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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31510
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31510
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

People will forgive a war crime if the character committing it is NOT motivated by cruelty or hatred or bigotry, but is motivated by some combination of love and logistical necessity.

I don't know your story so I will make up a similar situation:

Suppose my character knows for certain that a terrorist is hiding in a daycare center for toddlers, and the terrorist is a suicide bomber **_with a backpack nuclear weapon_** he can detonate at any time. My character can fire missiles into the daycare center and level it and the terrorist. He knows normal explosions will not detonate the nuclear weapon; but would probably leave the area radioactive. He knows he will kill fifty toddlers, parents and teachers. But his choice is the death of **_millions_** versus the death of hundreds. He fires his missiles. Does the reader hate him, or sympathize with his impossible decision to kill babies and young mothers and daycare attendants? Suppose his own wife and child were in the daycare center, and he still pulled the trigger? If the author makes it clear the terrorist feels trapped and this is the ONLY way to prevent the nuke from going off, and the MC feels certain his wife and child are about to die either way --- How does the reader feel about him?

I don't think they feel he is irredeemable, even though his act is horrific, and if done out of selfish interest WOULD make him irredeemable. If his motivation was pure, they will forgive him. Yet a far less harmful act could make him irredeemable if done for selfish reason: Say raping an underage girl.

This is true even if the MC decision was based on false information, if he trusted it was true. Suppose in this story, my MC is a pilot, and he does pull the trigger and blow up the daycare and his own wife and child. Then it turns out his information came from a traitor that lied to him and gave him false intel. There was a terrorist threat, but the terrorist was never IN the daycare center, it was blown up because a female US Senator was inside to discuss something about her daughter. The whole thing was a successful assassination plot, and he pulled the trigger on his own family and saved **_nobody_**.

Now how does the reader feel about him? Is he redeemable? If he left the military, would they believe he might come back, believing that feeling sorry for himself was just more selfishness and saving others is the only way he can ever justify his existence? That it was this or suicide?

To turn such things into war crimes, the daycare could be a foreign hospital, the senator could be a foreign politician, his wife could be an aid worker at the hospital. You can change things up and have the same plot.

But above the plot is a principle: **_Motivations_** determine whether a character is redeemable or a lost cause.

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