Oh gods why is this so much more terrifying. Calm. Calm. She is an adult Chelish woman and she can give a pretty good impression of a calm person.

"Lord Marshal. I'm still in the process of figuring out what the other commoners are most concerned with, but I personally am most concerned with child abandonment and the orphanage crisis, and then with determining how much of a general education system we can afford. I think the answer is not much of one, but I'm working on a proposal to create a much cheaper public library system as an alternative. I'm hoping to do it by expanding the responsibilities of the postal service. My top priority is the orphanages, but that's a more complicated problem."

"I saw that Family is considering making it a crime to father a bastard."

"Among other things, yes. I'd initially suggested it as something that would solve a large chunk of the problem but would never pass the floor - it hasn't escaped me that the floor is significantly more men than women - but one of the noblemen on the committee actually thought that it would be workable if we made the penalty a pure fine, so that wealthy men can pay it easily and commoners are forced to actually change their behavior. Then I received some information about the state of the crown's finances, and discovered that the orphanages are currently costing more than half as much the entire military. That is, to be clear, after ending daycare services, which I expect a majority of women in the cities have relied on at one point or another, and after cutting staffing and other resources so much that the children are now quite literally dying in elevated numbers, suggesting that providing services that people could rely on was in fact significantly more expensive than the entire military. With that information I thought it might be possible to get a large chunk of the military officers in the room on board, on the grounds that things which free up the crown's second-largest expenditure free up money for military matters. I'd hoped to speak to Archduke Requena about it at some point, and see if he thought it was worth backing." Since she just goes around talking to all of the archdukes except the Menador one, these days, but she does think highly of Requena and does think that he's probably a great bellwether with regard to whether the proposal will unavoidably be laughed out of the room.

"It's a drastic solution, I don't dispute that, and itself only a partial one, but the current situation is a crisis, and will quickly become even more of one if people begin reliably sentencing infanticide as murder."

.....hopefully telling them this isn't a mistake, but, like, talking about her plans and so that Chelam will maybe back some of them is literally why she got this job.

"Perhaps he'll be here tonight and you can get his input on it. I think it's a good idea. Though a woman absolutely shouldn't be the one to introduce it on the floor. Is the Duke de Lestdemarc willing to? Or maybe Fraga would, if Alexeara asks him. Line up a dozen men to speak in favor of it and then the first one who wants to oppose it looks like a scoundrel."

"I think those men without bastards will gladly support it, and we can probably arrange for enough of them to speak early in the debate. I can get you half a dozen myself, but I think you would not actually want a majority of those speakers to be paladins..."

"Yes, I think that's no good tactically. Everyone already knows the church disapproves of their liaisons, and they're doing it anyway. I have no idea how many noblemen without bastards who aren't paladins there are, but there's... probably one or two of them, and more who think you at least ought to support your bastards."

Oh man they think it's doable!!

"That is the intent, yes. Initially we had the fine as compensation paid to the mother, but we're also discussing some system of awarding payment to whoever is actually raising the child, whether that's a family member or an orphanage or someone else, and not sure what produces the best results. I do think it lives or dies on whether people can see that a large number of respected and reasonable men in the convention support it. It's not ready to be proposed yet, though. My intent is that a man can get out of the fine by marrying the woman in question before she gives birth, if she'll agree to have him. For that, and for the law to make sense in general, we need some definition of what a legal marriage is, and what responsibilities to the children it confers. For that we need a civil court system, which we also currently don't have. And there are some awkward edge cases to be worked out."

"Could marriages be performed and recognized by the church of Erastil? I don't see that a civil court system is necessary... for this, it's clearly very necessary in general."

Narikpolus walks in, quietly takes notice of the Duchess's new sword and of Cansellarion, and spends a moment trying to read the two of them. He has heard a bit about Lastwall engagement norms.

Carlota looks radiantly happy and like she has never worn a sword in her life and has no idea how to avoid constantly banging the furniture with it.

Alex looks happy, if less radiantly so, and slightly off-balance as if he's not instinctively sure how he'd defend everyone present if the Tarrasque were to suddenly burst through the mansion door.

....yeah, okay, he can offer congratulations in a moment.

"We in fact discussed allowing recognized members of all the organized churches to perform them, but others on the committee pointed out that without any mechanism of determining what promises were made and whether they have been broken, an option to marry a man who gets a woman pregnant isn't much more than an option to forgive the debt with no penalty, and no assurance of support. Many Chelish people do marry without contracts, in the sense of having weddings and in the sense of moving in together. But a wedding doesn't stop abandonment, or confer any legal responsibility towards the children."

Also holy shit that's the last remaining Archduke. What is he doing here. What.

"Well, that's why I suggested the church of Erastil in particular. I think they have an interest in performing genuine marriages and not fake ones."

But what's the - what?

"I think very highly of the Erastilian on the committee, but he says he comes from a region of the country where nobody is currently observing weddings or making explicit promises, they simply move in together and then informally try to stick it out. And I know several people personally who, ah, disagreed on what it meant, that they were getting married. I'm not really comfortable with using that as a framework for something that has criminal penalties, so I've been hoping to hash out a default set of promises that people can be required to make and can then be legally held to, in the absence of another different contract, but I don't know much about how marriage works in most other places." Other than, uh, the Thanelands, circa several hundred years ago.

"It seems to me that the local Erastilians are in a good position to ensure that everyone has the same understanding about the marriage they're getting into, and to ensure that it's a marriage that is proper and good for them and for the community, and that a court of law is - less so, in Cheliax. What would a court do, if a man is unfaithful? Have him pay a fine? Give him half a dozen lashes? Those don't seem like they - address the problem at all, in any way."

And now is when another Archduke arrives! He will come in a carriage and not on a gryphon, because gryphons eat horses, but he will come nonetheless. One needs to attend all the relevant parties or one will be out in the cold, diplomatically speaking.

He'll be announced at the door of the parlor, where there is a very happy Carlota, wearing a sword for some reason. "Archduke! Delegate Tallandria was hoping to run her unorthodox proposal to fund the army by you, I think."

There are many reasons to wear a sword. "Excellent," he says. "Delegate Tallandria? I am at your service."

"Oh! Archduke." She can bow, she's clear on the fact that you're supposed to bow to important people when they don't sneak up behind you, holy shit there are a lot of important people in this room. "Ah - so, the family committee has been discussing the crisis levels of child abandonment in Cheliax. I am told that the orphanage system is currently costing the crown more than half the cost of the entire military. That is, for context, after ending daycare services that a majority of women in the cities relied on, and after cutting staffing and other resources so much that the children who stay there full-time are now quite literally dying, even more than they used to. I haven't seen expense reports from before the war, but I would guess that providing services that people could actually rely on cost more than the entire military.

Given that, I think that solving the child abandonment crisis should be a priority for everyone. If the military needs more money, then child abandonment is the single greatest problem standing in the way of that. Among other things, I am working on a proposal to make siring bastards itself a crime. I'd initially thought that it would be, ah, laughed out of the room, but one of the noblemen on the committee believed that it would be feasible if the penalty were exclusively a fine, such that wealthy men were only required to provide some compensation to the mother, and commoners actually had to change their behavior. My intent is also that a man can get out of the penalty by marrying the woman in question before the child is born, if she'll have him, at which point he'll be responsible for supporting it, and the child will hopefully not end up in the orphanage system.

It's not ready to go to the floor, there are still quite a lot of details to be worked out, but I wanted to ask if you thought the broad idea made sense and would be willing to back it."

Delegate. He will give her a very shallow bow to acknowledge her extant status. "I agree that the situation with the orphanages is disgraceful," he says, "and of course every man ought to take care of his bastards," Xavier says, "but I would refrain from calling siring an illegitimate child you intend to care for a crime, and so declared by the state a violation of a man's law and honor, instead of merely a tort for failure to provide for a child he bore. But it is a disgrace for a man to abandon his children, legitimate or otherwise, and I would certainly support a law to rectify this."

What the fuck, why are archdukes bowing to her at all!!

"We did also discuss that as an option. I think the argument against is that it's currently a very significant cost to society as a whole, but I suppose you're right that doesn't apply in the case of someone who is in fact supporting his children even in the absence of marriage. I do think that either way, the proposal is going to require a civil court system to determine whether people are meeting their obligations after marriage, which I understand we currently don't have."

"Yes, I understand that to be the business of the judiciary committee," he agrees.

"They haven't gotten to it yet, though. Alexeara, does the Church have a stance on just introducing the Code Cyprian? I have my quibbles with it but we need civil courts quite badly, not starting from it is a slight to the Queen's husband, and it seems to be working reasonably well."

YEP.