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In Which Ileosa Arabasti Grows Savvy to the Conventions of her Genre
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You've got your Gray Maidens in full-face helmets? That's literally the first entry on

The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.

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It does if you can cast suggestion.

Fifteen?

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An unapplicable sci-fi trope: 

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

The one after it goes:

16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

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These are a lot of words across many separate bullet points to say, "I won't do anything fun if it in any way involves someone who dislikes me."

Seventeen?

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17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

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Is it really?

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Would I lie to you?

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I am listening, though.

I'm pissing and moaning about it, but I am also listening. 

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I never said you weren't. That really is number seventeen.

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Just as long as we're clear.

Eighteen?

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18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

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...Is the next entry on the list "I will attain eternal youth," or "I will have a daughter, who in Earth fiction for mysterious reasons will never attempt to usurp power," or "I will anoint a successor and be the last of my line," in reverse order of how bittersweet the best victory you can get through denying Earth's tropes is?

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It's not your second-pick, alas.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

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Ileosa is assuming that she'd betray her own mother equally readily? 

Ap-parent-ly she dodged a bullet that Eodred died without managing to knock her up first.

...If eventually having children is non-negotiable, what are the safest ways to do it? It doesn't have to be immediately, Ileosa's current plan was already to get her eternal youth and character levels and unchallenged despotism all sorted before taking on that kind of distraction. 

Ileosa's first thought is that she could leave a hundred unacknowledged bastards to be raised by their mothers far away from Korvosa, and never tell them about their heritage. It's not what she really wants - she'd like to be a better parent than her own father, to apply what she learned from watching him and make him proud/show the old man up - but it'd be better than nothing.

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I notice a handful of flaws with this plan.

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Yeah. 

If life follows storybook tropes, it'd make her usurpation at the hands of a claimant even more certain than if she bore and raised them herself. 

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That's one of the problems, sure.

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And for the others, there's alter self or a girdle of opposite gender.

What's number twenty?

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20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

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Huh. Weird.

In Chellish literature, it's the good guys who laugh like maniacs when it looks like they're winning, before the inevitable turnabout.

Twenty-one?

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21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

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Gods below, "Legions of Terror," that's brilliant!

Later when I'm more established and can get away with that sort of thing, I'm going to roll all of Korvosa's military organizations together under one one umbrella and call them the Legions of Terror. 

What's twenty-two?

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22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

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Shouldn't it depend more on how much energy is in the energy field? There are first-circle spells with areas of effect measured in ten-foot cubes, and there are ninths with areas of effect smaller than a walnut. 

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It might be a visual language thing? Since your scenes aren't typically illustrated, I think the thing that really matters is to always keep rule twenty-two in the back of your head when you're tempted by the prospect of unlimited power and thinking about consuming energy fields.

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