V. Revenge is not accountability: pain can explain retaliation without making it just.

Victims of repression can reasonably reject a transition that demands instant forgetting. Public truth, restitution and accountability may be necessary for legitimacy.

But recognition of injury is different from granting every injured group permanent authority to define punishment.

Accountability is strongest when it identifies responsible conduct, repairs what can be repaired and creates boundaries against repetition.

The objective is not moral amnesia. It is a public order in which memory does not require permanent revenge.

Killing, imprisoning, exiling or trying a defeated ruler can each end that individual’s tenure, but none by itself determines whether loyalists demobilize, institutions survive or political violence declines. The meaning of the outcome depends on process, succession, public legitimacy and the settlement that follows.

This is one reason transitional justice developed as a plural field rather than a single ritual of punishment. Trials, truth processes, reparations, institutional reform, conditional amnesties and negotiated settlements answer different problems; their legitimacy depends on how they are combined, whom they protect and whether they reduce the inheritance of revenge.