"So, as near as I can tell, the three obvious pathways by which Carissa could end up being taken from me, are, one, that the Queen is going to be a vastly better sadist, two, that Carissa has a sex problem which I'm not going to go into if it's not already in her file but the Queen is going to have vastly more expensive sex toys, three, that the Queen is the other person who could plausibly have absolute-power over Carissa."

"My Carissamodel says that it is basically not possible to steal Carissa from me by pathway two - that there's no realistic amount of pleasure you can get from sex toys and without dangerous drugs that you can use to steal a Carissa from a Keltham.  I nonetheless check explicitly that you agree with my Carissamodel there."

"Being much better at hurting her than I am, and maybe looking like the Queen has more real power over her than I do, both seem like actual problems."

"These problems could plausibly be solved by mature reasonable adults with five minutes of negotations.  They are much bigger problems if what we're fighting is a 'trope' that requires the Queen to try to steal Carissa from me no matter how little sense that makes, and make concerning progress on it, before the Queen gets revealed as a traitor or the matter gets resolved with an amicable harem expansion."

Wait.

If the fundamental reason why Carissa prefers Keltham is that Keltham will never statue her, and then Abrogail kidnaps Carissa for purposes of slow yet ultimately fake petrification, and afterward swears never to do that to her (barring deliberate betrayal etc) -

...could Sevar actually start falling in love with the Queen and start to lose attraction for Keltham.  Is that actually a thing they need to worry about here.

...is the part where Abrogail then ends up losing her throne or pregnant with Keltham's child also something she needs to worry about in that case.

This thought hasn't occurred to Carissa, who is missing some important information on Abrogail's future plans, and she's mostly thinking about how Keltham's very cute and she should go into her punishment tonight aiming to work out that flaw even though it wasn't prominent among the ones listed. 

Sevar, he's talking about tropes again, stop admiring how fucking pathetic you are and help me out here.

Isidre picks up another snack and consumes it, looking thoughtful, and maybe a bit confused and worried.  "I do agree that pleasuring Sevar is a most unlikely way for someone like the Queen to successfully steal someone like Sevar from someone like you," she says truthfully.  Anyone you can do that to is not strong enough to be worth doing it to.

(She's not admiring how pathetic she is, she's developing a plan of attack to get it solved tonight!)

That hypothesis makes this more valuable to you as a test of his tropes theory though you understand why he wouldn't see it that way. You have lots of observations about how incredibly implausible it'd be for the Queen to steal Carissa, but you aren't sure how they hold up in tropeworld. In the actual, logical world, though, incredibly unlikely. 

Also, though he has good reason to put this line of thought on hold, the Queen would absolutely respect a preexisting arrangement, even if things are running on...tropes...she couldn't be the Queen of Cheliax if she broke a preexisting agreement between Keltham and Cheliax over Carissa, such as that she is his.

"Eight hurrahs then for predictive modeling which has that form of pseudo-success which is advance prediction of someone else's more expert prediction," Keltham says, unfortunately in Taldane where it sounds less than entirely snappy.

Abrogail is no longer entirely sure she's safe to say that it's incredibly implausible because Abrogail is no longer quite certain it's true.  Keltham is right, in a way, there's - a sense in which Abrogail can give Sevar more powerful experiences, right now, than Keltham can give her.  Abrogail was planning the most powerful experience that would still let Sevar recover to health afterwards, well into the break-and-remake zone of torture.  Things like that have been known to ever affect a submissive's feelings.

But if - that's all a 'trope' - is she able to just -

"Suppose that 'tropes' do have power here, and we try to just - not test it at all, walk away," Isidre says cautiously.  "Does the 'trope' fight back, punish us for trying to defy it, I realize you're going to say 'no' but I'm wondering what the answer is instead."

"We don't get to decide that there isn't going to be this huge complication.  Only the Queen can decide not to pursue Sevar.  And if a 'trope' is manifesting in her, then that's not something she will decide to do.  It's not that she can't decide it, but that she won't."

"It's not that she can't, but that she won't" is unfortunately exactly the wrong literal phrasing to use, if you were hoping to not remind Abrogail Thrune that she is now the Queen of Cheliax, her mother is safely dead, the tutoress who said those things to her and backed them up with a whip was turned into a statue, eventually, and that the point of being Abrogail Thrune is that literally nobody gets to tell you what to do.  She has a junior partnership with her senior partner Asmodeus, and keeps to her side of that bargain, and that's it.

...but is it actually any more proof of her freedom, if she lets a 'trope' manifest through her, instead?

...though, according to Sevar, it's more that Keltham just happened to land in a universe where the Queen will do what the 'trope' wants, and now at this point Abrogail is genuinely confused about who and what she's supposed to say 'fuck you' to.

"But, to be clear," Isidre says cautiously, "if the Queen chooses of her own will not to cause a complication, then the result is that we've proven tropes don't govern here.  That's the only result, correct?  It's not that our head of government blinks out of existence or is subjected to a godlike level of mind control."

"Right, but the problem there is that this scenario doesn't look like the Queen entering into grownup negotiations for how to rent Carissa, and that happening safely and with no complications.  It looks like there not being any particular need to rent Carissa to the Queen in the first place, because the Queen is just busy running her region like a sane person."

You are not fucking helping me make this decision, little boy.

"I think that sane people occasionally take time off from running their country to sleep with people they are actually attracted to," Isidre says.

Intuitions only partly magical tell Abrogail that Isidre needs to make this statement incredibly blatantly sharp for a Chelish person, so that it will come across as slightly sharp to Keltham.  Abrogail sends a side note to Sevar about how the very blatant sharpness is deliberate, and why it's there; Sevar may need to note for her own future that Keltham may need very loud signals for them to be perceptible to him at all, that's going to take some practice to calibrate right.

Are Sevar's thoughts by any chance flirtatious right now, in the sense that Sevar is thinking things she knows will get her punished.

Sevar, cooperatively, thinks that this is hilarious and Abrogail deserves every word of the takedown Keltham has no idea he is delivering.

She is really, really, really not looking forward to the conversation that's going to happen after Aspexia, Lrilatha, and Gorthoklek all get ahold of all these transcripts.  Maybe she can take out her frustrations on Sevar afterwards.

"I agree in one sense, and I'm sorry that the Queen doesn't more often find people she's attracted to and doesn't have a wider field of choice.  But there's being Evil and then there's being stupid, you know, and messing around with the very important alien's girlfriend is definitely the latter thing if you're not being shoved around by 'tropes'.  Actually, even if she is being selected into existence by tropes from my standpoint she's still being unrealistically stupid from her own internal standpoint, presumably there's some story she'd tell herself but I don't know what it would be exactly."

YOU REALLY ARE NOT HELPING YOUR CASE, LITTLE BOY.

"And there is no hope in you for the case where Abrogail rents Carissa, under terms agreeable to you, they both have a fine time, Abrogail doesn't go insane from overwork, Carissa respects you more for having done a usual dominant thing, and also gets to let out some steam in a way that you'll probably learn quickly at 18 Intelligence but aren't ready to do to her today... none of this holds any hope for you at all?"

"Let me put it this way:  I would be much more hopeful about it in a world where Pilar didn't go to Elysium, Ione didn't deliver prophecies, and if Asmodia comes back from the dead with superpowers I would just call the entire thing off."

"I do have enough pull myself to call in a Resurrection on Asmodia shortly, and whoever does it can check whether or not she has... superpowers?"

(An earlier attempt at Raise Dead on Asmodia failed; the fool couldn't manage to die by her own hand before Nidal's shadows turned her into an undead shadow herself, which requires Resurrection and a more expensive diamond.  Which, however, Cheliax now has.)

"I'm not actually confident I can call tropes that finely; though I suppose, now that I've said it out loud, it's more likely to happen.  Not a bad test, I'd just as soon do it now, if it needs doing anyways.  Unless Asmodia is otherwise enjoying Hell a lot, and will be irate about being called back before the project has actually restarted, I should've thought of that earlier actually."

"Hopefully, though it varies by the person, and in any case I'm sure Asmodia will agree that the test you've proposed is good reason to call her back from Hell to Cheliax a little early."  Abrogail is really sure about this, in fact!  Really, really sure!  Bet-her-kingdom-on-it sure!

(Abrogail is mistaken, but this is genuinely not her fault, here.)

"Make it so, then."

"It shall be done," Isidre says graciously; though, as a Paracountess of Cheliax, even SlightlyTooGoodCheliax, she is a little put out with Keltham giving her orders like that.  "And if we find that nothing unusual has happened to Asmodia - what does a rental agreement to the Queen of Cheliax look like?"

"Look, I'm not sure that Asmodia failing to return with superpowers is enough of a test, here.  It is not predicted that strongly by 'tropes', it was halfway a joke before we started talking about it, which, yes, makes the 'trope' level stronger, but not that much stronger.  The Queen is a much stronger 'trope' and a much stronger test than that."

"But to answer your question, the thing I'd want to see before I rented Carissa to the Queen of Cheliax was - sufficient cause to believe that, if I had to fight with the Queen over Carissa's love and sexuality and possession, I'd win.  Like, not because a 'trope' said so, I don't think I can rely on that, I mean win inside a normal Golarion universe."

Affection is weakness, and Carissa does not want to be weak. Affection is weakness, and Carissa does not want to be weak. Affection is weakness, and Carissa does not want to be weak.

Shit she's supposed to be coming up with things for Isidre to say. 

I think if you lose Carissa, it won't be because the Queen stole her heart with her superior ruthlessness and sadism, it'll be because you shy away from using your own. A girl can be happy with a wide range of masters but not with one who isn't Evil, not with one who isn't interested in discovering what's in his heart however dark it is. And I think you're at risk of that problem even if you tell the Queen to go on her merry way.

"I think," Isidre says seriously, "if you lose Carissa, it won't be because the Queen stole her heart with more ruthless sadism, it'll be because you shied away from using your own.  A girl can be happy with a wide range of masters but not with one who isn't Evil, not with one who isn't interested in discovering what's in his heart however dark it is.  After hearing some of what you said earlier, I do now worry you're more at risk of that problem even if the Queen's advisors talk her out of the whole thing."

"Thought your earlier advice was not do anything I didn't want to."