Pride is of Asmodeus!  He doesn’t have much other theological education, but he’s sure about that one, so not being Evil means denouncing pride, completely and utterly.  There are already laws to stop the pamphlets, this seems all about pride!

He gets into line.  He wouldn’t dare say anything if not for the anonymity provided by an Archmage, but he thinks the Archmage’s protection is sufficient.

Carlota should oppose this as too broad. She really should. It would be the virtuous thing to do. There are a couple winnable modifications. In Axis libel laws require demonstrating actual damages or that the allegation is of a few types where damages can be presumed. 

She's absolutely not going to. If they pass this and then hang the pamphleteers that found out she was working on censorship law and decided to destroy her life, her organization and her duchy over it by falsely implying she was a diabolist and a whore, she will be happy. 

This sounds like it will be selectively enforced to the benefit of the nobles and will effectively make it illegal to give floor speeches. Lucky how he mostly wasn't planning to talk ever again until he goes home. You can get almost as much in bribes just to vote.

Is this just going to be for nobles and in cities? Or would they put you on trial for telling your neighbors which shops in town are honest and which ones aren’t? How can you trust anyone’s reputation if no one can say whether a man is lazy or violent or a thief?

He doesn’t like making speeches but he will if it might help.

“There is no reason for us to endure the anarchy of the last week. No other reasonable country allows its people to tear each other down in such vicious fashion. We cannot rebuild Cheliax when all of us working at that effort have to guard ourselves against spurious accusations at every turn. And without this law, even the most careful is not safe - lies are spread, or carefully phrased, technically true statements straight from a devil’s tongue. 

Well, we will put a stop to that. This law is sorely needed, and I am glad to help bring it to the floor.”

"This hardly needs a debate," Berenguer-Aspex says as he comes to speak, "but since someone has to do it anyway - this is a law banning slander. Every other country in the world bans slander. We tried having no slander law, and we had riots and diabolist accusations and hellish charges and good and honest men and women being defamed by liars for a little more money. Now if you lie about another man the law has something to say about it. It's a good law - every last person in committee voted for it, paladin and archduchess included, because we need slander laws and they know it just as well as I do."

Well, you won't be allowed to say a huge variety of things, but most of those are things that people would have eventually murdered or destroyed you for saying anyway, so really this doesn't change much at all. 

..... possibly it changes things for her since apparently her current strategy involves saying lots of things that people are definitely going to murder her for later and just expecting that they can't get away with it during the convention unless she specifically pisses off the archmage.

This proposal is deeply stupid and entirely based around catering to the nobility's wounded pride. It's also overbroad and the sort of thing that could be leveraged to legally attack just about anyone, for saying anything, ever. No wonder Vidal likes it.

But she does not currently think that telling the stupid nobles they're stupid will benefit her or her cause in the slightest. Even though they are indeed very stupid, unrealistic, lack any social awareness of what kind of crowd they're speaking to, and should, perhaps, adjust to the environment they have decided to settle in instead of trying to bend it to their fickle whims. Before they get ripped apart by another mob again.

Finally. 

"Old Cheliax's slander laws were just, wise, and permitted reasoned disagreement while expecting of men that they conduct themselves responsibly. If you wish to make a statement in the town square, it ought to be made very carefully. If you wish to make it in private, it ought to at least be true. That is all this bill says. I am grateful to the committee for their swiftness in bringing it to us for a vote."

Felip has already spoken enough in front of the floor, he thinks. He'll just applaud this one, and be ready to defend it if it faces any serious attacks.

She's really not sure whether to expect that it will. The radicals will be opposed, but their support will be downright helpful. The reasonable people...well, if the Archduchess and the Lord Marshal voted for it in committee then that settles that.

The idea that anyone can ever confidently know much of anything about anyone else is patently absurd.

She wonders idly if a spelled judge would accept it if you carefully stuck to only making claims about your own observations what things you've heard other people say, and not discussing anything about a person's general character that you determined based on those observations. Really, the game is, as always, just to break the law and not be heard, but she ought to at least know what the good habits are.

Wow, she hadn't been expecting the nobles to actually pass a law saying they can hang you for saying that Evil nobles are Evil nobles. She gets in line, but apparently a bunch of other people have already had the same idea, there's a bunch of people ahead of her.

Lluïsa hates getting called an Asmodean left and right (for one she's a (former) Mephistophelean, which is a cut above Asmodean, thank you.). But this specific bill... She stands to speak.

What a good bill. "This bill does the important work of protecting the people of Westcrown from lies and slanders, and I support it!"

Enric tries to decide whether to stand up and join Lluisa and Victoria, because they might need the help, or whether to stay down so it’s not obvious that they’re a group. 

"I did say that slander law was necessary and I support that, and I have no doubt that the Committee on Urban Order can produce a fine slander law, given time, but this seems overbroad to me. In particular, I note that there is no requirement that the statement is negative, causes any damages, or is known to the speaker to be false. Taken literally, a man must be exiled for saying before a large crowd that a Raymond's Pub has the best beer in Westcrown if the new-opened Aspex's Brewery - unknown to the speaker - has just brewed finer. Of course the magistrate should apply his discretion in that instance just as the law recommends, but in this statute the magistrate is explicitly told to apply the maximum sentence, and by the will of Her Majesty all of our magistrates have been laid under Geas to rule only according to the law as written, so I fear even the sensible provisions in the law to prevent this might fail at their tasks. I would suggest that it be modified so that ignorance should be a defense in private conversation, and also so that the purported victim must be able to make a reasonable case for damages, in order for the statement to be slanderous. With these modifications, I would support the bill."

Oh no, her liege-lord disapproves! This is why she should have avoided saying things.

See, she doesn't have to be a good person and do the right thing and propose changes to the bill, her allies who are less prickly about slander right now will do it. 

"Your Highness, I believe you are reading the sentencing provisions overly narrowly — the magistrate is permitted discretion in cases where a statement is made before a wide audience if there are mitigating circumstances, and a complete absence of real and plausible damages would certainly be a mitigating circumstance, as would the innocuousness of the statement itself."

Damn, Archduke Requeña continuing to outperform all reasonable expectations for nobles.

Yeah, he's making an excellent case for Plant Growths to Sirmium. Screw the Heartlands, they suck and contain people like Fraga and Vidal, she'll tolerate some really long flights out of principle.

"That in private conversations ignorance should be a defense I think is reasonable, unless it is the culpable ignorance of one who repeats outlandish accusations without a moment's thought to the harm they'll do. But what constitutes damages? Does a man have to wait for a mob to burn down his home to prove that there was harm from slandering him as an Evil noble who should be forced to flee?"

A grandmotherly Pharasmin gets in line.