Xerath: A Thought on his 'Evil' Deeds

So. New lore's out, we've all had a chance to get a good look at it. And wow. Xerath is an amoral asshole. We're talking not even ambiguously sympathetic. What a jerk. Right? ...right?

Not really. There's another layer there that's not obvious, and that's Xerath's background. He's a slave. He has no name. He and all his fellow slaves are essentially livestock and treated as such, left to die once that becomes more expedient than healing them, as happened to Xerath's father. What's the death of one slave when you can just get more? Shuriman slaves are things that only have as much value as their use to their master. It's a strict profit and loss situation. That's what Xerath grew up around. That's what he learned. That's what he knows.

When you've had family members die in agony building a statue to a guy's horse because nobody thought they were worth enough to help, murdering a few people for a greater cause might not seem so bad anymore. With that in mind, does it really come as any surprise when he starts quietly killing people he sees as a danger to the only person willing to treat him as a human being? He's simply turning that same 'life is cheap' attitude he'd been subjected to his whole life back on the people who instilled it in him. The Empress's children would be threats were they allowed to be born, so he made sure they weren't. When she had one anyway, he killed the child, the empress, the midwife, and everyone who witnessed him act, which happened to include the Emperor. He was doing it to protect Azir, both out of friendship and in the hopes that Azir would one day live up to his promise and free the slaves. When that didn't happen, well... we all know that story.

It's still a tragic tale, and Xerath is still every bit a morally ambiguous individual. By our standards today, yes, he's a murderous sociopath. But if you put yourself in his shoes, look at his life from his perspective rather than from ours, you'll see someone who has learned from experience that killing people to achieve a goal isn't wrong. Shurimans did it to him and his people all the time, after all. Why should he treat them any differently?