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The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest

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Zimmerwald1915 said:
admonishes the Forresters for destroying that evidence, but gets around that by shifting the burden onto the Whitehills to prove that the saboteur wasn't their man, rather than where it really should belong: with the Forresters to prove that he was.
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To the nobles in court, the Forresters did prove it by submitting a confession by torture. It sucks, but we can't just throw it out as of right now. One of the compromises is trying to set up a precedent where we're cutting how much aid the Forresters would have gotten if they didn't torture the dude to death. This is probably one of many backward customs that we're going to have to slowly chip away throughout the years.
 
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Crafter of War said:
To the nobles in court, the Forresters did prove it by submitting a confession by torture.
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You may very well think that (the distinction between "a confession by torture" and "a confession perforce reported secondhand because the torture killed the witness" has been hashed to death at this point), but the point is that the two compromise options don't actually agree on this point. One just takes into evidence the confession, as reported; the other acknowledges its existence while discounting it as evidence—but instead of reaching the conclusion that the plaintiffs failed to prove their case with evidence, shifts the burden to the defendants to disprove the plaintiffs' allegations. These are not the same, and should not be treated like they are.
 
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    • Well after a very spirited debate, the vote is now closed. Thank you everyone

    Adhoc vote count started by Teen Spirit on Jan 10, 2025 at 8:01 PM, finished with 384 posts and 84 votes.
    [second] [first] [third]
    • 77
      [X] [Second] Execute Him
      ... and 11 more.
      [X] [Second] Send him to the Wall for inciting the fight and have a wergild paid to the families of the dead from his possessions.
      [X][Second] 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][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] [Second] Execute him and have a wergild paid to the families of the dead from his possessions.
      [X] [Second] 5 lashes with a whip
      [X] [Third] Send him to the Wall
      [X] [Second] Write-in "With three men dead at your feet do you have anything else to say in your defence?"
      -[X]If he pleads for the Wall then allow it. Otherwise execute him.
      [X][Second] Write-In: Execute him. And pay damages to the survivors of the three dead men from the seditious drunkard's estate.
    • 81
      [X] [First] Side with House Whitehill, Keep the Tolls in place
      [X] [First] Compromise: With no document proving if the road can be tolled or not, you find it reasonable that House Whitehill does so. However, you also find it reasonable that House Forrester is receiving recompense for the actions of the Whitehill armsman. House Whitehill will have to pay for the reconstruction of the dam.
      [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] [First] Side with the Whitehills and keep the tolls in place. Make it clear to the court that by torturing the sabotager to death the Forresters denied the court the ability to assess his testimony, thus both foiling the court's ability to examine potentially valuable evidence as well as leaving the foresters with no evidence to their claims, forcing you to rule against them.
      [X] [First] Side with neither, Reduce the Tolls by half
      [X] [First] Write-in: House Whitehill as a vassal of House Bolton is allowed to levy tolls on the road given their previous maintenance work and the lack of documentation provided by House Forrester. However, the levy must be set at a reasonable level that is comparable to other road tolls levied in the North. House Whitehill is responsible for the actions of its armsmen and must provide recompense to House Forrester. The recompense shall be set at half the cost of repairing the dam. Any further actions against the dam or similar infrastructure by House Whitehill or servants of House Whitehill will face significantly more harsh punishments as decided on by House Stark
      [X][First] Side with the Whitehills and keep the tolls in place. Since the Boltons are the ones maintaining the road, it is their right to allow the Whitehills to levy tolls along it. Make it clear to the court that if, as the Forresters allege, a Whitehill armsman had hypothetically destroyed the dam, then the Whitehills might hypothetically be liable, even if the sabotage did not occur at their orders. However, it appears that the Forresters have destroyed the evidence of their own claim by killing the only witness in the process of trying to torture a confession out of him. While the Forresters' own word is not in doubt, it is now impossible to determine whether the dead saboteur was lying or telling the truth. As such, the court cannot hold the Whitehills liable for the destruction of the dam.
      [X] [First] Write-in: It's clear that the 'evidence' obtained at the point of a knife from a bandit is suspect. No doubt once the brigand was put to the question he would claim anything in the hopes that it would end the questioning. Were such flimsy evidence reliable it would be cause for war, given Lord Forrester has started no war he clearly sees how such flimsy claims from a bandit are less than reliable and has chosen to limiting himself to claiming coin for the damages wrought. Damage with no proven responsible party. Still. A bandit did the deed of destroying the dam which caused damage to Forrester land. Damage for which they deserve recompense. The road was allegedly built for the use of both houses, but no evidence or records of such exist. Despite this the road lies on Whitehill land and they are responsible for it's upkeep, thus a toll for it's use seems reasonable. What is not however reasonable is raising the toll to take advantage of ones fellow nobles plight. The tolls charged to House Forrester Stand. They will pay them. And the coin shall go directly to The Lord Paramount of the north to go towards the reconstruction of the dam. Thus forth, the Lord Stark and his house Shall be responsible for the upkeep of the whitehill road and the levying of any fair tolls for their use. Until and unless that he or his duly appointed representative is convinced that it can managed fairly. We suggest their fair and honourable conduct be reviewed in two years. (Subject to QM approval)
      [X] [first] Suggest that Whitehill and Forrester each put forward a champion to determine whether the armsman belonged to house Whitehill or not in trial by combat. If he is determined to belong to Whitehill then they have a responsibility for the actions of their armsman, even assuming Lyanna did not order it of him, and so must pay for the reconstruction of the dam. If he is determined to be unrelated to house Whitehill then they owe Forrester nothing.
      [X] [First] Compromise: With no document proving if the road can be tolled or not, you will find it reasonable that House Whitehill does so. However, you will also find it reasonable that House Forrester is receiving recompense for the actions of the Whitehill armsman. House Whitehill will have to pay for the reconstruction of the dam.
      [X][First] The Boltons maintain the road, so if they want the Whitehills charging a toll, then they can. But no raising the toll any higher than it is now. The Forresters have evidence that a Whitehill man destroyed the dam. But because the Forresters tortured the only witness to death, their case against the Whitehills is weakened. The Whitehills pay only half the cost of repairing the dam, and get to keep the money from charging the Forresters the higher tolls.
    • 76
      [X] [Third] Send him to the Wall
      ... and 1 more.
      [X] [Third] Write-In: Send him to the Gift, to farm the land in bond to the Watch
      [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.
      [X] [Third] Give him the choice; the hand, or the wall.
      [X][Third] 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.
      [X] [Third] The father is sent to the night watch, the daughter can become a servant at Winterfell or another castle if her mother agrees. The mother can follow her daughter, or stay on the farm.
      [X] [Third] Send him to the Wall, but only after a set period whereupon it is ensured his wife and daughter are able to safely provide for themselves without his presence.
      [X] [Third] Write-in "The punishment is intended to ensure you don't steal again. Your farm is blighted, easy enough to return that to the Lord Paramount for him to bestow it on another. Congratulations on hunting the buck. You'll serve your lord with both hands as an archer, until your service has paid off the worth of the buck. And the rations the soldier spared you. Your wife can't handle the farm alone and your daughter can't be allowed to starve. Your wife and child will be employed by the lord Stark, to serve his guests, work in his kitchens, cook and clean. (Subject to QM Approval)
      [X] [Third] Remove his Hand
      [X] [Third] No matter what happens, we need to make sure this guy's daughter gets food.
      [X][Third] Since the poacher was a desperate man, we commute his sentence. Instead of death or maiming, he will forfeit all his land to the Starks. He is now a tenant of the Starks and not a freeholder. They can decide his rents.
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    • Zimmerwald1915 said:
    You may very well think that (the distinction between "a confession by torture" and "a confession perforce reported secondhand because the torture killed the witness" has been hashed to death at this point), but the point is that the two compromise options don't actually agree on this point. One just takes into evidence the confession, as reported; the other acknowledges its existence while discounting it as evidence—but instead of reaching the conclusion that the plaintiffs failed to prove their case with evidence, shifts the burden to the defendants to disprove the plaintiffs' allegations. These are not the same, and should not be treated like they are.
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    The difference is that in one we take the confession as evidence, and the other takes the confession as evidendce but it gives the Forrester a slap on the wrist because they killed the key wintess under the interrogation , and we cannot further interrogate it...

    The difference is prretty small...
     
    FWIW my own take was that I didn't think we knew enough to judge the political wisdom of siding with one house over the other (although I though siding with the Whitehills was probably better politically), and that the state of evidence was a useful fig leaf to avoid clearly doing that.
     
    Fanhunter696 said:
    The difference is that in one we take the confession as evidence, and the other takes the confession as evidendce but it gives the Forrester a slap on the wrist because they killed the key wintess under the interrogation , and we cannot further interrogate it...

    The difference is prretty small...
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    I disagree. I voted for ruling entirely in the Whitehill's favor and for the compromise that gave the forresters a slap on the wrist. I found ruling entirely in the Whitehills favor to be much better than the compromise that didn't give the forresters a slap on the wrist, because not even slapping them on the wrist means treating their killing of the witness as a non issue, whereas ruling against them or giving them a slap on the wrist at least imposes a cost on them for doing so.
     
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    Teen spirit said that tortured is considered a valid way of gaining information and no one at court seems to really care that the victim died. I understand that you want to change that, just throwing that out.
     
    FallenDawn said:
    Teen spirit said that tortured is considered a valid way of gaining information and no one at court seems to really care that the victim died. I understand that you want to change that, just throwing that out.
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    Teen spirit said that torture is considered a valid source of information extraction. He did however also say that criticizing the Forresters for killing a critical witness before we could personally interrogate him is an entirely valid response:
    The Laurent said:
    True, but I don't think, "It sucks that we can't actually interrogate the perp because you tortured him to death #GetBetterTorturers" is that outside the scope of what she might think?
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    Teen Spirit said:
    Yeah that part's fine.
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    There's an underlying cultural context here which partly explains why this society (and most such societies) are fairly quick to reach for the 'death' button and to countenance inflicting injury and mutilation on someone convicted of a crime.

    There's a significant fraction of the population that has effectively nothing- no property or benefits from reputation that could be taken away from them, nothing to lose because they are practically already a slave. Threatening to imprison them is not credible because no realistically survivable prison can have conditions that much worse than where they already live, and because the expense of maintaining such prisons would be prohibitive for the nobility unless the prisoners are working at forced labor to make up for the food they eat and the need to maintain their shelter. Except, again, that the conditions of being a prisoner working for Duke Dunderhead in his jail and the conditions of being a tenant farmer working for Duke Dunderhead in the farming village he personally owns aren't that different.

    There is a fairly broad consensus among the people in society who have something to lose from crimes (not just nobles, but also peasants who have property or who simply fear banditry) that crime is bad. And a big part of how the medieval state maintains legitimacy despite being literally a bunch of fuckers in palaces lording it over peasants in mud huts is by showing that they can restrain crime. That they can prevent raiding, stop feuds, and allow the median peasant farmer to just get on with her farming in peace without fear of having her pigs stolen or her house burned by raiders.

    So basically, the state tends to take the presence of an identified criminal as an opportunity to prove- violently- that it has the power here and is using that power to be "tough on crime."

    This is a pretty consistent pattern we see across many societies throughout pre-modern history. The idea of long prison sentence, humane treatment of criminals, and so on are all relatively new and directly descended from the modern philosophical understanding of "everyone should have equal rights."
     
    I mean, that is a reasoning for the many absurdly over the top punishments they had in history. But torture for the purpose of fact finding, I think that can be explained with something much simpler: They had no alternatives.

    It's not like forensic science is a thing yet. There are basically no other means of juidicial fact finding than testimonies. Which means, without torture to coax out those "testimonies", they would often have nothing, period - but that would lead the whole court system, the whole notion of lords judging, ad absurdum. It would probably lead to a lot more truthful outcomes if the lord judge declared "welp, no way to prove any of this, let's go home", but that would also mean ceding the authority of judgement (probably back to personal feuds, people taking justice into their own hands). It would be a loss of social power.

    Basically, from the point of view of nobility, it is better to make any judgement, even if it is in fact the wrong one. Thus, high society, the society made up of those lords and ladies, cannot admit to itself that torture will provide unreliable testimony. Because otherwise their whole system and authority of judgement would crumble down.
     
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    I'd hesitate to take that last step, because I do think they have to at least have a concept of "this thing this guy said while being tortured is false." If nothing else, because people being tortured do routinely contradict each other and for that matter themselves.
     
    Westeros has been operating at this level with torture and testimonies for over 1000s of years, probably with some knowledge that it's unreliable. But it's all they have and it's not as if they have a family tradition of passing down torture techniques like the Boltons. So unless there is some visual evidence to prove it otherwise than this is what we have.

    There is no silver bullet and while we can point to the way the testimonies are worded, not much can be done other than siding with one side or doing something in the middle.
     
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    F.I.M.M.98 said:
    ...well, not happy the most comprehensive vote got sidelined to third place

    Specially since the first doesn't expand Rhaenyra's reasoning
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    I can understand the frustration but the QM is also capable of reading, and given his ocassional posts in the thread i'm sure he's read quite a bit of the discussion going on, so I don't think it'd be unreasonable to believe that when the next update drops he can include some of the points made in the thread as reasoning for Rhaenyra to side with the Whitehills.
     
    Imperious said:
    Teen spirit said that torture is considered a valid source of information extraction. He did however also say that criticizing the Forresters for killing a critical witness before we could personally interrogate him is an entirely valid response:
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    OTOH while it's certainly unfortunate the Forresters killed the witness, assuming this is not an attempted cover up they didn't necessarily have (from a medieval perspective) a better option? If they haven't extracted testimony there's no case for them to save the witness for. They need something to bring the suit at all, otherwise who are they bringing it against?

    It could be that they tortured the witness to the point where they got the first confession, didn't torture them further but they still died of their injuries. Saying that this doesn't meet the requisite standard of evidence and #GetBetterTorturers is still valid obviously but I'm not sure there's much value in deterrence of this behavior in the future since it's unclear they had a better option.
     
    hailcapital said:
    OTOH while it's certainly unfortunate the Forresters killed the witness, assuming this is not an attempted cover up they didn't necessarily have (from a medieval perspective) a better option? If they haven't extracted testimony there's no case for them to save the witness for. They need something to bring the suit at all, otherwise who are they bringing it against?

    It could be that they tortured the witness to the point where they got the first confession, didn't torture them further but they still died of their injuries. Saying that this doesn't meet the requisite standard of evidence and #GetBetterTorturers is still valid obviously but I'm not sure there's much value in deterrence of this behavior in the future since it's unclear they had a better option.
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    I believe that my earlier answer to this line of argument remains valid:
    Imperious said:
    For all we know they are trying to cover something. After all the maester wouldn't be lying if he said that the armsman admitted to working for the Whitehills, if what the Armsman actually confessed was that he was working for the Whitehills, but that he absolutely did not sabotage the dam on their orders, but was rather acting on his own initiative. Such is one of the issues of killing witnesses before they can appear on trial.

    As is I don't really want to get into the granularities of the different ways in which one can perform acts of torture, but there are definitely methods of torture that can be inflicted on someone without killing them. If one of the effects of our ruling is that lords hold back a bit on some of the more vicious methods of torture so as to not risk killing their captives outright before they get to say their piece in front of the court then that hardly strikes me as a bad thing.
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    Imperious said:
    I believe that my earlier answer to this line of argument remains valid:
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    I don't really think it does, since presumably everyone who has torturers good enough to do that would already be doing that, since they don't benefit from eliminating a witness. Unless they expect that they will sometimes want to "accidentally" kill witnesses during torture and need to maintain a level of plausible deniability, but if so then they could just come up with some other plausible reason the witness died in captivity, which can't be that hard.
     
    hailcapital said:
    I don't really think it does, since presumably everyone who has torturers good enough to do that would already be doing that, since they don't benefit from eliminating a witness. Unless they expect that they will sometimes want to "accidentally" kill witnesses during torture and need to maintain a level of plausible deniability, but if so then they could just come up with some other plausible reason the witness died in captivity, which can't be that hard.
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    If it's someone who they personally hate a lot like say, a Saboteur whom they think damaged a crucial dam of their's, then I definitely can see some lord letting those captives have it harder than is strictly necessary to get the confession they want as a form of payback. For others, a lot are also going to die due to callous indifference from a torturer who doesn't really care if they die at the end so long as they get the confession they want. And yes, there are going to be case in which people kill a witness simply because they expect their testimony to do more damage than good in an actual trial.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    I'd hesitate to take that last step, because I do think they have to at least have a concept of "this thing this guy said while being tortured is false." If nothing else, because people being tortured do routinely contradict each other and for that matter themselves.
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    Well, yeah. That is why there would be something to admit in the first place. People will of course be realizing that. But they can't really bring it up, at least not in an universalized way, because they would be faced with the question "Okay, but what then?" and there is no good answer for that.
     
    In terms of this case and our incentives:

    I think what it comes down to is that even if you accept that evidence collected by torture counts as worthwhile evidence, a transcript of a torture-confession is not as good a piece of evidence as that same transcript plus the living witness, and arguably isn't even as good as just having the witness right there given that the higher court can order witnesses tortured too and ask other questions.

    For instance, in this case, one of the critical questions of fact comes down to "is this man factually a Whitehill armsman?" The Whitehills deny it but do not present evidence to the contrary. The Forresters allege it and present as evidence the torture-confession. But "is this man a Whitehill armsman" is a question that we conceivably could settle here and now at Winterfell, if the man himself were here. The North is a big place, socially as well as geographically, but not infinitely big. It's reasonably likely that someone would be able to identify him or confirm "yes, I know this man," or "Yes/no, there is/isn't a Whitehill armsman by that name."

    And that would be a big help in this case, so we definitely have grounds to object to the Forresters' torturing the guy to death, even if the general consensus of Westeros nobles is "well gee, the torture-confession of the dam-saboteur is evidence, isn't it?" Because there's evidence and then there's best evidence.
     
    Also if we're going to make a habit of sitting in judgements then we probably should start our legal studies sooner then later. Westeros apparently has an entire code of laws, on top of what is likely to be half a century of case law from Jaehaerys' time. We don't want to at some point unwittingly make a judgement that's flagrantly in contrast of already existing laws.
     
    Imperious said:
    Also if we're going to make a habit of sitting in judgements then we probably should start our legal studies sooner then later. Westeros apparently has an entire code of laws, on top of what is likely to be half a century of case law from Jaehaerys' time. We don't want to at some point unwittingly make a judgement that's flagrantly in contrast of already existing laws.
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    Hey Imperious love the suggestion buddy I really do, but uh, one problem.

    WITH WHAT ACTIONS!!!!???

    Dear Lord we couldn't even fit in a full conversation with Rhea Royce who we brought so we might be able to talk to her, still haven't talked to Steffon, would also probably be nice to figure out what to do with our tourney winnings, some training with Syrax certainly couldn't hurt and we also probably shouldn't snub any lords who's castles we visit by not talking to them.

    On top of all this, the next major judgement we can do with the Brackens and the Blackwoods is in 2-3 turns depending on if Castle Black is a turn or an interlude.

    So we need to get to brainstorming and deciding what we need to get done and what we can safely drop to the wayside for a bit.
     
    I mean, we did study the law books, and we did talk to Lyonel about him tutoring us on law. That kind of came through on this vote - we did know what the relevant precedent was at least for 2/3 cases. The only one that was really particularly contentious was #1, and that was more to do with the facts themselves were contested and essentially unknowable.

    Still don't really want to dip into the Blackwood vs Bracken feud cold but uh maybe we shouldn't do that anyway.
     
    The Blackwood-Bracken dispute is NOT the kind of minefield I want to dance in, unless we're just going to arbitrarily pick a side and blatantly favor them despite neither knowing nor caring who is in the right, just so we have a reliable ally.
     
    Good lord, the fact that things got this convoluted over essentially a bunch of irrelevant peasants really got me sweating over what the Bracken-Blackwood trials are gonna look like.

    I know it's one of the goals for the Progress, but I'm completely fine with just using three different Relax Actions in the Riverlands if we can avoid that hot mess of a feud.

    Our stress has been going up...
     
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