Huh. Yes, I'm familiar with the principle - although there are circumstances where people at home are expected to disobey their orders. Whole code of honor and list of war crimes that you're supposed to adhere to no matter what your commanding officer tells you and a procedure for addressing the illegal order if there's enough time to do anything other than knock her out and turn to the second in command. And you haven't had time to develop such a thing, I suppose. Sigh. I do not one hundred percent share his values, although I've avoided making any of the lack of overlap salient. Will it help if I can also do the entire calculation explicitly? I have some of the intuitive sense but I think best in writing so I learned to put it all into words one way or another.

Well, he can work with me and expect me to show up when I said I would; I suppose I have no idea what he'd be asking of me if I were a more viable delegation target; but I mean, in general, will it help to have the ability to expressly break down what's going on when we find ourselves at odds of whatever kind. I don't think adapting the actual Asgardian code would be a good idea because it contains things like 'if in dire straits I accept men under my command I will release them without penalty for desertion when the reality of combat overwhelms them unless they are at risk of leaking information to the enemy, in which case I will hold them without requiring combat duty' and things like that. And there are a lot of explicit exceptions for frost giants, because we really don't like frost giants. But there's better stuff too. There are several inter-realm ways of marking a noncombatant healer that we recognize and - unless they're a frost giant - we don't hurt them. Children who are not frost giants are off-limits, at least if we can tell by looking that they're children and they aren't holding weapons. It is never acceptable to rape an enemy and you need a very good reason to torture them - I don't remember the exact parameters of 'good reason' because in practice you can always get away with saying you didn't have a good enough reason and the parameters are there for people who are looking for an excuse to go for it. If you're not immediately under threat you mercy-kill a mortally wounded enemy who doesn't have a designated healer making for them. The rules about how you remand prisoner custody to other authorities would be really complicated what with 'death' meaning 'going to Mandos, who is a failure as a person', so that would need revision.

No, I suppose he hasn't, unless you count capturing orcs alive on the expectation that I'll show up and heal them as making a plan that relies on me. Orc children - well, pre-oath I'd want to whisk them away to be raised by the converted colony, who are not going to be having any children of their own besides a handful of test cases to see if they're born in pain. Post-oath I'd want to convert them. But this is how I handle adult orcs too. You could have an orc version of the frost giant exception, I suppose.

Given your abilities that makes sense. Absent your abilities I don't think it does. I know were I an orc I would be grateful for a quick death. ...Do frost giants swear your people undying enmity?

I'm not sure if they have anything like that going on but if they did it wouldn't be an unbreakable constraint on their will for the rest of their lives. Apart from Quendi and orcs I don't know of anyone who has that as even an option - I'm not sure about Dwarves, I asked Lúthien and she wasn't sure.

Why all the exceptions, then?

Asgardians just really don't like frost giants. Maybe we don't trust them to honor an approximately reciprocal code. I didn't ask; they don't actually bring juveniles to battle any more than we do and don't use an inter-realm noncombatant healer designation. Also since I'm a princess it would have been vaguely indecent for me to be under any command other than my mother's or possibly sister's so I had a small squad of people known to me I was commanding, for strike missions, and wasn't on guard against being told to torch a Midgardian village or anything.

Would your code have prohibited burning the ships? Would it have obliged us to commit a significant share of our forces to rowing the damned things back over?

Depends on your formal status with the Nolofinwëans, whether you interpret them as people you were working with or just some folks. But 'abandoning a salvageable ally in the stronghold of the enemy' is kind of a big deal.

Fervent agreement. Father would say that they weren't an ally but a unit of ours which deserted.

Well, you don't abandon salvageable deserters to the enemy, either, let alone their families, you haul them back and have them up on charges and they spend the rest of the war under close supervision digging latrines and getting the last pick of rations and then get dishonorably discharged or if they did something really destructive tried and executed.

If they outnumber you, and that is not feasible?

It's awkward to apply to this case anyway, because you weren't organized beforehand with a code with penalties listed for desertion or a command hierarchy that could stand up to a mean look, and you're a colony effort as much as an army. You could have considered them the Valar's prisoners of war but then we'd have to get into whether the Valar are relevantly honorable in any sense of the word.

You can break out prisoners of war, but it's actually fairly customary - unless we're talking about frost giants - to trade them. With your own prisoners if you have them, with something else if you don't. Sometimes only after the war's over. But this would involve the Valar condescending to not have exactly their way all the time, which is unthinkable.

They would never agree to any kind of concession, no. Anyway, my father thought he was leaving them in neutral ground to build their own damned boats, and I think it'll be - shocking, to him, to realize that he left them to the enemy. It might change his outlook on making amends now. The larger problem is that even if that does change his stance, there are no amends we can make that would rebuild the trust we destroyed, and no real avenue by which we can end up working together. And we may need to, as Nolofinwë said in that conversation you presented to me.

I asked once what your cousins wanted and they wanted to - well, Findekáno, while still on the ice, wanted to - receive and then spurn an apology, which doesn't seem very productive either. Pause. I wonder if anyone would faint if I told them that Fëanor apologized to me once for using my matronymic alone? I don't know if they think he's incapable of it generally or just about more important matters.

Well, I finagled the return of some of the objects. Although most of it's being delayed because delivering horses is awkward and I can't carry anything big efficiently. Orcs are probably going to do it.

And I expect this changed their outlook towards us not at all? Not that it should have. There are things you can't buy forgiveness for.

One of your brothers offered to arrange it if I healed your father. I had been genuinely on the fence about it so I didn't feel like I was extorting him, but I don't think it made it seem very conciliatory as a gesture to your cousins.

I don't think there's a conciliatory gesture short of kneeling at Nolofinwë's feet that would do it.

That's what worries me.