choice. They will try to take the set of quests which results in the most people being as healthy and happy as possible, but anything that jumps out and tries to attack them is almost certainly going to die.

This last one is really the best sort of morality you can expect of a man-god or daedra.

Azura fits this sort of description. She helps those she thinks are worth helping, that will listen to her and accept her help, and she will turn against those who have raised their hand against her.

Tiber Septim played his game to "win" by "conquering everything". Truly, the only "victory" end-game in an open RPG. He used just enough of his overwhelming force to declare himself emperor of the entire continent, and set up a line of emperors out of his descendants, while ascending into full godhood. From there, he protects Nirn from collapse.

Vivec, meanwhile, played his game in a more self-serving manner. He played his game knowing he could save people, but choosing instead to simply enjoy being a god-king and having his race grovel at his feet, with the childish sense of vengeance that would let him obliterate his own "toys" when he was done with them, because if he couldn't play with them, nobody could. He could have chosen to understand them, to empathize with them, to care for some of them the way that Azura or Tiber Septim did, but he chose not to.

The fact that he chooses this is a reflection of his moral compass, and it is something you can legitimately criticize him for, as he truly does enter the discussion of morality from the same point at which we initially enter into the morality with which we conduct ourself when we play the game.

Interesting.

I believe it may be morally wrong to do so anyway, otherwise why worship them?
This is an interesting text. Ill respond to it in bits and pieces as I digest.

The provisional house is the construction set and Vivec knows we know.

That would make him more realised and poignant to every day life than Sam Vimes and thats slightly creepy.
It insinuates we load saves, start from the safe point. It says we stand outside time and oversee events.
And he does so from inside the narrative.
The poet has a Jester hat on.

What you say certainly makes Vivec the more real person.
But isnt that his shtick all along?

Im not sure Tiber ever fully realised what he was doing. He may have been vying for power any way he could think of. Maybe, through accident of malice, he was put into the groove of becoming Talos.

Although it would probably be a bad idea to get too Nietzschian, the morality of deities in TES is more along the lines of the ancient moralities of pre-Platonic philosophical moral thought.

In other words, "Might Makes Right".

You obey the commands of Zeus because if you don't obey his commands, he's going to shove a lightning bolt up your ass. Zeus could freely sleep with any man, woman, child, goat, insect, tree, non-Euclidian horror from beyond the reaches of space and time whether they were willing sixual partners or not, and it didn't matter, he was strong enough to get away with anything, and that was all that mattered.

We forget now that post-Plato, people actually started to question this notion in their gods - the reason we have a bearded God in the Abrahamic religions now is because it was modeled on Jupiter/Zeus. Not the Zeus of smiting any mortal for fun and sleeping around whether the victim of his lust was willing or not, but the later versions of Zeus that reflected a willingness by theologians to question whether or not their god was moral. The very act of questioning changed how their god was perceived.

This is, to tread, perhaps, some dangerous theological grounds, also part of the story of Job. When we look at how God behaves in relation to Job, where he is willing to inflict every horrible suffering imaginable on Job just to see how Job would react, there was never a question in the people who put that story into ink's mind about whether that was a moral thing for God to do. To even ask whether God was moral was an alien concept - God is Good. As in, by definition. Whatever God does is Good, even if it means killing innocents just for fun. If God asks you to kill your only child that you have been praying for years to have born, you don't ask why, you ask how far to plunge in the knife. That is, after all, the entire point of the stories of Job and Abraham - you don't ask questions of God, you just do whatever the heck he says OR ELSE.

This is in total contrast to how humanity saw morality later on, post-Plato, where such a god would be seen as horrific and barbaric. We look at stories like God asking Abraham to kill his child with horror and wonder how to reconcile that with our notion of God being Good, and it causes much consternation.

To realize how this change happened, we have to look at how the philosophical framework upon which we build the notion of morality changed. (Which is, again, sort of where the Nietzschian stuff comes in...)

In the sort of Dawn of Man era, before the construction of cities, morality was something completely alien to how we view it now. There was, in essence, not so much the good and the evil, but the way to survive, and the dead. Humanity had to band together to survive, typically in extended family units. Anything that helped you or your family unit was "good". Anything that would hurt your family unit was "bad".

Charity towards others in your family unit? Good.
Charity towards strangers? Probably bad, unless this could lead to some sort of benefit down the road to your family.
Stealing from your family unit? Very bad.
Stealing from strangers? Good.
If you could use the might of your family unit to dominate and enslave other family units, and use their resources to enjoy the good life with your family unit while their family units either starved or were already dead? Very, very good!

It's only when we stop living in tribes, and start living in cities which must engage in trade and commerce with one another and have the beginnings of the notions of philosophy that we start to get notions of what "morality" as we see it starting to form. In a city, you cannot just think of your own personal clan's wellbeing, you have to start thinking of ways in which the same rules can be applied equally to all people within a cosmopolitan setting where both those with powerful family units and those without family in the area because they are merchants from a foreign land can actually meet with one another and expect not to be robbed blind.

This, then, is when we start to see the notion where we have to ask if gods are justified in doing something other than through the justification that they have the power to get away with it.

Daedra, however, really don't have this apply to them.

The whole Dunmer way seems to be rooted in this early form of society's way of thinking, only partially recognizing that rights and morality exist beyond the family alone. Necromancy on dunmer? EVIL! Necromancy on humans or argonians? Meh, they're not mer, so they're no better than beasts. Using a human's soul in an experiment is no different than killing a chicken for its meat. An argonian slave is no different from an ox being put to the yoke. They aren't family, so they have no rights.

Vivec is just god of this line of thought. He can do whatever he wants because he is a god, and he will be worshiped because he's got a meteor hanging over the heads of everyone else.

If you are dunmer, you worship him or it's kaboom time. That's the only justification needed.

Like I said, he left that meteor there on purpose because he quite deliberately wanted his people to die the instant he could no longer play with them as toys, because if he couldn't play with his toys, then nobody could.

Why must EVERY thread end in a discussion about Vivec !?

Because he's probably the only complex character in the entire series.

*SIGH*

By heritage I have some understanding of judaic interpretation, though I may be rusty, forgive me.

As far as I understood it the trial of Job was as much a trial of God as it was of Man.
It was a bonding in our relationship, a trial of proof.

It is clearer with Abraham.
When he obeyed his god he did so as much to test this god as he did to test himself, and as god did to test him.
It was a crucial step in the 'man becoming (closer to) god' process.
The man had a dilemma, and his choice, his faith, was to obey.
And with that sacrifice, of Abraham, his morals, his soul, his son, with the willingness to obey, the relationship was cemented and changed.
If his god would accept this willingly given sacrifice without halt, what god of his people would He be worth?
And if Abraham was not willing to give it all what does faith really mean?

It is a matrimony, a bond, but not one of love, not yet. Like the Russians and the Americans in the 80's. Testing.

(If you want to draw parallels between Romanic and Judea-Cristian do not leave out Mithras)

I have read, Kings, I believe it is, the text you refer to, and it is indeed a nice style of the triumph of barbarism. ( Not as a derogatory term but as a way of organising a society as opposed to civil or tribal.)
But that was the past, and before we understood, and were understood.

And I do not believe Dunmer society is inherently tribal or barbaric. Ritualised, xenophobic, singular, but what else is new in the land of the rising sun?
Real world social vectors make plausible how over time a society could distill to such values.

The picture painted here of Vivec is of a tribal god, a god who takes power because he can and revels in it.
And while that may be true, it is not Vivec
Because at the very same time he is enforcing love.

"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled.."

Vivec realises that the love that ensures the 'yes' must mean you cannot only sit idly by.
He said one day his reign would be seen as the greatest act of love imaginable.

Kinda sad ain't it, especially when there are so many other characters begging to have their voice heard. Seht probably could have easily took the stage if they'd let him speak.

Sorry to go back this far, but there are a few points out in these last few posts that I wanted to respond too.



Azura is the one that changed the Chimer into Dunmer... This is said multiple times and never really questioned. So she did curse an entire race for the actions of 3 (or 4) people. I always took the words "this is your own doing" as in you betrayed me, you deserve to be punished. There is something to be said for such punishments against a couple of people, but an entire group of people?

And not a terrible curse? Their entire bodies changed, could you imagine just walking down the street one day and all of sudden everybody has green skin? It would be a terrible thing, sure you can imagine worse things but that doesn't make it irrelevant all of a sudden.

As for the warning, that's exactly my point. Azura is no more a good God then Vivec was. She doesn't care about the Dunmer, she "cares", for a lack of a better word, for the people that serve and worship her. Nothing else.



The end justifies the means is an incredibly dangerous argument to get into... If that is the case, and if we assume that the end does justify the means then perhaps in the future it will turn out Vivec did the right thing with letting the moon fall. I'm still not entirely convinced he actually did though. Regardless, the destruction of any large group of people for whatever reason outside of a provoked war seems rather wrong to begin with, even for a God.



Too easy, Sheogorath may have started the events. But more people could have prevented it, or stopped it from becoming as bad as it became. All of them are at least in some part to blame for everything that happened because of the Red Year...



I don't agree, in a world with as many Gods as in TES. It is only logical to hold all Golds to some kind of moral responsibility. Why worship if they would rather kill you? Why not worship somebody else that can protect you and not kill you? Holding people responsible for their actions, even if they are Gods, is what makes us question and change.



Vivec likely had the ability to do something about it, if he knew about it at least. Unless he was killed or did not know anything about it. Never the less at the very least Azura had the ability to warn more, possibly Vivec did as well. That they didn't



I don't see why? Why can't we hold Gods to the same manner of morale justice that we can the rest of the world? Simply because they are Gods? Might makes right? Might doesn't make right, might gives the possiblity to a person or a God to do what they want, however that doesn't mean we can't hold them accountable on a moral level. We can't punish, or destroy or hurt them in anyway for the actions they take. That doesn't make it so that we just have to forgive whatever they do, simply because they have the power to do so.

If they know what they are doing, then they can be held responsible for it. Whether or not holding them responsible comes with any real justice dealt to them is irrelevant in this matter. At least to me.

We, as players, can not summon Azura down to earth and banish her back to Oblivion in the most horrible way imaginable. We can however choose not to worship her anymore.

By the same logic, we can not just go on killing sprees in any TES game without at least some consequences, mostly guards hunting us down but there are consequences. If in Morrowind I would walk into Balmora and kill the entire population then guards all around Vvardenfell would hunt me down if they saw me. It didn't matter that I was the only one that could save their lives, they wanted to hold me accountable. I couldn't even walk into Vivec city wearing Ordinator armor as the Nerevarine, that was a crime. Now part of this is of course game mechanics, but it does show that justice at least for some part matters. You can't get away with a crime simply because you are destined for something greater.



The question then becomes, did Vivec think that because it's true or did he think that because it's true in his mind. Does he wish the Dunmer to see everything he did as the greatest act imaginable because he didn't want to be seen as some cheap Sob who took power when he wanted it, because he wanted it?

Did he let the moon fall on purpose, and did he not warn them on purpose because he believes it will teach the Dunmer something and it will help them, or did he simply fail, or did he like Wraith_Magnus suggested do it because he didn't want anybody else to play with his toys?

An alternative is that he had no ability to prevent it and/or no knowledge of the events?

What we do know however is that Azura had the ability to warn the people but refused to do so on a large scale. Vivec had the ability to move the moon away, years and years earlier but refused to do so and he took a great risk at that. A risk he would know existed, we also know that Sheogorath launched the moon in the first place.

For those acts alone I would hold all three responsible. Gods or not, might does not make right.

Above post spoilered for length.

Unfortunately, Might DOES make Right because there is nothing you can do about it. Just like when you would attack Sheogorath in his throne room. BAM, you're in the sky falling to your death, doesn't matter who you are, you're going to die.

First time posting here, but I'd like to point out that the nature of Vivec's existence is such that egotism is the same as selflessness, because I ARE ALL WE.

In addition, the bit of the Lessons quoted in the prior is hardly the first time love is mentioned in the sermons. We see Vivec using the Power of Love to foil the dwemer, for example. Love is a recurring theme in the Sermons, and Vivec is usually presented as it's champion- or at least the one who has the most Mastery of it. Vivec says his powers come from love- he stole from the heart out of love for himself, and by achieving CHIM loved the dunmer as he loved himself because they are himself. Lie rock was a reminder to the dunmer that love was important. Loving vehk was loving themselves was loving each other, and when they lost that love, the ministry fell.

That just means being able to get away with something makes it morally right to do so... I'm sorry but I refuse to accept that. I may not be able to hold the gods in this game accountable for what they do, or do not do. But I have no reason to not blame them for it.

I tried to make a distinction between these two things, but it seems to have been overlooked:

I said that *we* are capable of judging the morality of the gods, using our own moral philosophy for doing so, and that we actually have a very good vantage point for doing so. That is the advantage of being the player-god of the games, and of having the history of theological and moral philosophy upon which we gain the perspective to make such judgments where we can even judge God. Of course, the gods may not particularly care for your morality, Sheogorath would probably just flip you the bird and stomp on some puppies in response.

When I said that you could judge the gods as immoral, however, someone asked "then why worship them?"

This is why I went into the fact that dunmer morality is not our own. To dunmer morality the claim that "might makes right" is one that they don't have particular trouble with. How else do they justify their slave trade of the "inferior races"? Because they felt kinship only to those they felt were "their kind".

Why did Azura only protect those she felt were worth saving? Because, like the dunmer, she was only going to protect "her kind", the people who she felt were her loyal followers. The rest of them, again, can go get smashed by the meteor the god they chose left in the sky to smash them. Because they did not choose her, she didn't feel they were her people, and as such, they could be left to the fate that Vivec chose for them. Vivec, meanwhile, decided that his "ultimate love" would have to involve the suffering of massive numbers of the dunmer people.

The dunmer worship their gods not because they thought they were moral gods (they certainly weren't), but because to them, their might made them right.

To understand why the dunmer did what they did, why the gods did what they did, you have to be able to understand their philosophical baseline. That does not mean we cannot judge, but we have to understand our basis of judgment and theirs can be wildly different.

========

EDIT:
Sorry, Fishy87, I'm going to respond to the rest of your writing a little later... I'm writing in too many extremely involved posts at the moment, and I really can't sit and do this sort of thing for more than a couple hours at a time, anyway.

(Man, I've only actually PLAYED Skyrim for a dozen or so hours, at that... I need to actually play this game some.)

Actually, the problem with this is, "When was this interpretation devised?"

Again, my point is that people have had to re-interpret the Old Testament to square them to the changing views of morality humans had.

In a time when we did not question God's morality because we believed that he was right simply because he was God, we wouldn't even need to have such interpretations to justify God's behavior, and that is why they weren't in the original texts. They had to be added later to satisfy the people who were uncomfortable with God's apparent immorality later, when people were willing to question God.

The central moral in that story from the beginning was not what it said about God, but what it said about Abraham - and that Abraham was Good (for the definition of good that existed then) because he would willingly obey God, even when the act God asked him to do was both apparently self-destructive and even evil by modern standards.



This is, again, where I come back to the Nietzschian notion of the evolution of morality over the course of civilization.

In the time before we had what Nietzsche called the "Slave's Morality" that was so blatantly championed by Jesus, our idea of moral treatment of "strangers" was not "charity", but "hospitality".

In the rules of hospitality, you treated strangers as honored guests, especially if they were from nearby tribes or towns, because that was how you maintained good relations with your neighbors. You expected the same in return. In fact, the overly cordial and elaborate nature of their hospitality existed for the specific purpose that they feared any insult of even the slightest kind would be pretext for war. Therefore, every movement was ritualized.

In the rules of charity, however, you gave of yourself to others who were in need because it was the right thing to do. You did not expect anything in return. Not from them, at least. Your reward was a closer understanding of God, and the succor of the self-justification that you have behaved morally.

The notion of hospitality, and how it is no longer understood the same way can be most clearly seen through the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In it, Lot had guests come to stay under his hospitality, and Lot extended him hospitality. Many of the people of the town, however, did not. They refused to abide by the rules of hospitality, and were known for not abiding by the rules of hospitality, and as such, treated the guests as strangers with no rights, to be used as the people of the town saw fit. Later reinterpretations, which did not have the benefit of understanding the focus this had upon the notion of hospitality unfortunately focused exclusively on the sixual aspect of the mob. It was Lot's action, the action that "proved him moral", that again, is the focus of the story, and what separates him, as a "moral" man for having hospitality, from the immoral crowd, which had no hospitality. Lot offered up his own daughters to have some... unpleasant relations with the people, so that his guests would be spared, and given the hospitality that he was honor-bound to provide. This was the moral of the story, the dividing line between Lot and the mob - Lot had hospitality, and was willing to go to extreme lengths to abide by it, and the mob did not. So God killed everyone but Lot and his family, because not having hospitality is an invitation for retribution, in this case, divine retribution, but more generally, military retribution from your neighbors.

It's worth noting that God, in this case, like Azura, adopted a "guilty unless proven innocent" policy - God only saved the couple of people he knew were "his people". The other people of the city who weren't participating in the mob? The children of Sodom and Gomorrah who were presumably innocent of the crimes their parents committed? They weren't God's people, so God killed them. He killed the whole of the city (except for his handful of favorites) because of the actions of a few. He even killed Lot's wife for disobeying his "don't look back" policy (of course, that has alternate metaphoric interpretations of its own). There is a parallel to Azura's actions, where she chose only to save the people she thought were her loyal followers.

(Since I am talking about the morality of the Old Testament so much, I should point out that the Jewish people have changed their moral outlook as much as the Christians have over the same period of time. One of the reasons for Nietzsche's general bad name in history was that his writings on the differences between the Old Testament and New could be interpreted as a slam against the Jewish people, and deliberately was misinterpreted as such. Of course, it didn't help that his sister was a Nazi and she edited his books to be used as part of Nazi propaganda. Or that he was an atheist.)

once again this discussion comes to close but no cigar (im horrible with english terms i hope i used thast right)

your trying to tribute "morality" on a god this concept is wrong not simply because off the "strength" of said god because he/she it can smite you at any time, no its simply because your talking about a GOD

now before we go into the morality from a Dunmer POV which you must view it from if you are to understand it lets simply look at it like this

if i could see the future and yet did nothing to provent a car accident even though i could does that mean im responsible for said car accident?
if you answered yes why? maybe i had a good reason to let it happen, who are you to question me can you see the future? do understand the world from my perspective? how could you?, you cant see the future and why should i try even explain myself to you?

likewise try telling a god that he has to stop a moon crashing into a city simply because he can, he is a god your merely a mortal that would be like a private telling a general not to send X amount of his men into battle knowing most if not all will die the private doesnt have all the information the general does for all the private knows their death's might end up winning the war, should the general sit around and explain it?

its that simple your talking about a being that views the entire world from a perspective that we can only glimpse at and yet we want to put are morality on to said being?

now factor in the Dunmer perspective that some asked how the Dunmer could revere something like Mephala, but they arent looking at from the prespective of the Dunmer.

To the Dunmer Boethiah was the voice it was he who gave them the ideas of what to become Mephala provdided the means in other words Boethiah says look you'll be attacked by your enemies simply for sharing my ideals you must defend yourself

Mephala taught them HOW to defend themselves he's good guy (to the dunmer) why would he help a Dunmer if he wasnt a good guy?

as such the dunmer admire and emmulate him (and why wouldnt you he helped found your race) its from this sort of perspective that you get vivec

where boethiath a guy who has people fight to the death for his love, where the "devil" is a pissant who's sole job is to weed out the Weaklings unable to pass the testing do you really expect some pious do gooder to become their living god? and is right to impose a set of standards on Vivec when not even regular Dunmer would understand them?

after all Vivec may have been a living god but he was still a Dunmer. you dont really expect him to act as anything other then a Dunmer do you?

OK, came back to this thread after having a bit of a break actually playing the game for a bit to clear my head of the stress of trying to argue all these esoteric arguments.

Actually, I think I actually appropriately responded to most of what you were talking about in my last post - You can and should morally judge a god on your own. With that said, that doesn't mean that the in-game people of Nirn will not judge gods on their own terms, as well.

Keep in mind that while certainly, some people do worship Azura, thinking her worth worship, there are also cults to daedra like Molag Bal or Clavicus Vile, which are not merely morally ambiguous or occasionally vengeful the way that Azura is, but outright malignant to absolutely everyone they meet. Who the **** would want to worship the "King of..." well, non-consensual intercourse, there's a censorship ban that affects even mentioning his title on these forums.

Anyway, to get onto this:



Actually, yes, we can go on killing sprees without much consequence. Especially if we turn off essential status. We can depopulate most of the world if we want to, then.

All you need to do is something like pin it all on the Gray Fox or wolf out before doing what we are about to do.

Plus, I'm pretty sure that no matter how terrible your crimes are, all crimes are punished with a jail sentence, so murdering every named individual in the game (provided you somehow bypass essential status) would let you "serve your time" by simply sitting in a jail cell for some odd number of game-years that nevertheless pass almost instantly for the player. That's hardly punishment at all, really.

Likewise, I'm saying that when you judge the morality of Azura, don't judge her in terms of Jesus Christ, judge her in terms of a human being who simply has power. What if, instead of being a "god", she was, instead, a queen. She was a queen who was deposed by her people, and then, when bad things were about to happen to her former subjects, she helped only the ones she felt were her supporters.

Yes, that's perhaps not the most admirable thing, but it is something human and understandable, and it doesn't make her a completely irredeemable person, at that.