"Count Ardiaca, between a man who robs and murders a tax collector for collecting taxes, and one who robs and murders his neighbor due to a mistaken belief that the neighbor is trying to restore infernal rule... I think both have done evil, but have a hair more sympathy for the latter. If you can find every rapist and get sworn testimony under a truthspell that condemns each one, I will not say you'd be cruel to castrate the lot, though I hear that doesn't work as well for prevention as it once did. But most of the crime of last night was not rape, it was murder and pillage that the many of the guilty believed to be justified by the evils of their victims. And the number of men willing to do that will only grow as you hang them, not diminish."

"Oh, I don't know if we can have them but I'd like trials, in which they freely admit that they didn't care which noble was a diabolist or think about whether there might be servants in the house they burned, before they hang. There reaches a level of lethal stupidity where it becomes worse than honest cruelty. Perhaps we could sentence them to exile, set up an illusion with frozen snow through a portal, send them to Lastwall? Call it Worldwound conscription and don't mention they're being given to Lastwall to train first. Lastwall might be able to make use of that sort of person."

"This was not Pezzack. The people of Pezzack rebelled when murdered for following the law. The people of Westcrown cowered like mice, until the moment Valia Wain gave them permission to murder men in their homes, and they saw that nothing happened. We tolerated the call, and they guessed that we would also tolerate any violence they committed, no matter how unjustified. Women and children died last night. Priests, bankers, ordinary men, men who had done nothing to them. Not because we hurt them, but because they felt they could, and that the authorities would be tolerant."

"I must agree with Regent Napaciza. What matters is the restoration of order, and for that I would forgive them, if it would work. But I don't believe it will, not without a swift and efficient display of force. It was not all the toleration of the assembly that stopped the riots in Galt from turning their swords on their own chosen priests and chosen leaders again and again and again, it was Cyprian and sulfur."

"I don't think that arresting Wain on the floor after her speech would have prevented this. If anything I suspect it would have made it worse. Shutting down the Abyssal pamphleteering would have prevented this, or bringing in a thousand paladins last night instead of this morning, or doing the rain preemptively, but - think about it. If a priest of Iomedae says 'there are diabolists still in power', and the Queen's men drag her off - maybe some men are discouraged from rioting because they see the price they'll pay. But a thousand others are persuaded her words are true. The people of Pezzack rebelled when the authorities declared a popular play to have been retroactively illegal and sought to put its well-liked star to death, and your takeaway is that we should've tried that? - to be clear I think we can execute her now, as liable for the deaths, but I don't think we'd be in a better position if we'd done it yesterday.

Similarly if the Archmage hadn't banned dueling. How does that go, speaking purely of how it looks to onlookers? Someone challenges her, she declines on the grounds that her church doesn't permit that. You run her through anyway? Do you think that convinces people she's a liar? I don't know anything that would convince people she's a liar, which is why I have focused on laws that prevent the dissemination of lies. The thing we were owed last night was a show of force in the streets. I don't know why that failed to happen, and I do intend to press Her Majesty on it, when she's less busy.

As for what to do with the criminals now - whatever works, it sounds like we're all in accord, and just in doubt about what that is."

He feels sick and angry again. Not that he's ever really stopped, but it's coming instead of going, now.

"I don't know what should have been done about the speech. I know she identified her targets, and that neither the crown nor the president reacted at all, with words or precautions."

"It was a despicable and evil speech. I think the best thing would have been for Lord Cansellarion to have been allowed his response, to rebut it, and if he were to have Wain arrested by the Church for it I don't think that would have make her a martyr. From a strategic angle here, thinking about public opinion, you want to take her down for betraying Iomedae first."

...nod. 

He hates having to think about public opinion, specifically because he's terrible at it. But this sounds much less like an attack, and he feels less sick and scared about agreeing with it. He should probably stop talking, though he's not sure he can eat.

"The church does not actually have jurisdiction over people who are not a part of it or subjects of Lastwall."

And now they're going to have this argument.

Ramirez nods. This was completely baffling when he first heard it, but it's already been explained once and he doesn't need it explained again.

"Sorry, what? Is she in fact a priest of someone else?" They should really have been saying that more loudly! And sooner!

Sigh. "If I understand correctly, the church of Iomedae holds that selection by the goddess does not actually make a cleric a member of the organized church, or impose any obligations on them."

(He probably should have let Cansellarion have it, but he knows something about Iomedae that someone else doesn't! How can you pass that up.)

"Exactly. I suppose if you're being very technical about it, she's one of Iomedae's Select but not a priest at all. She has not had any of the training that priests of Iomedae get, she has not sworn any oaths to the church, and there is no church organization that's empowered to give her orders or prosecute her. If the government of Cheliax had established a Chelish Iomedan inquisition with the Church's cooperation, that inquisition might have the power to prosecute uninitiated Select within Chelish territory but - Establishing an Iomedan inquisition here does not seem like it'd be a good use of anyone's resources, right now, even if the church weren't under its current resource constraints."

"I think having a very senior Iomedaen inquisitor explain in a very public trial what she got wrong would be a good use of the Church's resources. If you can't do it" I understand that there is no point arguing with paladins about whether their rules make any sense "even with Wain's cooperation or by request of the Queen then you can't do it. I just worry half of people are going to have the wrong takeaway from her Crown trial no matter how carefully it's conducted."

"An inquisitorial trial is not an option, no, not without an arrangement between the crown and church that predates the incident. Having an Iomedan testify at her trial might be possible, if the secular charges hinge on theological accuracy, though we're usually reluctant to endorse states that want to try Iomedan select for unorthodoxy."

"I hardly think the crown is intending to charge her for heresy. If she's still alive, has anyone heard what they're planning for the charges to be?"

"Presumably murder for everyone she called out as a target and wrongful death for everyone else. The problem is that the earlier pamphlet decree was poorly phrased and her speech arguably technically not in violation of it. If I were the Queen's prosecutor I'd also want to charge treason and sedition in case the court feels similarly about the speech. In terms of public opinion in the city I suspect it's much better to convict her of murder than treason, but much better to convict her of treason than of nothing."

"'Treason' sounds right to me. The queen and archmage Cotonnet said 'no more pamphlets calling for people's deaths, no killing delegates, no calling for the expulsion of delegates,' and if what she did was not technically a violation of the specific decrees, it was clearly enough contrary to their intent." From what he's heard of Galt he's not actually sure that 'mobs murdering evil nobles and anyone who stands with them' is actually contrary to Cotonnet's intent, but nobody in this room is going to acknowledge that.

"These people are paranoid about anything resembling subtlety," Joan-Pau finally settles on as a way to not offend Carlota. "I think in terms of public opinion - 'wrongful death' is undeniably true and very easy to prove; 'treason' is harder to make unambiguous."

"Oh, I have no disagreement there. I think it would be much better in terms of public attitudes for a conviction to be for the wrongful deaths that she unambiguously caused. But I am worried that the Queen's decree of the second of Sarenith stated only that charges for wrongful death would be brought if a person publishes a list of named persons in a manner as to imply an incitement to violence, which did not actually happen, and that I'm aware of no other decrees that touch on wrongful deaths as a consequence of published or spoken claims unless they are false. I don't know what to expect from Chelish courts, but an Axis court would not convict, on the law as I reviewed it today. Which is a flaw in our law, and one the more recent decrees from the Queen corrected, but they did not do so retroactively. 

And so if I were Her Majesty's prosecutor I'd be thinking about charges which - do less to quell public divisions, which will be less unambiguous and less satisfying, but which will at least suffice to avoid Wain being acquitted."

"I suspect that there's no decree on which she can be sentenced, and so we'd need to break out the old laws of Aspex never formally abolished in Cheliax. I don't think that's a very high price to pay, given that she in fact did cause wrongful death and everyone in Westcrown knows it."

Did the Thrunes not abolish the old laws or are we just not treating anything the Thrunes do as having really happened, because they were never themselves legitimate? With Joan Pau it can be hard to guess and it doesn't really matter. "Sure, perhaps they'll go that route. I am sure there are also some political constraints invisible to us," like that the Church probably would rather their people not be convicted of treason. "As long as it ends up firmly established that this was lawless, Evil, and her fault, and that no one's going to get away with it this time or any future time."

Oh, the second one. He nods anyway.

Nod nod nod.