- Mar 4, 2019
- 27
- 12
Personally i don t know how laws are emanated in the HH setting or how much power or discretionality the position that Cornwall hold have, but is fairly assume that not all the power are in the hand of Cornwall itself but that he need the support of a political force of some kind and if his ideas were to be too radical or progressist he will never have the support to be in a role of power considering the setting in wich the elves are seen by the majority of his nation like a strange kind of intelligent beasts too stupid to learn many things and without souls at the eyes of the church of HH' s world, so considered evolutionary and morally inferior, exactly like it was many century ago in the real world in the slave trade market.While that depends on various things, but generally speaking, yes. History tends to remember the people who sacrifice for the greater good. They may not be considered a 'good politician', but a good leader, more likely than not, at least once people can look back on it honestly and leave their biases out of it. Not to mention the old excuse "I just just following orders" is one of the worse excuses there is to history...
While 'history is written by the winner', we tend to discover the truth ...eventually. I could give some real world examples, but real world politics is not really an acceptable topic here.
Not all democracies require a majority of the population to vote on every piece of legislation, and not every rule is put in place the same way. Some laws/rules are implemented by voting (usually local, and even those can be ignored by the higher ups), some are voted in by the representatives who are voted for, but they are then free to "vote their conscience" (assuming they have one), and others can be put in place by non elected/appointed positions such as the head of a department (which is where Cornwall falls) or a judge (some judges are elected, others are appointed).
A judge or appointed department head can make huge changes to the laws we have or how they are interpreted, far more than many elected politicians.
Cornwall is still a leader of a conservative force and while his first concern is the economic and social stability of his society but he has a progessist take on the slaves condition not a reactionary one or at least seems to me, considering that in real world till the abolition of the slavery many slaves where considered just a property without any kind of rights, giving basic rights to someone is a huge step in the direction of recognize someone as an human being.
Basically i think he is trying to go in the direction of elves rights step by step in a slow but democratic way trying to do so without causing instability chaos and bloodshed, also the not inclusion in the Act of the halfelves it s caused by the same fears, a too repentine subversion of social and economic sistem will cause in his eyes instability of everykind.