Here Ender is complaining to his sister (during his visit to Earth) about how he’s being manipulated by the adults in his life and has no real options. In other words, he feels like a puppet. Which is exactly what Peter called him in 2.64. Just a coincidence, right? Or maybe we’re meant to draw some comparison between the different manipulators in Ender’s life.

What exactly is Val saying here? She’s trying to comfort Ender by telling him that he’s not a puppet other people's games, he’s actually a player. Is she right? The school administrators’ other quotes (that we pulled here) make us reconsider our attitude towards manipulation: oh, well, if Anderson says that manipulation is good for Ender, maybe he’s right. But here, Val takes another approach. She seems to be saying that we can escape manipulation by…ignoring it? Or leaning into it? This seems like a radically different approach from, say, Dink’s awareness of manipulation.

Ender may be a product of war, and he may be very good at it, but in some ways, he’s also a casualty. Think about it. If Ender loves the enemy, then destroying the enemy is always going to be a little painful. (Or very painful.) This is part of why Ender seems like a sad character in this book: the thing that he’s so great at (war) is painful. (Although the fact that we see Ender’s pain but not the pain of, say, Stilson, does strike us as a little odd. It’s important to remember that Ender isn’t the only casualty of his wars.)