She should stop. She should not say that they don't even have enough reasonable magistrates to try murder cases, and are accordingly offloading almost all of them to paladins. She should not say that under those conditions, the only wise thing to do is not to marry, and that accordingly the proposed law is making it a crime - or a tort, fine - to ever have a child with a woman who has even the smallest trace of sense.

Not gonna say it. She does still have a disabled ghost of a self-preservation instinct. 

"No, I think she's right to distrust the magistrates we have, and will have for a while. That's half of why we need a second convention as Count Ardiaca requested, to revise our laws once we have a system which can carry them out faithfully and honorably. -That reminds me, Count, Rights passed it, whenever you want it on the floor just send me a message and meet me at the podium."

"Thank you, Archduchess. I expect everyone at the convention will be pleased by that." Well, some grasping fools won't be, but everyone who wants to pretend to be reasonable will.

Eulàlia will also smile at the Archduchess, who swept in to her defense today.

Carlota opens her mouth to say she's all in favor of the proposal to have another convention in forty years and then remembers that perhaps she isn't, because Alexeara's writing this one. 

Well, that depends on what the floor will accept, doesn't it?

Why, they can get a great deal through the floor if they set their minds to it. Carlota is undecided on whether she wants to try again in forty years. She will be a wealthy widow with ten grown children....actually that'd probably be a lot of fun...


"I think Rights should generally consider bringing some of your proposals to the floor piecemeal instead of waiting to have them all. Less complicated votes are easier to win, and some of them are useful to have as protection against other laws people are bringing forwards."

"I've been aiming to bring packages of a few related things - several rights about how we can treat those under suspicion of a crime, family matters before we split that out, there are some matters of property to consider - but debate's been taking quite some time so I haven't gotten any of those ready to go."

"What proposals are ready at the moment? For that matter, are there any proposed rights around criminal investigations that Judiciary should be aware of?"

"Tomorrow I'll be introducing a rule against punishments not used in Lastwall or approved by Iomedae's church. I think everything we're considering around investigations is about treatment of prisoners under suspicion, and a lot of it I'm unsure whether it's wise. Banning getting a prisoner drunk for questioning, for example, which I'm sure Cayden hates but if we ban everything like it, that's very much untested and we might not like the consequences."

Carlota is not sure what they get by making Cayden happy but she's not going to say that to the Caydenite.

"It looks like tomorrow we are going to have several fights about torture. Urban Order passed a measure restoring the old Arodenite punishments and Rights a dueling one proposing Lastwall's." 

Carlota does not actually object to torturous punishment, at all. But she is the Church's now and they do. "I don't actually think that fight is winnable in general but it might be winnable via the Reclamation all saying 'look, we're half the justice system and we can't sentence people to being slowly disemboweled'."

Oh gods do they have to keep being half the justice system to prevent people from being slowly disemboweled.

"That might decide it. Though I don't believe the proposal actually requires it to be used."

What's wrong with slowly disemboweling people. 

She has enough sense to not ask that. 

"See, I think that makes it a much harder argument, because 'we shouldn't usually torture people to death' is a much easier argument than 'the magistrate should not under any circumstances have discretion about it'. If no lord of Cheliax has a very lurid story about a man who figured he had nothing left to lose and went on to do several more disturbing atrocities he could probably have been deterred from if he did have anything to lose then I'll be astounded. I have a few, frankly, though I don't mean to get up there and tell them."

"Is the proposal to torture people to death for repeated capital crimes? In the hopes they'll stop at one?"

"I think that is a common case where it's popular but not the only one. ...maybe the Church can win 'not at the magistrate's discretion' where it couldn't win 'under specific and limited circumstances' because of the tendency of the body to assume that whatever the rules are they will be applied in the most evil possible way. ....Tallandria, I don't know if this is an issue you feel strongly about in any direction but you are the acknowledged expert at making that argument to the sortitions."

It helps that she firmly in her heart believes it, although she's not sure that she cares deeply about torturous executions in particular. "I can try. What punishments were used under Aroden?"

"Beyond Lastwall; pillory, outlawry, hard labor up to ten years including the mines, garroting, burning, breaking on the wheel, and 'turning to parts', which my clerk told me was worthy of Rugatonn or Abrogail but didn't clarify. They might have worked fine for Arodenites who were mostly Neutral but I don't think we'll get our people to Axis without trying to get them to Heaven so I'm against them."

"I'm not actually sure I agree with that, your highness. Aiming for Axis and aiming for Heaven are very different, and I think that a population which is variously damaged might correctly recognize Heaven isn't attainable and give up. The argument I would make instead is that we were planning to change all of the old laws! Aroden was supposed to return! They weren't good enough, and no one thought they were!"

"I think quite a lot of people want to aim for Heaven, whether it's attainable or not, but lack better sources of direction than Vidal-Espinoza's pamphlets. That does seem like a winning argument from someone who can speak to it personally, though."

Were you aiming for Axis the first time?, she almost says lightly to Carlota, but restrains the vicious impulse. Just because she was defeated is no reason to lash out against an ally.

"I'm reasonably sure just trying to get everyone Axis won't work. Their ideas of what is Evil are too narrow - even mine is, I suspect - so that they'll think they're doing well and still half end in Hell. But you may be right, I don't know aiming to push everyone all the way to Good will work much better."

"Most of the people I met on assize claimed that they were aiming for Heaven, but I strongly suspect many of them mistakenly believed that they would be punished for heresy if they told me they were aiming for any other afterlife. The ones who claimed to be aiming for Axis weren't obviously better or worse in general, but I didn't have very much time to get to know any specific people."

"One woman told me she was aiming for Elysium but I think she was lying to try to provoke me, she seemed very startled when I said I hoped she made it but stealing cows wasn't the way to do it."

He did tell Valia that he was aiming for Heaven. He wasn't lying when he said it. It occurs to him now that he doesn't really know how to do much more than stop digging, which... is not going to be sufficient to redirect to anywhere, is it.