Killing someone doesn't automatically make you a murderer, particularly in a culture where something like honor duels are prevalent.
If you're an Imperial sympathizer, you're likely to think he was wrong no matter what method he used; it doesn't matter if the duel was fair, because fair or not it was still wrong.
An Imperial sympathizer can think it's wrong and still not have the grounds to argue that. If two men duel each other under certain agreed terms and one dies, you'd be hard pressed to justify calling it murder. They both took their lives into their hands when they went in. That's what a duel is, gambling your life that you're better than the other person.
If you support the Stormcloaks, you probably either think killing Torygg was a good thing anyway...or that the ends justify the means and if one man had to die for Skyrim to be free, so be it.
And this stands on the ideas that Torygg stood in the way of Skyrim's freedom, for which no evidence is ever offered in game, meaning we either assume that Torygg is guilty of impeding Skyrim, or innocent. That is important to know, for me. Why? Because instead of framing the Civil War around "The Nords should rise up to free themselves from the oppressive Empire" vs "Skyrim should be united with the Empire to be able to confront the Dominion", it's framed around "Did Ulfric murder a dude?", and everything else is made into a just a backdrop for it.
We don't have the details, so we look at what we do have and try to extrapolate. Of course we won't always be right, but it's a juicy chunk of story that can't just be ignored because so much draws attention right to it.
Borom said:
That's part of Ulfric's point, I'm sure. He's going back to tradition before the Greybeards and Jurgen Windcaller, when using the Voice in war was common practice among the Tongues. In some ways, its as much a denouncement of the Greybeards and Way of the Voice as it is of the Empire.
This got me thinking of something I've been noodling through over the last few days. I can't help but see a few parallels between Ulfric and Wulfharth.
the Moot's failure to appoint the obvious and capable Jarl Hanse of Winterhold sparked the disastrous Skyrim War of Succession, during which Skyrim lost control of its territories in High Rock, Morrowind, and Cyrodiil, never to regain them. The war was finally concluded in 1E420 with the Pact of Chieftans; henceforth, the Moot was convened only when a King died without direct heirs, and it has fulfilled this more limited role admirably. PGE 1Ed
Don't believe Abdul-Mujib Ababneh's lies
Well, we don't. But, we don't really have any information on Torygg's reign at all; Ulfric implies that he spent a lot of time hanging out with Elisif instead of actually ruling...but, obviously, Ulfric is hardly an unbiased source.
We can speculate about whether or not Torygg was a good king until the cows come home, but the truth is we just don't know. We have little more reason to believe he was any good at the job than we have to believe he was bad.
Ulfric, on the other hand, has lots of information on his style of leadership- both good and bad.