Is the Law of Our Side?: Part Three

"When valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with."

November 12th

The validity of Contessa Capulet's will was expected to dominate the second day of the trial. Goneril had concluded the first day with a cautious switch of tactics, and she had begun the second convinced that the will was invalid and thus could not be contested or consulted. She believed a favorable resolution would come more quickly if her mother's will was set aside. Afterward, Goneril would be generous enough to return her portion of the profits, that the estate might be divided up legally (which, in her view, would be just as it had been) by the Court. She had no concerns there, not when all that was due Lady Capulet would finally be hers. 

Naturally, the opposing side was against invalidating the will. Though she believed a fair hearing from Lady Iden was possible, Juliette was not so green as to not see how the court's discretion could be bent to serve other considerations. Fitzwilliam expressed all the indignation of a scholar, packed to bursting as he was with information he believed must contradict such an abuse of law. Of course, there would have been no call for indignation if he did not know that facts could be overcome. Facts were the cornerstones of their argument. If facts were overlooked in this trial, Juliette's cause was doomed.

Is the Law of Our Side?: Part Two

"Admit me chorus to this history"

November 10th

"Court will reconvene in one hour." 

After a tedious first half of the day, the observers in the balcony were anxious for relief. Cherry Albion stood before the magistrate's echo stopped, already adjusting her tiara. It was a stunning piece she felt well worth the trouble of actually wearing on her head. "Father?"

Is the Law of Our Side?: Part One

"What perils past, what crosses to ensue"

November 10th

The first sovereign Duke of Verona had granted oversight of the law to those families who had most honorably upheld it before and during the Veronese Revolution. He had believed that the most dangerous corruption in a magistrate was the desire to keep a position that could be lost to the ever-changing whims of the powerful. A hereditary judiciary nullified that danger. It gave the law a sense of permanence, of timelessness. As his legal system had long outlasted his dynasty, the Duke's reasoning had been proven sound to the Veronese.

Unless Thou Tell Me How

"I pray you, bear me hence from forth the noise and rumor of the field."

Content Warning: Click here for content warnings. (Potential spoilers)

October 31st

"Oh, my poor little man," Georgiana tutted. Her nephew had fussed since they had arrived at Darcy House that morning for a day's visit with her mother. For the inmates of Capulet Manor, it was their first day at liberty. The other adults had moved from one type of confinement to another: meeting their adversaries in Lady Iden's chambers to negotiate the terms of the trial. Rather than go to sit silently in a stuffy room, Georgiana had offered to bring Will to see his grandmother. "You're too little to remember, aren't you?" To her relief, he started to quiet down. "You've been away these three months, and that's a long time at your age, isn't it? This is your home, though you don't remember it just yet."

How to Choose

"Men at some time are masters of their fates."

October 18th

When the fashionable noble houses had fled their ancestral lands to build newer and better family seats in the capital, the House of Gloucester had stayed put. Lord Gloucester would forever be merely one of a crowd if the family had followed fashion. On his ancestral lands in the Cirenwade district, he was a king. Numerous generations on, Lord James Gloucester currently reigned over a quasi-court comprised of his extended family and local gentry who had outgrown the inelegance of nearby Port Gale. Though he lacked a throne room, the lord's study, a lonely place with no buffer and no escape, loomed as large as any royal audience chamber ever had.

After twenty-eight years of these command performances, Neve still hated to be summoned. It was so often a waste of patience and time. Her father-in-law liked to assert himself, and one method of doing so was to call for a person and then make them wait in the hall. Exceedingly rare was the occasion when a caller was admitted immediately. How many hours of her life had she spent here, pressing her child's hand - usually her son's - between hers and assuring them that all would be well? Her son was in the study without her today. Fortunately, God had blessed her with a wonderful distraction.