[D6] Enlightenment in the woods [Laena and Mikel closed]

"What you can do for me?" Laena pretends she has to think about her answer for a moment before answering. "Well, as I mentioned before, if you bring what you learn to me so that I may analyse it, I won't deny I benefit from that - it's not ladylike to have a proper network of eyes and ears, so I have to make do; though that's more mutually beneficial, since I would help you interpret it. I would like to know how you get on with Ser Roland, but that's mere curiosity. Hmm." She shrugs. "Well, there's nothing of import that springs to mind at the moment. Let's just agree that if I have need of a strong, honourable knight, I know who to turn to first. If my brother's not suitable for whatever reason."

She taps her cheek with her forefinger. "There is one thing. A small thing, not repayment by any means, just indulging a small curiosity of mine. Consider carefully and answer me this: Lord Merryweather has escaped mortal justice, but right now, in this hypothetical scenario, he is blindfold and bound before you. No-one can trace his presence to you, and you may walk away without trace. Or kill him without consequence. And those are your choices. What do you do? Do you slay a man, a lord and knight, in cold blood, helpless and begging for mercy? Or do you leave, letting a monster escape to continue to prey on the weakest and most vulnerable, hiding behind his titles, until the day he finally dies? Either way, none will ever know save you and the Seven, to commend or condemn. What. Do. You. Do?"

Laena raises an eyebrow. "Truly? I had not expected you to be so well-acquainted. Doing your bit to help ensure he does not end up on the opposite side of a civil war should hopefully be even easier than I expected, then. Assuming your feelings are reciprocated, at least."

She nods at his answer. "Good. The only answer I would call outright wrong is 'I don't know', but I admit, I do prefer your answer. One's perspective is somewhat different when you fear you may become one of his victims should he become bold or reckless enough."

She taps her fingers on her thigh again. "While I am asking you questions, I should probably ask the big ones. Forget, for the moment, your oath to Lord Starkwood which guides your blade. How do you see the current political situation? What's the primary cause, and what's merely incidental? Who's right, if anyone? And what is your opinion on Ser Daemon Blackfyre?"

She waves a dismissive hand. "Do not apologise for giving a nuanced answer to a complex question. Those who do otherwise are either idiots or lying to you. Having said that, let us dissect your answer.

"Firstly: Ser Daemon being a fool not to push his claim?" She shakes her head. "No. Unambitious, certainly, and to many that's a worse sin, but not foolish. This is not the problem some houses have where a legitimized bastard is now higher in the inheritance than the previously-supposed heir; King Daeron is inarguably older than Ser Daemon, and inheritance law is clear here: the oldest son inherits, regardless of which son the father favours. Only if King Daeron were illegitimate himself would Ser Daemon have a valid claim, and while he may have spread the rumour, my father clearly did not believe it, else he would have disowned and denounced him; it's no secret that there was no love lost between them."

An amused smile flickers across her face before she continues. "As someone who owes their current position due to your merit, I can see your view, but it's important to understand how nobles think. The patronage network is essential, and using it well can make or break houses, or even kings. You may not pay much attention to politics, but you've surely noticed some people receiving power or honours being called 'political appointments'? Appeasing the powerful by honouring their houses? In this way, over the centuries, many incompetent people have ended up with power or honours their capabilities did not justify. Were the appointers all horrible judges of competence? Of course not. Did they want incompetent people in those positions? Again, of course not. So, why?" She locks eyes with Mikel. "Understand this: the personal trumps the political.  This law is the very foundation of noble marriages.  A powerful man is probably smart enough to understand that having a competent man in a recently-vacated position of power is better for the realm, but he feels his house hasn't accomplished much to boast of recently, and he needs to secure his legacy, so he'll throw the polite equivalent of a child's temper tantrum until his idiot son receives that honour, instead of the competent man. The wise ruler recognises that if too many of his subjects are throwing tantrums, that causes more harm to the realm than simply appointing the idiot in the first place, so that's what he does.

"When he doesn't do that? You end up with situations like we're in now. Understand the current situation was entirely predictable, and entirely avoidable, if King Daeron had been willing to play the patronage game. But no, he refused to compromise on having competent people - his morals demanded it. And solely and entirely because of that, he brought his kingdom to the brink of civil war. For all my father's flaws, he played the patronage game well, which is why, for all his mismanagement, he never suffered an uprising.

"Now, you can blame the nobles throwing tantrums that they lost their place at the gold-plated feeding trough, I would even agree there is merit to that position - they are expressly acting against the interests of the realm. But their actions are entirely *human*. Power and honour are antithetical to each other - having one slowly wears away at the other. The King's honour is eroding his power, and nobles like Lord Peake have had their power erode their honour. Their position has shaped them into the men they are today, who are men who can do nothing but what they are doing.

"I suspect that this is a problem with scholars: they have too firm a grip in their minds of how things *should* be that they miss how things *are*. While knights and warriors of power have seen the worst depths humanity will crawl through to save themselves from death, and understand all too well humanity's true nature."

She gives an apologetic smile. "I should perhaps say that I don't condemn everyone with my words, these are just general rules, with plentiful exceptions. Particularly among your peers: powerful enough that you need never taste pure desperation, yet not so powerful that you have been forced into bartering away your honour and your soul piece by piece to maintain it. And I am sure the battlefield has seen many displays of heroism as well.

"Lest you feel I'm being too harsh on our King, I will say that his incorporation of Dorne was a stroke of pure genius. No warrior would ever conceive of effectively surrendering to Dorne - I certainly never would have, either. But he's right. Oh, sure, for now, the heir has the Rhoynish look, but in a generation or two of mixing in Targaryen blood, that'll fade, and Dorne will still be part of the realm. It was a masterstroke of unexpected solutions and long-term thinking, and doesn't receive nearly enough credit. Now Dorne is part of the realm, over the generations, future kings can slowly rip up the advantages given to Dorne now, each one in isolation not worth rebelling over, until, a half-dozen generations from now, they're no more advantaged than any other part of the Kingdom, but too deeply enmeshed with the other realms for rebellion to be in their interest. If the utter failure of the patronage game is the drawback to having a scholar King, actions like this are clearly the advantage.

"So far, I've cast blame on the King, and the rebellious nobles. However, that's not all. My father was a mass-rapist monster. And unlike previous kings, like King Maegor the Cruel, he didn't have dragons to protect him. Honourable knights and lords should have weighed up their oaths, realised they were breaking them by action and inaction both, and risen up against him to limit the damage to their oaths. But they didn't. They collectively took the easy path, and buried their heads in the sand, letting the dishonourable gain succour at his court.

"The result of their inaction was the plague of Great Bastards we currently have infesting the lands, including Ser Daemon himself. There would be instability regardless, due to the previously mentioned failure of patronage, but from their collective moral failure, they have created an incredibly dangerous focal point, making the situation that much worse. In this way, even the honourable are culpable for the current situation, and the blame is passed down to their children.

"So, who do I hold responsible for being at the brink of civil war?" She locks blazing eyes with Mikel again, and yells in a drawn-out fashion. "Everyone!" In a more normal voice, she continues. "In fact, you may, as a young man born of commoner parents, be the only noble in all the realm who is entirely blameless."  After a moment, she adds "Congratulations", in a rather dry voice.

Laena raises an eyebrow and gives the knight an assessing look before answering. "I can, but remember that our circumstances are very different. I am the natural-born daughter of a king, you're the trueborn son of peasants - we are about as different in circumstance as two people in the same house can be.

"Having said that, there are a few things. Firstly, Lord Merryweather leers at any woman near him. I have had the displeasure of his attention before. So, were a woman to meet with him, her natural instinct would be to dress more modestly than normal, covering up as much as possible. This is a mistake! If you overtly change yourself because of who you're meeting with, you are showing that they have power over you before a single word has been said. This emboldens them and weakens you psychologically. Some might think to try and go the other way, and wear more scandalous wear, but this is still a mistake, for exactly the same reason; though that mistake does have the advantage that it may impair his thinking. But it also invites scandal, which I, as a natural-born lady, always have to be vigilant against. So, the best thing for my view is for your appearance to be as normal.

"The same thing applies with escorts - taking more than normal displays fear. Weakness. Men like him are animals - they pounce on weakness.

"So, where can you gain advantage? Location, location, location. To too many people, your camp is your terrain, their camp is their terrain, and everywhere else is neutral. This is wrong. Even something as simple as laying down a picnic blanket with your house colours or heraldry on it can mark 'neutral' terrain as your own. You can even be more subtle than that. Say you're meeting in the library, by getting there first, standing when they arrive, and offering them a seat, you are projecting ownership of that space. And by starting a negotiation with them doing what you say - even it's as minor as taking the seat you point towards - you start with the momentum on your side. Be aware that more competent players will recognise this and take steps to counter it, but if you, Ser Mikel, are facing one of them, nothing you do will be much help.

"The other thing you can do is unsettle them. In this way, they will be distracted by those feelings, and not be able to focus their full attention on you. For example, I may do my makeup ever so slightly asymmetrically. If I'm in a gallery, I may tilt the nearby paintings ever so slightly so they're not perfectly vertical. Small things that just give an impression of 'wrongness', which aren't obvious enough to easily detect. If I were meeting a young chivalrous man, I'd likely try and use the scandalous paintings here to unsettle them - the paintings evoke feelings which their morals say are 'wrong', and they are fighting as much against themselves as you, and the battle's half-won.

"So, to bring this back to the specific: Lord Merryweather. He's the lord of a powerful house, I'm a bastard of a branch of a very minor house. So, what advantages do I have? Targaryen blood. I'll look for a location related to the royal family, making it 'home ground' for me, and reminding him that while I may be a Starkwood, I am not *just* a Starkwood. I am the *King's* half-sister!" She pulls at a strand of her hair. "Obedience to this hair colour is habitual. Be confident. Ideally find a way to be taller than I am. Appear regal. Lord Merryweather may be more beast than man, but even his instincts would baulk at insulting the royal family. In this way, I establish dominance from the off.

"With regards to reputation, think of reputation as like ... mud." She eventually settles on. "People with good reputation are coated in 'good mud', people with bad reputation are coated in 'bad mud'. Be around either, and some of their mud will attach itself to you, as some of your mud attaches to them. In this way, say you spent a lot of time with Lord Levalle, Ser Robyn, and Ser Otho: even if you actually did nothing bad yourself, simply by spending time with them, your reputation would decrease. So, always be wary before spending time with someone with a bad reputation.

"However, with Lord Merryweather, it's more than that. Lords have their pride, however undeserved. And someone like Lord Merryweather is always looking for his next 'target'. If we were to meet, and he were to feel I'd wounded his pride, there is a very definite chance he'd look for a way to 'put me in my place'. Given who it is, likely by recreating my conception, with him playing the part of the late King, and me in my mother's role."

She swallows, and Mikel can see her shaking slightly momentarily, before she realises what she's doing, and stills the movement, shooting him a firm look that forbids him from acknowledging her moment of weakness. "Anyway, we've paid that lecherous lump of fat far more attention than he deserves already, let's move on. Any more questions?"

Laena ponders a moment before shaking her head. "I trust you have the wits to not repeat any of what I have said where it might get back to our lord and master? While we may reach the same conclusion, he has made clear that he's not interested in any of the nuance and grey-shades that the reality of the situation contains, and bringing his wrath down upon me is not in my interest.

"Aside from that, remember these two things: what I have given you is just the very briefest look at the subtle art, and, due to the complexities of people, the only way to truly understand how to implement it is to practice - theory can only take you the first few steps."

She ponders for a moment more before shaking her head. "There's a *lot* more you need to learn, but it's an art, not a science. You need to find your own style. I've given you enough to start off."

Laena considers his question about Ashara for a moment, before shaking her head. "I keep confidence with both Ashara and Aerion. They are both familiar enough with my true nature that they know not to pass anything you say on. But just those two, no others."

Finally satisfied that she'd done enough, and with her throat rather dry from all that she'd said, she gives the knight a nod of acknowledgement "Ser Mikel.", and turns and departs towards where her entourage awaits.

And the final lesson I give you is unsaid: how to ensnare an honourable knight. To start, cast his greatest failing - his lowborn state - as a strength. Make him feel special, for example, by saying he alone is blameless. Scatter in flattery. And to tie everything together, feign a moment of weakness; make it seem like beneath your hard, cynical exterior, lies a vulnerable woman, in need of protection.

Do this right, and you have a man who will readily stand between you and danger for personal, rather than political, reasons.

Perfect for situations where it's too dangerous to use someone you actually care about.

[/scene from my end]