Are you going to give it even to people who decline, then?

I'm not sure I'll be able to work with much finesse. Tesseract's a beautiful tool but I cannot give somebody free will by being even very clever about answering questions beginning with 'where' about them. I would need one of the other stones, probably soul but I might be able to pull it off with any other one, though time would be a last resort. And I have some reason to expect the Tesseract to like me, and some reason to expect it to produce a guess about whether I can safely wield other stones, but I might be able to pick up the soul stone and do one, simple thing with it and then put it down but not be able to get it to do complex conditionals. If I can get it to do complex conditionals I'd probably want something like, mm, free will for anybody who would choose it if they were not under the influence of any oaths, maybe with an option to clear standing oaths but retain the ability to make new ones, but something to get around the circularity of the whole business. If you would decide not to be able to tell me about a nuclear threat even if you were not under a secrecy oath that begins to be beyond the scope of things I feel entitled to be annoyed about, really.

It's not 'I'd decide not to be able to tell you about a nuclear threat' it's 'are my people better off, and am I more able to act in their interests, if I can bindingly give my word', and I'm not sure of the answer to that. Coercing people into oaths is obviously monstrous.

Which is why if I only get to decide 'free will for everybody or no', you will have to deal with having it, because orcs outnumber you. If you count the dead ones, anyway.

Yes, obviously if that's the only option that's the way to do it. Not even because they outnumber us, because being coerced into an oath is much worse than not having the capacity to make them.

I'm really curious what will happen to the converted orcs. I mean, if they want to start the local chapter of the church to One-Above-All even once they're not using the concept as a surrogate Melkor, that's not going to hurt anything but it'd be a little weird.

Yeah. It'll probably fade once they don't need it. An oath to serve breaking is really weird, it feels awful for a little while.

It does?

Not painful, just - a very acute sort of directionlessness that's easy to disentangle from your ordinary grief but hard to get over except by grieving. I'm not sure what an oath to serve someone you didn't trust and love would feel like, breaking.

...how do you know what it's like...?

...we swear to the King, and he was murdered...

Everyone does this, or just...?

No, just people with important political positions. It's a very very loosely worded oath, it does not actually oblige you to obey him, just if you're going to work against him to make it known you've parted ways. I don't know what wording Fëanor requires of his people, these days, or if he expects it of more of them.

I don't know either. I didn't know this was a staple.

Fealty's not a thing, back home? - or, I suppose, it is but doesn't actually bind you.

I do not much care to think about what Odin would do with the power to so much as strongly suggest fealty oaths. It would probably not be a disaster for most people but it would have been dreadful for me.

I can imagine.

Especially since I'd have been invited to swear it without the benefit of knowing what species I was and the implications thereof.

The one with my grandfather was 'I desire to serve this kingdom and its people; if I find myself unable to bear that obligation honorably I will discharge it honorably.' Pretty safe, as oaths go.

I suppose. Given Asgardian definitions of honor I would have been in a desperate bind, though, I was too clumsy to hold a sword until I invented my spell... stealth wouldn't have been an option, not learning to hold a sword was not really an option, and female sorcerers are not so much 'honorable'.

Yes, it sounds like it would have put you in an awful position.

Which makes me skeptical of its wisdom as an institution even if nobody in the social position expected to take the oath happens to be a Loki.

Fealty in general? Or just forms that one can't lie about?

There might be versions which wouldn't have - victims, no matter who happened to be the monarch at the time. But that doesn't seem to be one.

Monarchy that doesn't have victims regardless of who the monarch is is a little too high to place the bar, I think, realistically.