someone on twitter claimed his dark side character murdered a certain family. that made me wonder. it is possible to claim murder in all 4 cases - from a legal perspective? In 2/4 cases i can't see how you can do worse then just self defense kills no matter what. in 1/4 i am not sure if there is even an option to be made directly responsible for the death. the last one i haven't seen yet so i can't judge. so not much material for murder - and lets take British laws here as e.g. german concept of murder is insanely hard to fulfill.

so yeah, looks like just a bold claim that cannot be backed up by facts. then again its twitter

but admittedly, it's kind of hard to achieve murder against people that are trying much harder to murder you instead. it must be kind of funny for dark siders... against such opponents one owns evilness is always overshadowed and put to shame in comparison. i mean its hard to look evil at all.

Murder by definition is the premeditated killing of another person. I'd say one could argue that they had been plotting the death of the entire family after waking up. There's definitely premeditation in both the jedi knight and sith warrior to kill Valk. They both without question murdered him. My SW is hunting Arcann and Vaylin and has dreamt of killing Senya since her betrayal. She will murder them all when I finish kotet.

My IA killed them out of duty. She did not murder them all. She would have let Senya live but Senya couldn't be trusted and therefore she made the decision there. My SW lives, breathes, etc thinking about murdering them. She's evil.

Murder by definition is the premeditated killing of another person. I'd say one could argue that they had been plotting the death of the entire family after waking up. There's definitely premeditation in both the jedi knight and sith warrior to kill Valk. They both without question murdered him. My SW is hunting Arcann and Vaylin and has dreamt of killing Senya since her betrayal. She will murder them all when I finish kotet.

 

My IA killed them out of duty. She did not murder them all. She would have let Senya live but Senya couldn't be trusted and therefore she made the decision there. My SW lives, breathes, etc thinking about murdering them. She's evil.

When you're going after an evil monster, such as the Emperor, and kill him, it is not considered murder. Especially when one is sent their by the faction that you belong to.

Arcann is an on the run criminal. Or, an on the run, losing side of a war, enemy. He not only invaded other areas outside his rule, he betrays the outlander right off the bat, who barely survives what was about to be their death.

The Outlander then forms their own government and Arcann is an enemy of that government.

Depends on who's perspective you look at it from; i.e. who's laws. Under Zakuul law

But under Republic/Empire law you're defending the Republic/Empire in wartime.

My questions are, at which point is

considered murdered? It's a universe where Force Ghosts and body possession are documented regular occurrences, after all. Do you consider that one murder or two?

And why am I bothering with spoiler tags at this point?

You only need the legal definition but a good lawyer could get the outlander found not guilty of "murder" but there would definitely be other guilty charges.

The outlander invaded the eternal empire space. They tried/assassinated the emperor/ they destroyed the ruling family/brought chaos and destruction to Zakuul.

If the outlander refuses to bow to the emperor then they absolutely murder him. Its regicide. It's bad. If they bow then they did not murder the emperor. Arcann does. This throws Zakuul into chaos and it's all the Outlander's fault. They are the criminal. If you attack a British ship/probe and they take you to see the Queen and you do as the Outlander...you are only the hero in your story. To the people who were living in prosperity, you're the worst kind of murdering criminal.

The outlander could plead insanity since Valk does push for them to kill Vaylin and Arcann. Only one that can be argued is Senya. However, if you took the option to try to kill her in the shuttle then murder isn't out of the realm of possibility.

oh damn. i completely forgot about the first encounter of our characters with Valk... since, well... he didn't die that much. indeed there is one option where we can indeed claim murder. whether a court would count it as such is another matter. i mean your character can say they acted with malice but even so the judge could still consider it brought about by reasonable provocation.

other then that the final fight (which is juridically very problematic since it wasn't physical) and the confrontation with Valyin the main problem i see here is that in both cases the killing was simply lawful (self defense). so whether there was malice involved or not just doesn't matter i think.

furthermore there is also the problem that at some point the actions of the eternal empire imply a state of war (except for chapter 1). as such the imperial family all become enemy combatants and therefore killing them is anyway fully legal for as long as they don't capitulate thus impossibly a murder.