Heralded as a war hero in his own time, later generations charged Ender with genocide.

The terrans had been threatened by the Buggers, an extra-terrestrial race it had met in military encounters known as the 1st and 2nd invasions. The 1st invasion had obviously been an exploratory mission, but the 2nd bugger fleet, arriving 50 years later, was prepared to set up a colony in human space.

Terra was close to losing this second encounter with the Buggers, when a decisive victory was won by a single commander, Mazer Rackham. Fear that the buggers would mount yet a 3rd invasion, spurred the search for another military genius to replace Rackham. Ender Wiggin was the result of this search, which had spanned decades.

(Ender's birth, in fact, has been "requisitioned" by the military since his brother and sister had come close to meeting their criteria. This made Ender a "Third" at a time when having more than two children was discouraged. Since Ender had been conceived by government mandate, he enjoyed the same privileges allowed "Firsts" or "Seconds," such as public education.

Ender's formal training, sometimes brutal and often controversial, began at age six. By the time he was 11, Ender won the Bugger War for Earth by destroying their home planet and the inhabitants thereof.

Although Ender's contemporaries held him up as a savior, a book published soon thereafter, The Hivequeen, dampened Earth's initial enthusiasm. The Hivequeen described the war from the buggers' point of view, and began to provoke feelings of guilt, or at least remorse. The book carried the byline "Speaker for the Dead," and no investigation, no matter how thorough, ever uncovered the author's true identity.

Later generations pictured Ender as a wholesale murderer, while the "Speaker for the Dead," became a religious fountainhead. Speakers for the Dead specialized in frank, objective eulogies, often perceived as a catharsis for the bereaved. Theirs was considered a humanistic religion and was popular among colony worlds.