The Lesser Evil Is Still Evil

There’s a moment in The Witcher, right after another butchered choice leaves bodies in the dirt, where Geralt of Rivia lays it plain:

“Evil is evil… lesser, greater, middling—it makes no difference.”

And he says what most men don’t have the stomach to admit:

“If I’m to choose between one evil and another, I prefer not to choose at all.”

That’s not neutrality. That’s a refusal to carry water for devils. It’s a line carved in iron by a man who’s seen how these stories end—every damn time. It’s not bravery that makes people pick the lesser evil. It’s fear. Fear of being seen as “naive,” of being called idealistic in a world of monsters. And so they choose. Tell themselves it’s noble. Strategic. Necessary.

But there’s nothing noble about compromise that costs someone else their life.

Take Victor Frankenstein. He played god in a lightning storm and brought a corpse to life. And when the thing opened its eyes, Victor abandoned it. Pretended he hadn’t crossed a line.

Told himself he’d done the hard part—and that walking away was some kind of moral restraint. But responsibility doesn’t stop when the work gets ugly. That creature became the ghost of every excuse he ever made. And it didn’t just haunt him—it gutted everything he loved.

Geralt would’ve stayed. Would’ve faced it. Would’ve said, “I did this,” and met it in the dark. Because refusing to choose isn’t passive—it’s a stand against becoming the very thing you think you’re outwitting.

The Roman Senate made their choice too. They saw Julius Caesar rising—brilliant, dangerous, beloved. He trusted them. He came to them unarmed, believing in the sacredness of their tradition. And they stabbed him to death on the floor of that tradition.

They told themselves it was for the Republic. That they were stopping tyranny before it began.But they weren’t saviors. They were cowards in togas.And that blade didn’t save Rome. It gutted what was left of it. The Republic bled out beside Caesar, and what followed wasn’t freedom—it was empire.

Agamemnon stood over his daughter, flesh of his flesh, and made his own deal with the gods. They told him to kill her, and he did. Not in war. Not in the chaos of battle. But in cold blood, with calm hands and open eyes.He called it duty. Called it the price of command. Said it was better than losing the war.

But the only thing that died that day was honor. And when he came home, victorious, there was no parade. Just a wife waiting with a blade of her own, and a history that would remember him not as a king—but as a murderer who sold his soul for wind.

The Girondins? They sat in the blood-warm chamber of revolution and voted to kill a king they didn’t believe needed killing. Not out of principle. Out of fear. They thought they could buy time. Thought throwing Louis to the wolves would quiet the howling.

But blood never bargains.Their heads rolled not long after his. No eulogies. No redemption. Just the quiet shame of people who knew better and did worse anyway.

This is the real story of “lesser evil.” Not caution. Not chess. But betrayal wrapped in fine words.The men who make those choices don’t get clean hands. They just push the stain down into the cracks of their legacy. Tell themselves it was worth it. That survival mattered more than the cost. But all they did was delay the consequence—and deepen the debt.

Bushidō understood. The way of the samurai is found in death. Not death for its own sake, but death with the spine intact. Death before dishonor. Before compromise. Before offering up your child or your country or your conscience and calling it wisdom.

Because the lesser evil is still evil. And when you choose it—when you kill for it, betray for it, bleed the innocent for it—you don’t escape damnation.

You just walk toward it with cleaner boots.