fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, April 10]

"There's a very famous story on this world," Anakin began. "Of the lady or the tiger. For those of you not from this world, the short version is there was a fictional king with his own sense of justice--instead of a court system, he had an arena with two doors. Behind one door was a beautiful woman, handpicked by the king. Behind the other was a tiger. If you chose the tiger, you were eaten and declared guilty. If you chose the lady, you were considered innocent and married the lady. The king didn't care about your previous marital status or sexual orientation, apparently."

He began pacing. "One day the king discovered that his daughter had been having an affair with someone far below her station, so the man was arrested and tossed into the arena. Now the princess knew which door has what behind it, and her lover looked up to her for advice. She had two choices: watch her love die, or marry another woman. The story ends with the princess telling him which door to open, but leaves us hanging as to what waited behind it."

Anakin smiled. "Your task today is two-fold. First, pair up with a classmate and decide what the princess did. Then tell me what you would have done in the princess's place."

Stranded - Plumb

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Anemone looked around for a partner, then shrugged and sat down next to the cranky girl, one of the other library aides that she never saw. Amy? Ally? Something like that.

"He's neglecting the option of pushing the king off the throne and into the arena, and letting the tiger eat him, instead."

Adah glanced up from her tiger at the pink-haired library girl with a slight arch of her eyebrow. She gave the other girl a good look-over before picking up her pen to write.

"I'd imagine that, if he's made quite the tradition out of this, he's taken into consideration that one of the men he's condemning to death or marriage might try that at least once, and has his ass covered accordingly."

"Meanwhile, I think the author is a lazy, cop-out bastard. What a way to avoid having to step up to the fact that the princess ~~should have~~ would have chosen the tiger."

"Of course he'd suspect the man, but who suspects the pretty little princess?" Anemone asked, grinning. "Maybe she takes the throne and gets rid of her obviously stupid lover, all in one move."

Despite herself, that got a little bit of a grin out of Adah.

"Oh, I don't know if she's that clever enough. The narrative says that she thought she was in love, and love is only for fools. Out of all the characters, I have to say I support the king the most. None of that sentimental bullshit there, except perhaps a little. He did give the man a chance to live. I guess that's where the semi part of the barbaric comes in. Any smart king would have just gone and killed the lover, but, then again, he was a man and he was a father, so it would play into place that he might be wont to sadistic torture for his daughter."

She knew her father had dug that whole scene, after all. It might have skewed her perception just a bit.

Edited 2008-04-10 18:02 (UTC)

If I was the king, I'd put a lady behind both doors," she mused. "Older, cranky ladies, that are going to make the lover miserable for the rest of his life. The tiger is too easy, if they were stupid enough to get caught."

"Most likely," Adah wrote back, "the lady will turn into a nag, anyway, even if she weren't already cranky and old. I agree that the death by the tiger might be too easy, but, at the same time, I'd rather just be rid of the stupidity."

"I take back what I said about the king being my favorite character. The tiger is. I'm rooting for the tiger, and I want the tiger to have a bit of fun and a good meal."

Adah also felt a bit for the woman behind the door; she, in her eyes, was fairly innocent as well, and had done nothing to inspire all the drama of the king's insipid, sadistic pleasures. She was not, however, going to share those sentiments if she could help it.

"We aren't allowed to kill people for stupidity," Anemone said automatically, clearly parroting something she had been lectured about before. Unsuccessfully.

"If I was a tiger, this wouldn't be very fun. Wouldn't it be better if they actually let the tiger hunt? That way it's more entertaining for everyone. Well, everyone but the princess and her boyfriend."

Adah quirked an eyebrow at the seemingly automatic response from the pink haired fellow aide. No, they weren't. Not in most societies, anyway. Lives, no matter how stupid, or wasteful, or insipid, were supposedly precious, to be protected, prolonged, saved...

In most societies. Adah had seen another side of that fence, and her opinions in class so far reflected which side she liked better quite nicely. When it came time for her own life-saving Oath, she had her money on lightening striking.

She might avoid any responses down that line, though, keeping it simple with a noted, "And they already had their fun. Their fun is what got them into the whole mess to begin with."

Ethics [Thursday, April 10]

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