Wen Qing and the Siege on Cloud Recesses
Apr. 2nd, 2021 12:45 amIn the CQL rather than MDZS timeline, is Wen Qing partly responsible for Cloud Recesses getting sacked or for the considerable success of the siege? She does test the ward defences in the back hill and tell the Wen about the weird three day disappearance of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian in that area, which she correctly guesses might relate to the Yin Iron. Did she tell the Wen where those wards sat, and how to break them? Did she tell them about Cloud Recesses’ security and logistical arrangements in detail, based on her time there as a hosted student, diplomat and openly-acknowledged spy? Because if so, that’s a significantly higher level of coerced complicity with and responsibility for war crimes than fic often affords her.
Admittedly Wen Xu, the more competent Wen brother, was also around with his owl summoning device scoping things out, and he did the actual sacking. And granted, almost everyone in canon is responsible for war crimes to some degree. Even ‘war crimes’ is a term we’d have to define quite specifically, here, in terms of its relation to offensive strikes and actions beyond the shifting, shared framework of morally permissible combat in this culture.
Admittedly Wen Xu, the more competent Wen brother, was also around with his owl summoning device scoping things out, and he did the actual sacking. And granted, almost everyone in canon is responsible for war crimes to some degree. Even ‘war crimes’ is a term we’d have to define quite specifically, here, in terms of its relation to offensive strikes and actions beyond the shifting, shared framework of morally permissible combat in this culture.