Talk:Arche Eeb Rile Furt/@comment-31820190-20180614160716/@comment-45.56.46.26-20180822201935

It's not a red herring. A red herring would be someone distracting you from the characters that you're actually supposed to care about.

But you're supposed to care about Arche. Yes, you should also care about the nameless elf slaves who have their lives saved by Erya's brutal death. They might even be more important in later volumes than Arche ever would have been, despite not currently having names or any screen time (only side mentions) after kicking Eyra's dead body for a bit. But Arche isn't just in the story to distract you from the huge significance of the elf slaves of Tenmu.

Or from anyone else important. She's in the story to be important and die anyway so that you can face the fact that Ainz is dealing with decisions that can and will affect the entire world, and doesn't always have the luxery of making "obvious" choices conforming to human instincts like "hey, let's find a way to avoid killing this cute young girl."

That doesn't mean his choices are always best or even right. The more I think about this, the more I think that Ainz should have had Shalltear turn Arche into a vampire as a test of what happened when you turn a talented mage (or anyone else) into a vampire. She would have been quite useful to Nazarick in any number of ways (including helping Shalltear grow as a commander).

Of course, her sisters would probably still have been sold into slavery and died because Arche would probably no longer care what happened to them unless she happened to know that they were also magically talented and could be picked up on the cheap.

But my opinion that Ainz made a mistake and feeling that it is sad that Arche was killed doesn't change the fact that her father, Jircniv, Hekkeran, and several other mook characters we EACH individually far more responsible for her death. Nor does it change the fact that Maruyama isn't making a narrative error, he's making a profound point about national-scale morality and ethics.

And while I feel that turning Arche into a vampire would be better for Nazarick, it is clearly NOT better for making the point that Maruyama is making here, and continues to make through several more characters in later volumes (i.e. it's not an accident).