remedial goodness for Chelish archdukes
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"Nobles don't punch each other," says Marcel, but the tone is explanatory, more than hostile.

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"Then it makes sense that you could not employ that strategy usefully. Is there a dueling weapon that's permitted to nobles less lethal than swords?"

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"Technically, the challenged party gets choice of weapons, but it's usually swords. Or unlimited choice, but that mostly happens if you challenged a caster." And 'anything goes' is in fact much more deadly than swords.

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"I see. Well, while there is no healing it is very dangerous, and uses scarce and important resources, to duel, and it is very commendable where one can figure out how to solve a problem without it; but I would not forbid it, because defending other people is the right thing to do and being willing to do it by violence is sometimes necessary."

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This gets some nods. 

"You can duel to first blood," he offers, "but usually not if it's about something very important." 

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"So saying in this case that the duel should be to first blood would have been saying that the insult was not very serious? And what would then have happened?"

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"It's an insult to Margarida. It's saying he's willing to object to it, but not willing to do anything dangerous to prevent it."

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"And then it's more likely to happen again." Or worse.

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"What if he issues a challenge, and someone else says, 'to first blood only, by the Church's insistence', is that still an insult to Margarida?"

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Some of them exchange glances.

 

"Well, we haven't tried it."

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"You mean always?"

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" - I am at this time not insisting on any specific thing about duels. It is not the most important thing here, and I would like to build more trust with your people before I start insisting on any things that aren't vitally important. I am trying to get a sense of what you think would happen if that was the expectation, and I am not expecting to tell you to do anything other than exercise common sense.

 

But yes, I really think ideally there would be no duels to the death? No one here for lunch is your enemy. You are not stronger for killing your allies."

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He kind of thinks Màxim is his enemy, though. "But what if he touches her?"

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"That is a crime under the Queen's law, isn't it?"

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He exchanges glances with Alfonso, who also doesn't know.

"...is it?"

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"The law forbids rape. In Lastwall that would mean it forbids taking any person, man or woman or child, by force, or by threats, or without their consent, and to attempt it would be illegal even if the attempt did not succeed, and to threaten it would be illegal even if no attempt followed. What is the law understood to mean here?"

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"You can't force someone to have sex with you if they don't have to do what you say, and they refuse." But a lot of situations are either officially or in practice ones where you have to do what someone else says. Also not everything you don't want to happen to you is necessarily sex.

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"I do not want to speak to the law here if I might speak wrongly, so I won't try to guess how it'd apply here until I've spoken to the Archduke. It is not Evil to defend yourself or to defend another person, so long as you try to use only the force necessary to achieve their safety."

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"But it is better if he does not try anything and does not die for it. And if he will not learn and has to die for it that is - a tragedy, just a lesser one than the ones he'll wreak if he can't or won't learn not to."

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More confident nod. 

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"I know that our being here and changing the rules has made things more difficult. I appreciate the work that all of you are doing to help us understand what problems we are creating. We are trying to fix them as quickly as we can. Do you have any questions for me about this?"

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Not any they're willing to ask. They're not going to ask if anything is going to happen to Màxim.

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Arn can't answer that! He has no judicial authority here and is in fact committed at present to not reporting crimes, though this one the Archduke will almost certainly have heard about through other channels! He can go meet up with Marit and see about an appointment with the Archduke. 

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He is, as usual, very shortly available. He's working pretty hard to be available to these two.

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