Why, of course they would.

(Joan-Pau has spent a significant part of the day after the riots rehousing people. His own house wasn't burned down - most of the evacuation proved to be unnecessary, aside from a few scattered looters and a rain-countered arson the mobs never made it to that district - but he still endorses the decision in retrospect.)

Xavier has no objection. (He's been apologizing to Skybreaker and being borrowed by the Queen.)

She greets them in the smaller entrance hall of the reconfigured Mansion. "Archduke. Count. I heard many stories of your heroics today. Are your people all well?"

"So far," he says. "No deaths among my men, though one of my vassals took a bad wound. May I hope your night was not too eventful?"

He'll nod with Xavier vis-a-vis the "no deaths" rule.

Carlota was in no position to do anything; she doesn't have the kind of personal power to stop riots without being reasonably likely to become a casualty of them herself. It nonetheless feels like cowardice, staying in. If it were Chelam she'd have taken the chance, but in an unfamiliar city it'd be stupid. "None of my people came to harm, hopefully not because I was wrongly too reluctant to make use of them." And she shows them into the parlor where Cansellarion and Narikopolus are.

"Marshal, how good to see you. Archduke, I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance." He doesn't think he's encountered his northern neighbor before, and will bow to him as an equal. 

Joan-Pau will, of course, bow deeper, since he thinks he's the lowest-ranking person here in every practical sense.

Narikopolus bows back. "Same to you. I only wish the circumstances were better."

"We are also expecting the other Menadorian nobility, who are also staying here. They had a long day but will join us for dinner." Carlota waves an unseen servant over to serve everyone tea. 

"Archduke, Count Ardiaca. I am glad you could join us."

The Duchess will give everyone a minute to settle in and then - "I hope under the circumstances you'll forgive me for being all business. I want to ban the pamphlets when the convention reconvenes, and I'd like us to spend the time before then working out a reasonable well-designed approach."

Ardiaca will attempt to conceal his shock. "All pamphlets?"

Xavier does not do a noticeably better job. Surely this is... extreme.

"Obviously there can be some kind of process for approval, but all random distribution of pamphlets by any person, devil or interfering foreign body inspired to write and circulate them, yes."

"In Lastwall any publications like that would have to be approved by the church. I think - the main issue with a similar here is that the crown is having a great deal of trouble staffing the existing bureaucracy with decent people, without adding any more departments to it."

"Yes. I'd straightforwardly make a rule requiring crown or church approval like Lastwall has, or crown or lord approval like Taldor has, if we had the capacity, but we don't. The policy that requires the least further enforcement by the crown is that publishing one copy of anything is permitted - probably make it three or five - but that making enormous numbers of copies of it is forbidden. So things can spread, but not like wildfire, and everyone can have an opinion, but not all at the same time. But I imagine there's a better solution. I know little of the policies of regimes outside the Inner Sea. Axis has freedom of the pen, and I would yesterday have described myself as a believer in it. But Axis is full of axiomites and I have become persuaded that this flatly doesn't work in Cheliax as it stands today. May our grandchildren surpass us in this as in other matters, but for now this has to end."

He doesn't have anything specific to say about that, but he's nodding.

The thing is, Joan-Pau likes pamphlets. He thinks they're useful. He sent the Duchess a copy of something Silvia had written, with the intention of getting it published so they could win the pamphlet game everyone else is playing badly. Molthune's Office of Wartime Security maintains a list of banned books and libraries of acceptable books and licenses print shops solely to print exact copies of acceptable books, and if they depart the model they're imprisoned for treason. 'People murdering and looting and raping' is a situation best solved by executing the people who do until there's no one left prepared to violate the law. 

"I believe the practice of Andoran," the most liberal polity not to collapse into civil war, "is that each print shop must purchase a license from the township or borough in which it resides and submit to that township's censorship, which might serve as a model except that Andoran has demonstrated the result of this is that a few townships marry their devotion to Milani and Mammon, and license print shops for a fat fee that are founded, publish a swift run of libelous pamphlets, and then disappear. So that will clearly not serve as a model for our legislation." And Taldor is useless...

... This suggestion feels Erastilian, to him, in the worst sense, the way the nastiest of the Lawful Neutral Erastilians get about staying in your place, not making waves, a law for today and not for tomorrow and the Office of Wartime Security hasn't closed... Almost Asmodean or Barbatosian, the way how because a few people violate the laws no one is allowed to write...

"Duchess, Archduke, Archduke, Marshal, I believe I have it." 

"I dislike the idea of outlawing all pamphlets," he says. "Not only is it a break from the practice of Axis, but it means offending an archmage, and though we all know from the survival of the present Galtan regime that he is a deeply forgiving man, it is still unwise to make enemies of archmages. And yet clearly the status quo cannot continue." He's talking rapidly now.

"And yet I think there is a way to get the benefits of Axis, without outlawing all pamphlets."

"First: A law outlawing the deranged radical pamphlets won't work, and we know this because it was passed. The abridged version of Valia Wain's speech was incitement under Her Majesty's law, and I expect the man who published it will be executed within a day or two - possibly even by tonight. His imitators will follow under the same law; strict enforcement will take care of them.

"And we cannot have an office of censorship, because we do not have the men to staff it working for the state - hence the need to outlaw them all." He nods to Carlota. "But we do have men capable of making this judgement. Not everyone in Cheliax is a fool."

"What we need in a new law is a way to clearly distinguish between legal and illegal writing, and to ensure that illegal writing is either never published, obviously illegal, or is at least attached to a name we can fine for damages done. Very, very, very large damages done. That's how they do it in Axis, no?"

Without waiting for much of a response -

"I propose that we accept the following rules for the censorship. Anyone can operate a print shop upon posting a bond. Say, Two thousand Absalom pounds?" He hopes for winces, or, more likely, appreciative expressions. That's the cost of an enchanted sword. "Perhaps make it four, or six." A headband. A headband and an enchanted sword. "Should the shop print illegal works responsible for damages, it can be sued under the law, for up to the value of the bond - or more."

"Those capable of posting the bond will either be serious, sober men, invested in the welfare of society, with a good deal to lose should they be convicted of incitement to murder and no way to run without forfeiting their landed property. Or powerful adventurers, but they have more ways of doing damage than writing pamphlets."

"For those without? They may go to an existing print shop, which will judge whether their pamphlet is likely to be a risk to the print shop's bond. Or, should they be turned down, they may go to the Church of Abadar to post the bond for them, who will observe that they are raging lunatics and decline to do so - or, if it judges them to be sober men, be very, very interested in what they write."

He makes a sweeping bow. 

"And so we will outlaw seditious pamphlets, increase the wealth of the crown by whatever must be confiscated, and continue to have those benefits that the freedom of the press does bring, that we might otherwise lose." Such as Silvia not preaching sermons of fire and blood at them.

"It's elegant, and you are right that it is how such a thing would be approached in Axis, if Axis had need of any such laws, which it doesn't because words do not move the denizens of Axis to madness and murder. I think it would reduce the madness of the present moment. 

I think it's insufficient. And the reason I think so is that my best judgment is that Wain's speech - the unabridged version - was legal. Evil, foolish, but not barred by any of the decrees issued before it. I want a law that would have prevented its publication anyway, and I don't see how this does so. A sober man would soberly assess his own risk of prosecution as low, for evil and dangerous but not technically prohibited words. Maybe if we dispensed with the idea that the shop can be sued only if it prints illegal works responsible for damages, and say it is responsible for those damages that result from its publications even if they technically toed the right side of the law."

"As an interim measure until such time as a new legal code is promulgated, that would seem reasonable? We'd need to work out a more precise definition of damages, of course." He doesn't like this because he's very worried it will end up in the final legal code, but he thinks it is significantly less bad than the alternative.

"I think that half of these restrictions are just good sense given a population given to mad lies and the other half should be explicitly interim. Emergencies make for bad law, and yet we need law in emergencies; so make the law but make it temporary. 

Maybe the Abadarans can help us define damages, as they'd function in contract law. Obviously we do not wish to punish a printer if they publish the Acts and some madwoman decides they mean we need to kill all evildoers and tries to do so personally. ...you know what else we could do, is make it a full or at least very substantial legal defense if the text is permitted in another Good and Lawful state, borrow some of the effort their censorship bureaus are putting in."

"So, Lastwall?"

"Well, and Hermea," she says, in her best imitation of his tone yesterday when he pointed out that the gold dragon tiny island project-city doesn't have slavery. "Do you think Molthune approves anything a good society would prohibit? I take it you think they prohibit things a good society would approve, but this is a - backup, a source of additional flexibility."