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> While I agree that collective guilt as a general concept tends to be counterintuitive, I’m not sure the Sangheili’s situation parallels any that we can draw from real-world history. We talk about blaming the front-line Elites as opposed to those that were back home on Sangheilios, but as far as we know they were all Covenant.
The other issue I have with the collective blame/punishment thing in this thread is that I don’t think people are applying it correctly, because I don’t think people understand what the Covenant is and how species relates to it. It’s true that all Sangheili, save for the Ussan’s, were Covenant but this is true for all other species too. All Grunts, Jackals, Lekgolo, San-Shyuum, Huragok and Jiralhanea were Covenant. The blame should fall as equally over all of them if collective blame is what one is going for in light of all Sangheili being Covenant.
Species doesn’t matter in the Covenant politically, as far as I can see. What started as an alliance between several species-as-polities became a single nation with species-as-ethnicity. America isn’t an alliance between white people, hispanic people, black people, etc; it’s a country with different ethnicity which are all American. In a similar sense I don’t think it’s correct to view the Covenant as an alliance between species anymore because its all been mixed in and melted together, and politically they are all Covenant. It’s fully integrated. When the Covenant broke up it didn’t break up into its different species, it broke up into several smaller Covenants. Sanghelios is populated by many of the former client species as was seen in the Kilo-5 novels (Even Brutes live there), which technically makes Swords of Sanghelios a multi-species faction. Jul’s Neo-Covenant is obviously multi-species. A character from Halo Escalations (Zef 'Trahl) said that dozens of warlords claim to lead the Covenant now, but in reality only lead a small fraction of it.
So, going back to what I original called out, I don’t understand why one species should carry the blame for the crimes of the Covenant when it was a single nation acting as one. I think people are trying to categorize everything physically and are so fixated upon species meaning something that they aren’t seeing what the Covenant really was.
> Sure, some Elites wondered why humanity wasn’t offered admission to the Covenant, and others felt humans were honorable or worthy foes, but despite some minor sympathies to the best of my understanding we don’t know of any Elites that were truly opposed to the war.
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> All available sources seem to indicate that at that time, the Covenant was a truly monolithic organization and that the vast majority if not all members of its respective species were committed to its goals. For some species, such as the Lekgolo and Kig-Yar, the Covenant was more pragmatic than anything, but from what we have to go on, most Elites were true believers in the Great Journey, regardless of whether that belief was misguided. In that sense, there’s not a lot separating the Elites on the front lines from those back home. Now, groups like the Ussans should get a pass since they were out of contact with the rest of the species and didn’t even know of the war, but as far as I know there aren’t any known anti-war dissidents in Covenant space during the Human-Covenant conflict. Remember, the civil conflicts between the Elites post-Halo 3 were a result of the new knowledge that the Great Journey and the Prophets were false- prior to that though, they all seemed to be on the same page in their fight against humanity.
There’s evidence of anti-war sentiment, but no mention of anti-war movements. Given though the Covenant’s history of putting down movement with mass murder (E.g. The Ussans, the Grunt Rebellion) and it’s track record with removing other rebellions surgically (E.g. Halo 2 Heretics and the Halo Wars Heretics) I don’t think there’s going to have been much fight left in people. The Covenant’s ruling class* were practically unassailable.
343i has been taking a more realistic approach to the Covenant as of late, and it seems as though they’ve actually looked at the Covenant’s aims and goals critically and asked a few questions Bungie never did. It was mentioned in Contact Harvest by the Prophet of Truth that one of the central themes of Covenant faith was that all were free to join and go on the Great Journey. This was ironically enacted for thousands of years through the forced subjugation of everyone they encountered, but nevertheless everyone was included and weren’t shut out based on who they were. So it seems to me that the more zealous you became in the Covenant, the more opposed you should have been to the war with humanity because it was essentially against the spirit of the Covenant that all could go on the Great Journey. At worst it should have caused some major confusion as it introduced a contradiction to their faith - all are included, but the Prophets say to destroy this race anyway.
This was raised in Broken Circle where a senior Prophet (Zo Resken I think?) privately calls out the logical inconsistencies in Truth’s argument for humanity’s extinction. Even the charge that humans were heretics and destroying Forerunner relics was historically irrelevant as far as the Covenant was concerned, as according to Resken all Covenant species were previously accused of heresy and the Hunters were even accused of having destroyed Forerunner relics themselves, but yet all were accepted.
So this idea that there was anti-war sentiment is not only realistic but highly consistent with the lore, but it took a long time to finally result in the Great Schism because these people were poised against a regime that would happily glass a planet of Covenant citizens in order to make a point (Like the Grunt home world). The Covenant was a bit like a miniature Xeno version of the Imperium of Man from 40k, tbh. However the discontent was definitely there simmering beneath the surface and was the reason why Truth started the Schism; he was losing control and trying to preserve his power.
*The people who I think shouldn’t be forgiven. That’s high ranking and privileged San-Shyuum and Sangheili, and anyone else who found themselves in a position of power to influence policy and action, like Jiralhanea Alpha Chieftains. Species shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
