something about balduran advocating for fair sentencing and being against the death penalty, at least for smaller crimes, and the emperor defining "criminal" as a nebulous category of people who can be killed with no moral repercussions. and then we get into the second layer of that which is: does the emperor even believe that, or is he retroactively justifying his feeding habits in a way he believes you will find acceptable? i doubt he actually thinks feeding on criminals is all that moral, but i also doubt it factors into his diet. the fact that he sticks to criminals at all does imply that he's prioritising The Law over his own convenience, but on the other hand the state of baldurian lawmaking appears to be absolutely dire, but on a third hand this whole premise (and honestly the gameplay assumptions of basically every RPG) take for granted that you can kill "criminals" and it's fine. so really the emperor isn't doing anything out of the ordinary here. and yet in the chamber of justice, the punishment must be proportional to the crime. i've just argued myself in a perfect loop
still thinking abt the idea that palisade is driven by grief—the emotion of loss and the parallel thematic overlapping of past and present. as in: "not even corpses are stationary", "most people don't have time to practice dying", "the season about the inability of standing still". the myths of the twilight mirage come up against cold reality. and in the midst of the fight, the blue channel and their allies are grieving. (valence, obviously. and griesel, phrygian, and figure.) (integrity lost dahlia. the afflictions haunt the planet, and a tomb shines in the night sky. jesset, just... generally.)
how do you look forward, live on, when your loved ones are behind you? what does it mean to fight in someone's memory? you might be willing to die, but are your friends ready to mourn? all palisade questions. season about grief.