Next week will be a return to "Luz's crimes" thanks to MorningMark posing a fun comic. Here it is: r/TheOwlHouse/comments/1bbazn8/body/
Sorry about posting it later than usual, was down for a while.
After the 15-minute break
Once the last noble returned to their place, Moon slammed her gavel down.
"I hereby call the trial to order."
The Box of Truth rose back into the air from its resting place and showed a bright light down beneath it.
"Mewnisters, it is your turn now to ask questions."
Lady Jassmine Flowers stood up first and walked down to the light.
"Ex-queen Eclipsa. Did you abandon your husband, King Shastakan, and abdicate your throne to elope with a monster?"
As she asked this question, a holographic portrait of the event occurred, ending with a holo-monster standing in front of Eclipsa.
"Oh, hello, sweetie. Yes, I did run off with a monster. But could you really blame me? How could I resist a smile like that? Also, I made sure all the paperwork for abdication was filled and left where the relevant Mewnisters could find it in the morning when I ran off into the night. My wand was left on the Book of Spells on the throne. I even left a note saying they could pick whoever they wanted to replace me! I made sure that they would have no reason to come after me for doing that beyond loving a monster."
Jasmin nodded before heading back to her spot. She was replaced by Lady Marine Waterson.
"Eclipsa, when you were in contact with the Prince of Darkness, your monster husband and one of the leaders of the monsters, did you ever divulge state secrets or anything that they could use against the kingdom you swore an oath to protect?"
Eclipsa opened her mouth as she was about to answer before stopping to think.
"There was that time I found out that an assassin was being sent after him. And the time I told him about a medic convoy and asked him to make sure it wasn't attacked. I also gave him the location of a few forts and ambushes so he and his forces could avoid them."
She continued for a few minutes, listing several more things she had told him before running out.
"I would like to mention that I only talked to him about this stuff when I thought it would prevent people from dying, and that is the only way he used it apart from killing the assassin who tried to kill him first."
She then walked back to the booth to be replaced by Lord Falcon Redbird.
"Eclipsa, please describe your opinion of your Mewman husband King Shastacan."
Eclipsa scowled at that. "He was a spoiled pig that I was in an arranged marriage with. It was set up by my mother in her will to 'show solidarity between the mewman kingdoms.' We went through the ceremony and acted like roommates. Unfortunately, he began to grow feelings for me. I told him point blank multiple times about how I did not like him like that and never showed that I liked him. The only reason I didn't annul the marriage after my gruncle Jushtin married into the Spiderbites himself was that I decided to just abdicate the throne instead."
Lord Falcon nodded before walking back to the booth. He was replaced by Lord Jordan Fields.
"How did King Shastacan and half the Spiderbite kingdom die in a single day?"
Eclipsa cringed at that. "My monster husband ate him while rampaging through the kingdom while searching for our daughter."
She then sighed and looked downwards in a depressed manner. "Mewman blood has an intoxicating effect on Size Shifters like my husband. After he ate Shastacan in a rage, the rest was a mix of searching for her, defending himself, and going on a bender to deal with the pain of losing her."
Lord Jordan blinked at that. "Really? Mewman blood does that? Are there any other monsters that have the same effect?"
You already asked your question and this isn't related to this trial. You can ask this later.
He cringed before heading back to the bench. Lord Percy McKnight marched forward with his hand on his sheathed sword hilt.
"You're majesty, did you remove the option to pay for taxes by serving in the military?"
Eclipsa steadied herself before looking him in the eye.
"Yes, I did. As I said, I tried everything to get the government to stop the war. They wouldn't listen to anything else I tried, so I went with this to reduce the number of people who were killing monsters. I kept it off for 3 years before I abdicated the throne."
She then shrugged. "Unfortunately, it didn't stop them from fighting. I have no idea how Lord Arthur was able to convince so many to continue to fight for him."
Lord Percy stared at her with contempt before turning to Lady Ruby and waving her over as he walked back to the booth.
"Do you know how the taxes were paid in your time and how your decision negatively impacted people?"
Eclipsa shrugged. "Not really. I just let House Stone worry about that."
Lady Ruby turned to the Box. "Can I explain how this works?"
Due to her ignorance impacting her ability to answer your question, I will allow it.
She nodded before pulling out a scroll, turned back to Eclipsa, and began to read from it. "There are two taxes to focus on. The first is called rent, which is the tax paid to the local nobles who owned the land the peasants were working on. The second is the Teloumenon, which is a household tax paid to the central government. The exact mechanics of how much taxes you have to pay aren't relevant to this, but there are three ways to pay either of them. Money, the equivalent value in goods, or unpaid labor. The unpaid labor is used for things like building or maintaining government-owned things like roads, being a servant in the castle doing things like shoveling poop, or joining the military."
She then gestured over to Lord Percy. "Lord Percy can give you a better run down on how the military worked, but it involves forces armed by the nobles themselves and peasants that provided their equipment out of pocket in a levy.
"That equipment is expensive and time-consuming to make and get, so it takes a while to get ready. Most villages will pay both taxes during wartime by giving soldiers for one tax and weapons and armor for the other. Even if they go into debt for it during peace times, most conflicts last long enough that the soldiers and weapons can keep them from paying taxes for a while and allow them to recoup their losses. They might even see a profit if the war goes on long enough like the war against the monsters did."
Lady Ruby then narrowed her eyes at Eclipsa. "However, when you made it so that peasants couldn't pay taxes by serving in the military, you also made it so that they had a much harder time paying in weapons and armor. Before when they provided them with the soldiers, they had a very high chance of getting them back after the war to hold onto until the next one. Now, the army either didn't need the stuff due to manpower shortages or just took them with little incentive to return them to the same village later. This cost the villages very expensive equipment that could take years more to make, and that already put them in debt to provide.
"In a single pen stroke, your plan to reduce the conflict left a large number of peasants into a bind where the method they had planned on paying for their taxes wouldn't work anymore, and often made it so they couldn't pay any other way. Lots of families had their possessions seized to make up the difference, leaving them homeless. That combined with a smaller army meant that the monster forces had an easier time hunting down groups of mewmans to kill."
She looked Eclipsa right in the eye. "In trying to stop the war, you killed and beggared a large number of the people you swore to protect."
Eclipsa paled at that, looking over to the Box, which just nodded in response to Ruby's accusations. She eventually composed herself and returned to the bench. Lady Carice Cross walked over to take her place.
"Before I ask my question for the Box to judge, are you ok?"
Eclipsa just looked at her for a moment before blowing her nose. "I am in as good condition as someone in my position could be in. You can continue the questioning."
She just nodded. "Verry well, my question for you is this. Did you secretly give orders to my ancestor Lord Fredrick orders to covertly send medicine to the monster to combat a plague they were facing, and did you know what happened after they used it?"
Eclipsa scouled at the question. "Yes, I did. That bastard sent them poison instead and killed hundreds. I was trying to build trust with the monsters to hopefully gain enough goodwill to get them to stop the war on their end and make it easier for me to stop it on my end. Instead, it just intensified the fighting."
That is what she thinks happened, but it isn't what happened.
Eclipsa just blinked and turned to the Box. "Are you saying-." Eclipsa cut herself off before turning to Lady Carice with a pleading look.
"Given Lady Ruby could give you context, I believe I can do the same thing."
You can.
"To make a long and complicated story short, monster biology is different from mewman biology. Medicine and techniques that work on one won't work on the other. Sometimes it will even be harmful. This is what happened with your medicine. The species you sent them to either had bad reactions and died outright or it had no effect on them."
She then gave Eclipsa a pitting look. "I know you were only trying to help, but my ancestor did say he tried multiple times to warn you about this."
Eclipsa's eyes began to tear up. "Yes, he did. I thought he was just making excuses to not have to treat monsters. And I treated him so horribly afterward. I lost one of the few friends I had in the Mewnistry over my own mistakes."
Lady Carice walked forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "Hay, it's ok. You messed up, everyone does it. The important part is that you learn from your mistakes and aim to not repeat them in the future."
She then backed up and went back to the other nobles. Lady Berenice Firefly walked out to face Eclipsa with the eyes of a teacher about to give an exam.
"Who did you leave your throne and wand to when you abdicated, and how did you reach said decision?"
Eclipsa sighed in relief at that. "Thank you for asking an easy question. As I mentioned before, I left a note saying they could choose whoever they wanted. I did since I did not doubt that they wouldn't accept anyone I put forward."
Lady Berenice just continued to stare at her before she nodded and returned to the bench, pushing the last noble forward.
"Finally, this was taking forever and stopped being fun 3 nobles ago."
"Quiet Star!"
Lady Juniper Forest looked at Eclipsa with annoyance. "Do you know what happened after you left and before Festivia was delivered to us by your husband and how it affected the kingdom?"
Eclipsa shrugged. "No idea whatsoever. I and my husband were more interested in setting up our new life together in hiding, then we were dealing with being new parents, and then I was crystallized."
You can tell her.
Lady Juniper nodded before she continued. "According to our records, the week immediately following your leaving was filled with arguing over who should be the queen. Every one of the noble's houses has a claim to the throne through one or more of your ancestors. The houses eventually pulled their forces from the front lines to begin getting ready to seize the throne and wand themselves through force.
"The monsters didn't stop their assault because of this either. Mina is good, but even she has limits when her fellow Solarians decide to back one of the noble houses in the pending war."
She then got a downcast look on her face. "At the end, there were 9 small armies with about a dozen Solarians each ready to fight over the throne while the last dozen of the Solarians were focused on keeping the monsters from taking too much advantage over the chaos and failing.
"If it wasn't for your Mewman husband bringing Festivia from the Spiderbite kingdom and providing evidence of you hiding her there to protect her from the nobles and monsters that might try and use her to force your hand, they would have torn the kingdom to shreds."
Eclipsa turned to the Box.
"I know at least one thing in that statement is wrong, but can you save it for after the last questions are all done?"
Ok.
2190 words on part two, and Star's opinion is my own.
As I have said before, I am ok with Eclipsa not being liked for her pro-monster views during an anti-monster time, but she also seemed to be a bad queen. I am trying to go for a "she means well, but has no idea how to be a queen due to her mother caring more about the battlefield and never teaching her how to do that part of royalty and the other nobles work against her agenda."
Info on taxes is taken from this video: watch?v=2kjPCzBMZns
As for Globgor getting drunk off mewman blood and the medicine killing monsters, that is just me showing that there is a difference biologically between the Mewmans that goes more than just skin deep. any attempts at equality between Mewmans and Monsters HAS to consider this, and it will be explored more in my future works.
Noble houses are taken from JGSS0109, whose work was deleted due to events I am not comfortable talking about happening. I am still using the nobles because I needed a large number of them to ask the questions and didn't want to make them all up myself.
I decided for my New Year's Resolution to do one fanfic chapter a week for all of 2024. Who knows how long I will be able to keep this up, but next week's fanfic chapter is up on my . This is also being posted on , AO3, and Tumbler.
: /user?u=10132890
: s/14051718/1/luz-appreciation-week-2022-from-1228248
AO3: /works/52823413/chapters/133608991
Tumbler: blog/brianedner
I am also doing fanfic info dumps, think wiki articles that go one episode at a time with some compilations at the end on certain topics that are sorted by episode.
Fanfic info dumps here: 1228248/gallery