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It depends on whether the act was performed with malice (def.: "the intention or desire to do evil").
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To say this entire plan was Ghoulish and Evil is an understatement. It cost Victor a war with the FWL and CC ((Which the Fed-Com lost)) and gave Katherine Steiner-Davion the justification she needed to split the Lyran portion of the Fed-Com away from the Davion side.
Not giving a father the chance to see his dying son one last time so you can continue to get war materials from his realm in exchange for "trying to cure his son of cancer" is just evil.
Underhanded? Definitely.
Ghoulish? Certainly.
Cold? Sure.
Malicious? Not necessarily.
Victor coughed into his hand to hide his surprise. "Forgive me. I did notice your approach, but I did not think you would be coming to speak with me. I haven't earned much favor with your family."
[Isis Marik] nodded sympathetically. "Joshua's death was a blow, but I very much appreciated what you did to keep him alive. I know your father started his treatments, but you could have terminated them after the Clan truce. Joshua was no longer needed as a hostage then."
"But that would have been inhuman, which could sound funny coming from me, given what happened." Victor frowned. "I bore him no ill will, and the same goes for you and your father - for your nation, too."
- Grave Covenant, ch. 19
While Victor's actions were certainly not-right, they were hardly so monstrous as "He has Thomas Marik's dying son ((who is on New Avalon getting treatment for cancer)) killed..." - phrasing that connotes a malice (which is defined by intent to do evil) that was clearly not present on Victor's part.
Could/should Victor have been honest with the elder Marik from the onset? Of course! But he didn't (and that was a failure on his part), and it cost him (and the Suns) dearly.
Moreover, there is the added irony, with regard to Thorn's comment, of the fact that it was actually Sun-Tzu Liao that made an active attempt to have Joshua Marik murdered in his hospital bed...
"If that man was connected to Justin Allard's murder, then he was an agent of the Capellan Confederation." The full import of that realization made Victor slump back against the wall. "Is Sun-Tzu stupid enough to try to kill Joshua? Something that would anger both me and Thomas? With his realm wedged between us, that is hardly a wise move."
"So it would seem, Highness."
Why would Sun-Tzu do it? What could he gain? The most he could have hoped was that the return of Joshua's body to the Free Worlds League might lead to discovery of a double. But Sun-Tzu would have needed to know about the double in advance to come up with this plan, and he couldn't have known about the switch.
Victor's jaw dropped open. My father got the idea of substituting a double for Joshua because Sun-Tzu's grandfather once plotted to replace my father with a double, and almost succeeded in putting his own puppet on the throne of the old Federated Suns. If Sun-Tzu guessed at the possibility of a substitute, or even intended to manufacture evidence to prove to Thomas that I'd put a double in his son's place ... Thomas's gratitude to Sun-Tzu would have firmly cemented their relationship.
"Curaitis, check the bodies for syringes or scalpels or anything they could have used to take tissue or blood samples."
The dark-haired security man paused for the briefest second, then nodded. "Another wrinkle."
- Bred for War, ch. 19
Victor certainly have a claim to the moral high-ground versus Thomas Marik with regard to how the Joshua Marik situation was handled.
But Sun-Tzu's arrangements to actively assassinate an already-dying child in a hospital bed, in order to spark a war from which he and his nation could (and ultimately did) benefit? That is evil.
Edited by Strum Wealh, 02 January 2014 - 07:40 AM.
