[Sol Falling]

Heh. 'k, speaking on the Roy/revenge thing, it's actually kinda weird for me. I remember I was pretty contemptuous of how that chapter turned out back when I first read it, and felt a similar incredulity over the overdramatized 'wrongness' of Roy killing Envy and the manga's moral preachiness about revenge. I wasn't actually expecting to like this episode, but somehow, maybe because I knew it was coming, I didn't really mind it this time. The conflict between Roy's destructive emotions and Ed, Riza, and Scar all rallying to hold him back still isn't one of the high points to me of this series, but at least I think I've accepted that these are the author's intentions and that they are significant to the story.

Gooral, here is my understanding of what's 'bad' about Roy killing envy. You're right, I think the civilians he killed in Ishval were a thousand times a more monstrous crime than him killing Envy would have been. However, the difference here would have been: in Ishval, killing civilians filled Roy with revulsion and self-loathing. With Envy, Roy would only have felt satisfaction--even if only satisfaction for killing a mass murderer who threatened the fate of his country, it would be the same satisfaction that Kimblee described back in the Ishval arc about one's superiority over another. And the point is, it's not that Roy would change immediately after. Not at all. I don't buy at all the moralizing tripe about becoming 'no better than Wrath or Envy', who, despite it all, I nevertheless managed to find sympathy for at the end as a viewer. The danger lies in if Roy ever loses anything else--Riza, or any other of the prized subordinates Roy obviously put a lot of his heart in. At those times, consumed by grief, Roy would be liable to lured by the satisfaction of revenge again. As someone blindly pursuing that, there would be no way for him to properly lead a country--nor would he deserve to, if only because, at the very least, his heart wouldn't be in it.

Er, I think in the above I've over-sentimentalized a number of things. A more precise counter-argument follows:

Roy's revenge might be over the moment he finishes Envy. However, you won't disagree that Roy is unfit to be a leader while he is satisfying his thirst for vengeance against er, 'her', right? To take it a step further--this whole time, while Roy was chasing after Hughes' murderer, a part of him inside had festered that cared only about that vengeance, the fate of the country be damned (per his suicidal determination this episode), right?

As someone who aims to be a leader, and as someone for whom many things are precious, Roy might well lose another 'Hughes' sometime in the future. If, as he did now, he went on a murderous rampage, or were preoccupied by chasing after and finding the murderer(s?), what would happen to the leadership of the country? What if his enemies, seeing that, targeted his valued subordinates directly? That is the "country lead by a blahblahblah" (I forget, someone quote it for me) that Scar was talking about.

I think having all of Ed, Riza, and Scar show up, and Roy going all 'Graaah!' and being willing to kill himself, was a tad overdramatic. But presuming we're attached to idea of Roy as a leader and visionary, I think this chapter/episode is decent enough in its conclusions. It makes sense. It's not about revenge being wrong as a person, it's about revenge being wrong for someone aiming to rule for the sake of others.