Lover of princess killed in trial: Did the princess play a part in the outcome?
By Starr Sackstein
The crowd watched on as the princess’s lover selected the door which would lead to his death.
It had been speculated by many that perhaps the princess would offer leniency to her lover and save him from potential doom.
Sources close to the princess have stated, “Her decision had been indicated in an instant, but it had been made after days and nights of anguished deliberation. She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would answer, and, without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.”
Was this gesture in fact the hint that the lover was waiting for? Citizens of the kingdom have called their king “semi-barbaric”, so it is possible that his daughter possesses the same genetic inclination.
The princess later said, “I have seen this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon my lover, and sometimes I thought these glances were perceived and even returned.” She continued, “Now and then I had seen them talking together; it was but for a moment or two, but much can be said in a brief space; it may have been on most unimportant topics, but how could I know that? The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to my beloved; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, I hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent door.”
The king was questioned about the outcome of the event, to which he stated, “this vast amphitheatre, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages, is an agent of poetic justice, in which crime is punished. Or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.”
Only the criminal can decide his/her own fate according to the king. He just sets up the trial when necessary.
“When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king, surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheatre,” stated Stockton when retelling the events from earlier that afternoon.
“When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day the fate of tile accused person would be decided in the king's arena,--a structure which well deserved its name; for, although its form and plan were borrowed -from afar, its purpose emanated solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king, knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism,” stated a citizen of the kingdom about the structure of their justice system.
Is this a fair method of justice? It is for the king and his kingdom to decide.
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