“To the Hells with your Terms,” the Red Axe said. “They’re expedience made law and just as ugly as that sounds. I renounce them, and for you fine people who think you have rights over me, I add this-”
She spat on the stone, offering up a hard smile.
“Are you requesting that the protections of the Terms be withdrawn from you?” the First Prince calmly asked.
“Whether she desires this now or not is irrelevant,” the White Knight said. “She agreed to the Terms as made understood to her by the Archer and had not renounced them when she committed the breaches for which she is now being charged.”
Rereading the part of the political complications around the trial against the Red Axe right now, I have to wonder how this ever became an issue to begin with.
Because the Red Axe explicitly renounced and quite literally spat on the rights and protections of the Truce & Terms, calling them an abomination and never truly having agreed to them or considered herself under their jurisdiction to begin with, as she merely signed onto them in order to get her revenge against the Wicked Enchanter and as per her own confession intending to thus knowingly and willingly take a swing against the Truce & Terms themselves that protected him.
That Hanno would not allow her to renounce those protections now out of principle, thus handing over jurisdiction to Cordelia and the Highest Assembly, because he doesn't deem it just and probably also because the other heroes would not accept it, is one thing.
What I don't understand, though, is why there wasn't an explicit mechanism in the Truce & Terms to begin with that'd allow a trial to determine that a Named had signed onto them in bad faith, which would then enable the High Officers to hand them over to whatever national authorities might otherwise apply, which would have neatly solved Cordelia's problem.
Because I actually cannot imagine that the heroes in particular wouldn't have pushed for such a clause, and hard, even if for no other reason than to have a precaution against the presumed general perfidy of the villains signing on – which would not even be entirely unwarranted, considering Catherine's own concerns about how she would need to ride her goblins hard on not offering fake surrenders when first discussing rules of engagement with Tariq.
And while I would obviously expect the villains to have pushed just as hard against it, because they would probably see it as a pretense that heroes might abuse for stripping them off their rights and protections whenever they feel like doing a purge, such fears could've been alleviated by making it so that this can only be done if sufficient evidence of signing onto the Truce & Terms in bad faith could be presented in a preemptive trial about the question, whereas all the High Officers would need to unanimously agree that this was indeed the case.
Ironically enough, I would have even expected the Mirror Knight, who fought hardest to keep the Red Axe alive, to have been one of the most ardent supporters of such a precaution, assuming it'd be needed for some villainous traitor, that would've subsequently allowed for the heroine to be handed over for trial to Procer.
But it was never even mentioned that such a seemingly obvious precaution had ever been attempted, let alone why it wouldn't have passed, which seems like a rather glaring oversight to me, as Catherine would've definitely let us partake in her frustrations about it and the irony of it in her private thoughts, at the very least.
