Yes, I'm aware that's how you think, and that is a very bad way to do reasoning.
It is also how the main character is likely to be thinking, and importantly how quite a lot of the effectively
nationwide audience who are judging "how does Rhaenyra perform the role of a judge, in accordance with my expectations of how a judge should behave" by watching cases such as this.
The fact that we were, according to your lights, perfectly logical and consistent in all things will get Rhaenyra precisely zero prizes in Westeros.
...
My own position is to attempt to mitigate the injustice of the punishment against the poacher by reducing it to, in effect, "he now has to pay a type of taxes directly to the Starks, when he didn't before, and the Starks are probably some of the least-bad landlords to have in all of Westeros, so hopefully that will work out okay in the long run."
In theory, this would then give us cover to send the seditionist riot-starter to the Wall without creating a juxtaposition where a man whose excuse was "my starving daughter" and a man whose excuse was "I was really drunk" get the same punishment.
However, I would argue that mandating actual execution
is the minimum, not for reasons of "justice as Hailcapital sees it," but for reasons of broader statecraft.
...
Again, medieval kings and nobles exercising the power of judging legal cases are not ideal spherical frictionless philosophical justice-bots operating in a vacuum. There are the concerns of:
1) Ensuring that the judge's own power base is not undermined directly by the nature of the judgement, unfortunate but a matter of self-defense for a person in Rhaenyra's position.
2) Ensuring that the public as a whole
has faith in the judge and the law, which means adhering not to ideal spherical frictionless philosophical justice-robot thinking, but adhering to the cultural and political norms of the society, that is to say
performing judgeship.
By way of analogy, being a good general in premodern warfare is not about being optimal at moving soldiers around like pieces on a game board, as communications and observation technology do not permit the general to do this with their forces in battle. One key element of good generalship is simply to maintain morale and confidence in the army's ability to win by
performing generalship.
By way of example, a medieval European general from, say, the Hundred Years' War who at the start of a battle dragged out a goat in front of his army and sacrificed it to Zeus would probably cause his army to fall into chaos and dissension, with many of the soldiers refusing to follow the heretic/infidel into battle at all, and possibly some of them even turning on him for their souls' sake. He would not be a good general, because creeping out your soldiers and convincing them they are going to Hell for obeying your orders right before battle is a very stupid thing to do.
By contrast, a Greek general of the time of the Peloponnesian War who
failed to sacrifice a goat to Zeus would cause very much the same problem in reverse. His men would be fearful of going into battle under an impious commander, in case Zeus punished the commander with military disaster. So whereas in 1400 AD in France (or for that matter Greece) sacrificing a goat to Zeus is very bad generalship, in 400 BC, sacrificing a goat to Zeus is standard best practices for any general who wants a hope of victory.
If soldiers and generals were ideal spherical frictionless war-bots in a vacuum, then sacrificing a goat to Zeus would have nothing to do with the quality of a commander's generalship. To do it would mean nothing, and to not do it would mean nothing. But in the reality of a particular time and place, where the definition of 'a general you can trust' is culturally constructed and tied into larger overarching belief systems, the decision to sacrifice or not to sacrifice that goat can mean a lot.
Judgeship is much the same.
As a response to some of the stuff
@Simon_Jester has been saying - the idea that we need to execute this guy because otherwise that will encourage people to be seditious of us over the incest thing and then we'll have to flee Westeros and even then what if they chase us down is completely crazy, because one thing we learned via this is that people actually like the Targaryens enough that if you are badmouthing Viserys like this, ordinary citizens and merchants will actually assault you over it. We are not in danger of some eminent crusade against all the descendants of incest, led by one dumb drunk merchant.
This is an absurd strawman version of the point I am making, and you should know it.
updating my vote. I do think that forrester's are more or less right on what happened. but it is nuts to make the Whitehills pay for the full dam with only this evidence. The argument for executing the drunk guy worked on me. And we ether need to send the farmer to the Wall or eat the cost of going easy on him, I am not a fan of the gift idea for this reason as it seems to be one of these having cake and eating it too ideas.
I still think my write-in for the third case (the first of the two I've approval-voted) would be workable, in that it is a severe punishment that any man of his status would fear to suffer, and one that more than compensates the noble who has been offended against, while also preserving the man's life and letting him continue to be there for his family.
[X][First] Compromise: There is no evidence for Forresters' claim that the road should be toll-free. As the Boltons are currently maintaining the road, it is their right to allow the Whitehills to levy tolls along it. So far as this court is concerned, the tolls stand as they are now, not to be altered until the dam is completed. However, the saboteur confessed to being a Whitehill armsman before dying. As the Whitehills apparently have no evidence that the saboteur was not one of their armsmen, they must be held at least partly liable for the sabotage. The court holds that the Whitehills must pay half the costs of the dam reconstruction. The court admonishes the Forresters for having tortured the key witness to death, thus weakening the evidence of their own claims. Hypothetically, if the saboteur was here to testify today, then the Forresters might have been awarded higher damages.
[X][Second] Execute him.
OR
[X][Second] Write-In: Execute him. Also decree that the first claim on the traitor merchant's estate will go to pay customary damages for wrongful death to the survivors of each of the three dead men. If there is anything left for the merchant's heirs to inherit after the wrongful death damages have been paid, then they can have it.
[X][Third] Write-In: In recognition of the poacher's unusual and desperate conditions, and that he may remain able-bodied and capable of supporting his daughter, the court will allow him to compensate Lord Stark by forfeiting all his land. The land is now Stark property, to rent to tenants or otherwise to do with as they see fit.
OR
[x] [Third] Write-In: Send him to the Gift, to farm the land in bond to the Watch
