A Clash of War and Peace
A small allegory I wrote on the importance of both sides of the aforementioned spectrum.
In a time everlasting, there was a noble who sought an age of peace with his rapier, 'tolerance.' This man held a grandiose ideal of a world where he would never have to draw his rapier.
This ideal brought him into a great battle with a veteran of war with a sabre christened "conviction." The battle was held over the issue of how best to ensure the ideals of virtue to live on.
When the final clashing ring of blades ceased echoing, there was only one warrior who strode off the battlefield: the Noble. With his rapier always holstered at his side, he grew to be a great ruler over his foe's former empire. His rule ushered in a great golden age that the people of this land had never dreamed possible.
Yet, when his kingdom was under attack by a truly abominable enemy that sought to enslave his people, who had lived in such peace and prosperity that they had forgotten how to fight, the noble stood out on his balcony and yelled at the top of his lungs.
The Veteran, having hidden himself in the mountains for all these twenty years under the Noble's mercy, rode down the mountain to cleave the army of thousands to naught with only his sabre.
The scribes who had labeled this Veteran as a "villain" quickly changed their records to match the noble's insistence that his brutal but effective friend was a hero.
Yet, at the Noble's insistence that he be named the "villain" for being so blind as to think a world could exist without a blade being drawn, the Veteran gave a hearty drunkard laugh and a slap on the back. "Was there a need for either of us to be 'evil'? Every battle has two sides, that doesn't mean one of us was the devil."