Court Of Truth
From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki
Title: Court of Truth
Author: Stephanos
The Court of Truth. Hallowed bastion of Justice, walls firm against Falsehood, bars and chains keeping Wrong in its place! At least, so those who preside here wish it to seem. But judges and prosecutors and bailiffs alike are peopld just as you or I, and as for we their minds and mouths are woven with weaknesses and selfish interests. So long as their hands hold the keys in this place it is a Court not of Truth but of people.
As all courts are, of course, there is no other way for them to be. A gathering where gossip decides cold shoulders for a difficult member of the community, is a court! And its proceedings are muddled and mutable as all courts are.
But a concerned sewing circle does not crown itself with a Principle, does not insist on the association whenever it is named. A court must be distrusted, must be examined, so its decisions can be made good ones, but how could one distrust a 'Court of Truth', how could one look at its officers and see their frailties and missteps? That demands a leap that common folk do not have time to make as they tend their fields and hawk their wares. And so those who know well whose opinions in their village can be trusted and whose cannot do not apply this same examination to the officers within these walls. Perhaps this is an accident born of our Britannian traditions, perhaps it is by design so those who ought be most examined escape our eyes, but the result is the same: rot finds fetid home within the Court.
How many times have the starving stood before the court on trial, when the true crime was their desperate state? How many times have the mad been condemned to these cells when their violence is not crime but symptom of their sickness? Who can forget the trial of Ricardo in the wake of the Ophidian invasion, the stepping stone in Casca the Tyrant's ascent to steal the Throne?
I do not write these words to scoff at Virtue or Principle, but at an institution which shields itself from due examination using them. I speak only in warning: in this Court, Truth is not guiding Principle but merely a word, and it behooves all of us to watch its proceedings with distrust rather than blindly following its charge.