- he really wasn't expecting that, and was in fact already well into drafting the final report to carefully avoid stepping on her toes or implying that the government of Cheliax could have been expected to conduct itself differently! Her Majesty's middle-of-the-night hours are of course less spoken-for than her daytime ones, but they are certainly still busy. Also he is under the impression she is moderately hostile to the Church, not that he intends to say that in any way. He does not expect he can fool her, and of course he can't lie to her, but he can...avoid bringing it up, not too gracelessly. Or maybe from the fact that he is invited alone he should infer she means to talk about secret matters! Anyone's guess, really! Alexaera doesn't actually seem to be a reliable source on the woman.

He will, of course, be there.  And bow very deeply, and go through all the proper forms.

"Sir de Luna, I hope the timing is not too inconvenient? I know you wanted to finish your report before tomorrow but this last week has been terribly busy." There's tea.

"I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with you, Your Majesty, and there is no hour I'd count excessively inconvenient, though I'd be slightly baffled if you picked dawn." He'll take tea. "Would it be useful to you for me to describe the process the Church employs for these reports?" It would not be useful for reasons such as 'giving her new information' but maybe she would like him to continue pretending that it would.

"I'm familiar enough with the process. No need to waste time."

"How was the decision made to call a constitutional convention?"

Well that's slightly awkward, in that the agreement was initially made between Élie and Catherine. She's...not going to ask second Alex to jump through a bunch of confidentiality hoops so that she can say that.

"Élie and I first spoke about it, hm, it must have been five years ago now? When it was becoming obvious that we'd try to overthrow the infernal regime, but long before it was obvious that we'd succeed. He wanted a republic, naturally, I suggested a constitutional monarchy with - republican institutions. Something that could eventually transition to a purely symbolic monarchy or even a full republic, gradually, over time. Given that there would be a constitution, it was clear enough to both of us that it would have to be written or at least approved by some sort of popular body, so an assembly would need to be called.

...Though I think possibly a more relevant answer is, a bit less than a year ago, Élie asked me when we were going to have the convention. And - the only possible answers, in my opinion, were 'very soon,' or 'in twenty years.' As I saw it - the convention would likely make a lot of changes to the structure of the government. If it was going to be in five years, that changes the calculus around a lot of investments in building better government institutions, writing a more complete law code, and so on. But, on the other hand - the sort of emergency absolutism that's been the norm for the last year, without those institutions and without a sense of normalcy - it's not good for the country. I didn't think carrying that on for five years would be a good idea. So it was either have the convention now, invest a lot into building institutions that won't last a decade, or have the convention much later. I think I might have preferred much later, if it had been entirely my choice, but Élie wouldn't stand for that, so - this year or early next year."

"How did you decide which laws to implement immediately by decree and which to leave up to the convention?"

"Anything particularly complicated was left to the convention, or rather to its successor legislature. Anything not urgent - like all of civil law - was left for the legislature. Taxes were left to the legislature. By decree, I outlawed proselytizing for infernal powers and implemented a very basic criminal code concerning violent crime and property crime and little else, and then - other things as they came up. It's obviously a poor way to run a country on a long-term basis, but it wasn't meant to be long-term."

"Did you contemplate the possibility that speeches before the convention might trend towards incitement? Did you have a plan to respond if delegates broke the laws on the convention floor?"

"Oh of course. We kept the convention closed to the public - obviously it was a porous barrier but we didn't want an audience in the room that people might perform to. If delegates broke the laws on the floor - well, that goes back to the limited nature of the laws. If one delegate physically assaulted another, Élie or the guards would put a stop to it. If one of them called for their fellow delegates to join them in a murder, likewise. But there weren't actually very many laws that delegates were liable to break - Select Wain's speech was not illegal at the time. We didn't have a plan in place for dealing with something like it because we didn't expect it to be a matter of much significance outside the convention."

"Its prompt publication took you by surprise? Do you know if that was deliberate and coordinated, by people intending to incite a riot, or if it was organic?" The prosecutors at the trial didn't seem to know but that doesn't mean the Queen doesn't.

"This part in some confidence - I don't want it in the public report, but it can go in the version for the precentors-martial and Cansellarion and Yaneva and the like -

Vidal-Espinosa was intending to incite a riot with his modified version of the speech. He didn't have anyone inside the convention, and got the original speech off a newsstand. We've been investigating since the riots and have absolutely no indication who arranged for the unedited speech to be published and distributed as widely and quickly as it was. Your man Riudaure is probably more up-to-date on the details there than I am, but - all divinations have failed or dead-ended. We've found a number of people who copied it, but no trace of the person they copied it for."

Well, that's troubling. 

It's almost definitely not Mephistopheles. Or Geryon. Almost all well-orchestrated information operations are just people, doing it out of the ordinary range of human motivations. Even almost all well-orchestrated information operations with access to ...Mind Blank. Or some other immunity to divinations. Or maybe they just got Final Bladed before the diviners started looking. Cheliax really kind of rushes its executions.

"At what point in the evening on the 3rd did you become aware there was unrest in the city?"

"I received a sending from someone in the city before any of the fires started. At that point I sent to Élie, which - failed due to go through, in hindsight, due to planar interference - It was not, at that point, apparent quite how widespread the riots were or how quickly they would escalate in some areas."

"Before Wain's speech is there anything you have identified that the Church or its agents could have done to prevent this. - setting aside the obvious 'don't invite her or get her a theology education first'."

"Apart from the obvious... neglecting opportunity costs, the temple in Westcrown is horribly understaffed. The same is true across Cheliax. If it were less so then at least Wain's confusions would have been noticed. Likewise, Cansellarion is overworked - I know that is as much on me as on any of you, feel free to say so in your failure analysis. There's also the issue where -

I assume you've read Vidal-Espinosa's pamphlet? Part of the problem is that the people of Westcrown were eager to believe that if they went on a rampage they would get Heaven for it. They think Iomedae's church is the official church of the empire, and have almost no idea what that means. They are desperate to learn Iomedan theology and didn't actually have enough sources of correct Iomedan theology."

"Your Majesty, do you want a large, well-staffed, politically active Church in Westcrown? - I'm probably going to recommend it either way, but there is a significant difference in the error analysis between 'I thought that we were not particularly desired' and 'we genuinely mostly weren't'."

"Rahadoum was a humanitarian disaster. I had assumed your absence was that you were busy with the worldwound, Tar-Baphon's recent escape attempt, the completely inexplicable yet presumably justified crusade against Razmir, all while facing unexpected staffing shortages because your Goddess only picked one new cleric last year."

It's not quite an answer to his question, but then perhaps his question was too familiar. "That's most of why there aren't priests in all the villages that need them. If we do more here we'll be approximately abandoning Gundrun, or imposing on your allies to try to handle that, and we're beneath our minimums everywhere. In three months that situation will improve, and in five years be tolerable, unless something else happens." Unless Geb does something, mostly. 

"It's...half, maybe, of why there isn't a church in Westcrown that understands its role to be 'Imperial politics'. We have people who know that game...or, at least, we could follow your wise example and pay Naima to raise them." 

But he's not going to press the point. "After Wain's speech, is there anything you have identified that the Church or its agents could have done to prevent this?"

"No. Cansellarion happens to have left the city early that night but I can't identify a sensible policy which would have indicated that he shouldn't."

"Anything yourself or other actors could have done to prevent this?"

"'Prevent' is the wrong word. The riots were trivially preventable, Wain's speech was trivially preventable, if anyone had known either would need preventing. I think - had I seen Vidal-Espinosa's pamphlet that afternoon rather than after it was all over, that likely would have been enough. So, a policy of having agents reading the pamphlets on the streets and identifying anything particularly incendiary, instead of reading them in unfiltered batches once a day - Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if the priests at the temples were getting a lot of questions about whether les aristocrats à la lanterne is enough to win martyrdom... If they identified the problem but did not bring it to our attention, that is something they could have done. If they had hints in the questions of confused parishioners and didn't identify the problem I don't know what they could have done better at that point."

"They got confusing questions, answered 'no, of course not, who told you that, that's a terrible crime', and didn't learn where the questions were coming from. Iustin scrapped his evening sermon to give an improvised one on how murder is wrong and you go to the Abyss for it, and it was interrupted halfway through by the Mage's Decree." Sigh.  "Do you, now, have agents reading the pamphlets on the streets to tell you promptly of inflammatory ones?"

"Yes."

"Are there Church resources you haven't already called in that would be useful to you at this point in repairing damage or preventing a repeat incident."