Ah. He's putting together a few more of the pieces. Laws won't stop feuding in the streets, because justice is never so viscerally satisfying as personal retribution for a personal harm -- Claudius knows because so much of his politicking lay in working around or with people's worse natures. Keeping a young man who continued a feud without punishing him around would be politically disastrous, but any public punishment would still seem to be choosing sides, giving the families more to argue and murder each other over. Even moreso, when the most recent violence involved the prince's own kin. In the prince's place, Claudius is sure he'd quietly send that young man somewhere else, until the incident was forgotten. A mercy, unless that young man had a desperate reason to stay.
"I see," he says, simply and swiftly summing up his thoughts. He pauses before the door to his workshop, opening it up to the familiar smells of hanging herbs and bubbling distillations, of old books and scrap metal. "No wonder you're in the mood for the duel. There's no one you can settle this particular debt with -- and even if you did, it wouldn't bring Romeo back. Or Tybalt. Is that why you miss him?"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-08-27 03:34 pm (UTC)"I see," he says, simply and swiftly summing up his thoughts. He pauses before the door to his workshop, opening it up to the familiar smells of hanging herbs and bubbling distillations, of old books and scrap metal. "No wonder you're in the mood for the duel. There's no one you can settle this particular debt with -- and even if you did, it wouldn't bring Romeo back. Or Tybalt. Is that why you miss him?"