Harry Potter unforgivable curses

[Roberts]

The other day I was thinking about my favorite book, Harry Potter, and I thought of something. The three Unforgivable Curses which land a person in Azkaban for life are murder, torture, and the Imperius curse (stealing someone's free will maybe?). And then I realized the forbidden magic in the Wheel of Time is basically the same. Aes Sedai can't use the Power to kill, or use the Power as a weapon, which rules out torture, and Compulsion (maybe analogous to slavery?) is forbidden too, although not by the Oath Rod. I thought it was interesting that the same things were outlawed in two different books.

[SirZelig]

no offence or anything.... but most societies have these rules in them. when it comes to magic and the like, these rules always seem to be what separates good from bad(unless your Jedi then its a red lightsabar =p). i wish i could think of some other place they show up, but my mind fails me.

[Rrikor]

Most stories tend to loosen up on these rules though.  In the mistborn series it seems that the division line is drawn at torture because both sides kill and take over beings.  In fact most books have the good guys killing as much as the bad guys if not more.  The three oaths are strict but you will see that most of the main characters are not bound by them so they don't matter as much, and they are perfectly capable of torture as seen when they were ferreting out the black ajah in the tower.  The definition of using it as a weapon is rather vague too. They could easily tie you up in the air then have the warder stick you with his sword.

[alSeen]

True. also some arent bound yet.(accepted) and also the reason the mistborn books r great is because the heros MEAN to kill. just like in WoT .

[Wolfstar]

no offence or anything.... but most societies have these rules in them. when it comes to magic and the like, these rules always seem to be what separates good from bad(unless your Jedi then its a red lightsabar =p). i wish i could think of some other place they show up, but my mind fails me.

Ah, but you're not thinking very historically here.  Given the span of human existence, the ban on slavery is quite young (and not even true for all places on Earth).  Murder/killing are defined in so many different ways that it is often hard to distinguish one from the other.  For instance, is killing in self defense murder?  How about in war?  Or, in certain parts of the world, how about killing someone of a lower class/caste than yourself?  Even torture is defined in such a way that objectively pegging down what is and is not torture is difficult.  Dick Cheney swore that waterboarding wasn't real torture, but it sounded like it to many.

I'm not saying you didn't have a point.  You did.  We look for certain indications in our stories to distinguish heroes from villains.  But that doesn't make Roberts's first post any less interesting either.  Then again, I'm a big fan of learning about the different archetypes in literature, so I can look for ways to twist them/apply them.

[c0rr0s10n]

Well, in the Mistborn series, the Inquisitors and Nobles have skaa killed for next to nothing in the first book at least until book 2. But yes the majority of the time those 3 rules apply to almost all civilized cultures not based around slavery of some type.

[Hero of Ages]

Holy Topic Resurrection, Batman!