I think both perspectives are valid and defensible. It might just depend on how much trust you put in what she says. She says repeatedly in Books 2 and 3 that working for the Nazis was a huge mistake that she regrets and repents, but on the other hand she says a lot of other things that just aren’t true. So do you believe that she’s genuinely repentent, or do you believe that she just switched sides out of self-interest? I know the answer to that question, but readers can come to their own conclusions!
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At the risk of adding fuel to this argument, I will say that I generally find Zhu more iffy as an RO than Maria. Being a collaborator is bad, and, of the two, the Nazis are the worse government, but Zhu has outright committed war crimes, including mass murder, for ideological reasons.
Of course, his backstory can make you say he never had much of a choice, given how he grew up, but that’s true of lots of war criminals. It’s up to the individual if they can forgive it. I can enough to want him to find redemption, but not enough to want my MC to kiss him.
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You mean, the interactions where she HELPS THE NAZIS?
“Complex” doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. “Willing to help genocidal fascists as long as they bump her bank account” isn’t complex, it’s “greed-driven little shit”.
Definitely evil. In fact, definitely Evil, with a capital E. I cannot stress this enough: if you are a willing collaborator with Nazis, you are, in fact, definitely Evil with a capital E.
Still Evil. With a capital E. If you harm innocent people for your own gain, you are, in fact, Evil. There is, in fact, no way to weasel out of being Evil with a capital E if what you do is harm people for your own selfish gain.
I mean, I’m not defending him as an RO, either, so 
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No I mean the interactions when she says that she hates them. When she kills them. And yes, I know what I mean when I said complex. She has a troubled past with what happened to her father and we saw her family was more left leaning so extreme right wing groups are def. not her forte. Also, you are saying there is no chance for redemption? Becuase you know, she isn’t collaborating with them anymore and (again, based on your playthorugh) actively fighting against them. Agree to disagree though. If you think she is evil or hate her that’s totally fine. I see a lot more in her
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Regardless of Maria being evil or not, I think there is value in having bad people in stories, even bad people who may not in the end get their just desserts; perhaps more importantly, bad people you can be friends with, love, and who may not be at peace or honest with themselves or others about the contents of their own souls. To me it reflects the interesting reality that we rarely befriend or apportion our sympathies based on virtue alone, especially on a personal level. Sometimes having been an old school friend (or even enemy) is all the difference there is between ‘irredeemable Nazi monster’ and ‘person who made mistakes’.
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Thinking about it for a bit, I’ve stumbled with my genius mind onto two things
Firstly Maria does work with the Nazis, but if I remember correctly she’s not really aware that she’s helping them in a meaningful way. Doesn’t she talk about how all the artifacts stuff is bullshit and ho she’s scamming the Nazis or something in the first book? Yeah even if I remember correctly, it doesn’t make working with the Nazis less evil, but it makes her slightly better I think?
And secondly: Maria not believing in Nazism isn’t really as good of a defence as people think it is. Her hating or disagreeing with them makes her a collabo out of convenience. And that’s arguably worse.
Because these collaborators knew how evil the Nazis are, they knew the utopia the Nazis claimed they were fighting for would never materialise and they decided they don’t give s shit cause profit and they went along with it because they thought they could profit. And people like this were historically shown to be the worst kind of collabos. Off the top of my head take idk, Andrei Vlasov and his ROA as an example of what I mean
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This is sorta definitely accurate, because as we see near the end of Relics 1, she definitely doesn’t believe the artifacts have any sort of power. Of course, Maria is a de facto dumbass who seems to completely ignore that morale is a very defining factor in wars, which the artifacts would definitely help with even if they did literally nothing else (the first one is literally a jewish artifact, come on) so, y’know.
But now you’ve reminded me that, as we see later in the Congo, besides all of her other faults, she is also BAD AT HER JOB. Regardless of how you feel about what should be done with the artifacts, she is demonstrably bad at the technical aspects of archaeology.
I definitely agree here.
THIS part of the discussion I can happily sit out (had to happen sometime), because once you hit the “willing nazi collaborator” stage, I feel like the “why” is just splitting hairs.
I mean, I literally use “Chamberlaining” as an insult, so.
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I think that’s part of her redemption. In Book 1, she doesn’t even really consider herself helping the Nazis. All the Relics stuff sounds so deranged, so obviously fake and crazy, that as far as she’s concerned she’s just conning the Nazis. They’re paying her to help them track down fairy tales, they’re the victims of her brilliant scam!
Unfortunately for her, in the story, it turns out that all the batshit crazy Relics nonsense is actually true! So it’s not quite as straightforward as saying that she was helping the Nazis: she actually believed that she was ripping them off.
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Yes, she does think that everything supernatural they believe in is fake so that’s why she’s not worried about them gaining world domination through those artifacts. Now, even without that, taking the job from such scum is questionable but I think the description of her character is fascinating and gives us insight into why she did the things she did. That bit of backstory is great.
Now granted, a lot of people and countries made questionable decisions at that time. France and the UK wanted to appease Hitler so they just stood by and let the annexation of Austria and Sudetenland happen. What are we going to call them then? These really aren’t examples of bastions of freedom.
Seeing as Maria stopped working for the Nazis in 1937(?) I assume she would have known about the Nuremberg Laws but again, lots of people turned a blind eye to that. There is no excuse for ignoring such Antisemitism but the ‘Final Solution’ of the Nazis only came later in the war. She could not have known about their ideas of genocide because they came later.
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Book 1 María believed the hunt for the relics were a wild goose chase, and being employed as their expert WAS for her self-serving interest in getting that money, BUT ALSO as a misguided attempt in facing her trauma (as later revealed in Book 2) which is personal in nature. Obviously Nazis who believe in their vision = Bad, but there is nuance, and it’s doing a disservice to characters viewing them solely in Moral lenses when there’s still other stuff to consider, bc honestly, María’s probably one of the most complex characters with all the twists and motivations one (1) beloved author is hiding in his notes.
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2nd i’m just here to put my 2 cents in but the selfishness and self-serving attitude IS María’s trademark, sure they aren’t morally GOOD or nice traits, and not everyone LIKES a character like that. BUT SOME do, and it gives them a different perspective in considering them. It all comes down to subjectiveness and our individual thoughts in response to what we read. So I DO get why you’d think considering María is whack-- and that’s valid! But personally i’m just out here in my bed turning diff thoughts like a pancake
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ALSO GOD THIS REPLY IS LATE AF but MRRP I still need to research more on the accurate timelines bc god knows how shit our history educ was (derogatory) BUT to my knowledge the nuremberg laws were passed @ 1935, started arrests at 1936, BUT the start of the full extent of their shit against Jewish people went around 1938(?) and the final sol was conceived around 1941, which is out of her purview by then. PLUS I believe she was mostly concerned by the OP for Lyngvi, but ig
and im not gon excuse it. but motivated by selfishness or not, she’s doing a service by being an agent of the SOE (if she’s still alive) fighting against them.
i swear i had a train of thought but i forgot bout half of what i was gonna post 
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Yes. Absolutely. The first thing is in her favour, and I agree that as a character she is fascinating, I’m just saying that she is a very very dark gray on the moral spectrum
Do not get me started with the Western powers and their downright idiotic decisions when it comes to quite literally everything from 1933-1943.
That is still relatively late, most of the Nazi power players were already firmly in place by this point, they didn’t come up with the final solution, yes but they were still actively searching for ways to take away the rights of people they considered subhuman. Again I’ll bring up what I said before: Maria was invited to at least one Nazi dinner party, thus it is within reason she rubbed shoulders with people like Reinhard Heydrich (or Heydrich himself who was already big game in the SS) and still didn’t realize how dangerous and evil they were or even worse didn’t care
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Also I’m looking at the whole thing through a very Yugo-opinionated lens. Like our post war courts would have condemned her faster than you can say: “Sehen sie diese stadt? Das ist Walter” (literally no one will get this reference fml) , and secondly, yeah I’ve written like 7 paragraphs explaining “Why she bad part 1/567”, but I don’t dislike the character, quite the opposite. For me the worst thing a fictional character can be is boring, and Maria is far from it.
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Wait. Yugo-opinionated? May I ask where are you from? 
PS Valter brani Sarajevo 
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Oh, I’m from Belgrade, (otherwise known as hell jr., At least it isn’t Niš)
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Heh haven’t seen that one since college nice choice. Honestly though I’m inclined to agree it’s refreshing to have a charcter be so complex that opinions are so divided and that shows the skill of @Schliemannsghost writing. I honestly look foward to seeing the possible developments of Maria down the line and see where she really lies on the morality scale.
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Ja sam iz Varaždina 
pozdrav 
Nisam baš puno naših tu vidio haha
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Zdravo zdravo, ja sam video još neke naše ovde Al jest, nema nas puno
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TFW you have a variable called “bedshared”, but you accidentally mistype it as “bedsharted”, and you realize that that has very, very different connotations…
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Talk about a shitty relationship…
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Eh kako je svet mali.
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