User blog comment:Hippogriff12/The Scarcity of Racists in Skyrim/@comment-4588723-20120731160247

Since discussion has expanded to side-topics, one of which being whether General Tullius should be blamed for your blind date with the chopping block at the beginning scene of the game, naturally I wanted to get in on it. Here’s my take: when a military operation screws up, the highest ranking officer involved must and should take responsibility for the mistakes, up to and including those of his/her subordinates. Despite this, neither Ulfric nor Tullius seem to take much pause for their respective blunders: namely, walking into an enemy ambush with some of your best warriors, and leading a uniformed Imperial lynch mob in an effort to shortcut the rebellion and ask questions later. As for Tullius, we all know that he was standing there overseeing the underhanded execution of an elected, untried Jarl of Skyrim by the corner-cutting occupying force who couldn’t be bothered to consider due process. The General was the commanding officer, it was his operation, it was dirty, and he was the one ordering the proceedings to “move along” and "get this over with" regardless of how the situation had changed – a situation which was already wildly out of hand. You, the Dragonborn, were just one civilian who was going to get lost in the paperwork so he didn’t need concern himself about how many little people lost their heads, as long as he got credit for the big fish. The priorities of industrial-military ambition at its finest.