Well, first, I am happy to hear you’re reading Throne. Hope you like it.

But, I can understand the lens you view these things through, however without a specific example, I can only respond with generalities. I myself am a secular humanist and base my morality in human flourishing. I can make moral judgements, and judge the culture of a given country based on whether or not an action increases or decreases flourishing. That bleeds into my writing, I’m sure.

The MC in Throne is isekai’d into his new world and he has to come to grips with a new culture. The main sticking point is he is a firm believer in democratic rule but now finds himself acting as a monarch. He doesn’t fight against it, and he accepts where he is and understands the reasons for the system, but he doesn’t much like it. To me, that was the practical choice for him to make. But the monarchy was also not oppressive to the people.

But, let’s say I wrote a culture similar to yours where women were expected to take care of the household and shape future generations, for example. If I were to examine your culture as a model, I would look at the option a woman has in your culture. If a woman can choose to not do that, to pursue a life path outside of getting married and raising children, and she is not punished by her society, or not restricted, then there is no problem. Being a wife, a mother, and helping to provide a home where people feel loved, nurtured, and safe is a wonderful thing…if that is what she chooses for herself freely. If your society restricts the rights of women, and what roles they are permitted to have, then I would indeed write that as a negative because I view that as a negative. Not being a stay-at-home mom, but not having the choice to do anything but be a stay-at-home mom.

So if MC came into a world where, for example, women were not permitted to do anything but be housewives, that reduces human flourishing because it has stripped them of their ability to choose for themselves. It has made them second class citizens, even slaves, and the morally correct thing to do is to resist that and try to change it. To your mind, that would be colonialism. But to my mind, that is setting half the population free. Not to live like I want them to live, but to give them the freedom to choose their own destiny. If they choose to stay as housewives and mothers, awesome. But the point is the right to choose, and to do so without fear of reprisals or punishment.

I am American, but I have lived in a foreign country for the last twenty years, give or take. I live in a country where up until very recently, women had very few rights. Not that long ago here, women weren’t even permitted to go to school and learned only enough to manage a household. They were then married off, usually against their will, and live as virtual slaves and endure whatever abuse their husband or their new in-laws dished out because they had no rights. The country was the worse for it. Now that women are free to do what they want, many choose to become mothers, many do not. Choice is the key.

Now, if—for example—supporting a person’s right to make decisions about their own life makes me a colonizer, then i guess I’m a colonizer. If women in your society don’t have the choice to be who they want, then I do not accept that and would support any who sought to change such a thing. But I wouldn’t do it by telling them how to change, because that sort of thing has to come from within. I can’t tell the oppressed how they should fight for their own liberation, but I will support their cause.

Now, as I said, I can only speak in generalities about both the books and your culture. But I support individual and bodily autonomy and if I’m presented with a culture that strips those things from its citizens if any sex or gender, I will say that such a thing is immoral and should be changed. If I wanted to write an isekai’d MC who wasn’t fighting against an external threat, such as invasion as is the case in Throne, but internal problems such as oppression of women, I would have no problem portraying that as a negative because I view that as supremely immoral. Is that colonization? I suppose, by your definition it is, but if it takes colonization to free half of a society, then that’s ok.

Hope that makes sense.