She takes notes on a piece of paper. 

"Greetings." Peal salutes Peal's fellow lawyers. "By the judgement of Axis, we believe Alexandre Esquerra, known on Golarion as "King-In-Irons," the decedent today, to be Lawful Neutral.

"We do not believe him to be unambiguously Lawful Neutral, and it is wholly understandable that others of our colleagues have come to differing conclusions." Because they are arguing disingenuously or are also Lawful. "Nonetheless, on net, we in Axis believe him to be clearly more Lawful than Chaotic - see Pharasma, in re overcrowding - and neither Good nor Evil."

"The chief problem with my honored colleagues' arguments is the lack of a balancing test. The decedent has done Evil. The decedent has also done Good. The decedent has made attempts to atone for some the evil he has done, but not full-hearted, clear attempts to atone in a direction unambiguously Good instead of Neutral, and while concur with the honorable representative for Elysium that he has wholly atoned for his entire life prior to fleeing Cheliax, and made clear signs of regret, repair, responsibility, reparation and change, he has not done so in all respects, as his actions during his personal war with Cheliax were far more mixed. He regularly took Evil actions - theft by violence, fraud, murder by stealth, killing, manslaughter, subverting testimony - for Good ends, paying large costs in collateral damage. There was a god of that, and that god was Aroden, considered Lawful Neutral since millennia before his ascension. In re Janos, in re Horseriver, in re Wulfenbach, were all cases where the Arodenite activity was justified insofar as the decedent was correct and good resulted from this evil; when the decedent was wrong - in re Cromwell, in re Philip, say - the decedents were, despite their good intentions, found Lawful Evil. The universal precedent is that there is a balancing test. How much evil, for how much Good? Axis concludes that, on the grounds of the harm the decedent caused the Lawful Evil empire of Cheliax and through them their Hellish overlords, that sufficient Good was done to balance the Evil, but not sufficient to make the decedent Good, especially due to his Neutral motives for these Good deeds - in re Flashman, "good deeds done for wholly selfish reasons may make the decedent Neutral, but not Good."

"On the other hand, we believe he was much more clearly Lawful. His Law was, chiefly, an Asmodean sort of law, driven by respect for the letter, but although Axis has contested the precedent, this court acknowledges Asmodeus and Mephistopheles both as Lawful and, by this precedent, so too must the King-In-Irons be. He worshipped Baphomet while resident in Absalom, but not while located in Absalom - only in pocket dimensions, international waters and while Teleported outside Kortos. He informed his subordinate, Aspex Oriol that the worship of Socothbenoth was illegal in Absalom, and that Aspex should therefore do his morning prayers in a rope trick, in the full knowledge that this was asking for a favor from someone who gave few of them, and by doing so gave up resources he could use to accomplish his goals. I highlight these in particular not because these are exceptional cases, but because they prove false the claim that he did not care for the law. He did - but only his law, not that which others attempted to impose on him by force." 

"His devotion to contractualism is important in establishing his Law. He held from an early age that the sole justification for authority was founded on the consent of both parties founded in their rational agreement to the bargain for the sake of mutual benefit, which is a fundamentally Abadaran perspective, especially given the youth at which he accepted this and the attempts by Asmodean Cheliax to annihilate the ideal." Peal really, really dislikes Asmodean Cheliax. "When his teachers informed him that the power of Asmodeus over him was founded purely in the power of Asmodeus and the contract between Asmodeus and the King of Cheliax, he nonetheless continued his belief in the contractual nature of power - that his service to Cheliax was justified solely in an implicit agreement by both parties to benefit the other, only breaking with Cheliax after he concluded that they had first broken their end of the bargain. He then consciously and knowingly rejected the authority of the Chelish state to bind him; In re McGuire, in re Olson, 'there is no bright-line distinction between a bandit and a state, nor is it Lawless to judge an ambiguous entity to belong to either category', in re Spooner, 'the belief '[the state]... has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man', is not sufficient to render the decedent Chaotic.' The decedent did not obey the laws of Andoran, Cheliax, Molthune or Isger because he did not believe they were legitimate since at no point had he agreed to any contract binding him to acknowledge their authority. The decedent did read and obey all of the laws of Absalom - which the majority of citizens of Absalom do not do - because he did sign a contract to do so. This is abnormally Lawful behavior, by mortal standards." Because mortals are really, really, really Lawless. "He further warned his subordinates to be careful to follow the laws of Absalom - and, shortly before the day of his death, Mendev and Gundrun - so that they would not by violating these laws as his subordinates impose costs on him." 

"This leaves his most serious offense against the Law: He did, in full knowledge of the significance, decide and attempt to break oaths to his employees, repeatedly refusing to pay them their contracted wages, and, later, paying them additional bonuses to make up for the lost wages. This was part of a deliberate program to weaken his Law, and he did so in the belief that it would prevent him from going to Hell. While my colleague from Hell is technically correct that all of his contracts with non-adventurer employees included the right of the employer to dock wages for a 'failure to perform' judged solely by the employer, he nonetheless attempted to knowingly and deliberately oathbreak for the purpose of not being Lawful, rather than invoking this clause.

"Nonetheless, Axis does not believe that these specific Chaotic acts suffice to make him Chaotic, or even unambiguously Neutral. He was careful never to do this where it would be destructive to the interests of his employees, he ceased to do this two weeks prior to his death, and he always paid the money later; moreover, not only did this not affect his trustworthiness on larger issues, but his employees did not expect to be paid on time every month, and many were shocked that he came as close as he did. We do not believe that his lifetime of devotion to the law above and beyond the standard of Lawful Neutral mortals is sufficiently overcome by these few acts, Chaotic though they were, and we therefore believe him to be Lawful Neutral."

Why is literally everyone in this trial going for gods. As far as she can tell, the viewpoint of the court is that the King in Irons worshipped half the pantheon, including dead ones. 

The decedent is extremely charming. She has to keep a perfectly straight expression and not be charmed about reading and following all the laws of Absalom and the single most Lawful way to break oaths ever.

Is paying all your employees' wages on time Good? ...probably not but that's really not the way a Nirvana representative should be thinking.  

... Alexandre thinks he understands the situation. Fundamentally, it's everyone else against Hell, because everyone else hates Hell and knows the only thing Alexandre cares about is destroying Asmodeus. They don't need to like each other to want to set a rabid dog on His servants, and so the only thing they need to do is get him Any Alignment That Isn't Lawful Evil, and then they loose him on their shared enemy and he does what he does best. If he's Lawful, he's clearly Lawful Neutral; if he's Chaotic, it doesn't matter if he's Evil...

He's all right with this.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and honorable gentlebeings."

"Heaven concurs with the arguments made by Elysium that the decedent is Good, and with the arguments made by Axis that the decedent is Lawful. His devotion to fighting Evil even in the expectation of a complete lack of any personal benefit from it - in the expectation of Malediction - is clear and strong evidence that he is Good, and his devotion to his self-appointed duties and to his contractualist code is also evidence that he is Lawful."

"It does, however, think that notwithstanding these arguments, there is a stronger argument that the decedent is, specifically, Lawful Good, which has not been formally raised in this courtroom. five of the eight barristers here have all concurred, and the sixth now concurs, that the decedent atoned for his childhood loyalty to Asmodeus, though they do not all agree to what alignment he atoned to. Heaven believes that it can shed some light on this troubled subject.

"In the opinion of Heaven, the decedent is Lawful Good because less than twenty-four hours before his death, he donated more than eighty thousand Absalom pounds in freehold property to the Church of Iomedae, then left to spend the rest of his life battling demons under Iomedaean authority to protect the world from destruction. We submit that this was a 'reliable and consistent change of behavior' to behavior which was, during the remainder of his life, wholly and solely Lawful Good."

"First, it is established that knowingly and deliberately providing resources to a cause is an action morally and ethically aligned with that cause; in re John D, in re Engels, in re Mhalir. The decedent's gift was given with a true and justified knowledge of what the Church of Iomedae's priorities were, having previously read both the Acts of Iomedae and the legal code of Mendev, and the decedent correctly believed that these resources would strengthen the cause of Iomedae, as they did. Therefore this was both a Good and a Lawful act.

"We expect the representative of Hell to make the claim that the decedent had no other use for this money, but this is false. A priest of Abadar could have been hired to sell the property and keep the funds in trust for the decedent, should he survive, as he expected to. Instead he donated it directly to the Church of Iomedae, which is well known as one of the leading forces opposed to all Evil on Golarion - not merely Hell, but the Abyssal and Abadonian forces that he had previously aligned himself with. While we cannot speak for his internal mindset, this action of the decadent's, and those that followed, showed that he 'changed relations, attempted to repair relations, and reliably and consistently changed his behavior' with regards to his Abyssal affiliations, three of the five prongs of the Newton test."

"Moreover it is established that accepting the authority of agents of a deity to issue you orders is both Lawful (insofar as it is accepting authority, in re Urk) and aligned with that deity (in re Gug). The last act of the decedent's life was to travel to Mendev with the intention of, first, fulfilling his relations to his employees by finding them a safe refuge in Kenabres, and second, placing himself under the authority of either Iomedae's Mendevian or Lastwaller paladins at the Worldwound, with the explanation that he intended to align himself to 'whichever of them needs me most'. We observe that this is an Iomedaean act, in that it is cause prioritization for the sake of maximizing Goodness at personal cost, but it is chiefly relevant because it demonstrates that he had already mentally - though not physically - accepted the authority of Iomedae's priesthood over him, corroborating evidence for this being his reading the Acts of Iomedae and the legal codes of Lastwall and Mendev before traveling there. Therefore under Urk and Gug, his attempt to travel to the Worldwound to atone for his crimes is an act both Lawful and Good. That he failed to accomplish the killing of any demons is irrelevant, first because of the well-justified nature of his belief that his action would have a positive expected outcome (in re Hope), and secondly because subordinates formerly under his command successfully carried out his plan, and are presently serving at the Worldwound."

"We further wish to raise a third point related to this. Nearly every one of the decedent's subordinates, and all of his subordinates of noticeable physical or magical power, were Evil. Many of them are presently battling on the Worldwound, as a sole consequence of his actions, and thereby taking Good acts under Lawful authority. We therefore submit that the decedent, as one of his last acts, attempted to redeem thirty-nine evildoers, and that statistically speaking many of these attempts will succeed, saving souls that would otherwise have gone to Evil afterlives and causing them to instead go to nonevil afterlives. This court submits these as important Lawful Good acts, in re Matthew, and holds therefore that the decedent has therefore successfully atoned of his life's evil deeds, and, based on the last acts of his life, is Lawful Good."

Wait, is the angel saying that that dumb last-ditch plan actually worked?

No, it just thinks his plan worked well enough to back. Heaven trusts him enough to give him the rope to hang himself. Well, we'll see who hangs...

She ruffles her papers. She tries not to contemplate her god's displeasure.

"Abbaddon substantially concurs with the analysis of Hell and the Abyss.

"My able colleagues have mostly left aside the issue of the decedent's early life. The one thing that all of my able colleagues can agree on, it seems, is atonement. He atoned! We don't know what direction he atoned in but we're absolutely certain that he did. 

"I present a representative incident. While fleeing Cheliax, the decedent cast Charm upon a farmer to convince the farmer to let him stay. The farmer, who believed deeply in the virtue of hospitality, would have done so regardless, but the decedent didn't even ask before resorting to mind control. The family had little enough, but they planned to go hungry to give the decedent enough to eat. He was injured, and they dressed his wounds. The farmer even offered to trade blankets with him, because winter was coming soon and the decedent would be cold on the roads. 

"I remind the court that a decedent's actions under Charm Person reflect how they'd treat anyone whom they cared about, and the farmer's generosity was "a product not only of mind control but of his own values," in re Ben Beastson, -2352.

"The farmer asked no questions. The decedent had no reason to believe that the farmer would report him to Cheliax, or even suspected that he was on the run. 

"The decedent slit the throats of the farmer, his wife, and their three children, and fled into the night." 

"No reason?"

He rises to his full height and gives the karuzmek an absolutely deadly glare.

"Any viciously scarred, half-starved youth who arrives at a farmer's house in eastern Sirmium with a spellbook, a dagger and a travel pass for five counties away is on the run, and any farmer who treats a guest like his beloved family and cannot say why knows that the cause is Charm when the morning comes, and what to do to escape the stake. I took the option that would destroy Asmodeus most effectively, which was the option to survive, and I did it because I was powerless and it was the best option available to me to become powerful. By Norgorber and Calistria and my luck that is not a choice I have had to make since I crossed the border, and those five corpses I have make Cheliax pay for just as I have made them to pay for all the other blood they have caused to be shed in the province of Hell that is all that is left of the greatest nation in Avistan."

"It was necessary to slit the throat of the child, then? It wasn't that you valued your convenience over an innocent live? It's the result of a brutal cost-benefit analysis that Iomedae Herself would approve of? Say, how many children do Iomedaeans murder, I just don't know..."

Her palps tap on the table in thought.  

"Iomedaeans in Cheliax die. I lived. One of the many, many reasons why I have never claimed to be one - nor anything but an enemy of Asmodeus."

"You didn't keep your word. You didn't do right by those who had done right by you. You gave up everything that Law and Good were so proud of you for having. To live."

"I gave my word?" He raises an eyebrow. "I broke all my oaths of fealty to Asmodeus, yes. I could hardly keep them if I wanted him dead. I don't believe that I ever promised not to kill my hosts. But you're right, I value my life more than Goodness or Law. I can fight Asmodeus without one, and not without the other."