"Does this mean people would have to attend every execution?"

"No, this doesn't make attendance at executions mandatory. It simply means that executions will be conducted in public, and members of the public may choose if they wish to attend, or choose not to."

Wait, what are they supposed to be doing if they're not supposed to just treat everything the Crown says as true?

She doesn't trust this guy at all on account of how he keeps bringing in proposals to help the Evil nobles, but this seems... obviously good? If someone were being executed for a crime against her she'd want to watch them die, and if she were being executed she'd rather her friends be there if it were safe for them.

She’s skimmed the transcripts for the previous two days, so this proposal isn’t a surprise.  It’s not too unreasonable… the spectacle of public executions isn’t ideal, but establishing public knowledge is beneficial.  The rest of the Urban Order committee’s ideas might be a problem though.  Should she start fighting them now to sap their momentum or let them get to their actually objectionable proposals first?

She’ll look to her political allies for cues.

"The citizens of Cheliax have learned deeply to mistrust the government. We must earn their trust, not merely demand it, and openness and honesty are our best tools to that end.

To elaborate on an aim of this law which Conde Cerdanya has hinted at, there is widespread confusion as to what the law is, and what crimes will and will not be punished. Many suspect that crimes against Asmodeus and the Thrunes are still prosecuted; others cannot believe that the Queen seriously means the decrees she has made. I have here the transcript of the trial of Livi Barro, a delegate some of you may remember, wherein he said in his defense for the crime of murder:

Your Honor, they're slips. Calling it murder to kill a slip is insane.

Barro was not the first man to murder a halfling in Westcrown, and not the first man to be put to death for it. But the previous man--one Lluc Canol--was executed unremarked and out of sight. I know of him only because I sought out the records, at some expense. Barro was genuinely surprised that the court saw his conduct as murder. There was no chance for Barro, or any of the mob he riled up, to see Canol's corpse hanging in the public square and ask himself, 'what did they do him for?', and discover that in fact halflings are subjects of Her Majesty entitled to the full protection of the law. If he had, he might not have been so eager to go killing, knowing that it would be tried as murder and that he would receive the Final Blade for it.

The aim of punishment is not just to do justice; it is to educate the public on crime and thereby reduce it, and for that is best done by public executions."

"I am told that the man who murdered my wife and child has been captured. In almost every other country in the world, I would have the right to see justice done. But in this one, I do not. 

The Asmodeans made it mandatory, or effectively mandatory, to attend public executions. I believe our wise and good rulers were trying to do the opposite of what Asmodeans did in every respect, when they decided to make execution proceedings occur in utter secrecy. But this is madness; the Asmodeans believed the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the new government should not declare that as a matter of doctrine it rises in the west now. Our justice system should do nothing we are uncomfortable having it do openly. People deserve to see justice done. The unfixable wounds of a murdered loved one are not much salved, by witnessing justice, but they will certainly bleed forever, when one is prohibited from witnessing it. 

The people of Cheliax deserve better."

She hates him and wishes he were dead and—

—it was wrong to murder his child. Not wrong to kill him, not wrong to kill his wife apart from how killing his wife killed their child, but it was wrong to murder the child. And — he's not wrong that people deserve to see justice done, and — maybe that means people like him will be better off, but... only in ways that everyone deserves to be? She's not sure if that makes sense.

"The Count mentions that executions are carried out in public in almost every country in the world. He neglects to mention in which country, specifically, they are not. The answer, as many of you know, is Lastwall, Iomedae's own state."

"Now, Cheliax need not, and indeed should not, imitate Lastwall in every regard. But when Asmodeus mandates something, and Iomedae forbids it, it seems at least worth asking why they have taken their respective positions."

"About the motives of the Prince of Darkness we can only guess. But Iomedae's position on public executions is in the Acts, and it is as follows: it does not, in truth, heal anything, to watch a man die, even if he is the murderer of someone you love. It is necessary, for the upholding of the law and the greater good, to sometimes inflict suffering and death. It is still tragic, as war is tragic, to do so, and Iomedae does not wish us to take pleasure in it. Asmodeus, we must imagine, wished you to take pleasure in it; that is why attendance at public executions was mandatory in Asmodean Cheliax. Hell wished to inure you to the suffering of your fellow man, to teach you that death was a spectacle, to have you believe that other people deserved the fires of Hell so that you would eventually believe you deserved them yourself."

"There are, I admit, other reasons to have executions done in public, and in my former life I would not have thought to speak against the practice, whatever Iomedae may have said. But today I must concur with Iomedae and our Queen. The publicity of Asmodean executions was intended specifically to corrupt the people of Cheliax towards Evil, and the best thing to be done for the people of Cheliax today is to reverse their policy entirely, as our Queen has done."

"Your Highness, I do not think it is wise to emulate Lastwall in this respect. The people of Lastwall trust their government, and know they can trust their government, and so when they hear that a man has hung for murder they neither suspect that he has secretly been set free nor fear that he has been flayed alive. The people of Cheliax do not share this trust — and understandably so, for Hell routinely deceived them. Even when the Crown is being fully honest, we cannot expect any policy that relies on our subjects to trust the Crown's honesty will be successful."

nor fear that he has been flayed alive.

Yeah that's indeed a failure mode he hadn't thought of.

...If Iomedae doesn't think it heals anything to watch someone who's done terrible crimes to you die then Iomedae is stupid. She does not at all trust that Delegate Thrune is telling the truth about what Iomedae thinks, but the thing he's claiming is obviously wrong, you could find out it was wrong just by asking one person.

They both have good points.  Maybe they could ban mandatory execution attendance, so people can choose, as they personally judge best, to either avoid the corruption of witnessing death or to confirm with their own eyes the death?  It wasn’t an execution (as far as he knows), but he personally wishes he had stayed for the Valia Wain trial, given lies and fabrications spread about it before it even finished.

Wait… is that the subtext to this?  People think Valia was executed in secret and are indirectly pushing back against it?  Like the proposal against detainment that was actually a sarcastic mockery of the Archmage?

The fact that Iomedae thinks it is bad to want your child's murderer to suffer is sufficient reason to reject her entire and go to Hell, though he can't say that. He will proudly say at judgment that he's Evil, now that he knows what Evil is.

Iomedae sure doesn't have any interest in making it appealing in any way to obey Her, does She. She supposes that She doesn't need to.

Taís really doesn't think that she could stop wanting someone to suffer if they went and murdered one of her children for no reason! Maybe she can still make Axis if it just never comes up? ...Probably she should stop thinking about that, she's not sure she can change it but she doesn't want to get in trouble.

"The Archduke is entirely correct, and the Conde badly in error. There is no way to earn trust but to be worthy of it, and as long as we continue putting convicts on display as spectacle, we are not worthy of it. The people of Cheliax deserve better, and they will not trust that anything we give them is better. No, not even if they see it; I wouldn't, because I have seen that falsified far too many times myself. So we must simply do right by them regardless, and give them time to see that we do not perform for them, but only for our own consciences and Pharasma. There are places we should deviate from Lastwall; we must build families from people who have forgotten how to have them, and Lastwall has never forgotten."

"But on justice? No. Iomedae's justice is true justice. What Lastwall allows, is all that is needed for public safety and public order. Everything beyond that is for something else. For savagery and gore, for bloodlust and cruelty. For spectacle and terror. It is Evil, and nothing else. There are orders Iomedae says one should not accept from anyone, even your Queen or your Goddess. I judge this is one of them. No public executions. No gibbets or slow hangings. That is a path to Hell, and I will not take one step more on it."

"I have seen what public executions do to a people. My people, my city, who I love beyond reason and spent my life preparing to die for. Even when it is their own friends and family who were victims, those executions heal nothing. They inflame the anger in men's hearts and fuel their hunger for more bloodletting like tapeworms. They incite people to seek out their own vengeance without justice or mercy in mind. And they make them fear. Fear that they will be next."

"I ask you, the delegates of the convention: How sure are you that you won't be the one on the gallows in the square? How sure are you that no law will be passed you understand poorly and violate, no charge created which a man more powerful than you can point at you if you offend him? You know what the answer was. You may hope that it has changed. For today, it has. The Queen was careful about it. But will it stay changed?"

"Conde de Cerdanya will say it will remain just. I believe he intends this, and is not lying. But he, and the others on his committee, are wrong. I have seen the other proposals they are preparing, and they will send this country back toward how it was under the Asmodeans. Maybe not quite so far; it would be hard to do so badly without intending it, and they do not. But they will do it anyway, and call it the Arodenite way."

"It is bad for our souls to witness executions, as Iomedae tells us. For the Good among us, that may be enough. But remember, always, that when the convention votes to permit a punishment, it is voting to permit it on you. Lord or serf, baron or burgher, anything the convention allows is something it allows to be inflicted on you. Do not approve anything unless you are content that you may be next."

"Honored archduchess, before you return to your seat, may I ask whether you believe Lastwall's soldiers Evil?"

No, actually, she's already stormed past the back of the line and doesn't react until an aide shakes her shoulder.

"I don't think the Archduchess is feeling quite well," he says, loudly enough the people near him can hear him.

"The gentler sex isn't suited to discussion of these matters, and of course should not themselves attend the events."

That is true but he thought that in Cheliax you were not supposed to say it.

She got in line when she saw the Archduchess was speaking.  Now she wants to include descriptions of death in her speech just because of that comment.

She needs to find an angle that will sap from the conservatives momentum without making her or other moderates seem unreasonable.

If she wants to discredit herself like that that's certainly her prerogative.

"It is true that Lastwall does not conduct civilian executions publicly. Military executions in Lastwall are conducted in front of their fellow soldiers. Iomedae did not reject public executions as an intrinsic Evil, to be avoided at all costs; She believed, correctly, that they were unnecessary for civilians in the country She was building, but She did not believe they should never be used.

Osirion has public executions. Molthune has public executions. Taldor has public executions. Mendev has public executions. The Cheliax of my birth had public executions. Are they all walking the path towards Hell? Are the hearts of the people of Osirion filled with wrath and bloodlust? Of course not. 

If a man hangs unjustly in the public square, the injustice is in the hanging, not in the fact that it was witnessed by its countrymen. I cannot say I agree with the Archduchess's fears, but even were they proven correct, would she rather men who have done no wrong be killed in private, where any man may easily pretend as if it never happened? Is that justice, Archduchess?

Perhaps the Archduchess fears it will corrupt her own soul, to witness public executions. If that is so, I certainly would not wish to force her to attend, and indeed this statute does not oblige her to. But I have seen men hang, and I have died and gone to Heaven none the worse for it, and if the Archduchess means to tell us that Good demands we mete out justice behind closed doors I cannot say I agree."

She thinks she’s thought of an angle to draw out the issue as much as she can.

“As has been said repeatedly, other countries have not been ruled by hell.  It is true the public has need to confirm events with their own eyes.  It is also true Iomedae believed making a spectacle of it is morally corruptive.  Each person should judge for themselves which need is greater, so I would propose this amendment to supplement the mandate of public executions: it should be forbidden to require the attendance of anyone not directly involved in the crime for which the execution is taking place.  This would present a balance of interests, so that people tempted to celebrate death or of a gentler spirit may avoid it and that people that need certainty may witness.”

There, hopefully that distracts and delays the issue so they don’t have as much momentum when they get to their more troublesome proposals later.