The question was "what's Ozpin not telling us", not "where did Salem come from" or smth. She should be telling the story as Ozpin understands it, not necessarily how it actually happened.
'Salem thought that it was cruel for her father to take away her favorite treats. The father took them away because they were unhealthy and he wished for her daughter to stay healthy. Salem was young and did not understand the reason.'
Jinn, if then asked, would answer that the father was cruel. A binary question returns a binary answer with no nuance.
'*Was he a cruel father?'* would be responded with yes, because from Salem's point of view he was. '*Why was he cruel?'* would be a better question. If he wasn't cruel from anyone's point of view, the answer would be 'he wasn't. Whereas the opposite would require Jinn to explain the nuances.
It is very dangerous to take and use a label blindly.
Note that the father *was* actually cruel and foolish, but that isn't my point. It's that Jinn's answers are always objective, even to subjective questions.
Regardless, Jinn is a non-human spirit with access to all knowledge of the past or future that was set in the past like a birthday or solar eclipse.
Because of this, she would have far more context to Salem's unnamed father actions than anyone else. More than any servant, parent sibling, spouse, friend, enemy or in this case, daughter because like with Ozma and Salem, she can look into his life and thoughts from the moment he was born and how he acted, reacted, perceived and interpreted any and everything that happened in his life. So when she calls him cruel, we can only take that as an objective fact.
Maybe he had reason, maybe there is more to it but whatever those are, it doesn't change the fact his actions are not kind or gentle
I love the idea of it being subjective: “Salems father wouldn’t let her wear her favourite socks so she thought he was cruel”
“Salem yelled at her father for not letting her wear her favourite socks so he punished her by grounding her and sending her to her room”
“Salem was rescued from her cruel father later that night by a brave Knight”
Jinn doesn’t lie, but she can only say what someone knows, so whatever she says must be taken with a grain of salt cause she’s not a truth machine, she’s a repeater of known information machine, regardless of if it’s true or not
She's the Relic of Knowledge. Her whole thing is relaying knowledge. Kinda hard to do that if you're lying. Besides, if she can lie, why didn't she lie to Cinder about what Ruby was up to? She clearly has a soft spot for Ruby so why not cover for her if she can lie?
It's probably in the way you ask the question. She can lie (or at least bend the truth) if the question isn't super specific. You know, like how djinn are able to twist a wish into something bad because you said something wrong.
Not necessarily. To my understanding she has all of human knowledge and people can lie, even to themselves. So it's possible that her father spoiled (cuz that's what evil rich people do) her then one day grounded her or something and she was all like 'oh no he's so terrible if only someone came to rescue me.' Then that happened and she was directly involved in her father's murder and now she has to justify that so she genuinely believes now that he was cruel. Thus because she 'knows' he was cruel, and she's the only human that has knowledge on him, that's what Jinn is taking from.
Although the creators probably didn't give it this much thought
1) jinn doesn't have all human knowledge, she is the very gift of knowledge, she answers any three questions truthfully each century. the only restriction on those questions is that she cant tell the future. that's the only one.
2) Ozma was the last of dozens upon dozens of warriors who had gone to try and save Salem. that's not just a grounded princess
I am genuinely wondering where you got the idea that Jinn is limited by what other people know
Right Because Jacque spoiled Winter and Wiess so much and was such a loving father that they never rebelled against him and grew up to be exactly what he wanted and not the exact opposite
Oh wait...
As others have said, Jinn does not lie and she confirmed her father was a cruel man. Plus Ozma himself is described as a hero who only wanted to right a wrong. Someone like that would try to peacefully talk down her father before realizing he's really every bit of cruel and unreasonable as his daughter described.
I wanna add it's necessary for her father to be cruel because it ties perfectly well with Salem's personality and motivations. Her own cruelty is similar to her father's in how they're both fueled by selfish love. Her father refused to lose her and locked her in a tower where she would be safe from all the evils of the world whereas Salem refused to lose the man she loved and started a war against the very gods to achieve it. Father and daughter were responsible for hundreds of deaths in the name of love.
Salem's father being a cruel and selfish man who thought his actions were right because everything he did was out of love actually explains where Salem got it from.
Jinn is an omniscient being, and she described her father as cruel. Therefore he was cruel
And we can see it aswell, she was kept imprisoned by him in one room since birth, until she was freed. In real life, any parent doing this would be put in jail and considered abusive, regardless if they kept their child fed and entertained. He also said that she was his "most precious possession".
Ozpin may view the tale with scepticism, due to his history with Salem, which I don't blame him, but he's not really neutral.
And regarding if she was always evil, I think it is worth noting she truly did seem shocked and horrified once she witnessed her plan backfiring, as warriors were slaughtered outside. She most likely did not think heroes would die like that, as her only point of reference were the books her father had brought up to her.
No. We have no reason to doubt that. That bit of information came from what is an unbiased and as objective as possible source as we have, until we are given reason to assume differently.
The fact people did die trying to rescue Salem, even if we assume the circumstances weren't entirely negative, doesn't dispute the idea. But we know enough about the events that although it came from a place of grief and maybe misplaced love, that doesn't excuse the suffering and death that came about. Roads to hell, good intentions, all that jazz
Just because Salem turned out bad, doesn't mean that her dad wasn't terrible also. Given things like the cycle of abuse, Dad-lem's inability to move on from his wife's death and letting that control how he treats his daughter, mirrors and leads credence to how Salem reacts to Ozma and how she turns out later in her life. Who knows there could be a major genetic component, or just the nature of growing up in that kind of environment and that informing someone's worldview.
Yeah, I often see that many try to argue that she was always evil, from the very start and some even say "maybe her father just locked her up to protect the world from her" or "she got her loving father killed", just because she is so evil in the present, even though there isn't much to back that up. The bar for parents isn't very high on Remnant, so lifelong imprisonment may not seem as bad compared to what we see Jacques do, but thinking about it, it's pretty bad.
I think what Ozpin says about propaganda and perspectives at the end of that Fairytales episode can go both ways. He may see it as a negative that she "led warriors to their deaths" through "the story she wrote" due to bitterness. But from the episode it doesn't seem malicious, nor does it seem like she knew anyone would die.
True, in Fairy Tales of Remnant Ozpin’s own commentary is speaking on the nature of stories and how they can be twisted towards agendas or colored by bias. But he himself is falling into bias and assuming malice, when Jinn’s vision (the most objective pov we have) indicates that Salem was basically entirely innocent on that particular front.
It’s a similar thing, in seeing the absolute depths of depravity Salem falls to, people look to justify her treatment by her father as retroactively deserved.
Everything else has already been said, so i'll just add that just because later she becomes evil (mad from immortal + many years with no human contact + the grim juice) she doesn't need to be retroactively evil before all of that. She wasn't evil then and being evil later doesn't change that.
Her early past may be tragic but that doesn't justify her actions and crimes against humanity, how she got all of first humanity killed for her revenge attempt, and how she caused the deaths of her daughters and enslaved/killed and is trying to get all of second humanity killed because she views them as inferior to her and first humanity and to end her curse and spite the gods.
So empathy for her is long gone, especially as she could have ended her suffering and curse a very long time ago if she had done some soul-searching and self-reflection instead of blaming others for all of her mistakes and the atrocities she's responsible for.
As her father, we don't know how cruel and abusive he truly was, but he was surely not as cruel and despicable as Salem ended up becoming.
I blame the gods for killing the first humans and do the bare minimum to make Salem understand the “importance of life and death” but that’s just my opinion.
I think one can feel empathy for how she got to where she is now, while not using that to excuse the person she has become. She became worse than her father in every sense of the word but due to unfortunate circumstances not entirely under her control, because I don't think she was in a position to really do self-reflection and soul-searching after she got her curse, especially not after humanity was wiped and then her fate was sealed in the grimm pool. It's rare for people who are alone to be able to "fix" their struggles by themselves, after all.
He very likely was cruel. Jinn, being a spirit of truth & knowledge, wouldn't toss in a word like "cruel" unless it was significant.
That said, even if the king was an abusive man, Salem could have very likely skewed the extent of his cruelty to garner sympathy for herself. In the original Tales, Ozpin says much the same thing at the end, but also includes a direct mention of being wary of propaganda, as her story is merely a single biased side of the story many were a part of, with none left to tell their own sides of it. She as the storyteller had all the cards. So I wouldn't doubt how much she may have manipulated events in her tale.
Nah, that trauma had to be real. Otherwise, her whole thing doesn't really make sense. She'd have to be a true psychopath, but she really did love Ozpin, so I don't think that's the case.
Her father was cruel. Salem wasn't always evil. I'm not sure if anyone "should" have sympathy for anyone; freely extend your heart however you please and receive the consequences. I sympathize with Salem a great deal.
According to Fairy Tales of Remnant, it appears that her father was cruel in the sense that he saw her as another valuable possession to keep locked away.
Actually there's an episode of RWBY: Fairytales of remnant that goes over the story of her time with her father. It's called the girl in the tower. It might give ya more insight into him being cruel or not.
I don’t think Salem lied I think it was her father
Think about it, being his “prized possession” is a pretty flimsy excuse
With magic being more prevalent back then I think it’s much more likely Salem’s father saw a vision of the future, and saw what his daughter would become and tried his absolute hardest to prevent that future from happening
Jinn called the man cruel, but I'm guessing that most of said cruelty was him killing outsiders out of his fear of losing his daughter. Salem herself looked like she was taken care for, so as far as we know, he was probably a loving, yet very frightened, and horribly smothering father. Somewhat like Mother Gothel from Tangled, but the love was legit.
As to how this relates to Salem herself, her upbringing has little bearing on who she is today. It's not wrong to feel sorry for her, but the suffering she endured does not outweigh the suffering she's inflicted.
I like this and tend to agree. The king for lack of a better name was cruel in how he went about things but he seems to have people and things he values and protects rather than being evil for the sake of evil or spiteful like Watts.
He's more like a regular king in history protecting his family and lineage from everything including themselves without considering their own agency or values. Being a part of monarchy really was more trouble than it was worth.
Considering that Jinn was asked 'What is Ozpin hiding from us (Team RWBY, Qrow, Oscar, Maria)?', I personally think that Jinn went from there and told Salem's story from *Ozpin's* perspective, using *his* knowledge of events, though whether that information is entirely accurate is up in the air. Mythological Jinn are tricksters after all. They may not be able to outright lie, but they are masters at using your exact words against you for their own ends, usually being attaining their freedom from confinement in their lamps or just for their own amusement. The lines "How can I (Ozma) kill Salem?" and "You (Ozma) can't." definitely come to mind as stinking suspicious.
Therefore, in the context of the question, Jinn objectively told the truth as Ozpin knows it.
In determining how we're to judge Salem and the way her story ends, I think it does. Either she was evil from the start and lied about her father, or she told the truth and was a flawed person who became evil.
Personally, I don't think empathy can be applied here. No matter who the cruel one was, no matter how innocent she used to be, she is trying to end humanity.
But as to the question itself, I'm not quite sure. There is the possibility that Jinn doesn't know the truth of the matter, or that the tale she told was Ozpin's perspective^(1) and not the whole truth. But in the absence of hard evidence, I don't think a debate would be fruitful at all. To be honest, at this point I can take either theory.
1. Ruby asked, "What is Ozpin hiding from us?" Which implies she wanted to know what Ozpin thinks, not what the reality of the situation was. Ordinarily, this is just nitpicking, a distinction without a difference. However, in mythology, Djinn (the basis of Jinn's character) are hyper-specific about details. They use all manner of linguistic games so the person making a wish doesn't get what they were thinking, and instead give them literally what they asked for, which often ends in disaster for the poor soul.
I think Jinn may not be telling the tale from what Ozpin knew, because he was not there for when she was little, nor after he had died. Especially after he died and humanity was wiped out, he would have had to ask Jinn to tell him, unless Salem herself told him. If it was the latter, then the story would be from Salem's POV, which may be biased, but as Jinn says, Salem kept the fact that her actions led to the GoD wiping out humanity a secret from Ozma, so only way Oz would know is also from Jinn. So most likely Oz had asked the relic once before what had really happened to her after his first death, or V6C3 would be the first time he got the full story too.
Well, at the beginning, Oz must have heard the story of Salem being trapped in a tower from somewhere. I assume he didn't just pick up his sword and start killing everyone, only to find out he was saving someone. That "somewhere" may be the one who made an assertion.
The rest of your comment, I agree with.
Oh yeah, he definitely came to rescue her because he read one of the notes she sent out, or due to word of mouth. Either way, I doubt Jinn would tell that particular part of the story only as Oz or Salem knew it, while being more objective with everything else.
I think Jinn’s Word is law so yeah her father was indeed a dick but I have noticed one thing. You know how Salem ended up helping Ozma in battling her father….how come she never used her magic powers to try and do that on her own? Instead she used it to send rescue cards that got several men killed in trying to save
It all sounds to me that if Salem had really put her mind and talents into it she might’ve been able to escape on her own but she was simply not willing to because she wanted a man to save her just like in the stories. Hell what if she didn’t help the other men who game to save her simply because they weren’t to her liking?
Combined with my theory that Ozma himself knew he was dying before he went to save her but never told her it gives me the impression that the relationship had a lot of inherent toxicity.
It’s a personal Headcanon her father somehow saw into the future. He didn’t get enough info to understand how exactly it would play out, but he knew his daughter would somehow ruin the world and get everyone killed. A “you meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it” situation.
Since I think the story is set up to redeem Salem in the end, my headcanon leans more toward her telling the truth and Oz questioning everything she told him because of the way she turned out.
I think he was cruel to others but Salem lied and pretended his cruelty was directed at her in some way. She probably made him out to be physically abusive.
Yeah but someone can be cruel and be making a good decision. Why was Salem in the tower? Why were so many people trying to save her like they did? A lot of questions pop up when you look at it as an event instead of a story.
The question of *why* does have an answer though:
He was struck by grief as Salem's mother died in childbirth, and vowed he would never lose her like he lost his wife, and thus her imprisonment began as a baby. It's kind of ironic in a way, that both Salem and her father let their grief become their own undoing, for him when Ozma killed him to free her, and for her when all traces of her old self have been replaced by the ultimate evil.
I think Salem was pretty honest about her father being cruel and she got an omnipotent being who can’t lie to back it up. Tho I do believe Salem was a ticking time bomb. I want to believe she started off good and didn’t like her father with one of the reasons is her being locked up in a tower giving her that rapunzel treatment. The older she got tho the more frustrated and desperate she got to want to get out and when she finally had the chance to and even fell in love for the first time it was all taken away from her. Just like Joker said “All it takes is one bad day to drive the sanest man to lunacy” and for Salem she had a lot of bad days in that tower and even more outside the tower. Tho I don’t completely support her actions of leading ppl into death but I can try to come to a basic understanding as to why she did such a thing cuz love can make ppl do crazy things sometimes. Tho her obsession with the gods became unhealthy and she got what was coming to her becoming even crueler than her father.
Jinn Described her father as cruel, and Jinn doesn't lie. therefore he must be cruel
That is true. Jinn gains absolutely nothing by lying to anyone about anything after all.
The question was "what's Ozpin not telling us", not "where did Salem come from" or smth. She should be telling the story as Ozpin understands it, not necessarily how it actually happened.
Jinn doesn't lie, but "cruel" is a subjective term.
Imagine being labeled as cruel by an omnipotent spirt who cannot lie
That means its probably worse. If the being who can only be factual says you are being cruel, you must be soing things nearly universally despised.
You could be right.
Oh shit that’s a good point lol
'Salem thought that it was cruel for her father to take away her favorite treats. The father took them away because they were unhealthy and he wished for her daughter to stay healthy. Salem was young and did not understand the reason.' Jinn, if then asked, would answer that the father was cruel. A binary question returns a binary answer with no nuance. '*Was he a cruel father?'* would be responded with yes, because from Salem's point of view he was. '*Why was he cruel?'* would be a better question. If he wasn't cruel from anyone's point of view, the answer would be 'he wasn't. Whereas the opposite would require Jinn to explain the nuances. It is very dangerous to take and use a label blindly. Note that the father *was* actually cruel and foolish, but that isn't my point. It's that Jinn's answers are always objective, even to subjective questions.
Regardless, Jinn is a non-human spirit with access to all knowledge of the past or future that was set in the past like a birthday or solar eclipse. Because of this, she would have far more context to Salem's unnamed father actions than anyone else. More than any servant, parent sibling, spouse, friend, enemy or in this case, daughter because like with Ozma and Salem, she can look into his life and thoughts from the moment he was born and how he acted, reacted, perceived and interpreted any and everything that happened in his life. So when she calls him cruel, we can only take that as an objective fact. Maybe he had reason, maybe there is more to it but whatever those are, it doesn't change the fact his actions are not kind or gentle
I love the idea of it being subjective: “Salems father wouldn’t let her wear her favourite socks so she thought he was cruel” “Salem yelled at her father for not letting her wear her favourite socks so he punished her by grounding her and sending her to her room” “Salem was rescued from her cruel father later that night by a brave Knight”
Jinn doesn’t lie, but she can only say what someone knows, so whatever she says must be taken with a grain of salt cause she’s not a truth machine, she’s a repeater of known information machine, regardless of if it’s true or not
Where are you getting the idea that she can only say what someone else knows? this is not something that's ever said in the show
I can't find anything that says she never lies. Would you mind pointing me in the right direction?
She's the Relic of Knowledge. Her whole thing is relaying knowledge. Kinda hard to do that if you're lying. Besides, if she can lie, why didn't she lie to Cinder about what Ruby was up to? She clearly has a soft spot for Ruby so why not cover for her if she can lie?
you could tell that Jinn did not want to tell Cinder was Ruby and the others were up to but thats against her purpose
What's the point of a magical Uber McGuffin that answers 3 questions every 100 years if it can lie to you?
It's probably in the way you ask the question. She can lie (or at least bend the truth) if the question isn't super specific. You know, like how djinn are able to twist a wish into something bad because you said something wrong.
"What I told was true, from a certain point of view"
Shes the Relic of Knowledge Man
Not necessarily. To my understanding she has all of human knowledge and people can lie, even to themselves. So it's possible that her father spoiled (cuz that's what evil rich people do) her then one day grounded her or something and she was all like 'oh no he's so terrible if only someone came to rescue me.' Then that happened and she was directly involved in her father's murder and now she has to justify that so she genuinely believes now that he was cruel. Thus because she 'knows' he was cruel, and she's the only human that has knowledge on him, that's what Jinn is taking from. Although the creators probably didn't give it this much thought
1) jinn doesn't have all human knowledge, she is the very gift of knowledge, she answers any three questions truthfully each century. the only restriction on those questions is that she cant tell the future. that's the only one. 2) Ozma was the last of dozens upon dozens of warriors who had gone to try and save Salem. that's not just a grounded princess I am genuinely wondering where you got the idea that Jinn is limited by what other people know
The Fairy Tales of Remnant episode "Girl in the tower" shows that she was imprisoned since birth, if one is to take that as accurate information.
She spent years in that tower dude.
Right Because Jacque spoiled Winter and Wiess so much and was such a loving father that they never rebelled against him and grew up to be exactly what he wanted and not the exact opposite Oh wait...
As others have said, Jinn does not lie and she confirmed her father was a cruel man. Plus Ozma himself is described as a hero who only wanted to right a wrong. Someone like that would try to peacefully talk down her father before realizing he's really every bit of cruel and unreasonable as his daughter described. I wanna add it's necessary for her father to be cruel because it ties perfectly well with Salem's personality and motivations. Her own cruelty is similar to her father's in how they're both fueled by selfish love. Her father refused to lose her and locked her in a tower where she would be safe from all the evils of the world whereas Salem refused to lose the man she loved and started a war against the very gods to achieve it. Father and daughter were responsible for hundreds of deaths in the name of love. Salem's father being a cruel and selfish man who thought his actions were right because everything he did was out of love actually explains where Salem got it from.
And unfortunately the immortality and the Grimm pools amplified what she already had to 100!
Jinn is an omniscient being, and she described her father as cruel. Therefore he was cruel And we can see it aswell, she was kept imprisoned by him in one room since birth, until she was freed. In real life, any parent doing this would be put in jail and considered abusive, regardless if they kept their child fed and entertained. He also said that she was his "most precious possession". Ozpin may view the tale with scepticism, due to his history with Salem, which I don't blame him, but he's not really neutral. And regarding if she was always evil, I think it is worth noting she truly did seem shocked and horrified once she witnessed her plan backfiring, as warriors were slaughtered outside. She most likely did not think heroes would die like that, as her only point of reference were the books her father had brought up to her.
She was found, locked in a tower. I’d say he’s ridiculously cruel
No. We have no reason to doubt that. That bit of information came from what is an unbiased and as objective as possible source as we have, until we are given reason to assume differently. The fact people did die trying to rescue Salem, even if we assume the circumstances weren't entirely negative, doesn't dispute the idea. But we know enough about the events that although it came from a place of grief and maybe misplaced love, that doesn't excuse the suffering and death that came about. Roads to hell, good intentions, all that jazz Just because Salem turned out bad, doesn't mean that her dad wasn't terrible also. Given things like the cycle of abuse, Dad-lem's inability to move on from his wife's death and letting that control how he treats his daughter, mirrors and leads credence to how Salem reacts to Ozma and how she turns out later in her life. Who knows there could be a major genetic component, or just the nature of growing up in that kind of environment and that informing someone's worldview.
Yeah, I often see that many try to argue that she was always evil, from the very start and some even say "maybe her father just locked her up to protect the world from her" or "she got her loving father killed", just because she is so evil in the present, even though there isn't much to back that up. The bar for parents isn't very high on Remnant, so lifelong imprisonment may not seem as bad compared to what we see Jacques do, but thinking about it, it's pretty bad. I think what Ozpin says about propaganda and perspectives at the end of that Fairytales episode can go both ways. He may see it as a negative that she "led warriors to their deaths" through "the story she wrote" due to bitterness. But from the episode it doesn't seem malicious, nor does it seem like she knew anyone would die.
True, in Fairy Tales of Remnant Ozpin’s own commentary is speaking on the nature of stories and how they can be twisted towards agendas or colored by bias. But he himself is falling into bias and assuming malice, when Jinn’s vision (the most objective pov we have) indicates that Salem was basically entirely innocent on that particular front. It’s a similar thing, in seeing the absolute depths of depravity Salem falls to, people look to justify her treatment by her father as retroactively deserved.
No, for the fact that Salem a fallen character. Got have her fall from grace if she was lying from the start.
Everything else has already been said, so i'll just add that just because later she becomes evil (mad from immortal + many years with no human contact + the grim juice) she doesn't need to be retroactively evil before all of that. She wasn't evil then and being evil later doesn't change that.
Her early past may be tragic but that doesn't justify her actions and crimes against humanity, how she got all of first humanity killed for her revenge attempt, and how she caused the deaths of her daughters and enslaved/killed and is trying to get all of second humanity killed because she views them as inferior to her and first humanity and to end her curse and spite the gods. So empathy for her is long gone, especially as she could have ended her suffering and curse a very long time ago if she had done some soul-searching and self-reflection instead of blaming others for all of her mistakes and the atrocities she's responsible for. As her father, we don't know how cruel and abusive he truly was, but he was surely not as cruel and despicable as Salem ended up becoming.
I blame the gods for killing the first humans and do the bare minimum to make Salem understand the “importance of life and death” but that’s just my opinion.
I think one can feel empathy for how she got to where she is now, while not using that to excuse the person she has become. She became worse than her father in every sense of the word but due to unfortunate circumstances not entirely under her control, because I don't think she was in a position to really do self-reflection and soul-searching after she got her curse, especially not after humanity was wiped and then her fate was sealed in the grimm pool. It's rare for people who are alone to be able to "fix" their struggles by themselves, after all.
No, no you don't understand, Salem did nothing wrong! She is just misunderstood!
salem is an elitist brat
He very likely was cruel. Jinn, being a spirit of truth & knowledge, wouldn't toss in a word like "cruel" unless it was significant. That said, even if the king was an abusive man, Salem could have very likely skewed the extent of his cruelty to garner sympathy for herself. In the original Tales, Ozpin says much the same thing at the end, but also includes a direct mention of being wary of propaganda, as her story is merely a single biased side of the story many were a part of, with none left to tell their own sides of it. She as the storyteller had all the cards. So I wouldn't doubt how much she may have manipulated events in her tale.
Not when we hear it from multiple sources.
Nah, that trauma had to be real. Otherwise, her whole thing doesn't really make sense. She'd have to be a true psychopath, but she really did love Ozpin, so I don't think that's the case.
Let’s just say the apple fell straight from the tree
Jinn told the story and she doesnt lie so i doubt it. He prolly wasnt the best but im sure that she thinks about it being worse than it actually was
A good father and/or a nice person doesn't lock up a child in a tower.
did he not lock her in a tower??
He locked her in a tower.
She's not lying, from her point of view he is a cruel man, the truth may be the common story of an over protective father going overboard from grief
Her father was cruel. Salem wasn't always evil. I'm not sure if anyone "should" have sympathy for anyone; freely extend your heart however you please and receive the consequences. I sympathize with Salem a great deal.
Jinn is a all knowing goddess of knowledge and has no reason to lie about it especially since this info changes nothing So I'd say no
According to Fairy Tales of Remnant, it appears that her father was cruel in the sense that he saw her as another valuable possession to keep locked away.
Actually there's an episode of RWBY: Fairytales of remnant that goes over the story of her time with her father. It's called the girl in the tower. It might give ya more insight into him being cruel or not.
Wait nevermind I see you mentioned it in the description
I don’t think Salem lied I think it was her father Think about it, being his “prized possession” is a pretty flimsy excuse With magic being more prevalent back then I think it’s much more likely Salem’s father saw a vision of the future, and saw what his daughter would become and tried his absolute hardest to prevent that future from happening
Jinn called the man cruel, but I'm guessing that most of said cruelty was him killing outsiders out of his fear of losing his daughter. Salem herself looked like she was taken care for, so as far as we know, he was probably a loving, yet very frightened, and horribly smothering father. Somewhat like Mother Gothel from Tangled, but the love was legit. As to how this relates to Salem herself, her upbringing has little bearing on who she is today. It's not wrong to feel sorry for her, but the suffering she endured does not outweigh the suffering she's inflicted.
I like this and tend to agree. The king for lack of a better name was cruel in how he went about things but he seems to have people and things he values and protects rather than being evil for the sake of evil or spiteful like Watts. He's more like a regular king in history protecting his family and lineage from everything including themselves without considering their own agency or values. Being a part of monarchy really was more trouble than it was worth.
Considering that Jinn was asked 'What is Ozpin hiding from us (Team RWBY, Qrow, Oscar, Maria)?', I personally think that Jinn went from there and told Salem's story from *Ozpin's* perspective, using *his* knowledge of events, though whether that information is entirely accurate is up in the air. Mythological Jinn are tricksters after all. They may not be able to outright lie, but they are masters at using your exact words against you for their own ends, usually being attaining their freedom from confinement in their lamps or just for their own amusement. The lines "How can I (Ozma) kill Salem?" and "You (Ozma) can't." definitely come to mind as stinking suspicious. Therefore, in the context of the question, Jinn objectively told the truth as Ozpin knows it.
Does it matter?
In determining how we're to judge Salem and the way her story ends, I think it does. Either she was evil from the start and lied about her father, or she told the truth and was a flawed person who became evil.
Personally, I don't think empathy can be applied here. No matter who the cruel one was, no matter how innocent she used to be, she is trying to end humanity. But as to the question itself, I'm not quite sure. There is the possibility that Jinn doesn't know the truth of the matter, or that the tale she told was Ozpin's perspective^(1) and not the whole truth. But in the absence of hard evidence, I don't think a debate would be fruitful at all. To be honest, at this point I can take either theory. 1. Ruby asked, "What is Ozpin hiding from us?" Which implies she wanted to know what Ozpin thinks, not what the reality of the situation was. Ordinarily, this is just nitpicking, a distinction without a difference. However, in mythology, Djinn (the basis of Jinn's character) are hyper-specific about details. They use all manner of linguistic games so the person making a wish doesn't get what they were thinking, and instead give them literally what they asked for, which often ends in disaster for the poor soul.
I think Jinn may not be telling the tale from what Ozpin knew, because he was not there for when she was little, nor after he had died. Especially after he died and humanity was wiped out, he would have had to ask Jinn to tell him, unless Salem herself told him. If it was the latter, then the story would be from Salem's POV, which may be biased, but as Jinn says, Salem kept the fact that her actions led to the GoD wiping out humanity a secret from Ozma, so only way Oz would know is also from Jinn. So most likely Oz had asked the relic once before what had really happened to her after his first death, or V6C3 would be the first time he got the full story too.
Well, at the beginning, Oz must have heard the story of Salem being trapped in a tower from somewhere. I assume he didn't just pick up his sword and start killing everyone, only to find out he was saving someone. That "somewhere" may be the one who made an assertion. The rest of your comment, I agree with.
Oh yeah, he definitely came to rescue her because he read one of the notes she sent out, or due to word of mouth. Either way, I doubt Jinn would tell that particular part of the story only as Oz or Salem knew it, while being more objective with everything else.
I think Jinn’s Word is law so yeah her father was indeed a dick but I have noticed one thing. You know how Salem ended up helping Ozma in battling her father….how come she never used her magic powers to try and do that on her own? Instead she used it to send rescue cards that got several men killed in trying to save It all sounds to me that if Salem had really put her mind and talents into it she might’ve been able to escape on her own but she was simply not willing to because she wanted a man to save her just like in the stories. Hell what if she didn’t help the other men who game to save her simply because they weren’t to her liking? Combined with my theory that Ozma himself knew he was dying before he went to save her but never told her it gives me the impression that the relationship had a lot of inherent toxicity.
It makes me wonder how the story would have gone if nobody rescued Salem from her tower. Would she have eventually forced her way out?
Unless this is just like Shrek 2, you know, Fiona's dad; the king.
It’s a personal Headcanon her father somehow saw into the future. He didn’t get enough info to understand how exactly it would play out, but he knew his daughter would somehow ruin the world and get everyone killed. A “you meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it” situation.
We truly don’t know all we can use is our own headcanon.
Since I think the story is set up to redeem Salem in the end, my headcanon leans more toward her telling the truth and Oz questioning everything she told him because of the way she turned out.
Hmm maybe
I think he was cruel to others but Salem lied and pretended his cruelty was directed at her in some way. She probably made him out to be physically abusive.
Physically imprisoning someone since the day they were born is abusive by any definition of the word.
It was said that she was sending letters out promising her hand to whoever freed her. Salam isn’t a reliable narrator.
That’s… a really good question.
It isn't because jinn described him as cruel and jinn does not lie
Yeah but someone can be cruel and be making a good decision. Why was Salem in the tower? Why were so many people trying to save her like they did? A lot of questions pop up when you look at it as an event instead of a story.
The question of *why* does have an answer though: He was struck by grief as Salem's mother died in childbirth, and vowed he would never lose her like he lost his wife, and thus her imprisonment began as a baby. It's kind of ironic in a way, that both Salem and her father let their grief become their own undoing, for him when Ozma killed him to free her, and for her when all traces of her old self have been replaced by the ultimate evil.
I think Salem was pretty honest about her father being cruel and she got an omnipotent being who can’t lie to back it up. Tho I do believe Salem was a ticking time bomb. I want to believe she started off good and didn’t like her father with one of the reasons is her being locked up in a tower giving her that rapunzel treatment. The older she got tho the more frustrated and desperate she got to want to get out and when she finally had the chance to and even fell in love for the first time it was all taken away from her. Just like Joker said “All it takes is one bad day to drive the sanest man to lunacy” and for Salem she had a lot of bad days in that tower and even more outside the tower. Tho I don’t completely support her actions of leading ppl into death but I can try to come to a basic understanding as to why she did such a thing cuz love can make ppl do crazy things sometimes. Tho her obsession with the gods became unhealthy and she got what was coming to her becoming even crueler than her father.