Which pamphlet does he need to publish...

How is this story going to need to be spun...

Jonatan really does not think it serves the interest of public order to have this much visible and stated disagreement among figures of authority about whether Wain's speech was legal. If Her Majesty in her wisdom wants Wain to live, there are less dangerous ways to do it, and if she wants Wain to die she shouldn't have allowed an archduchess and a paladin to be called in her defense.

"On the matter of wrongful deaths under the decree of the twenty-ninth of Desnus, I find the accused innocent. The accused's speech on the floor of the Constitutional Convention did not constitute a proscription list under that decree. If it were to constitute such a list, it would be a list with only a single entry. I am disinclined to believe that such constitutes a 'list,' and observe that if that were the intention of the law the queen would have forbidden any denunciations of our fellow citizens rather than narrowly forbidding lists of such denunciations. Furthermore, I observe that the decree of the twenty-ninth does not prohibit speech. Though it may seem like a minor matter, I judge that it was unambiguously legal - at least so far as the decree of the twenty-ninth is concerned - for the accused to speak before the Convention.

On the matter of incitement to murder I find less clarity. It is true that the accused intended that men die, or at least be threatened with death if they did not comply with her other demands. It is true that she spoke words to that effect, before a crowded room. And it is true that some of the people whose deaths she intended were killed as a result. However, it is also true that the she did not intend any of the people who heard the speech to conduct the violence, that she did not intend her speech to be spread to the people who later did the violence, and that, in fact, it was not her speech that moved the doers to the deed. The accused intended violence, and intended a path to that violence, and that violence occurred. But the intended path to violence was interrupted, by the accused's own actions, and the eventual incitement was by the words of another. The accused, upon learning that her speech might inspire men to the violence which actually occurred, decided not to repeat it or to spread it to an audience which might be so inspired. It is not incitement to murder, if a man speaks in a private setting, and unknown to him others take his words outside of that setting and spread them to people who are driven to murder. If the law of this country were more thoroughly developed, I would judge the accused guilty of conspiracy to incite murder, which she surely did even if she abandoned her conspiracy before the final deed; but as the law stands now that is no crime. Perhaps it should be, but it is not my place to write Her Majesty's law, only to discern whether it has been violated. As such, I reluctantly find the accused innocent of incitement as well."

What

Correct about the law, guaranteed to be interpreted by absolutely no one as actually about the law. Well, that's what they have the pamphlets for.  She will quirk an eyebrow at Xavier and Joan Pau to take credit for having called it.

The feeling of failure despite one's best efforts is a familiar one and it wells up in her as the judge speaks—

Valia had something she was going to say but - but she was not, not even slightly, living in the world where she would actually get to say it. She blinks at the judge in astonishment and does not open her mouth because her voice will be shaking far too much for it to do any good.

It wouldn't have been satisfying anyway. Important to remember that. He'll figure out how to tell his sister somehow.

Hooray! Clap clap clap clap clap.

....cheers? Cheers!!!

Thank you Shelyn, thank you Iomedae, thank you Anyone else up there who helped -

Right, she's recovered enough to speak. 

"I wish it had been illegal," she says, as loudly and clearly as she can manage, "because then I would not have done it, and I should never have done it. I -"

"Bailiff." 

The bailiff goes to cast a silent table but the advocate has done it already. What a reasonable little advocate.

"Valia Wain, you are found innocent of any crimes in giving your earlier speech, but if you are intending to give any more you will do so outside of my courtroom." Nevermind that the courtroom is a stadium full of thousands of spectators, today.

She doesn't know what's going on but this silent table has been at the tip of her finger for so long that she casts it immediately. She didn't even really catch the words.

She's completely in shock. If you'd asked her before the trial if Valia might be acquitted, she would have gestured to Lord Cansellarion, putting his thumb on the scales in exchange for his troops in Westcrown, and she wouldn't have called it impossible that he'd succeed, but - there's a difference between thinking something is possible, and seeing it happened. And she's not even sure that's what happened!

Yep, Carlota, you were right.

Well, isn't that a thing. That almost looked like the judge was following the law!

"Magistrate, I would like to address the crowd, to give the church's perspective on -"

"No! This is not the gods-damned opera! Get out!" Iomedans!

Valia is innocent, Valia is safe, Valia is going to be okay—

She feels as if she can properly breathe again, for the first time all trial — no, for the first time since she went looking for Valia, the night after the riots, and couldn't find her. Valia is going to be okay. The Queen is Good, and Valia is going to be okay, and Victòria didn't get her — her friend — killed by trying to help her read the law. 

It feels very silly to have doubted the verdict would be anything but this but Victòria is very aware that a moment ago she was not at all certain it would be.

Valia is going to be okay. Valia is going to be okay. Valia is going to be okay.

Valia would love to get out but she's in fact chained to a chair with a lot of powerful magic, here.

Innocent. What fun. Now a mid-level adventuring party is going to jump out of an alleyway and try to stab him to death some time in the next week. He hopes they have decent loot.

Justice!

(He did not, particularly, doubt the end result would be just. He just wasn't sure how it would end up there.)