Or a person’s very brain might have been altered by the magic (or their war experiences or what have you) and that is who they are now.
Only thing we know is that they just committed a massacre and won’t explain why, won’t hint why they won’t explain why, etc.
In the US we place a high value on defending against false punishment and miscarriage of justice, ie presumption of innocence, Miranda rights, due process etc., but in a world of magic like Mage Reborn’s I don’t think that level of scrupulosity would even be possible. The possibilities of magic are open-ended. You don’t know what spells you don’t know and what magic might make possible (especially when some Arcadians wielding apocalyptic unknown magic have been running around lately.) When you can rationalize the avoidance of legal penalties with “we don’t know that he meant to do it, his highly-incriminating behavior might be caused by yet-unknown configurations of magic,” then an orderly society becomes impossible because there’s no limit to what magic might be able to explain away. The presumption of innocence would never be vulnerable or in danger of being overcome because you could never demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant chose to do what he did. In order to have a functioning legal system in such a world, you would have to do away with either a) the presumption of innocence or b) the possibility of mind control/unknown magic as a mitigating factor.
Basically, unless you could demonstrate that mind control or mind-altering magic was in play, the mere possibility of such magic does not merit consideration as a mitigating factor, or else the whole system would shut down.
…why did I just devote so much time to arcane Parami legal theory.
Except we KNOW the Parami king doesn’t actually need noble support, because Leomar’s father literally went against the noblemen when he outlawed Arcadian slavery, and when a nobleman went against his orders he took most of his lands.
EDIT: And then they go against the nobles AGAIN when Leomar makes the MC his aide, a highly-coveted political position than is supposed to entail no danger whatsoever.
Because there’s only so much direct administration one person can actually do, and distance is a major hassle at this tech level (because Param’s mages aren’t worth shit, so nobody gets to Spirit Gate, the single biggest strategically advantageous spell in the entire world).
Like, it has admitedly been quite a while since I played, especially the Parami part, but I cannot remember a SINGLE moment where it’s even hinted at that the Parami king doesn’t just do whatever he wants without needing to consult anyone.
That’s the whole point! Mind control exists, everybody knows it exists, and because of those facts, if you consider the mere possibility of mind control to be a mitigating factor then the presumption of innocence can never be overcome. I’ll lay the argument out formally.
Assume Mind Control as Mitigating Factor: a defendant is not considered guilty of actions committed under mind control.
Assume Presumption of Innocence: a defendant cannot be convicted if there is reasonable doubt that they are guilty.
Assume Open-Ended Magic: we don’t know what spells we don’t know, we don’t know just what magic can do, what we do know does not exhaust the limits of the possible. Example: though we know that mind control can be used, we don’t know everything that it’s capable of, and we don’t know what magic might be in play, ie a spell preventing the defendant from speaking in his own defense perhaps? Another part of this assumption is that if we were to check for spells, we couldn’t know that we were detecting all the spells in operation; a reasonable assumption given the events of the story and the possibility of detection-evading spells.
If 1 and 2 are true, then a defendant cannot be convicted if there is reasonable doubt that they are NOT mind-controlled, ie if it is possible that they are mind-controlled or tampered with by unknown magic in a way that would fundamentally take away their agency in the matter or distort their will.
If 3 is true, then it is ALWAYS possible that the defendant is under the influence of mind-control or will-distorting magic that we do not know about or cannot detect.
If 4 and 5 are true, then no defendants can ever be convicted because we can never be sure that they aren’t under the influence of mind control or will-distorting magic that we don’t know about.
Therefore, if 1, 2, and 3 are all true, then no defendants can ever be convicted.
The takeaway is that, in order for the conviction of defendants to be possible, which is necessary for an orderly society, you have to do one of three things: A) do away with the “it’s possible that they’re mind-controlled” argument as a mitigating factor and only count it as one if the mind control can be demonstrated, B) do away with the presumption of innocence and enter total judicial tyranny, or C) presumptively declare the canon of magic closed, which is nonsensical. I choose Option A.
You might say that Leomar is choosing Option B, but if he didn’t pick that one then he would have to choose Option A (which his actions could easily be interpreted as doing) or the nonsensical Option C. Catch-22 for our guy Leomar here. Either way the “but he could be mind controlled!” argument doesn’t work.
Also, if “the will of the monarch is the only law” is the definition of absolutism then we have never had absolutism. Monarchies do use laws, from the Codex Hammurabi to the Lex Justinian, and they are often also bound by canon law of their respective religions (though the power to enforce such canon laws is always a push-and-pull affair.) These laws have in common that they are purportedly binding on the king too, and the king incurs wrath if he acts against them. The ability of kings to defy their nobles under certain circumstances does not imply a blanket ability to do so whenever, just like a baseball player taking a strike does not imply a blanket inability to hit. If a king defies his own laws, he loses political capital. The definition of “absolutism” as “the law is whatever the king wants it to be” is a poor definition as it does not capture the historical realities of monarchial states.
That Assumption 2 is doing a lot of heavy lifting, considering we never see it mentioned anywhere. In fact, I don’t think we ever see trials mentoned anywhere.
The times where we see any dispensation of Parami justice mentioned the only thing that comes up is “the king does whatever he wants”. A dude murders a bunch of Arcadians because he didn’t like he was no longer allowed to enslave them? The king does whatever he wants. The magical plague might be man-made? Julius automatically sends an executioner in case that’s true, because the king does whatever he wants.
As far as we know, Parami justice works on the basis of “the local lord does whatever he wants, unless someone higher up in the hierarchy tells him otherwise”.
There is no political capital. The world works on bloodlines. The Parami royal bloodline is the one group of people that can use the goddess-given magic-cutting sword, and that’s all the capital they need.
EDIT: Like, Leomar’s bloodline has been the Parami royal bloodline since there WAS a Param, with the sword being handed down from father to whichever-one-of-the-sons-can-kill-all-his-brothers-first since the kingdom was founded.
I dunno, I just think all of this legal talk assumes leon was really trying to do his best by the mc and just couldn’t save them on the strength of the case. even he knows that wasn’t the case–that’s the reason saine and ilya can live with themselves but leon has a much harder time. whatever the rules he was working under wrt his nobles, the church, the people, he knew just as well as the other two that nothing was adding up. but he wasn’t ready to be a peace-time ruler, and he broke down under the pressure of the situation and took the path of least resistance.
all this to say I think the difference between doing your best and coming up short and not trying is really important. I don’t think leon tried.
EDIT: maybe least resistance isn’t exactly it, more like he’s trying to perform the ideal of what a king should be instead of actually using his judgment
I lowkey haven’t played this game in a while. All I remember was that our beloved MC turned some poor bastards into paste and introduced the Saintess to the business end of a knife.
I definitely agree there, Leon as good as knew something was wrong but he panicked under the pressure and didn’t try as hard as he could’ve, and I think that’s what everybody’s mad about when it comes to him, they’re not mad that MC had to be executed, they’re mad because it looked like Leon didn’t do enough to fight the execution, even if he would’ve eventually had to go through with it afterwards anyway
Assumption 2 is implicit in the “don’t kill him because he could be mind-controlled argument” because “could be” only matters if innocence is assumed and guilt must be proven. Either way, criticisms of Leomar based on the “don’t kill him because he could be mind-controlled argument” don’t survive scrutiny.
The examples you bring up are examples of the executive acting. That does not imply a lack of legal structure any more than the presence of traffic tickets implies the nonexistence of traffic laws.
And Leomar and Saine are the only members of that bloodline in existence? No alternatives exist? Never mind that civil administration requires more than possession of a sword, powerful though that sword may be.
This is correct. Because, as we’re told, up until this generation Parami royal succession was made on the basis of “last brother left alive”. These two have no living relatives other than each other.
Except the story is that sword was given by the actual Jovian deity to the first king of Param and it was what allowed the kingdom to be founded in the first place. Inheriting the Parami throne has required nothing more than two things:
i) being a son of the Parami king, and
ii) managing to kill all your brothers before one of them kills you.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. The Parami royal line has been self-selecting for the best dude at killing other dudes for generations since the kingdom was founded.
EDIT: I have no idea what happens if one of the king’s kids happens to be a girl. She probably can’t inherit, but maybe a brother just offs her anyway to prevent any inconvenient nephews, or maybe the Parami royal bloodline can’t produce female offspring, I dunno.
Simple fact of the matter is the mc is the biggest hero there is in Parami, even more so then Leon, without the mc the war would have been lost. Leon also said that he would trust the mc completely with anything. But when it came time for him to prove that he went back on his word.
Personally I feel like part of this is because he had built up this image of the mc in his head. This image that no matter what happened the mc could do no wrong, and so long as they where pointed at his enemies Leon maintained that image, regardless of what the mc does. For example, a Nyx mc used literal black magic, undead, soul flaying magic, but since it was directed at Leons enemy, the hero was still good in his mind.
But despite this when the mc kills the saintess, Leon can not see anything other then this broken image of the hero in his mind. He doesn’t kill the mc cause it’s the right thing to do, or because the mc killed a bunch of knights (which in my play throughs has never happened and the mc uses enchantment or alchemy to knock them all out). He kills the mc because he takes their actions personally. The image in his mind is shattered and he is so damaged by that he doesn’t see the actions taken as anything other then a personal slight against him.
Leon doesn’t form the holiday for the hero, or his people, he does it to assuage HIS guilt. It’s about him and nothing else. So yes, I feel he has what’s coming to him. Leon is not a good person, or a good king, simple as that.
It’s not like we’ve been beside the king most of the time. You can’t just say that he just does whatever he wants without needing to consult anyone when we only saw him a few times.
