The Duchess of Chelam has evening dinner plans. She is inviting the Reclamation and is going to try to talk them around on censorship and maybe civil courts if she can come up with a few modifications to make Cyprian's code tolerable. If the evening does not go too late she might try to go to Fraga's Sarenite festival to which she was invited.

"Delegate Tallandria." 

"Duchess. I have a contract. It's - well, here."

She's suddenly not very sure why she's making herself go through this, given that 'I'll pay you one week of my earnings if I tell everyone all of your secrets' is kind of a ridiculous insult, but - 

She reads it. 

"There aren't even civil courts," she says tiredly, "so I don't think it particularly matters, but this....does not oblige you in anything, or permit any redress if you don't do it. Oriol wrote it for you?"

"Yes.

I asked the free legal counsel offered to delegates, first, and they said that they couldn't predict what the civil courts would say about it when they existed again, but they thought it was very possible that the first one would result in indefinite indenture if anyone read my mind, since - no one knows what the courts will consider reasonable precautions. Oriol thought so, too, said I should definitely not agree to that. I know this version doesn't do anything, but I can't sign something that's predictably going to get me indentured. I have a kid to take care of."

"I will not agree to pay any third party claims that arise against you as a consequence of this agreement in case Oriol has a specific opportunity for a third party claim in mind, or even if she doesn't. The limitation on liability is acceptable to me."

Does she have to pay for it, then? .....probably even if she doesn't pay for it it's going to be very hard for someone to argue that she owes more than five gold when the contract says she can't owe more than five gold. Or, wait, third party claims meaning other people - augh, say something.

"All right. Do you want it recopied without that?"

"If that's acceptable to you we can just scratch it out and initial that it's been scratched out." She'll do this.

Hopefully that's how contracts work in this country! Apparently nobody knows anymore! But even if it's not she doesn't think having it in hurts her, so sure.

It will be understood by Abadaran arbitrators who she's apparently agreeing to pay for even though that costs more than the five gold she could conceivably recover. 

With that addressed she signs it.

Well, Korva will sign it too, then.

Hopefully that wasn't a terrible mistake. If it wasn't then she's going to make a lot of money and get to be consulted on speeches, which is probably worth a tiny bit of risk of accidentally having signed your life away. She is almost positive that you can't sign away your soul via a contract that you saw an almost definitely human lawyer draw up in ten minutes which doesn't at any point mention anything about souls.

"Would you like to come over to the mansion now, then, we can talk about the things I expect are coming to the floor tomorrow. You can bring your child, if necessary."

She probably shouldn't have told the duchess about the existence of a child at all, whoops. Well. She is going to need to figure out better security than 'live in a random person's house with no defenses and try not to be followed' anyway, but not tonight. Zara can look out for herself for now. She'll just go pick her up... very late, and figure out where to stash her going forward when there's nobody who could very obviously be reading her mind.

"I can do that."

Carlota's mansion has a compact but impressive entrance hall with an elaborate clockwork ceiling through which fake sunlight streams, and then two parlors off the entrance hall short of the dining room, which is very large because they're having the whole reclamation for dinner tonight. She calls a few of her staff into one of the parlors. 

        "Korva, these are Mateu and Juliá. Their job is to read the committee notes and prepare a summary for us every day, so we know what to expect to be up in the morning. Though today Urban Order held an emergency early meeting to get their censorship bill through. Mateu, what are we facing tomorrow -"

"Your grace. Urban Order voted on a measure to re-permit torturous executions and recommended a candidate for Lord Mayor to the Queen. Rights has an expansion of censorship to cover the theatre and a measure competing with Urban Order's, to introduce a right not to be tortured. Judiciary's drafting but did not vote on a measure to introduce provisional bailiffs to replace the Reclamation. The committee on the family is working on a proposal to fine bastardry. Trade and Travel proposes abolishing travel passes." 

              "- your grace?" says a page at the door. 

       " - yes?"

              "The Lord Marshal's here early."

       "Korva, why don't you and Mateu and Juliá talk through these proposals and figure out which ones you would be more excited to help us prepare for."

"Yes, your grace." She doesn't know the styles but apparently that one's the one for the the Duchess de Chelam, given two other people just used it.

....not that she has any idea what they're meant to do to respond to any of those. She'll follow Mateu and Juliá's lead, first.

Juliá takes Korva in. "You're one of the sortitions, right? Do you want to bring back normal executions?"

       "The Duchess is probably going to side with the Iomedaens on that one since I don't think she cares and they do."

"I haven't thought about it much." She always found regular executions painful to watch, but watching the trial for Vidal-Espinoza was also awful, and it seems entirely possible that she just has a bizarre squeamish aversion to the idea of anyone dying at all, which is hardly a reasonable basis for policy. "We were talking in Rights a while back about whether everyone should have the right to the final blade, which seems like it matters much more than what the execution looks like, but we decided the logistics of doing it for the whole country would probably be impossible."

"Do you care about the candidate for Lord Mayor?"

"I probably would if I knew anything about him." She has to live in this city, after all. "Who is he?"

Have a transcript of two days of Urban Order arguing over him; he's a military man and the nobles want him to clean up the streets and hang more rioters and probably get Wain's associates rounded up and arrested.

As someone who was once in a room with Valia Wain she's not entirely sure how to feel about that. Admittedly this technically describes the entire convention. 

Do they have any idea what cleaning up the streets entails.

"Probably going around rounding up traitors and troublemakers, right? And I guess pamphlet-writers, now that that's illegal."

"Sure. My only hesitation is that 'troublemaker' is not a specific crime, and I'm not very clear on what all the foreigners think is making trouble. Sounds like the only alternative that's been raised is someone from the Reclamation, but they didn't go for it, huh?"

"I think that the conservative nobles think the Iomedaens are soft and not taking crime seriously," says Juliá. "Because they got their own priest off and because paladins aren't allowed to do any torture or any threatening people or anything, which is kind of nice if you have any jobs where you don't want anyone tortured but it means you don't want them in charge."

They held Egorian okay, sort of. Admittedly Egorian was... kind of an incredible mess, and also they were working in tandem with the Order of the Nail, at first. 

"No strong opinions on the mayor, I guess, I'd have to know more about mayors."

"Expanding censorship to allow the theatre. The Duchess is gonna be in favor of that one. They've already banned practically all public entertainment."

Korva continues to hate the theater, but the Archduchess likes it. "Yeah, I was there for that one. I don't expect it to be a major fight; it was an oversight in the original law, and the mechanism we have is a censorship board like the opposition wanted for everything, so I don't see how they can oppose it."

"How about the right not to be tortured."

"Rights had been talking about it as part of a longer list of basic rights that I think we intended to introduce as a set later, but if people are moving now then I guess we might have to do it piecemeal. It's tricky, is the thing. Limitations could be good, even if it was just 'you can only torture people if they actually committed crimes', but it's hard to actually define."

"I guess it depends what you say counts as torture," Mateu says dubiously. "If you have to wait for the paladins to even whip people then I think that'd make things lots worse."

"Right, if you don't have a clear definition then everyone assumes it's in a different place, and some people will assume that it means everything is banned, and other people will assume that it doesn't ban anything that seems normal to them. At some point you need to be able to punish people somehow. And yet it still might be nice if nobles couldn't, I don't know, put burning nails under people's skin for no reason. ...not actually sure whether that's technically illegal right now, I'm not sure I've seen a list of all the existing laws."

"I think that's illegal?"

        "I mean, I don't really think anyone'd get in trouble for it."

"Well, probably not."

"Right, so, that's the idea. Being clear on whether that's illegal or not. But it's hard, because you can't make a list of every specific thing people can and can't do to one another, and if you just say 'torture' then everyone thinks they know what that is, but I bet it turns out they all think it means different things."

"It doesn't really seem possible to make a law that does that but I guess that doesn't mean the convention won't try."

         "It seems like a better law than the one against bastards, what a nightmare."

"That one's mine." She's going to do her very best to say this confidently and casually and not apologetically. She thinks she gets pretty close. "It's nowhere near ready to go to the floor, yet, though, it needs a civil court system. Also to, like, come up with a legal definition of marriage."

"It'll indenture, like, all the men in Cheliax," says Mateu.

"Or they'll marry, or they'll stop. The orphanages have closed down half their services, and are still costing more than half as much as the entire military, which suggests that they were costing more than it before. I understand that infanticide is apparently legally considered to be murder, now, so in the future abandonment will increase even more. And we're not offering daycare, so it's way less possible than it was for a single woman to raise a child and work a job to feed him at the same time. Under those conditions, eiither men start raising their children, or the whole state is going to collapse under the weight of doing it for them."

Or we could just legalize infanticide again? Mateu's not sure why no one's considering that obvious reasonable option. He doesn't say that, obviously. "Well, the Duchess'll probably be with you."

"Anyway, I understand we need civil courts back either way, for businesses and stuff. Are any of the committees on that?"

"I don't think it's come up yet in Judiciary. I think Issa was looking at Cyprian's code, I bet someone's been reassigned to that but I don't know who..."

"Is that what they're using in Galt?" She has never heard any good things about Galtan politics but the Queen is a Galtan, so probably they should know anything about that.

"Yeah. I don't know much about it but a lot of the Duchess's allies like Cyprian's laws. When the Duchess comes back we can ask who's working on it now."

Cool.

.....she doesn't know what else they're supposed to be doing here. It seems like if there's nothing to immediately react to then they should be getting out ahead and working on their own stuff, but this isn't actually where she would do that, as far as her own priorities go.

"Do you care about travel passes?"

"Never traveled anywhere before three weeks ago. Do other countries have them, or is it just us?"

"I don't know. I think there's serfs everywhere but maybe usually there's not passes about it?"

"Well. I'd want to know what things are done everywhere and which would be radical changes, before I had an opinion on them." Is she going to have to come up with opinions on everything, now. Maybe she can offload most of that by figuring out what the other commoners want later.

"I can call in Sarei, she's from Andoran."

     Sarei is a young woman Korva's age with her hair cut like a man's. "Travel passes are Asmodean," she says immediately. "So's serfdom, the convention should abolish it. ...most places do serfdom. Most places don't do travel passes."

Shrug. "I guess let trade and travel get to work, then." Not that she necessarily has any reason to believe this person knows more than her about anything. They don't do travel passes in the Ironbound Islands but she's also not sure they have, like, written laws.

"So do you want to work on any of these, then? I guess the bastards one?"

"Sure, but it's stalled on civil courts. I guess I can work on writing up possible language for it ahead of time."

She feels very weird getting paid to... publicly brainstorm about her own ideas... but now that she thinks about it that's what the convention is, too.

"Sarei do you know who's working on Cyprian's code now that it's not Issa?"

        "Teo, I think. Why?"

"It sounds like maybe it should be ready pretty soon? Or someone'll beat us to it."

        "Well, then Issa shouldn't've been an idiot.It's long. I don't even think Teo's read all of it."

The Duchess returns at this point, wearing a sword for some reason and looking rather pleased with herself. "My apologies, Tallandria, I wasn't expecting the Lord Marshal for another hour. Is there anything coming up tomorrow of particular interest to you?"

"Uh, the dueling torture propositions are coming up and probably matter, and the Lord Mayor appointment seems important to all of us personally, but I don't know enough about it to have much of a stance. The things I'm most invested in are going to take a few more days to get off the ground, at least."

"And what are those? - actually let's go rejoin the Lord Marshal in the front parlor, I expect he has opinions about the dueling torture propositions, that sounds like something the Church would care about. Thank you, Sarei," and she collects the briefing sheet from her. 

You know, the brave and bold stance against wearing fancy or remotely decent clothes suddenly feels extremely stupid and humiliating if she's going to be hanging out in noble parlors giving reports to higher nobility (who, uh, specifically personally invaded her city) as opposed to just giving speeches on the floor. Score one for Jilia, she actually does need better clothes.

Oh well. She went to wizard middle school. She can handle a little bit of non-fatal abject humiliation.

"Alexeara, I invited Delegate Tallandria over tonight so we could all trade favors - I think we don't lose votes the Church and the liberal nobles and Tallandria are all aligned on, so we should take some care to make sure on important votes we're not at odds or at least are because of irreconciliable differences. Tallandria was going to tell us what her highest priorities are."

"I am glad to be formally introduced, though of course I've noticed your speaking on the floor. Please, do tell us."

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.

"I think it will do fine. I don't know the church to have an official stance, but the sparsity of the law code in Cheliax has been an ongoing problem and I cannot think of any code which would be better for Cheliax to adopt wholesale."

..........now people aren't directly talking to her anymore and she's not actually sure if it's rude to ask if anyone has a copy. Probably it's rude. She can get one from the other staff members later, maybe.

"On another note, your Grace, am I correct that congratulations are in order?"

"You are! You know the Lastwall custom, I take it. It was a surprise to me." She steps over to Alexeara, very neatly, landing half a step behind him. "The Lord Marshal has done me the great honor of asking for my hand."

"And I was most pleased that Her Grace did me the honor of accepting."

"Well, congratulations, then. May you have many happy years together."

Wow, stuff really just keeps happening. Are you supposed to congratulate Duchesses on getting married. She's pretty sure you're instead supposed to fuse into the wallpaper at this point.

She flashes Alexeara a delighted smile and bobs her head politely at the Archduke. "You can expect an invitation shortly to a formal event announcing our engagement which will most probably be on Starday or Sunday. I'm going to see if I can arrange the palace ballroom for it. One has to invite everybody to that sort of thing so it'll be a good occasion to mingle with some of the immigrant nobility without making it clear which of them I'm tremendously irritated with."

She realizes only after saying this that possibly one should tell one's fiancé about one's engagement party before telling the Archduke of Menador. Ah well. Aside to Alexeara, "I have presumed I should coordinate with your secretary about scheduling and invitations."

Marit arrives alone, with only the expected number of swords.

Elorri's primary weapon is not a sword but he does have one for emergency swording situations. Does this Mansion have a stable or does he need to leave Katixa just hanging out outside?

Angela's got a sword. She can cast spells through it and hopefully will have no reason to do so tonight.

"A very reasonable presumption. I don't myself know whether I have more commitments on Starday or Sunday."

Oh look, more archduke.

...Drat. She thought she had more time than that.

There's not a stable, she's really not got all that much extradimensional space here.

"Archduchess! Welcome!"

WHY ARE ALL THE ARCHDUKES HERE.

At least the specific flavor of humiliation that the Archduchess adds to the clothing situation comes with a novel sort of almost friendliness. She did try to warn her. Obviously there's a sense in which this makes the situation even more humiliating, but she thinks the Archduchess is probably more likely to be feeling annoyed impatience about it than sadistic joy, which itself would at least be a change of pace from the dull confused disgust that everybody else is probably feeling, if they're taking note of her at all. 

She's also, uh, probably actually less likely to die of archduke overexposure with the Archduchess here. Probably. Unless she's mad about her accepting an offer of employment from Carlota. Shit.

"Duchess, thank you! And it looks like I owe you congratulations?"

"The Lord Marshal has done me the great honor..." Carlota can do this specific script an arbitrary number of times this evening with as much enthusiasm as she had for it the first time. Her mother told her once, a long time ago, that a woman communicates far more about her marriage in the look in her eyes when she looks at her husband than in anything else and it seems like that one in particular is just straightforward to do right. Carlota is a very competitive person and is wholeheartedly intending to win at marriage.

"Well, you both have my congratulations, and my compliments on both having excellent taste in spouses."

"Of course we have now rather obviated my original purpose for this dinner, which was to plead with the Reclamation to get itself organized as a faction and have priorities so my allies and I can trade favors with it." This is obviated in that now that is Carlota's job, see. 

"I'm sure you'll find something else to do besides entertain; I don't think boredom has been a visitor at any of your dinners and I don't expect it to intrude tonight either."

"We were contemplating the Code Cyprian, actually, when you arrived." If Jilia objects to it for being sexist then Carlota doesn't have to be the person who does that.

"Do you happen to have copies to hand, Your Grace?"

"Of course, though I warn you it is two hundred fifty pages long." She gestures for a servant to bring copies in nonetheless.

Maybe she can sneak one. ....and ask about keeping it privately later, because she's not going to steal from a duchess.

"It's an excellent basis to start from, I suspect, though I think a lot of self-supporting women would revolt if we tried to implement it as-is, unless I misunderstand it badly from the summaries and skimming."

"I had the same thought," she says neutrally, "but it didn't cause problems in Galt and I assume many of the same dynamics were present."

"Which section most illustrates what you have in mind?"

....she's very curious about what about it is terrible for self-supporting women and is not actually sure if she's permitted to speak, here, or if it would be better or worse if someone addressed her so she could. Hopefully she can pick it up from what everyone else says. 

(Should she, like, be here? Should she be sneaking out? Is it rude to still be present? - no, the Duchess would dismiss her, she's pretty sure -)

"The Code Cyprian treats free men as citizens, with the franchise and various other rights and responsibilities, at the age of twenty one, and women on marriage. Or if they're officers - the Reclamation would not be directly affected -"

"Is there some kind of coverture before that - so many people don't have social fathers -"

"I would accept a great deal of trouble to end the Terror that I would not happily accept under even these circumstances. I think we'd be unaffected," gesturing to indicate the duchess but not Ser Jornet or Tallandria, "holding titles in our own right, but from the summaries my cousin and personal secretary Lady Sofia Reytan gave me, the rights reserved to men and married women include, if memory serves, ability to bring a civil court case on one's own behalf. Sofia told me in no uncertain terms that if I voted for that intact she would refuse to assist me any further in any of my business, and she's the most indispensable of a staff I've put quite a lot of work into building."

Well, that completely destroys all of her plans, at least her plans with Archduke Requena's suggested changes, in addition to destroying a bunch of other things.

"Not being a citizen does not actually entail having any fewer freedoms than the people of Cheliax all have right now, they won't be more disadvantaged by not having fathers than they presently are. But - yes, I'd rather just have it twenty-one for everybody, I think."

.....Korva has also been the primary breadwinner for her household since she was sixteen, but not having a right to bring court cases until age twenty-one is at least less fundamentally horrific. Or, well, horrific if they plan to have a system in which they expect people to actually use the civil courts for important things, like negotiating all of their marriage and family obligations.

"What's the reasoning behind the choice of twenty-one as the age of adulthood?"

"The decision to set the age of majority in Cheliax so young was made by Hell, because young people make worse decisions and they believed - correctly, I think - that promulgating the idea that in your mid-teens you are an adult and should embark on all adult endeavors would damn many of them. Nineteen or twenty or twenty one is common everywhere else and is, I think, reasonable, assuming some provisions for underage people without guardians."

"If I remember right Taldor allows as low an age of majority as the Thrunes did, in certain narrow circumstances which the Asmodeans tried to construe as broader to make it sound less radical, when they weren't trying to make it sound like a favor to us. I think I'd favor nineteen; I've had plenty of staff who were in their teens and had good judgment. Even a very few of those who were fourteen or even thirteen, all former urchins; I just wouldn't want to make general policy for them."

"The appropriate age of majority surely depends on what it is that majority is used for within the rest of the law. But if we wind up using a lot of civil court mechanisms to patch damaged family institutions - nineteen isn't just old enough to have a child, it's old enough that some people manage to have four of them."

Thank you, paladin guy from the family committee.

Nod. "Taldor's situation is... complicated. As Her Highness says, the age of adulthood is not entirely consistent — in particular, the age at which someone could bring a civil case in their own right, the age at which a title-holder is permitted to serve in the Senate, and the age at which someone could marry without their parent's permission are all different, among other rights and responsibilities that I expect are also covered. ...And as she says, there are various special circumstances that can sometimes result in those ages being younger than typical, and the laws about which circumstances occasionally contradict."

"I think the example I heard was something about inheriting a noble title with the endorsement of family, which sounded drawn oddly on purpose as part of some strange fight over regency a thousand years ago. It's the sort of story people would tell about Taldor, though, and might be a fabrication."

"I wasn't focusing on the structure of the family on last read, what does Galt presently do about young mothers and fathers? Married but still within the paternal grandfather's household?"

"They permit underage marriage with the family's approval or a magistrate's. I don't think it makes sense to bar all underage marriages, though I think they're usually very terrible for everyone involved. They often occur in circumstances where the alternatives are also terrible. 

....I do think you want to very strongly discourage a woman bearing four children out of wedlock by the age of nineteen, that being an enormous inevitable burden on the state or else a bunch of murders, or both. Maybe a fee for bastards will be sufficient to prevent that but if not we'll have to do something more."

"Apologies, Your Grace, I believe I missed the initial discussion of the bastardry penalty — what sort of fee does the Code Cyprian levy? Do you happen to have a page reference?" He gives the two hundred fifty-page code a slightly nervous glance.

(Marit has not told a lie since well before he first took vows; it's very obvious that he genuinely hasn't realized the fee for bastards is a separate proposal from the Code Cyprian.)

"Discourage it, certainly, but if someone is today, already running around aged fifteen with a baby and we'd like to let her sue whoever left her with it, her being fifteen is if anything more reason to let her do that - and if someone is discouraged and then enchanted or abducted or something, likewise. - Marit, I don't think it's in the Code Cyprian, it's an idea of Delegate Tallandria's."

"Ah, my apologies. I suppose in that case I have the same question for you," he says to Tallandria.

Oh, gods, having to speak is arguably worse than not getting to. At least that's a clear enough address. She feels sick, but at least half of that is that they're all sitting around calmly discussing whether a woman's ability to participate in society on equal terms should be in any way related to the question of whether anyone wants to fuck her.

"It's a proposal that the family committee is working on, though it isn't ready for the floor yet. We'd discussed the possibility of making siring a bastard either a crime with a purely financial penalty, or a tort," hopefully she's using that word correctly, "and had been thinking about a fine of about thirty gold or so, or not more than two or three years of agricultural indenture for anyone incapable of paying. Archduke Requena pointed out earlier that it's a bit unfair to make it formally a crime for men who are in fact supporting the resulting children, but if we wanted to use civil court cases to enforce it, you would of course need a civil court system that young unmarried women were both formally allowed to bring suit in, and capable of actually navigating without expensive legal counsel."

"We could reserve the franchise for marriage for both sexes, if we have a franchise, and permit everyone to bring suits in court. But I don't know if legal sex equality will pass the floor. It is further radicalism on top of the Code Cyprian."

"What other radicalism do you think worth highlighting?"

What the hell does 'radical' even mean. Cheliax has had legal sex equality in almost every respect for the last seventy years. ...probably. She's never talked to anyone who remembered it not having it.

"It is almost entirely without formal privileges of the nobility."

"It respects the rights of the householder and the employer, however."

"I'll back it, unless the Church is opposed. But you and I and the Archduchess are the three most liberal nobles in that room."

And now is when Joan-Pau arrives, along with a guest! He continues to wear a sword, as is traditional for nobles, even ones who never actually use the things!

Eulàlia is a wizard and carries a dagger but not a sword. She is very spectacularly dressed and very pleased to be Joan-Pau's date to a fancy noble dinner. Everything's going great!!!


What a concentration of power. She will bow very appropriately. 

" - three of the four, arguably. Your excellencies, thank you for joining us! I enjoyed your speeches today, Seguer."

More importantly so did hot boy. "Your grace. I have to say without the lich hunted I think the speeches would've been to no avail."

"We are all very grateful to the brave men who did it." Carlota is no longer insecure about having merely ordered it. Alexeara does not actually need a wife who is good at killing monsters.

"It was chiefly Lord Marshal Cansellarion's work, the rest of us just supported him. Greetings, Your Highness, Your Highness..." he'll go down the list.

Xavier is still used to Joan-Pau being the leader of the single most radical subfaction of the single most radical faction in Molthuni politics rather than an Excellency, but this will not stop him from being pleased to see him and his guest and greeting them appropriately.

"Several people were vital," nod to Korva, "but that doesn't make any of them less appreciated. They were very fine speeches, Lady Seguer, and it's a pleasure to see you both."

"Anyway, I think we can get the Code Cyprian and I do not want to sink it over equality of the sexes, which I do not think we can get, though I'd vote for it unless the Church is opposed. I suppose, Tallandria, Archduchess, if you think you can win a fight over equality of the sexes you could introduce it out of Rights, and then it stands or falls separately from civil courts and if it passes we can just modify the Code Cyprian 'in line with the resolution this body previously supported'."

"I would worry quite a lot about introducing new inequalities in one of the few places where this country doesn't have them, on the hope that we can actively roll back what we've already passed later. Especially if the specific rights the Code Cyprian limits are the very ones we most need unmarried women to have, in order to solve the orphanage crisis."

"I promise you, I am more sympathetic than most people to legal equality of the sexes. But nowhere does that. No, it's actually worse than 'nowhere does that'. Hell did it. I don't think you can get the votes....probably we can sneak in a way for pregnant women to use the civil courts, if we tailor it narrowly."

"I think all the Outer Planes do it in their own fashions."

"But Hell gave it to us, to make us worse; Her Grace is right, it's a terrible precedent even if the recent-native-born will, accordingly, be majority in favor. It might be best to include use of civil courts, bringing suit and testifying, in the Family's proposal directly, unless you think it would make that sink; if we call the old thirteen 'young adulthood' and say it's for all young adults. And if there are other protections important to make specific, Rights can propose those. I'm trying not to abuse the committee's remit, and stick to things that constrain the law's execution, rather than structure it."

"I think you can secure any number of specific universal rights if the Church backs them and they sound reasonable and it at no point becomes a fight over women's rights in particular. I think once someone manages to provoke a fight over women's rights in particular they will lose."

"It might work if it's a married man pushing it. But you're probably right."

Look at Xavier not saying anything at all on the topic.

Korva kind of thought that they were trying to have less slavery in this country.

"That seems like it would suggest that it's very important not to introduce substantive inequalities in the first place, if it will be impossible to roll them back. But I haven't read the code, it's possible that I'm imagining something worse than it actually contains. Obviously the principle matters less than the specific rights in question." She cares kind of a lot about the principle too, though.

The Sower on Family is probably married but he can't bring anything complicated to the floor himself because he can't read. Which is probably not unrelated to how he managed to have little enough contact with the Chelish state that he grew to his present age without suffering disqualifying moral injury.

Llei enters. Because he lives here, and is at this point hearing quite a lot of talking. He is... actually really unclear on what the current rules are for greeting this many people who outrank him at once. 

No one knows and it's terrible, but he can save him. "Napaciza. Where are you, on women's rights?"

That's not saving him, that's handing him a bomb! 

"Which ones?"

"Most urgently right to bring suit and testify, for the bastardy proposal to work at all, which the Code Cyprian does not grant to unmarried women. But we're discussing the matter in general, and how much can be salvaged from Hell's fingers having touched it. Ser Jornet pointed out all the virtuous planes have equality of the sexes, and Her Grace that it will nonetheless be enormously unpopular among many here, and that certainly none of us unmarried women could convince the convention to approve even if Iomedae does."

Carlota would really like more of a signal from her fiancé about the stance of the Church on women's rights before she makes any comments on it that aren't about political viability. She'll just nod along pleasantly. 

"You certainly don't want me speaking on it." There are, what, two extremely powerful noblewomen in this room, a countess, a female paladin, and the sortition from Family? Probably here specifically to talk about the bastardry proposal.

"I would certainly not ban women from using the civil courts, when we have them. I would probably ban conscripting them. I don't think I know anything about what's done in other countries that isn't very probably a lie, and am not particularly sure what else is under threat."

"I can talk about what we did in Taldor, if it's relevant, but in general I would not recommend Taldor as a model."

"I think the legal rights that end up having the most practical significance are the right to join a religious order, which in some countries a women cannot do without her father's permission - and obviously in every country a married woman cannot do without her husband's permission, but that's just common sense - the right to take out a loan or own property, which married women generally cannot do without a marriage contract that sets up a nonstandard arrangement, as in cases where she is titled - the right to file suit, start a business, join a guild, serve in the army or the civil service, or use the civil courts, and the right to divorce or to refuse marriage in the first place. I can't think what else would even be contested, in any direction....whether a woman may be divorced for insubordination, maybe?"

"I would naively think that limiting the rights of married women would discourage marriage. Obviously many married people don't have those, but I don't know why one would want to deny them automatically. I don't immediately see why one would want to limit any of those for women in general, other than divorce."

"The Code Cyprian reserves many rights to married women, for precisely one assumes that reason."

"It probably works better when you've already spent ten years uprooting everything evil and good about your society, and don't need any of your women's support for stability." Other than Minister Cynthia Megane's, so presumably high offices of state earn the rights of men somewhere in there.

"There's a balancing act, I think, because you want to encourage women to marry, but you also want to encourage men to marry, and many propositions to make marriage more attractive to women make it less attractive to men. In a functional society where men can't have women any other way they'll nearly all marry even if this affords them only Lastwall's and not Osirion's privileges over their wives, but I don't think we will be able to bring that about in Cheliax any time soon. Maybe the fine on bastards will be sufficient to do what is ordinarily done by virtue."

"There is an Osirian on the committee who was enthusiastic about the idea of offering various incentives and privileges to married men over unmarried men, not within their marriage but within their communities, which seems like it might accomplish that effect without making things worse for women. I think we might also want to offer some incentives for adoption, but we haven't gotten as far as actually discussing what privileges might be appropriate."

"Would the family committee be the best place to workshop some principles surrounding which orders women ought to be obliged to obey in marriage? This is an interest of mine and I think possibly of particular importance when many of the men around are unreformed Asmodeans."

"There are a lot more women willing to do without for many years if no man meets their standards, than the reverse, so I'd think the balance favoring women would work better. As it is, though, there are many forms of pressure which are legal that nonetheless deny them that option. But banning those also seems very dicey to suggest to the floor."

"The committee's initial attempt at a default set of marriage vows did not include obedience requirements. No one on the committee suggested adding them, that I can recall."

"I am aware of no functioning cultures where women do not promise obedience in marriage. I understand that Asmodeans have a persistent terror of contracts that can be interpreted very broadly and against their interests, and I am in favor of contemplating what bounds ought to be placed on it, but - Asmodeanism has destroyed sex relations in this country, it did that deliberately, and no functional society does likewise with less horrifying results."

"The priests of Iomedae who we brought to Westcrown actually ended up counseling the people of Kantaria against requiring or swearing obedience when they married, after seeing the existing marriages there. Most of the existing ones did include obedience requirements, and they felt that this did not improve them."

"I am not a priest to offer counsel but I think that might be too radical a social experiment for me. I do not see how a man can promise to protect or provide for a woman he cannot command, and if we drop that too then I am not sure what we mean any more by marriage."

Aren't these people supposed to be against slavery???????

"The initial draft from the Family committee actually didn't include those either, although the Osirian thought that it should include a requirement to provide for the woman separate from the children. The initial draft had both parties promise to provide or care for the children of the union, the man promise not to abandon them, and the woman promise to be loyal to her husband. The Osirian thought a husband should also promise to provide for his wife, Sir Goes was concerned that the proposal did not even ambiguously forbid male infidelity, and all of us disagreed on what 'be loyal to' did or should entail, so that part at minimum should probably be rewritten. Notably, this was to be the legal minimum, for use in combination with the bastardry ban; people could additionally be encouraged to swear other vows if desired. But I would expect requiring obedience for a the marriage to be legally valid would cause marriage rates to go down, and condemn quite a few more men to three years of unpaid farm work than I was really hoping for."

"I - would expect if the wording was drawn from Osirian practice, then 'be loyal to' would imply a degree of obedience.

I think that requiring vows of obedience for a legally valid marriage would be a mistake, but it still seems like an important part of a typical marriage, and it would be an impoverished society whose concept of marriage doesn't include that element at all... which does not mean that we should definitely push for obedience vows in marriage now. I think there are things where naively trying to implement the customs of Lastwall or Osirion or Cheliax of old would be bad for Cheliax of today, because those customs rely on a morally healthier population, and I think many things about authority fall into that category."

"I don't know what the legal minimum marriage should be, and perhaps among Asmodeans it cannot oblige obedience. But I think it would be a mistake to enshrine in law and custom Cheliax at its worst and not even - hold up as aspirational - the institution as it functions in a morally healthy society."

...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."

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. 

"I would be very hypocritical to dissuade anyone from trying for Heaven, and I do think that among nobles specifically you often end up Evil if you just try to straightforwardly make all the decisions that seem best for your aims without a distinct bias towards Good. But nearly all people aren't nobles and I think 'do as much Good as you've done Evil, for pure self-interested reasons' often lands better than 'you are now supposed to be a soldier in the other army'. - I know that's not what Heaven is. But people don't."

He smiles slightly. "I think something a bit like that is landing very well in Kantaria, but of course Kantaria is very eager to be Iomedae's, for reasons that do not necessarily generalize."

"Kintargo got a ship-full of lay Sarenrites and Shelynites just as I was rescued and revived, based on the ties the Ravens and my homegrown rebels had already made to Andoran, which I think means they're doing better - even Sarenrae's soldiers have a healthier mindset than Heaven's. But that definitely doesn't generalize, without a few dozen more ships landing inland. And I have to admit the bunch of Andoren junior adventurers have caused problems of their own."

"I think Vidal-Espionosa is - what you get, from quite a few people, if they think they're supposed to serve Iomedae now and are guessing for themselves how to do it. Or, you know, informing on their neighbors as inadequate Iomedaens, beating their children bloody with no priests to be had for failing to memorize the Acts -"

Are you supposed to not do that.

Marit grimaces.

Elorri shakes his head sadly.

What the fuck do these people want, for everyone to be perfect Iomedaens without taking any of the actual actions that bring that about, because taking actions is Evil? ...yes, that's probably precisely it.

"We keep begging for more, but of course no more exist. I think perhaps we ought to send some large number of our people to where they grow them. On the third we were discussing how many men we might be able to send to Crusader's Fort. For all I know an entirely voluntary recruitment drive might at this point be very powerful, especially with so many people out of work. That would give the Church resources, rather than taking them, and when the men come home I dare to hope that they might actually know something. I don't know how much spare space the divinity college in Lastwall has, if any, but if it could squeeze in a few more students, then we might consider ways to make that available to some of our people as well."

"The onboarding won't be trivial - a typical divinity student starts with a very different background than a typical Chelish person - but I do think we should be considering recruitment as a way to get people catechized."

Which is a fine time for an additional paladin to arrive, really.

"Molthune is significantly different itself, though the gap is smaller and better-understood. Thank you for having me, your Grace. Pleasure to see you, your Highnesses..." and then he'll run through all the other greetings. "What was Chelish divinity school in aid of?"

"Catechesis of the general population."

"Well, we'd at least know if we succeeded, which is better than I've managed on assizes. I don't think we could do much without additional resources from outside the Church, but we have spare training capacity at the moment while Her needs for Select is lower, if that can be found." He also takes a second look at Carlota and then Alexeara. "Also, my congratulations, your Grace, Lord Marshal."

"I don't think we'd want typical Chelish people, but the wizard academies are open. What our young people lack in any exposure to goodness, some of them may make up for in being quick studies, and be capable of sharing their insights with their countrymen later. I certainly don't think we should send anyone who isn't interested, but I suspect that there are certain places where if we made announcements, there would be interest, if Lastwall had the resources to take them. But I do think we should focus first on staffing Lastwall's forts, as that makes the church stronger very immediately, and is probably in reach of more people."

Carlota will repeat the graciously-accepting-congratulations-on-her-engagement ritual as needed! "Yes, a lot of people have experience at the Worldwound and can desperately use the Good."

Message to Joan-Pau, how is everyone who sees them inferring their engagement? Is the sword a Molthuni custom? It's not very flirtatious to discuss engagement customs, it's just a very practical question.

The sword is a custom of Lastwall, he messages back, one which the Lord Marshal picked up during his service. It symbolizes his unwillingness to get into stupid fights with a wife to protect. "If Lastwall is prepared to send recruiters, I expect they can get plenty of wizards capable of doing inexpensive maintenance and casting Mount whether it's for the Worldwound or the Belkzen border or just forts with nobody doing laundry, as long as they'll promise it helps you get out of Hell."

"Which in fact it does, so it seems like a good idea all around, really." Except that getting Lastwall to do things is like pulling teeth but it'd be rude to say that.

Why would there be a romantic custom of not picking stupid fights. Picking stupid fights is so romantic.

"I don't know if Lastwall is prepared to send anyone, right now, but if they'll sign off on recruiting materials I expect we can find someone to do it for them."

It is about time to start heading everyone towards the dining hall and that's as good an opening as any. "While probably we should be petitioning Lastwall more pointedly, the thing which initially moved me to propose this particular dinner was that I do not think we are employing each other as well as we could be.

I am going to be very blunt on the Lord Marshal's advice. The people in this room are sufficient to win most votes if we are coordinating and while we do not agree on everything we agree on a great many things, and there are a great many more that only half of us care about. We can trade favors. 

Trade and Travel is abolishing travel passes, which are technically already abolished but I think still in effect in half the country somehow. Judiciary is likely to shortly contemplate the Code Cyprian, which I know is of great importance to many of my allies, and is drafting a proposal to let the nobility provisionally appoint bailiffs to replace the Reclamation once acclaimed as adequate by the paladins, which also seems fairly important. The floor is probably going to be arguing about torturous executions all day tomorrow, perhaps with a break to argue about public executions. Family wants to define marriage and fine bastards. I would like us to discuss these topics tonight so as not to surprise each other on the floor. The Mansion outdid itself; we have twelve courses; I expect we can get through everything of great importance and I think we ought to. 

I also hope you will forgive me my seating arrangements, which were diligently done a day in advance with reference to the protocols of three different countries and two different time periods before the Lord Marshal proposed marriage to me and obliged their last-minute rearranging." It's true and also a very convenient excuse for there being absolutely no satisfactory arrangement for a crowd of this character.

....she is probably not supposed to sit with everyone? The duchess has actually been letting her talk almost completely freely with only one firm nudge to shut up so far, which was itself a nudge and not an order or a dismissal, and people do keep acknowledging her as a useful piece for winning votes, but - no, no way. 

She's not immediately sure what that means she is supposed to do. Is she supposed to just leave? Is she allowed to just leave?? Is she supposed to stand off to the side in case someone needs her to talk about votes??

The dining room is aping the style of old Arodenite temples, ceiling that appears to open to the night sky and walls covered in detailed mosaics and glossy glass table at which there are fancy place settings with namecards. The food is Vudrani today. Variety is the spice of life.


(Korva's place card is among the paladins, who seemed unlikely to feel slighted about this or act slighted if they did, and near Count Ardiaca and his date because Carlota knows Count Ardiaca finds her useful to talk to and won't take it as an insult.)

She's slightly insulted but isn't going to show it.

Wow that smells amazing. Oh, and this is a fancy noble dinner party in a Mansion and it would probably be fine to actually say that out loud rather than implicitly casting aspersions on the host's priorities. "It smells delicious."

Korva cannot see her place card. This would require being closer to the table than she is, in the manner of someone who expects that they are supposed to sit down. 

"Thank you! It is a favorite cuisine of mine and you largely can't get it here in Cheliax, even though I'm told it is from Golarion in origin."

Maybe the girl dressed like she's a city nobody can't read. "Next to the lady knight," she says, and doesn't add idiot, because she doesn't need to.

He's glad to have more people to talk to near him! The third most important factor for a sentient being's value is whether they can contribute useful ideas and also he likes insightful people.

Aw, she doesn't sit by her favorite non-Kintargan so far. Should have gotten the first dress rush ordered. Only partially so someone thought about where it came from.

"It really does. I suppose there's no chef to compliment in a mansion, which seems a shame." She's a little annoyed she doesn't recognize the cuisine but suppresses it.

"There is, after a fashion, but it'd be difficult to convey your compliments. I asked the caster to imitate a specific restaurant I used to like."

"I suppose it's unlikely I'll ever be in Axis to visit it. We'll have to settle for complimenting your good taste."

...oh. 

Korva will sit down, then, and force herself to attempt to look like someone who is not dying inside, and try not to think about the fact that she hasn't changed or properly repaired her clothes in a year and a half. (She has cleaned them, at least. Thank you, Zara.)

"Why, Archduchess, you'll only have to stay where you are until we've built Axis here." Carlota is at her ✧˖° fiancé ✧˖°'s side and positioned so she can both hear Count Ardiaca who is consistently interesting and the archdukes who are going to be careful not to be too interesting but whose noncommittal murmurs are very important.

The conversation is more political than usual at the dinner table but at least not tedious. The drinks are very good. The proposal to abolish travel passes is not controversial.

The conversation about bastards is slightly so.

"Men not marrying is a product of Asmodeanism but men not being faithful in marriage is....a human universal as far as I can tell."

It cannot possibly be harder to be faithful to your spouse than to spend a decade as a celibate paladin, but admittedly most people are not celibate paladins.

Antonio doesn't understand why being faithful in marriage is desirable. It's probably a Good thing, so he's listening very attentively.

Llei keeps feeling like he's not supposed to admit to only sleeping with his wife, and then remembering that he is not, in fact, only sleeping with his wife anymore. 

"The family committee's first suggested set of vows does not have men promise fidelity, though I know Sir Goes was concerned about that."

"I don't think you want a promise more than half of people won't keep, you're keeping them out of Axis that way. Obviously you can still hold it up as aspirational, and try to discourage it other ways as with the bastardry penalties."

There is something unaesthetic about expecting less of men specifically because as a class they are less able to meet the standard. It's infantilizing. But she has a point.

"There was more discussion of what female fidelity should be understood to consist of, really, especially if the vows are to constitute a legal minimum. ...there are definitely some number of married women in Cheliax today whose contracts explicitly negotiated getting to sleep with other men, and I am not immediately sure how to respond to that."

"That's - interesting? - what situation would give rise to those contracts, are the husbands in these examples known to be sterile, or...?"

"The women are much more powerful or influential, I assume?"

"In general, yes, the man is the subordinate partner. More rarely, neither party cares, and the marriage is for reasons not especially related to producing children."

"I don't think we should be invalidating existing marriage contracts - or I think we might wish to invalidate a great many existing contracts for unconscionable terms and many of those will be marriage contracts, but if we do that I think it'd be with a very sparing concept of unconscionable terms, the bar for that should be much higher than just mundane 'well that's a terrible idea'."

"I suspect that quite a lot of specific marriage contracts should be invalidated. I have not burned my first one, but I was tempted. But I would be hesitant to make the legal minimum for a valid marriage any more restrictive than absolutely necessary, if we intend to use it to encourage as many people as possible to marry for the sake of raising children."

"Not having children at all is also fine, but there's not a lot of domestic celibate orders I could reasonably recommend to anyone at this time."

"Is that the only alternative? I suppose it makes explicit your intentions but that doesn't seem necessary, even if you want to be committed to celibacy."

"I would not be surprised if it turns out that there are other life courses that can work but I have not seen them tried in practice and at scale."

"I think we can be more optimistic than that. Andoran's norms are terrible for the abandoned children, but do seem salutary for the adults if those outcomes can be split apart. Particularly the women. And I definitely want a society in which it is encouraged to remain celibate for years, and self-supporting for some of them, waiting for a man qualified to be a decent husband to be found, because I think it will often need to be done to avoid terrible marriages. That's my present heir's life course, and if I'd been born twenty years later like her likely would have been my own."

"Oh, I think it would be fine if the membership in whatever group were temporary and the vows with it. A lot of ours expired on the conquest of Cheliax - not mine, but I think most of them."

Well, it's a very awkward context in which to ask, but on the other hand it's not like she's going to have an opportunity later. How to ask without implying she isn't obeying Iomedae in every single stupid respect.

"Can someone refer me to an explanation of, uh, why the Church opposes extramarital sex? Word has spread rather widely that it does, and people with any sense are complying, but generally without any understanding of the actual justification."

"'Opposition to extramarital sex' is the short, simple version of the more complicated thing. The major problem with extramarital sex is that it produces children whose care is uncertain and damages the foundation on which a marriage, which should be a relationship of trust, is built - so, the thing popular in Osirion with taking lovers of the same sex is fine when everyone expects that, for example, but that doesn't fit into the short simple version, especially if you have to clarify that it is not fine if your spouse does not expect that."

"I'm a wizard. The Duchess of Chelam is a wizard. Really quite a substantial fraction of the city are wizards. We do not need to worry about unwanted children. No one speaks about this in terms of 'well, naturally you should do whatever you want with Iomedae's blessing' and if in fact we all should this would be exciting news to many people." 

"It is often - not always, but often - a mistake to take actions which you would not choose to publicize or that, if publicized, would present an example that others should not imitate."

There is literally not a single person in the county of Seguer who thinks that they should imitate actions taken by the countess because she is the countess and they are not. She should not say that.

"I wonder if you'd find it helpful to consider an explanation from a different angle. In healthy societies, men can only have respectable women by marrying them. This is to the advantage of all of the women in that society, because they are much better off with a husband than with an uncommitted lover. I would argue that it is also good for the men, because being a husband is good for men, but observably they mostly do not choose it, if they can instead have respectable women without marrying them. Perhaps it serves the man they'll be at forty but not the man they are at twenty, and it's the twenty year old choosing.

But while women, as a whole, are advantaged by obliging the men to marry them, an individual woman, especially if she won't end up with an unwanted child, might be advantaged by defecting; she might be able to enjoy the company of a man whose hand in marriage she couldn't secure, but who will happily sleep with her, and the harm this does to the overall balance of forces towards marriage is diffuse, while the benefits are very immediate.

For this reason in every healthy society I know of, women despise other women who betray the collective in this fashion. Women will call each other harlots with the same intent that men call each other cowards, and for the same reason - because the society cannot function if anyone gains by evading their duty."

" - well that does answer a related question I had which is why by all the gods the immigrants consider that insult a dueling offense."

"...is it not one, in Asmodean Cheliax?"

"Not at all. - of a married woman it'd be an insult to her husband, of course. But if she's single? It doesn't land any differently than saying it of a man."

"That's true in my experience as well. Even the Andorens take it more seriously than the holdovers, upper class or low."

"The project of civilization is ordering men's obligations so that everyone behaves virtuously, stands when they must stand, fights when they must fight, and raises the next generation strong, healthy, and themselves capable of the defense of civilization. It is an allegation of defecting on that project. Acts says that men do not reason in these terms, but they are written on their hearts; the law just adds up to what everyone was doing anyway by habit because the civilizations where they did not do it were destroyed.

...the reason same-sex liaisons are treated differently than liaisons with men where the women are wizards, even though neither of those things produce children, is because one of those changes the incentives around marriage in the undesirable direction and one in the desirable direction."

That's incredibly annoying but at least it has moving parts.

"Even putting aside concerns about the social fabric, I worry that if we attempt to spread the message that it's not necessarily Evil for unmarried wizards to have sex, people will misinterpret us as meaning that it's not Evil for a wizard to kill their ensouled unborn child."

That's Evil? Seriously????

"I don't deny that that's a good and stable way to order a society, and one which works in Lastwall and probably Arodenite Cheliax. I'm not sure it's one we can reach from where we are. If we tell women of Cheliax to call harlotry a cardinal sin, well, firstly most of them won't really believe us or internalize any of that reasoning, and I'm not certain it's salutary without, but secondly it will be used as they're used to using insults and accusations - like heresy or disloyalty, weapons which can be wielded against almost anyone and whose truth or falsehood barely matters."

Joan-Pau is visibly slightly moved by the triumphial defense of civilization!

Oh nooooo, hot boy has principles and Eulàlia is going to have a very hard time getting him to sleep with her!

"If it were in my power to keep the people of Cheliax from facing Pharasma's judgment in their current state, I'd do it. But as we cannot do that I do not think it is a kindness to try to spare them the judgment of their peers. Treating infanticide as murder but not shaming fornication is mostly a wrong to people who are very bad at being moved by the long-term consequences of their actions."

Actually the two facts that Eulalia raises are both true but totally unrelated "This makes me wonder if it's worth paying the capital costs of a room with a Zone of Truth Hallow attached, cast by Inquisitor Shawil if we can afford his price, used for judicial cases and rented out for other purposes. It's not perfect, but it would make the costs of our judicial system much lower and efficiency much higher in the major cities, and if it works in Westcrown we can replicate it elsewhere."

Well you can't say "I worry that would create a perpetual scene of accusations people would feel dishonored to have to refute, as we saw earlier today" when the Countess de Seguer who threw a fair few logs onto that fire is right there.

"It does seem like it might be constructive for the perception that the truth of such allegations doesn't even matter. ...If you did it at the convention hall it would probably have additional salutary effects, and then you could repurpose it as a hall of justice after the convention is over."

"Do you expect a proposal to cover the entire convention with a Zone of Truth to pass the floor, Your Grace?" Marit would frankly be thrilled about that but he has gotten the impression that a proposal like that would at best be highly controversial.

"I have a very hard time guessing the mood of the floor on things like that. I would want to have it in our back pocket and then bring it out after some particular incident to which it would have been relevant, probably. ...if you don't say we mean to bid for the Inquisitor casting it, you'll probably get votes from people who think they can resist it successfully. But perhaps that is too much scheming for the Church to countenance from its allies." Even though it would be so incredibly satisfying.

There are several kinds of sex that don't produce children, people. Also lots of circumstances under which having sex is a woman's only way to protect and provide for herself and her children, either directly or because her employer requires it.

She's not going to say that. She's going to continue shutting up and delicately gorging herself on this twelve-course meal and hoping that magical food doesn't disappear as soon as you leave the mansion. She'll be so heartbreakingly hungry if it all leaves her system afterwards.

Wait, but -

"Why isn't promiscuity a dueling insult for men, then?"

"Abandoning your children is," Xavier says, "but it's hardly an insult to civilization for a man to have a mistress as long as he supports her. There's no symmetric alliance between men to shame such men, as there is among women."

"Nor would you expect one. A man who has a mistress isn't damaging the interests of other men in any way. Maybe if he had so many mistresses as to produce a local shortage of women but in most places there are more women than men, as young men get themselves killed more."

She doesn't know quite what she's trying to say, the argument is too tangled for her, but -

"I would be very hesitant to judge the woman in that situation, knowing what her likely options are, and seeing that her children are in fact provided for. If the argument is that I am meant to judge her because her actions teach men that they can get away without commitment, which leads to many women being abandoned, then surely the man is also teaching other men this, and thereby injuring women and their families. And injuring civilization, to the extent that women and their families are a part of civilization."

"Most bandits are bandits because all of their available options were terrible and many of them because they were desperate to feed their families and yet a society that does not judge bandits falls apart immediately. But - of course we should have pity for prostitutes, and I do not approve at all of practices like denying them access to the temples or refusing to prosecute crimes committed against them."

That is an incredibly vicious thing to say about every woman who has chosen to sleep with a man who is decent enough to provide for her children, but who will not sign a paper.

She should shut up -

"I am sorry, this is a very stupid question, but if you will all forgive me, I have been caring for other people's children in an Iomedan orphanage since the war flattened my house, and had not have not had time to study other countries' mores recently. It sounds to me as if you are saying that in healthy societies, men still inevitably have mistresses, and they care for those mistresses and their children, which is admirable. But they are also encouraged to see these women to whom they entrust their children as common prostitutes, and in turn as women who are fundamentally defecting against the project of all civilization, so despised that in these places people would consider denying them access to the justice system, or to the teachings which might save their souls. I am sure I am misunderstanding something, but I lack so much context that I cannot see where."

Valentia is going to very placidly sip wine and not look at her father even a little bit.

Oh my, someone's upset about being called a whore.

That doesn't seem far wrong, though Jilia hasn't given it that much thought.

"In a healthy society some women would prefer to be the mistress of a wealthy and powerful man than the wife of a social equal, but how many women prefer this is kept in check by, yes, the fact that most other people won't think much of their decisions and that many will consider them merely a special class of prostitute.  And so most men and most women ultimately marry and certainly a man will have to marry if he wants a woman who is a social equal. I don't think anyone needs to be cruel to make it work, but it does in fact function off their willingness to judge each other, and off the fact a woman will lose standing if she's having children out of wedlock. I will make no claim that this system is perfect but it does not leave millions of dead and abandoned children in its wake and its participants get to Axis." 

"I see. If the women in question are all of much lower standing in the first place, I think that is probably the answer to my question."

"In the culture we are discussing if a man seduces a woman who is his social equal her family and the surrounding society will try quite hard to shame him, and potentially to duel him, into marrying her."

That just seems like being a sore loser??? 'awww, you did something meaaan, make it right!' Like you're three.

Paladins may not be good at dissembling but they can still attempt tact. Or distraction.

"Lastwall does, in fact, discourage and punish men for infidelity as strictly as for women. And it strongly discourages seeing prostitutes, though they remain legal and have all protections of law. This is a difficult standard for many to meet but I understand we largely succeed."

"I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that no men should have mistresses, though the church has made the case to me. But I'd not go that far because, in some places, many men die. I have heard the suggestion that excess women should join holy orders, but they largely do not exist in Cheliax, and existing ones would seem not to work very well for widows with children. In Kantaria it is very common for a widow to become the mistress of another man after. It is precarious, but not necessarily shameful, unless he makes it so. Others marry far below their previous status, sometimes legally and sometimes only socially."

"An order for widows with children wouldn't be a bad idea."

"There used to be a great many such. Orders for widows, orders for women whose husbands' conduct towards them or their children was criminal, orders for the raising of orphans much better than the present orphanages, orders for repentant prostitutes..."

"With the state we have now, we'd need others. Some more like guilds, really, for self-supporting women. I'm not sure it works out to being the right way to help."

"The Osirian on the family committee briefly made a case for allowing men to legally take multiple wives. He did not actually go so far as to suggest allowing it in Cheliax, only to legally recognize marriages from allied countries which do practice it, and I do worry about what the effects might be if we did allow it, but - if a man does have reason to commit to more than one woman, it seems to me more honorable for him to be held to both sets of promises."

"I have a slight allergy to introducing any Osirian institutions, lest they come with the general status of women in Osirion, but it does seem to me that if a man has two families it is better for him to have made commitments to both of them than to have one of them - precariously. And in principle I don't see why a man having two wives would go along with female seclusion, which is an abhorrent practice and the real core of the thing they're doing wrong."

Emphatic nod at that first part, and more thoughtful for the rest.

"Would you marry yours, if you could?"

That the flash of panic is almost completely concealed doesn't mean it isn't there. But - Narikopolus would not ask unless he thought it made them safer, here. 

"Monica was my wife for thirty-two years. I have never broken a promise to her, and I never took a mistress in that time. She does not need papers to know that her position is secure. But - it would be very unfair to her, if other people were to assume that the lack of them meant that she had done something wrong."

...did she... die... and then he remarried... and then he had her resurrected when Naima started operating in Cheliax...? It's not even that much cheaper though...

Pretty sure it was an insult before, too, although not one that suggested that her mother had done anything morally wrong, that not previously being something you could insult someone for.

....executed under the old regime and he had her raised once he could, but had remarried by then? 

No, no, he divorced her because it was safer. Probably she was from a family that the Queen almost but not entirely annihilated. 

She'd heard there was a first wife and no recriminations. She hadn't realized quite how deep the feeling went.

"There are not very many men who can say that in any country. I think I would go ahead and get married and then dare the convention to specify that men with two wives have to pick one."

"Marit and Arn were ultimately of the opinion that shaming or hiding the existing mistresses would do far more harm than good for all of us, even in cases far less sympathetic. It's not that they loved the situation, but over and over, they had to tell us that hiding or burying the results of our decisions would make things worse, not better. The things that most deeply concerned them were hardly related to the things that most embarrassed us. It is still legal, in this country, for a man to force his slave to sleep with him, or to trick or threaten a woman into an employment contract which denies her the right to prosecute him for what would otherwise be rape. There are still marriage contracts in effective use which enshrine one party as less than a slave. I think Marit and Arn would tell us to look there, first, if we wanted to fix things. They would certainly not tell us to hide or be ashamed of the parts of our families that we managed to genuinely protect and honor through infernal rule."

" - Slavery should probably just ban forcing your slaves tomorrow. A ban on contracting to someone the right to have sex with you even if you later withdraw permission - outside marriage, obviously - would be the business of some other committee but I would support that too." 

"I would put a bit more thought into it than that, though banning it on the same terms as forcing oneself on free people would probably not be especially destructive. Marit and Arn initially recommended banning all free people from sleeping with slaves, but naively implementing that in my household left quite a lot of the slaves justifiably angry."

"That does seem like it might create a bunch of headaches, but 'if it would otherwise be rape, the victim being a slave or a servant doesn't obviate that' seems like it would at least be better than the law explicitly permitting it. I am worried that part of the breakdown of marriage might be that by such contracts men can secure the rights of marriage without any of the responsibilities."

"It's standard practice to ensure it in domestic service contracts. Not necessarily using those exact words. You get a fair number of orphans and I assume infanticides that way, if the employer effectively requires it, but also effectively bans keeping or caring for the child in the house."

"Well, that should be illegal. ...is that also the case in Taldor, does anyone know?"

"...It is not standard practice in Taldor to require your servants to have sex with you as part of the contract. Some employers do coerce or threaten their servants into sex, but I don't think most of them would bother to write it down as a term of employment."

"The Duke of Gandia drunkenly seduced one of my servants at a dinner party last week and I'm irritated with him regardless but I'd be more irritated if he'd believed she had some employment obligation not to refuse him."

"I don't expect he did, but if it was standard in the part of Taldor where he grew up I might not have heard."

"I don't know much of his family, though I know it's his father who was chosen by the Queen as the Duke," and so there is every reason to believe he's just a perfectly average Taldane noble and no reason to believe he's withstood particular scrutiny. Her tone is lightly disdainful; of course the situation is slightly embarrassing for her but it's more embarrassing for the Duke of Gandisa, and they're trying to notice patterns and adopt better general rules, here.

"Fairly standard hospitality in much of infernal Cheliax, but even then, impolite without an offer. And that wouldn't particularly explain the Duke's behavior."

All the infernal nobles have been on best behavior with her staff. She is not going to say that, it wouldn't land as a compliment.

Did she believe she was obliged? Wouldn't be unlikely even in Kintargo, and they're a lot closer to Egorian here and Chelam.

Jilia weighs mentioning the question and decides that it's better to suggest it to Carlota privately later. 

Xavier frowns the frown of someone whose subordinates are behaving badly. "I am not acquainted with the current Duke of Gandisa. His father was a man of ability, but age caught up to him, and the son I have only met twice and both times briefly."

"Maybe he has more sense sober, but I have not seen him sober," says Carlota, which is as much as she's willing to insult the man. "In any event I speak with much less confidence when I speak to how men see these matters."

"Mmm," he says, because he really doesn't want to defend him but doesn't want to insult him either. "I do not think that most men see their mistresses as common prostitutes. I have heard that most women of similar social class to them console their envy at a great man's mistress by telling each other that she is equivalent to one, however."

"That I can understand. But that description sounds much less like a triumph of civilization that we should all encourage and participate in. I do not generally advise people to cultivate envy to console."

"I would defend envy as sometimes an engine of civilization but probably not when it takes that form. The thing that is the engine of civilization is the overall incentives, which have to be towards marriage."

"I think the women are already quite incentivized to marry, really, in the sense of finding someone who will agree not to leave them. It's just that extracting a promise from someone doesn't mean anything without very long experience, unless you mean to pay the devils to enforce it. I have known several women who had weddings and told people they had husbands, and then a year later they were alone again. If getting married did something, besides admitting that you had an expectation which you would be embarrassed to have proven wrong, then I might judge women for skipping it. If there is a simple standard contract that both does anything at all to prevent the parties from leaving, and doesn't reliably turn one or the other into a slave, then I am quite willing to insist that people sign it before having children with someone. But until then, I am too busy judging the men who convince women to rely on them, and then leave."

"That is very reasonable. I would support serious criminal penalties for abandonment, and I hope you are right that women will gladly choose marriage as soon as it is meaningfully offered to them."

"You have to make it not - contemptible, to trust a man. I don't think it's wise to tell people it's their duty to be stupid. But if you make it not stupid -"

"Penalties for abandonment. Penalties for bastards. A complete ban on all contracts that offer men the benefits of marriage with no corresponding commitment. Maybe we'll need more after that, but - maybe that'll be enough."

"Andoran still has problems, yes? Does Andoran do all of that?"

"I believe so but also Andoran has thrown out the concept of duty and obligation near-entirely as Asmodean. I'm not surprised that produces lots of abandoned children."

"I think we want to make the legal minimum contract as simple as possible. Something people won't have any good reason to balk at, unless they are in fact planning to abandon their children. Take the loyalty clause out entirely, and make it entirely about shared obligations towards children and not abandoning the other, at least not without mutual agreement or some list of poor behaviors from a spouse. Obviously tell people they're perfectly welcome to make other promises on top of that, and they're perfectly welcome to get custom contracts to enforce them, if they dare. But if it doesn't include a promise to care for the children, it's not a marriage, and there are penalties for the person who sired children without committing to take care of them. I think I'd want to write it without reference to the sex of the person who did so, too, if I can think how. I don't think there are a lot of female wizards going around impregnating people, but I don't see why they should get away with it if they do."

"Or if the Archmage Naima gives them a new form. I think you do want - not just shared obligations towards the children, something about trying to do right by each other, and I think you need the woman's commitment to fidelity so that her husband can expect future children to also be his obligation, but I can see why you might want to just leave it at that for the legal minimum. And then there should be a - Church marriage - that is the set of vows expected to actually be good for people."

"I think you're being somewhat unfair to Andoran. They certainly didn't try to convince anyone to reengage in a project of Civilization or Law, not even Codwin, and they started with Chelish people, who have little notion of duty or obligation that isn't done from fear of punishment, so of course they didn't consider that as a priority. We can, and given the results on the children we clearly should to some degree, but it will be difficult to do, for mostly the same reasons they didn't."

"I could go for 'try to do right by one another' if the civil courts were staffed by reasonable people, but it seems very vacuous. Admittedly, so is what counts as abandonment and failure to provide for children, so we'll need to handle that somehow anyway.

Requiring female fidelity would prevent people from making contracts that explicitly don't require it, which apparently some people have, and I thought people were leaning against that? And if we're allowing multiple wives, I don't want to legally ban multiple husbands, even if almost no one does that. Maybe some woman has heroically resurrected her dead first husband in the last year. They can always negotiate for more terms, but anything we put on the list is something we're saying people aren't allowed not to promise. Maybe we can do a legal minimum and then publish a list of more reasonable standard promises separately, or something."

"It seems ugly, to me, to suggest to women that they should agree to live as a man's wife off only his promise to support the children. I worry that women who might otherwise have held out for more won't. I do take your point that perhaps the default a couple is recommended if they come in to get married can be different from the legal minimum to not count as siring bastards."

"What size of fine are you discussing, for siring bastards? Something rich men can easily pay, I presume."

"We said thirty gold, when we were considering it. I might go a little higher, but not more than fifty. And two or three years of agricultural indenture for anyone who can't pay, so possibly we should attempt to determine what that's usually worth. Not that prices for anything are behaving, right now. We were a little more divided on where in particular the money should go; you could have a system where it always goes to the woman who bore the child, or a system where it goes to whoever is actually raising the child, if the woman in question is not."

"That's outright encouragement to have a child by a rich man, not that plenty of such encouragement doesn't already exist, and not that it seems like a bad thing necessarily."

Marit had been assuming the fine was paid out to the Crown. He nods at the first part of the Countess de Seguer's remark.

"I wouldn't say we want to encourage rich men to have more children, but certainly we do for men who are intelligent, virtuous and talented, and these are things that often make men rich. We have more baronies today than we have able barons, and even in normal times every nobleman wishes to have enough sons to have a lord and a priest and a hero among them." Even after time has thinned the ranks. "If the hero and the priest are the children of a mistress instead of of the lord's wife his wife may be disappointed, but the realm will not."