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remedial goodness for Chelish archdukes
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"Well, it depends, right."

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"Ah. Uh, in Lastwall it does not depend and all marriages have to be voluntary. What...does it depend on."

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Helpless shrug. He's not going to have a political marriage. Or any marriage at all, which is fine by him. "Sometimes people do it for an alliance, or their parents tell them to, or they have to do it because otherwise they'll be killed, or it's just that otherwise they don't belong to anyone, you know? Though I guess in the last case they usually don't actually get married about it."

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"I see. Well. I think the thing that is most important is that no one is having sex that they desperately do not want to have but cannot avoid, and a major part of that is situations where one person has extraordinary power over the other, and if 'one person is a slave' is not actually closely related to that then it will not end up being the rule we go with."

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"Maybe you can ban people from having sex with slaves they own, or something. But I belong to my father. Which is, you know, sort of how having a father is anyway."

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"Sort of. More here than in Lastwall, I suspect. Maybe we will end up just doing that, though I would worry that doesn't capture all or even most of the cases where someone desperately does not want to and does not have a choice."

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"I guess if you actually wanted nobody to ever have sex they didn't want to have it would be really complicated. That sounds... hard. But I want to go see my girlfriend. Promise. So, can I...?"

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"- can you wait one day while we figure out a better rule to put in place. I assure you that we are going to talk to people and figure it out as fast as possible."

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"....okay." Everyone else is going to get to, though.

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They also shouldn't be doing that, probably, but he can't fight every battle at once. "Thank you for explaining to me why this rule doesn't work to achieve the thing Iomedae wants."

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"Of course. Thank you for listening, Chosen."

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"Is there anyone else you would particularly recommend I talk to?"

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"I guess you could talk to the men who actually have captures, if you're mostly worried about that. My father and my uncle, maybe."

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"Thank you. I'll talk to them."

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Guim's father is a man of about forty, the current archduke's nephew. In many succession systems it would be he, and not Ignasi Alfonso Avernus, who inherited, but the current Archduke is stronger, and more experienced, and Oleguer's father died when he was very young. He's still physically powerful, and respected for it. His rooms in the castle are with his wife and their children, and of course he would be delighted to speak to the Iomedans.

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He is very grateful for the man's time and trying not to judge him for the fact that some of his own children are slaves. Because they are born to women he captured on raids.

"I am trying to understand - of the many things here that are different from ancient custom, and different from the Church's recommendations, which ones are causing problems, and which ones are not causing problems. We do not want to make things worse by changing them."

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"I understand. We are of course grateful for any guidance you can provide for us. I understand you're very concerned about the morality of sleeping with the household's slaves."

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"Yes. In Lastwall it would be prohibited. I am worried it is an injustice to them."

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"I am curious what you feel would be justice to them, then."

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"If I were a slave I imagine I would want to be free to earn my own bread, travel for better fortune if I thought I could find it elsewhere, choose my own wife, and raise my own children."

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"That's quite a lot of things that very few people have. Cheliax does not allow even most free men to travel as they wish. If you consider how the orcs in the mountains live, they don't travel far away. They don't earn bread, or know how to live without stealing. They don't believe that women should choose what man's children they bear, they believe that it's the right of the strongest. And in both places, they raise their own children."

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"I do not think that men should live like the orcs in the mountains." Oh no that was probably not diplomatic.

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"Nor do I. But that's all they know, when they come here. You can't give them all the options in the world and expect them to choose something reasonable."

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"I understand why you enslave them. I think someone should try doing a training program and then releasing them but I would not expect it to work. It still seems a great evil to rape them."

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"To make them part of our families. Most of them go to the fields, or the mines, or to whatever work needs to be done in the south. The ones you see have gotten the best fate out of all of them. They live in comfort, and their sons will be warriors, raised alongside noblemen."

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