Up to now, I’ve treated my feelings in this as something private, but, seeing this, I guess it’s time I broke my silence.
Alizabeth was my friend. That’s something it seems now that you want to say is a shameful thing, but I never once thought of it that way.
Both our reasons for being in the Empire and our formal postions were similar. Ali’s oath of service to Lady Newelle resembled mine to Directrix Daphiti, and we were both trying to redeem ourselves. Our real positions were different, though. Ali of course converted to Amarrian belief and practice, while I’m still stubbornly an Achur, but, also, I serve Directrix Daphiti as a sort of advisor, agent, and aide. Ali was always a soldier, through and through.
Ali chided me, once, for not personally sending the letters informing my crew’s loved ones of their deaths. It was a commander’s duty, she said, a method of taking responsibility. But I couldn’t take that kind of responsibility on. It would break my heart and sear my soul, to tell all those people, myself, that I’d killed someone close to them-- by my error, or by another’s, or just as a cost of war. Such things are impossible for me. I don’t think it hurt her any less, but I do think she was better armored, more familiar and even comfortable with military duty and sacrifice.
She was a person of huge zeal, whatever she put her mind to. There wasn’t a lot of gray in her world. Things were mostly hot or cold, good or bad. She didn’t have a lot of time for the kind of ruminating and philosophizing I spend so much time on, or worrying over things, either: “clutching pearls” wasn’t something she had a lot of respect for. She loved it when her path was clear; until then, she just had to wait until she had orders or some circumstance made her duty obvious.
Even at Alkabsi, where she plainly admired her opponents, there was no ambiguity for her. She had a job to do, a duty to perform, and her duty was all. Whatever her feelings, it was the right, the only, thing to do.
She often applied that black and white sensibility to herself, as well. She was fighting for her soul, but she struggled with the ambiguities. She was either performing her role to the letter or failing utterly; either a hero or monster.
Even so, even after her falling-out with Directrix Daphiti, she was able to maintain her friendship with me, the Directrix’s sworn retainer. It didn’t seem easy for her. Nothing in that situation did. It was messy, and messy and Ali weren’t a good fit.
Messy was a little inevitable, though, maybe. A capsuleer’s life is full of contradictions, some small, some not so small. The world’s complex, and Ali struggled a little navigating that complexity. She had trouble seeing herself as someone flawed but worthwhile, like any of us. She had trouble seeing even herself in anything like neutral tones. Mostly it seemed, in her own eyes, that either she’d done great things or she deserved to die.
And she did do great things. She served Lady Newelle in standing for House Sarum at the succession, of course, and was honored for that. She served the Newelles loyally for years. But, also, and to my mind more importantly, she was a key developer of the Drifter-hunting doctrine we still use today.
Her devotion to the memory of Empress Jamyl I was as close to absolute as I ever saw. To her, the fight against the Drifters was a holy war. She was never satisfied with anything less than total success. Early in our conflict with the Drifters, the prevailing doctrine required huge fleets to allow for attrition with almost every engagement. Losses were so predictable that I started naming all my Hive-op caracals the “Acceptable Loss I,” II, III, IV, etc… It was largely, perhaps specifically, Alizabeth who pressed for the changes that reduced our losses to almost nothing and made Hives runnable by just a handful of pilots.
We’d likely have lost a great many more people, if it hadn’t been for her.
She was definitely a troubled person. That trouble seems to be what led her, eventually, to put herself in a position to truly die, and then go down fighting. But I can’t condemn her. It’s interesting to me that she did not ultimately seem to condemn herself, either. The notion of taking responsibility for failure with one’s life is a common one in Caldari society, and it’s one our cultures share (to the occasional frustration of the Amarr in our lives).
Ali didn’t die like someone taking responsibility for failure, though-- didn’t take tea, didn’t open her throat, didn’t blow her own brains out with a pistol. Maybe she saw herself that way, but the way she went out was more like one of her soldiers.
I wonder if maybe, at the end, she couldn’t stand being an immortal commander of mortal soldiers anymore. So many others had given up their lives for her like that. Maybe she didn’t feel like she could be redeemed anymore, like her continued life wouldn’t be a net positive for her children and the world, and that a sacrifice of that kind wasn’t one she should be entitled to.
… unless she also made it herself.
Either way, I won’t remember my friend as a monster, Ms. Vea. She was a person, with faults and virtues and triumphs and failures and … huge passion for the things and people she cared for.
If you insist on painting my friend’s memory black, if you insist on treating her life as though it produced nothing of worth, you’re doing her the same disservice she did to herself, again and again.
Thank you for trying to bring her back. I’d never have known Ali if you hadn’t revived her. Knowing her was a privilege, so thank you for granting me that. There are people dead because she lived; that’s not a record any combat pilot can really throw rocks at. But there are people alive for that reason, as well.
Whatever the true balance of her life might be, I can’t call it a mistake.
I will miss her.