Thread:Theend3/@comment-1327106-20170924011720/@comment-1327106-20170925003844

I don't speak solely for the staff here, but personally I would not object to saying Erwin is indirectly responsible for the death of his soldiers in the Clash of the Titans arc while rescuing Eren. It was a pretty dangerous strategy that was guaranteed to lose soldiers.

The reason we don't want to tie so many tangental deaths to Reiner is because there needs to be a point where responsibility ends. If Grisha never came to the Walls the Reiss family would still be alive. If Marcel hadn't influenced the military's opinion, Reiner never would have made it to the island. We don't want to get to the point where every death in the series is listed under Ymir Fritz and the Earth Devil because they started the whole thing.

This keeps the lists of people killed a reasonable size and one that the casual visitor can understand.

In the case of the people who died without being squashed under thrown Titans, the direct death is from a Titan, the next degree of responsibility is Erwin for putting the soldier in the Titan's path, then after that you could say it's Reiner's for putting Erwin in the position where the rescue was needed, but that's two degrees of separation. That's why I don't consider Reiner to be responsible for those deaths. He's too far removed.

You can go ahead and list the two people who were killed by thrown Titans. That's fine. I would not include Armin because, again, he's only in that position because of Erwin's strategy, which Reiner had no control over. He's two degrees off the potential cause of death.

You actually explain yourself exactly why we're not assigning responsibility to Reiner while Annie has full responsibility. Annie directly kills soldiers in the Female Titan arc. Reiner does not kill any (except as collateral damage) in the Clash of the Titans arc.

I agree some of the Survey Corps deaths in the Female Titan arc were probably avoidable. I can see a case for blaming Erwin. (Note that others on the wiki might not agree.)  I don't agree with blaming Levi though, because it was Erwin's plan. Levi was just following orders.