Guild Wars 2

Torrad.1075:

When you get down to it, 250 years means that the events are six or seven generations removed from most anyone still alive. Most people would struggle (or fail) to recall the names of their great-great grandparents, let alone have a burning desire to right some injustice visited upon relations two or three generations even further back. The remaining Ascalonians hold most of their animosity due to the fact their war never really ended. The charr are simply an enemy to them, just like humans are to charr for the most part due to long-standing and recent conflict. I do have to note there, though, that it doesn’t seem like they view each other as the enemy.

This is the crucial point. let’s look at an example from our own past: the war of Austrian Succession. Now, that happened about 250 years ago. That had a death toll of approximately one million. While we can trace the cause of modern troubles to the post-treaty dualism between Austria and Prussia (which would eventually result in the German unification of Bismarck’s time, and would then feed the Imperialist ambitions of WW1, and you see where I’m going with this tangent), we don’t feel particularly affected by that conflict. You could even argue the same point regarding WW1, which was merely a century ago. We’re living in an age that was shaped by the modern sentiments born from that conflict, but it doesn’t strike a particularly dissonant chord in our memories.

Now 250 years is a long time, and newer traumas have a nice way of painting over old ones. I think most Krytans view the centaurs as a greater threat than the Charr, given that the day-to-day horrors of war they would experience are related to the former species. Same thing goes for the Dragons. And save for Ebonhawke – which is a whole other story – the Charr have no real way to impress their physical presence on the minds of humans living in Kryta; they have a whole mountain range between them.

So, while there is a very real amount of history, I think it’s fair to say that a Charr-Human friendship is helped by the fact that so many other terrible conflicts that help to smooth things over.