We don't know a lot about Ameraine, but there's good reason to believe that she's been around for a while now; she knew Karnas back in the day and she was the one to reach out to Jezera later. Presumably, she was already in Rastadel when Jezera came to her attention, or Jezera would know more about her recent activities.
Plus, Jacques always kept Ameraine at arm's length, much to her annoyance - she wasn't even allowed in the back room where all of the coup talk was happening.
Though in a broader picture, I'd also have to argue that "popular revolution" and "conquest" are weighted a bit differently in a medieval society. When villages barely know what's happening in the next village over, let alone the country as a whole, it's extremely difficult to get a real revolt going - they're always going to be at the strings of someone stirring them up, else they'd be a series of easily put down riots instead of a proper revolt. "Conquest" differs greatly as well; it's one thing when it's England sucking away your country's wealth and demanding you plant cash crops instead of food, but it's quite another when you've never actually spoken to your lord, and the only thing that changes is what tax collector shows up during harvest season.
The idea of national identities in general only really became a thing outside of the broadest of strokes after mass media, truthfully. Until there were books and papers being spread around in a shared language, and people were literate enough that it mattered, there wasn't that much in common between a peasant in Cologne and a peasant in Magdeburg. Had history broken a little differently, it wouldn't have been that strange if one of them had ended up speaking French or Dutch a few hundred years later instead of German.
I must have misremembered Ameraine's involvement, thought she played more of a part in getting the pieces in place rather than just being Rowan's handler.
I don't recall mentioning a national identity, just a shared culture in the form of similar values, which peasants from Magdeburg and Cologne would have, given the similar environments, religious background, and other historical similarities. It would be one thing if a tax collector came wearing a different crest and nothing else changed. It would be another if the tax collector came demanding different forms of tribute, criticizing the practices of the peasants as heretical, and generally deviating from the expected social contract (which could be the case depending on how intrusive the demon occupation will be).
In the context of the game, Rastedel is a bit of an anachronous mega-city in a still mostly medieval setting, I would consider it a "popular revolution" even if it only included the population of the city itself.
I also am of the opinion that sovereignty alone is not an acceptable sole measure of a revolution.
See, I'm from a group of people who have a history of being stateless. There's a pretty big history of "Genuine Revolutions" leading to purged of perceived others.
Even when some of the targets are more legitimate, the behavior of revolutionaries is a thing of moral import. A bloodless revolution is not morally the same as one that emerged through intense civil war and purges.
I did try to say that sovereignty was part of heuristical approach, not the sole measure, and that violence should always be a last resort. I apologize if it did not come across properly.
I'm interpretating a "revolution" as being the use of violence to enact societal changes (in the absence of violence I would call it a reform).
I believe sovereignty to be an important criteria when defining the type of the revolution, because if people are going to be inserted into a state of unrest, the bare minimum for this to have a chance of being just is that they had a say in it.
The societal changes achieved by the revolution also need to have their merits analyzed. If the goals of a revolution are cruel and spawned from a mob mentality rather than the well elaborated needs of the population, then of course this will count against the moral character of the revolution
And of course the expected damage needs to be considered, ideally the damage caused by the revolution should be minimized to the point where it is below the damage that will be caused by the continued existence of the old system.
Those are all things that I would factor when trying to pass moral judgement over a revolution, but the later two are more useful in a consequentialist framework, because it is normally impossible to know those things in advance with any degree of certainty. They can be incorporated into risk assessment, but that is never an easy thing to analyze, while sovereignty is more easy to observe in a preliminary analysis.
I do not think there ever was a "perfect revolution", even in the times there was popular participation, more often than not the participation was of the population turning into a mob and commiting extreme cruelty against scapegoats for ill-conceived reasons, not for the real benefit of anyone nor taking actions thought out to address the real issues. Ironically enough I suppose most of the better revolutions were ones with not much direct popular participation as those were more likely to be contained to a small scope and so the violence wouldn't spill beyond where it was intended to be. But there were many "revolutions" that were done in a similar fashion, and while they weren't imediatelly destructive, the societal changes enacted by them were intentionally in detriment of most of the population (i.e most of the military dictatorships implanted in South America during the Cold War). Ideally I still think a revolution SHOULD have the participation of the people, but we'd have to figure out a way of stopping that participation from turning into a mob, which I'm not sure if we're capable of doing yet.
I also think there's a pretty big moral consideration of "will it work".
I think any deontological answer to the question would need to be exceedingly complex in order to account for the challenges.
I understand "deontological" as meaning "moral independent of the circumnstances", if you start analyzing the situation, you're no longer operating in a deontological framework but in a consequentialist framework, which is why to me a revolution would always be moral to an uncompromising deontologist once less violent alternatives were exhausted, because not revolting would result into the acceptance of immoral behavior, independent of the circumnstances.
I am not endorsing such a way of thinking, I'm just estabilishing that's how the extremes would look like to me: a consequentialist would always be looking for an ideal but practically impossible to find answer, a deontologist would simply say that if the cause is just then the price to be paid does not matter.
Do the nature of the victims of revolutionary violence effect the morality of it?
Ideally violence would be kept only to what is strictly necessary, so the victims should only be the direct opposition that blocked every attempt of a non-violent reform.
Is it moral to engage in a bloody revolution when it has no chance of working and would just cause violence?
As long as it does not harm third parties and it doesn't involve goading people into fighting with false hope, I wouldn't condemn fighting even if it wouldn't imediatelly ammount to more than symbolic martyrdom or token resistance in desperate situations. And even if the hopeless fighting causes future retaliation on those that weren't involved, I would not consider that a moral burden of the martyrs, I don't think it is fair to hold them responsible for the cruelty of their oppressors.
Is it moral to partake in revolutionary violence for a system that would collapse right after?
I am a bit confused on the meaning of this, if we are talking about a situation exactly like the one in the game, I would say it would only be immoral if they had fair reason to believe there was a risk of the collapse happening. If they had no knowledge of the risk and it was extremely unlikely, I can't blame them for having terrible luck with the timing. But if they had an idea that it could happen, and they still chose to go take a fight instead of saving their resources to protect people from the bigger threat, then yeah it was immoral.
