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[rathercommon]

crystal | letter | cease and desist notices slipped under her door | action

Comments

[ipseite]

( rueful, )

Yes. I apologise if in the interim it has rather become less compelling to know.

[rathercommon]

No, no, it's not less compelling.

[ Embarrassed - ]

I've just - you know - forgotten a few of the details of exactly what we were talking about.

[ipseite]

Well—it is rather awkward to announce, but I suppose, myself. I preferred not to press you on what spirits displayed, but mine were—regrettably talkative.

[rathercommon]

Yeah. I remember that bit.

[ipseite]

I suppose it rather lingered with me. A question I am not often asked, doubtless the answers must seem—self-evident.

( which is not a critique. the way she's comported herself in thedas, it is a natural assumption that she's always championed a mage's cause. )

I was very angry with Marius for what he'd done, when I found out. I hadn't known the crime for which he was exiled when I followed him. It was a very different world.

[rathercommon]

But you stayed with him, right?

[ipseite]

If he had not killed me for leaving, if I succeeded in returning home, my daughter's life would have been forfeit. And then, when he argued that I could not be safe if I too did not know magic to protect myself in his absence, I did not have an uncle upon a throne who would spare my life for the crime.

Yes. I stayed.

[rathercommon]

You couldn't have taken your daughter with you?

[ipseite]

Marius's crime was witchcraft. He avoided, by virtue of his sex and his uncle's unwillingness to execute a male heir for a woman's crime, a slow death by burning. Veda would have been born on the wrong side of the blanket, unwanted by whatever man would take payment for absorbing the embarrassment of my scandal in marriage, and subject to the other consequence for witchcraft, which suffers not a witch's child to live lest they carry the taint of sin they were born from.

Her great-uncle would not have been so kind to about unwished for reminder of Marius. To bring her home with me would have been to sign her death warrant in my own hand.

[rathercommon]

People really cared that much about whether you were a man or a woman in your home?

[ipseite]

Legally speaking, I was the property of my father until such time as I became the property of my husband. Veda ordinarily therefore would be my father's to dispose of as he saw fit, but as her paternal family outranked ours, he would cede the Archiduc's will. I would have inherited my father's title, and it would have been my dowry, and become my husband's along with the estate and all of my inheritance.

[rathercommon]

God. How awful.

[ipseite]

I believed that we were best with Marius. That I knew him, at least, that we had once believed in the same things and I might influence him well. That Veda had her best chance beneath his protection. I had trusted him, once, and to his credit I have never doubted his love for his children.

( it wasn't a great decision, but there hadn't been great options. )

But it was. Awful. And- Marius's extremes aside, common. Terribly, terribly common. I wished to make it less so.

[rathercommon]

How?

[ipseite]

Originally, I thought to change culture by changing minds. To lead by example, and use what influence I might gain—to throw our political support behind endeavours that might improve matters. I wished, ( there is a wryness in her voice, ) to support education reforms, and to counteract the influence of the church in day to day society.

After Marius's exile—he would conquer that which had cast him out. We dismantled the architecture of the church's power and writ into law protections for the practising of its faith, instead. Laws against witchcraft were struck down, and we had been arguing for some time about the precise ways in which we should memorialize those murdered by the state.

I did not see the end results of his work.