“I don’t know. I would probably see it banned, if you think we can. I worry that’s overextending ourselves, and that people will see it as an attack on all concepts of obedience, or all promises, but maybe if the right person introduces it. The best thing tactically might be to ban it without talking about what it means people can’t promise, rather than what people can’t take from them. Have a list of rights that no contract can legally rob a person of, and make it explicit that interfering with those rights is - well, I don’t know if we want it to be grounds to nullify the contract, or be a crime, or what, but not allowed in some manner. I don’t have a clever way to prevent people from punishing those who make use of their rights, but - I think allowing some organizations to break bad contracts, and ensuring that everyone has a right to contact those organizations and petition for it, will at least do something. I do want to make sure that we don’t exclude marriage from the class of contracts that religious orders can break, I think we want to just have a stringent approval process so that we don’t end up with Caydenite orders who go around dissolving every marriage everyone asks them to.

I think the most important thing is that nothing requires general obedience. I am - worried, following the discussion of Cyprian’s code of laws, that someone might try to deny women basic rights until marriage, and either thoughtlessly or deliberately write into the law that marriage requires a promise of obedience, without clarifying anything that this obedience does not cover. And that, I think, would be completely disastrous, because Chelish marriages don’t work like that, not ones where the people in question plan to respect each other. We would be telling many men that it is wrong to marry, and that what we want is to relegate all women to the status of slaves. And - a lot of Chelish men will go for it, if they're offered that. Not all of them, they're not all terrible, but - enough that it might be very difficult to fix it, if the floor is deciding."

"I think if you frame it as a ban on the marriages that nearly all of the married nobles have it will go over badly - and especially if you suggest to all the married noblewomen that they are slaves, a suggestion at which both they and their husbands will take extraordinary offense - but if you introduce through rights or through virtuous churches a set of orders no one can be commanded to follow that will probably go fine, if necessarily more limited in scope than whatever the theologically proper set of illegal orders in marriage probably is."

"Yeah, I think that's best. And then family just needs to not encode it in their definition of marriage, and I think the family committee is broadly very reasonable. They disagree about - well, most heatedly about whether to focus on better orphanage-daycares or on keeping as many children with their mothers as possible, but - thoughtfully. I don't think any of them would argue for unbounded obedience except the Osirian, and he really seems like he can probably be talked around." She feels calmer, now, that's better. Not calm enough to talk about prosperity, probably. 

"Osirion is a terrible place to be a woman. Women everywhere are expected to obey their husbands, but in the barbaric east they are expected also to live secluded from the broader world, to not speak to strangers or do business with them, and that really does make it impossible to complain of abuse or flee it. I am sure many Osirians are individually well-intentioned, but it would not be a victory to import their customs."

Nod. "He's been talking about providing financial incentives to men to get married. Not directly paying people, I think, he's been getting business owners in his county to only promote married men, or something, and providing matchmaking services for people who have passed a class on how to be a good husband. I can't really tell based on his description whether the result is in fact positive and not horrifying, but - he's thinking about reasonable things. I don't think he's going to fight for obedience requirements. The fight he wants to pick is requiring husbands to provide for their wives, which... I don't know, I could go either way. But I'm not worried about the minimum definition if it comes out of family. It'll be good or it'll be mediocre, it won't be devastating."

"Then it sounds like you should keep working on it in Family, and perhaps we'll separately work out illegal orders in Slavery. - and maybe talk to the Archduke Narikopolis's Iomedaen advisor, the Archduke spoke a little about what they ended up recommending in Menador and I expect that if you have him on board the Church will defer to him."

Oh hey, yeah, he'd said that they were against obedience provisions. She's... terrified, at the thought of talking to any of Archduke Narikopolus's staff, but probably not more terrified than she was of speaking out the first day. And this is an important concern.

"That sounds good, I can do that. That's - probably enough to be getting on with, I suppose. What time should I come by for the teleport?"

"Let's say twelfth bell. ...do you have another outfit?"

"I'm working on it. I expect to have a second one by tomorrow."

"If it is delayed come a little early so you can borrow something from one of my girls."

Nod. "Thank you, I will."

"That's all I had. Goddess go with you."