"...Mercy feels evil," he says. "To have the power to hurt someone, and want to, and not do it, feels to me the way I imagine most people feel about, I don't know, rape or something. Like I'm doing something actively, terribly wrong. A lot of the... arranging my life to be better for everyone in it... that I've done over the years has been finding ways to think of things as something other than mercy so I can do them. It... seemed like you might want to know that."

"Yes. That's - interesting."

"If there's such a thing as an objective definition of right and wrong, I'm pretty sure mine isn't it. But - that doesn't make it stop feeling that way."

"That sounds - I was going to say 'really hard' but I suppose it isn't if you just do as the described feeling says."

"Yeah. Did that for a while, early on. But - if I want a functioning empire, I have to pay some attention to its needs, and that means things like buying slaves instead of abducting every attractive person I pass on the street. So I had to learn to think my way around that."

"Do you prefer to continue having this feature?"

"As opposed to what?"

"I'm assuming you won't like the idea and if you don't it's a nonstarter but the Valar can edit things."

"I'd rather keep it than have a god mess with my head."

"Not unreasonable."

"Not that it seems to be doing me much good, but, well. I really don't want gods messing with my head."

"I understand."

He nods.

"Many people would probably if asked find that their sense of morality came with - hm, thinking about knock-on effects of their actions? It's not that, say, rape is just bad in isolation, it's that it would make the victim miserable and others afraid..."

"It's about—who I am, for me, I think. Being the right kind of person, doing the things the right kind of person would do."

"But certainly it would be a problem if everyone tried to aspire to the same ideal."

"Yeah. I don't have feelings like that about what anyone else does, at least."

"Hm. Do you have an idea why you assign yourself this - exceptional role?"

"Because I was born an imperial prince? I'm not actually sure if that's it."

"Mm?"

"...it feels like the right kind of person for me to be is defined by my - imperialness, that this is who I am because my father was the Emperor. But I don't know if that's actually why I feel that way, or if I'd have exactly the same moral compass if I'd been born in a gutter."

"Does it matter that you're currently Emperor more by virtue of magic than by birth?"

"Not especially."

"Hmmm."

"Mm?"