"I am on both. For recommendations, I'll have to ask who isn't too busy. Lluisa is a lawyer; I don't know how good she is, but she knows a lot about how gods can fit into governments and how laws work. There's the child from heaven, Soler wanted to meet him anyway. Maybe one of the actual clerics? I'm not sure."

"I feel as though, if we split into several subcommittees, that will significantly slow our work down to no major benefit, since every new right would need to be debated in the greater commitee. I think a new full committee on the family is an important and necessary thing to have that would otherwise slip through the cracks of the existing committees, and I agree that there should be a capable nobleman or high priest to steward it through so that the recommendations it makes don't get lost. But - a married man or woman, with a family, should head it. Someone who knows what it should be in Cheliax, to work with the people who know what it is." His lip twists. "And as a perpetual bachelor, I'm unqualified."

"Well, I suppose if I went to head up that one you'd still have her for the religious requirement," Narcis says dubiously, nodding to Ferrer.

Oh, she's going to do the thing where you sign up for too many school assignments and get beaten horribly for failing, except the penalty isn't that you get beaten, it's that the laws of your entire country suck forever, which is also what they were like before, but this time it's all your fault in particular.

Well.

"...are any of the other Archdukes married? That would get it taken seriously."

"Ignasi Narikopolus of Menador, who has kept his seat through the transition of queens, and Shawil de Abadar of Longmarch, the Osirian adventuring companion of Her Majesty and the archmages. Both are busy men. Few of the new, less-Asmodean, crop of nobility are married so far, having mostly been recently resurrected."

Enric looks confused. Everyone knows archdukes are the same kind of thing wizards and fairies, where they aren’t completely a man or a woman. They’re some other kind of being, with strange powers and strange minds, that can look and act like both or neither whenever they want. The thing they do is obviously different from how commoners have marriage and families.

But the people good at politics seem to think it’s relevant to which noble they should have as the face of the committee, so Enric doesn’t say anything. 

Well they don't want an infernal noble, but they don't want someone who thinks women are chattel, either.

"...maybe we can just open it to the floor tomorrow, and see who wants it. A Sower seems a good choice to chair it."

"I'll ask around among the dukes, and see if I've missed anyone I could wholeheartedly recommend. But that may be best. Let's have a vote: All in favor of creating a Committee on the Rights and Duties of the Family, separate from this committee, but not other subcommittees?"

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

“Aye…”

Though he’s still a bit worried about family rights being divided up and then ignored. Hope they can find a good enough noble.

Victòria was worried this was some kind of trick until she realized she could just sign up for both. "Aye."

“Wait, uh, un-Aye?” Is that allowed? Doesn’t seem allowed. 

“I think this is too important to separate. We’re trying to get important people there like we do here, but we’ll still lose something. If all the rights are all together, people will vote for it just to get the ones they like. If we separate a right, like family, it might not get through alone.”

"- on the floor, you mean? - ah. Yes, I see, if we give them a list of ten they might see six they like and wave it through, but if we give them two lists of five they may strike one down."

" - does it work that way?" 

Nobody's... actually done a vote yet... so it's not immediately obvious what exactly the floor gets to vote on.

"...I think if everyone expected the committees to have the final word someone would have made more of a fuss about all the nonhumans on Nonhumans."

"No, sorry, I meant - can the floor not take apart the bundles for only the things they like? I guess maybe no one knows how it'll go, yet."

"Maybe they can send it back and say to do it over, but it'd certainly be a hell of a way to do it if we could work out a nice list that works nicely together and they could pick it apart into bits that don't."

“I don’t know, never been to one of these before. Not from Galt.” He smiles. 

“But look at how things went on the floor last time. One person already had a plan for which committees to have, there was a fight, but at the end the plan mostly happened without anything taken away. I think that’s why we have committees.”

She looks at the Archduke. (Something inside her is SCREAMING at addressing this person directly, but if she can't slow her heartbeat she can at least ignore it. Mostly. Sort of.)

"Split into only two groups, but have someone on both committees who can add any family-specific rights to the main list, if those working on the main list feel they belong? Many things relating to families are not rights, and don't need to slow this committee down, but some are."

"I'm also on both the Good Gods committee and this committee," Tetula says. "I think it makes sense to separate out the family, and we can make sure to put any family-related rights on our list too."

"I'm somewhat concerned we may find ourselves reduplicating effort; I see the advantage to submitting the rights proposed by both committees to the full convention as a single package proposal, but that suggests that we'll find ourselves redebating every family-related right that the family committee passes if some members of this committee have worries about endorsing it." 

Thoughtful nod.

("My mistake, Delegate Tetula, I thought you were only here and on the Anti-Diabolism committee.")