This is a popular law! Especially with lions attached!

Fine, fine. Joan-Pau gets in line.

Admittedly, it is completely random happenstance that she knows she's not lawful evil, and if she were lawful evil and happened to actually live in Westcrown it might be sort of comforting to know that the state couldn't deny her the blade, but -

Whatever. Most people don't live in Westcrown.

"Torturous executions," Xavier says, "are indeed practiced by the laws of nearly every country. It is a sensible, moderate bill, that His Excellency de Cerdanya has proposed, to limit them to only the most egregious crimes, and I fear that, should it fail, it might be replaced by one which reinstates more tortures."

"And yet I am still opposed. I am opposed because Her Majesty has placed us on the path of Aroden, the path to greatness, and that path I will walk so long as I have feet. Before us is a chance to forbid torture in all cases and to rule without any punishments beyond those strictly necessary for the maintenance of the peace, and whether it succeeds or fails, the path our ancestors walked that let them reach Axis was to look at Heaven and touch its very doorstep and then say that is not enough and reach beyond it! It was not to settle for what their own fathers did, or their own grandfathers! It was to touch the sky! His Excellency de Cerdanya said that the Third proves it is useless, but the truth is that, as Delegate Tallandria has said, every great city riots, save only for the great city of the greatest Arodenite of all, Iomedae, who saw what Aroden did and said it was not enough for her. Only Vellumis does not riot - and Vellumis is the port of Lastwall, and Lastwall has banned torturous executions. To accept His Excellency de Cerdanya's proposal is to reach for the past, as Taldor reaches for the past, and say that what we are and what we can be is Taldor, living in an echo of greatness. I say that the best days of our nation are yet to come! The Age of Glory is ours to forge! And in the name of the Age of Glory, let the ban on torture stand!"

She'll cheer for that.

He has already explained why he thinks this view of Arodenite excellence is mistaken and he doesn't especially expect it to be rhetorically effective to repeat the same explanation, here. He gives the archduke a respectful nod that nonetheless clearly conveys his disagreement.

Polite nod back.

Joan-Pau will see Victoria in line next to him and give her a polite nod. "Here to speak for the Rights Committee?" That won't go well, if she is.

Tiny headshake. "I — well, I got in line to talk about how the Lastwall punishments are missing a lot of important things — so is this law, but at least it's missing fewer — except now I also need to figure out how to explain that the lions thing would just let powerful adventurers get away with hurting people as much as they want, and how people shouldn't be forced to take the Final Blade even if they can't prove they won't go to Hell. ...I should've brought some paper up here with me, I've been writing it in my head but I'm worried I'll forget something important."

"Ah," he says. "Well, I think you're wrong about the lions - the sentence is to the gladiatorial games, not to participation in a single game - but I do recognize your point, though I am personally opposed to torture, even to the worst villain." She's on the other side, and she's probably the most hated person at the convention, and that is a great boon for the Forces of Good! Even Archduchess Banilius has fewer people who will vote against everything she does out of spite than Delegate Ferrer!

Stop getting cocky just because something totally unexpected is about to happen that might be good for your cause.

Never.

"...I mean, I think some people deserve to be tortured, but the Lastwall rules don't even just ban torture, they ban loads of normal punishments that aren't torture at all — or, I guess they might only ban things that Lastwall people think are torture, except when they tried to explain it it didn't really seem like they had a... way to decide what counted and what doesn't that makes sense to anyone but them?"

"If Lastwall wants to do something, they always pick the suffering-minimizing way to do it. Do you think it's more complicated than that?"

"—sorry, do you mean, do I think what Lastwall is doing is more complicated than that, or do you mean, do I think what people should do is more complicated than that — I mean, it's yes either way, but—"

"Do you think what Lastwall is doing; I understand that not everyone is opposed to all suffering."

"—yes! Like, Lastwall has whipping, which, I mean, it's a little-kid punishment but it still hurts — I was confused, when the paladin was trying to explain why that's allowed if they don't want to hurt people, although he explained that part — but apparently they don't have prison. Which, I mean, being in prison is — upsetting — but it doesn't hurt you, not really, as long as they feed you and don't hurt you in other ways—"

She would probably rather have been whipped than have spent a night thinking she and her friends were going to be tortured to death but it seems kind of pathetic to still be upset about that when they didn't even hurt her.

"Lastwall interns people briefly, but it doesn't have the money to hold them for a long time as a criminal sentence, outside of extraordinary occasions. Feeding and providing security for jails is an expense, and they want to save money so they can use it to fight Asmodeus and stop demons from breaking out of the Worldwound and killing everyone."

"That explains why they wouldn't do it very much but that doesn't explain why they'd say it's just not allowed at all. ...And I'm still confused about how they decide which kinds of whipping are allowed but I don't know if I can explain it well."

"I am not a great noble, nor have I ever been to Lastwall, so perhaps I cannot speak on the matters of grand policy as an expert. But I am a citizen of Cheliax, and I want to live in a nation that upholds the rule of law, and because of that I support this bill. I want a country where I know that we have laws that will dissuade criminals, and I do not have to worry that they will act without restraint once they have nothing left to fear. And this law will do that - while I have heard many people say the measures aren't needed, I have not heard say that they will not work, because these are time-tested rules already in effect everywhere in the inner sea. It does so with a list short enough that everyone knows what to expect, in one law across all of Cheliax, and if as our country moves away from the example of Asmodeus the harshest punishments are no longer needed it does not require us to issue them."

He thinks that was a pretty good spin on it, enough to make all the same points while showing he understood the message.

"Thank you, honored delegate, I quite agree."

The next person in line is Ferrer. Jonatan has read the Rights Committee transcripts and fully expects Ferrer to argue for torturous executions in the most off-putting way possible.

"At this time, I call for a vote for cloture."

This is unfair and unjust!

Yeah! She wanted to talk!

He shakes his head sadly and sternly.