Election 1896: A Winner Announced!

Fallen London
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[quote=Jolanda Swan]The Princess we saw in the elections could have been an enitrely different Princess that the one we have been meeting so far.
The Priness we knew was powerful, ruthless and very, very clever. The election Princess was childish, spoiled and had no idea of how people think (really? You do not know why doors are necessary?).[/quote]

The impression I got from the get go with that was that she was deliberately sealing the door shut. I haven’t played through her storyline in Sunless Skies, so if that shows differently then I’ll defer to that, but given–as Gul pointed out–that these posters were incendiary devices, I don’t think that’s necessarily a broken take.
edited by Snowskeeper on 7/6/2018

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I’ve found this thread and the arguments in it to be quite interesting, so to begin with I’d like to thank you all for sparking such an interesting conversation, good points have been raised all around. However, there is something that’s been troubling me as we’ve attempted to explain the actions of the Captivating Princess. As of the moment, her actions during the storylet where you share honey with her during the Feast of the Exceptional Rose have been glossed over for the most part. As such, I shall raise a point that we need to address if we wish to understand the Captivating Princess in her entirety. Just in case you haven’t seen it, here’s the text for the storylet I am referring to.

[quote]&quotA delightful dream&quot

She is charming. She finds you charming. Would you care to share a little honey after the dessert? You would? Splendid.
Envious eyes and three chaperones follow your departure to a private chamber. You share a dream of bright skies, sunlight and endless lush grass. She whispers in your ear. &quotThere are other honeys,&quot she says. &quotAre you the one who will share them with me?&quot Her eyes gleam red, here in the field you dream together. Something terrifying has leached into the air. But she is mesmerising.
You wake in Watchmaker’s Hill. The air of your thoughts is clouded deep red. There is a taste like blood in your mouth. The Princess is gone.[/quote]

To be candid, I find the implications of her actions in this storylet are nothing short of horrifying. The Princess spikes your honey with Gaoler’s Honey, she essentially roofies the player. By doing this, she tricks you into violating the mind of another, leafing through their memories like pages in a book. If we are to excuse the Princess for using Red Honey herself, justifying it by saying that that she has her own reasons just as Feducci has his for being a slave trader during the war with Hell, then we must evaluate her actions here in themselves without the Honey.

Removing Red Honey from the equation as it is just the means she uses, we are left with the fact that she violates the player’s consent, she does not even consider it a real factor. In the past, I have always felt that this fact has been downplayed or ignored by many in the community, whether they are fans of the Captivating Princess or not, and I think this is a major issue. I believe that if the Captivating Princess was male, if she was the Captivating Prince, this would not be overlooked. In fact, I think far more people would be horrified and outraged by this storylet. But this should not be true, no matter the Captivating Princess’ gender, no matter her reasons, no matter how the view of her character is shifted, I cannot in good conscience, nor should anyone else be able to, excuse what she does in this storylet. Even if we ignore the terrifying nature of the substance used, we are still left with an act that makes me feel sick to my stomach.

If one wants to understand the Captivating Princess, the true nature of her character, or even why some individuals such as myself were so against voting for her in the Mayoral Election, one only needs to look as far as this story to find the answers. Thank you for your time.

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Huh, I’ve always interpreted that as the player &quotagreeing&quot to the horrible proposal and then waking up with your memory blanked. As in, she doesn’t slip it to you on the sly like some date rape drug, she outright proposes you take it and then gets you to do so by being so irresistible. Something terrifying has leached into the air. But she is mesmerising.

I don’t think this is any better, just different (instead of being secretly drugged you’re essentially being mind-controlled - like a rodent looking into the eyes of a snake).
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edited by Anne Auclair on 7/5/2018

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That is another valid interpretation, but as you say, &quotSomething terrifying has leeched into the air. But she is mesmerising.&quot I would argue this interpretation is no better, because even though it shifts the issue, there is still a clear problem here. She pressures you into doing it instead of not even telling you. I may be something of a stickler, but pressuring someone into doing something using your influence, that still leads us back to the same issue, consent. She is mesmerising, she makes a flat refusal become unthinkable. I don’t think it is unfair to say that no matter how you slice this particular situation, what she does is unjustifiable, no matter how she gets the player to take Red Honey. I can understand the instinct to find a different view of this, but ultimately I can not abide by that in good conscience.

Edit: Was a bit late and didn’t see your edit, thank you for clarifying your view of this.
edited by MEverett on 7/5/2018

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Coming back round to Feducci, none of his slaves consented to be whipped by him or chained to an oar. The only difference is that he never actually enslaves the player, he just enslaved other people. That’s why I consider them morally identical. Going further, Feducci at first appears to get consent for his duels to the death, but he doesn’t tell people that he himself can’t actually die…which kind of makes said consent rather empty, as he’s not honestly telling people what’s about to happen when they face him. He’s tricking people.

I don’t think I’ve ever minimized how much of a nightmare her Royal Highness is.

[quote=Madison Everett]
Edit: Was a bit late and didn’t see your edit, thank you for clarifying your view of this.[/quote]
I initially thought putting agreement in quotes made it clear - but then I realized &quotwait, I should probably be more explicit that you’re being mind zapped.&quot
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edited by Anne Auclair on 7/5/2018

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[quote=Gul al-Ahlaam]She’s the same character, just trying to put on a more friendly face so she can win the popular vote.[/quote]Surely not? She might be the same character, but if she was earnestly trying to win the popular vote, she wouldn’t have stepped all over the lower classes by planning to ban journalists (one of her channels of communication with said lower classes) or put up posters, flammable or otherwise, over doorways. If she was truly a manipulative mastermind and wanted to win the popular vote, she would’ve found ways to appeal to the lower classes, and avoided saying or doing anything like in those two examples. Meet the people, kiss their babies. Well, she did throw out money into the streets, but apparently that mainly caused riots. Maybe she should have bribed the Failbetter Games writing staff to have that turn out better?

And I didn’t see any of those coins! Really, if she wanted to win the election by spreading wealth, she should have spread some to me. It would probably have made me feel obligated to return the favour by convincing my ‘creatures’ to vote for her. After all, that’s why I voted for Sinning Jenny. Every Feast of the Exceptional Rose she handles roughly a quarter of my seasonal opportunities. That’s not nothing. All the Captivating Princess ever did was giving me a mildly interesting experience involving some kind of ‘other honey’. And that was only interesting the first time. Every feast after that one she was best avoided.

And her jar of bees does not compare to the helmet and lance I got from Feducci. Not even.

… Elderberries!

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The issue I have with the points you have made Lady Auclair, and the point you just made, is this: I was not discussing Feducci, in fact he barely has any relevance in this analysis of the Princess. What he has done gives us absolutely no insight into the actions of the Captivating Princess, and in my opinion it comes across as a distraction. I do not know if that is your intention or not, but it avoids the main point of the discussion, which is what the Princess has done and how that affected how players perceived her.
I do not doubt that you have acknowledged some of the Princess’ most heinous actions in the past, but in the context of this discussion I feel you have refused to do so by refocusing the conversation to the actions of our last morally problematic mayoral candidate. Again, I have no way to gauge your intentions, but so far it has seemed to me that you have refused to acknowledge a point being made against the Princess unless it is irrefutable, but again I may be wrong. Either way, I feel that the best way to understand how the Princess lost is to evaluate her on her own merits and flaws, not by comparing them to the merits and flaws of another. This was my intent in my original comment analysing the Red Honey Incident, to give an insight into the Princess that would explain why people didn’t want to vote for her. I’ve had a very interesting time debating this, but I think there is nothing left for me to say that has not already been said more eloquently by another. Farewell, and I politely invite you to place this inside your pipe and have an invigorating smoke.

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&quotPopular vote&quot isn’t synonymous with &quotthe vote of the poor.&quot She was popular among bohemians and academics, as well as high-society loyalists, and polled extremely well among notable tastemakers (the player characters). Focusing on specific demographic groups and trying to suppress turnout among others is a perfectly legitimate electoral strategy. And besides, I did rather explicitly say the following:

[li]
edited by Gul al-Ahlaam on 7/5/2018

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It kind of does actually, as both Feducci and the Princess are pretty explicit that they consider each other soulmates.

They’re the same! They say as much! And they totally approve of one another because of this mutual likeness!

The Princess’s red honey drinking? Feducci is totally cool with it. Because why wouldn’t he be? It’s no worse then what he’s done.

I don’t see this as off topic - this was my original topic.

btw, the wedding is actually kinda horrifying when you stop to think about it - the two of them teaming up :P
edited by Anne Auclair on 7/5/2018

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But there is one way in which the Princess and Feducci are not the same, and while I agree that it is evidence of a double standard, I don’t think its the same one you are thinking of.

It is implied that the Princess sees people as either tools or toys, and regularly seduces people who she treats cruelly and then discards when bored or annoyed in a way that leaves them seriously emotionally scared (or dead).

Feducci on the other hand is charismatic, well liked, a man of mystery, probably actually a really awful person - but we know little to nothing about Feducci’s love life. It would have been entirely possible for Feducci to have been written as a character who had a string of paramours who he had no genuine feelings for, treated awfully, and then discarded, leaving them emotionally damaged by the experience, and doing so would not have made him less of a &quotmasculine&quot villain - but I suspect it would have made him considerably less popular, and even more hated then he already is.

tl;dr - Feducci’s crimes stopped short of him being an abuser, and while looking at any sort of objective terribleness that probably shouldn’t matter, the election isn’t a contest of least-objective-terribleness - its a contest of how easy it is to root for a character, and people don’t like to root for abusers.

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Slavery.

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Yeah, the slaving. Also the gathering up legions of people who hero-worship him and leading them to their deaths. Then coming to London, gathering up every warrior he could find with a tentative grip on life, and made them fight to the death for his amusement.

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To emphasize: several of the people he recruited seem to be in vulnerable states of mind when you encounter them. At least one of them is still reeling from the death of a loved one. It’s implied that Feducci is explicitly preying on vulnerable individuals because he knows they’re more likely to be willing to die permanently, and therefore more likely to help him indulge what is essentially a risk-free hobby for him.

Would argue that qualifies as abuse of vulnerable individuals on a similar, if perhaps slightly milder, level as what the Princess was doing. Certainly it is abuse of prestige and social position, although in his case these are due to his status as master of the fight clubs of London (and now his mayoral status, I guess).
edited by Snowskeeper on 7/6/2018

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…and now I will forever picture Feducci as an avatar of Odin.

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I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’

136

This poem describes the pre-election Princess perfectly.

137

As a general PSA, the Contrarian’s Opportunity Card is now live! Investigating him is echoed at the top of my profile.

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I love that the Mayor is actually doing his job - albeit in classically Contrarian way. We’ve essentially elected for London to sit out dancing in order to non-stop argue with the Contrarian for the next year.

139

Is the Mayor’s card generally available? I drew it in Ladybones and since it mentions that his house is there, I wondered if it’s location-based. Arguing produces a revolutionaries favour, as in Feducci’s case

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I drew the card in The Flit, so just like the previous Mayor of London cards, it’s not location-based.