...Wow dinner has a lot of important people tonight. He bows to each of the archdukes in turn, and the Lord-Marshal. (Why does the duchess of Chelam have his sword?)

"I think you're too dismissive of some of the more lawless societies. None is a moral paragon, but neither Andoran nor Absalom is a disaster, and neither has strict mandatory vows - if I understand Absalom law, which proverbially outsiders don't. But more, I didn't just stay celibate for safety's sake. Two years ago there wasn't a man in Cheliax, even my best friend and ally in Kintargo, who I'd be willing to swear to obey. Take his guidance, 'obey his wisdom' and not while he ceases to be wise, be worthy of his trust, work toward his goals as my own? I'd consider them all, for a good man. Obey through thick and thin? Not a chance. I think there are many vows we can ask which would be genuinely better than obedience, even in healthy times, and better to look for those now. ...Surpassing our forefathers, as I believe the Arodenite catechism goes."

Why would the archduchess have to swear to obey anyone she fucked????

"When I accepted the Lord Marshal's proposal I told him that of course I would cease speaking without specific approval at the convention, if he asked it. And he refused, which I expected, because - Iomedaens have a principled opposition to exercising authority in any context where they lack the formal authority to give orders and would nonetheless be obeyed as if they had it.

- incidentally, it is a very inconvenient commitment, but it has a fond place in my heart because - I don't think that this particular principle of theirs plays well in the average case. Valia Wain comes to mind right now, of course, but more generally - if the instructions you issue are a good idea it'll generally go well to be willing to issue them. I think this was a concern of Iomedae's not because of its performance in the average case but because if you have someone like Iomedae Herself, and you draft her into the nearest holy order, you lose everything.

Because if you have Alexeara it is very very important that he is not diverted into any of the thousand things Lastwall was doing that were less important and founds the Reclamation.

There are not many places where the Church is Arodenite but I think that's one of them; it's a place where all the policies stand protectively in defense of those rare souls who will surpass the men who make them.

But with all admiration expressed this is very frustrating, right, if one is oneself neither Iomedae nor Alexeara. Obviously when I speak I will be presumed to be speaking with the leave of my fiancé, and accordingly I'll speak much less frequently and more carefully, I'll just be doing it without any of the Lord Marshal's explicit instructions. And I am fine with this, for the next few months. 

It is not what I want from my marriage. What I want from my marriage is to find a man worth obeying, and I will agree wholeheartedly that they are rare, and then to do what he asks of me, and build things we can only build if he is both willing to ask it and honorable enough to not ask it without the attendant authority."

"The initial wording of the default vows was drawn up by a married Chelish man, Count Cansellarion. I believe he meant loyalty as a euphemism for infidelity, but again, we all disagreed about what actions it would prohibit in practice. I'm certainly fine with the good churches attempting to teach the people of Cheliax what marriage ought to be. I know how it is practiced here, and some of how it is practiced in the Thanelands, and I will not suggest either as any sort of positive example. But if obedience is required, right now, with the men we have, I can't imagine most women marrying. I would certainly advise almost all of them not to be willing to do so."

"I wanted to work on a theory of what sorts of things a husband may command of his wife and what he cannot. I don't know if that would address all of those concerns but if there are specific ones perhaps they could just be addressed with 'no, you should not obey your husband if he tells you to commit crimes, or harm your children, or sleep with some other man'."

"I expect that with the current highly limited set of laws, that would be insufficient — I can provide examples of legal but immoral conduct that I've encountered on assize if it would be helpful."

"Please."

"Specifically in the context of marriages — ordering a woman to mistreat her children by another man, which wouldn't be covered by a strict reading of that proposal except in cases where the man orders her to kill them. Forbidding a woman from food, water, or healing as punishment for actual or perceived misconduct. Ordering a women to break sworn oaths, out of the belief that both of them are damned anyway and it's better to be damned to the Abyss than to Hell. All of those are happening anyway, to some degree, but I would rather not make it outright illegal to refuse." Wives swearing to obeying their husbands is a good idea in general but a worse idea when many husbands lack anything resembling a functioning conscience.

"I haven't specifically seen any cases of husbands ordering their wives to assist them with fights that don't rise to the level of assault with a deadly weapon, but I'd also prefer to avoid that in most circumstances. ...To be clear, I'm not thinking of situations where the fight was necessary to defend their home or family, I'm mainly thinking of interpersonal disputes that probably should have been settled non-violently in the first place."

"All of those seem like things that would belong in a functional theory of when women should not obey their husbands, yes. ....it is not illegal for a woman to not obey her husband anywhere I'm familiar with, to be clear, it's just a way in which she is failing to fulfill her obligations in the marriage, and sometimes grounds for divorce."

"There are interpretations of Taldan law under which it could sometimes be regarded as illegal, though I generally wouldn't expect someone to be prosecuted for it, nor to regard it as a meaningful constraint on her behavior as distinct from her marriage vows."

"There was already some discussion of what sorts of provisions in marriage contracts should be considered invalid and not enforced by law, but we did not get very far. Many existing contracts are... bad."

 "I do not think the state should be in the habit of enforcing conduct in marriage except in permitting some and not other grounds for divorce. But I think insubordination is properly grounds for divorce, because it is - a serious injury to a husband to put him in a position where he cannot uphold his own obligations."

"That seems like it would allow any husband to trivially abandon his wife at will, as long as he begins by spending some time giving her the worst allowed orders he can think of until she breaks down."

"I think, Delegate, with all due respect, that Asmodeans tend to assume all courts and authorities are operating with the intent to cause as much social harm and permit as many damaging abuses as they possibly can, and no plans work if you make that assumption. If you go to a remotely reasonable magistrate with a divorce case like that he'd...well, he'd probably grant the divorce because the woman ought to be free of the man, but he'd surely still oblige the man in support of his former family."

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."