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Speakers for the Dead were ministerial advocates of a notably-Humanistic movement in human society, given the apparent importance of religion at the time of their advent. Though not associated per se with any official religion (a Speaker may be Catholic, but the Speakers in general are not a religious order), Speakers (as they are commonly called) typically enjoyed the respect and deference afforded any priest or cleric.
The job of a Speaker was to give an epitaph in the context of the subject's own values, attempting to memorialize the person's life in a manner consistent with how the deceased viewed themselves.[1] To that end, the Speaker's job typically involved arduous research. This was an intentional contrast to a typical eulogy, which tends to downplay the mis-deeds of the deceased and play-up their positive traits. The job of a Speaker is not per se to tear down or to uplift, but to speak the truth, and to be the voice of the departed.
This task naturally came easy to Ender, given his philosophy of loving his enemies. He studied the Buggers to understand them, because he needed to win a war. When he came to understand them, he grew to love them, as is inevitable when one truly understands another.
Speakers for the Dead arose as a cultural phenomenon in eventual response to the books The Hive Queen and The Hegemon, written by Andrew Wiggin under the pen name "the Speaker for the Dead." These books gave account of their subjects' lives from their own perspectives, slowly transforming humanity's perception of its conflict with the Formics. Before their publication, Ender was universally hailed as a hero of Humanity. Eventually, his books cultivated the (in his own eyes, vastly more appropriate) view of him as the monster who committed xenocide, and humanity by-and-large came to lament this monstrous deed. The cultural importance of Speakers didn't truly take hold until after publication of The Hegemon, because Ender's human audience was better-able to relate to a human subject.[1]
Any citizen of the Hundred Worlds had the legal right to summon a Speaker (or a priest of any faith, to whom Speakers were considered legally equivalent) in response to another's passing.[1]