Acceptable Behaviour at Court (King’s Landing)

[Westeros]

Westeros is not a particularly forgiving place when it comes to behaviour that breaks with what is considered socially acceptable and this is particularly true for women. A woman’s reputation is one of her most valuable assets and once it has been damaged it can be incredibly difficult, even impossible, to repair it.

With King Baelor’s return to court coming up quite soon, we want to stress the importance of an intact reputation for female characters. Baelor may be very forgiving, but he takes sins very seriously. Keep in mind that this is the king that will be locking up his sisters—forbidding them all male contact—so that their beauty cannot tempt men.

In fact, we know that during Baelor’s reign, unwed women are rarely seen at court. It would limit roleplay too much if we went that route, but that makes it even more important that unwed women in particular have near-spotless reputations if they wish to remain at court.

So, what does this mean, in practice? For starters, it means observing thematically appropriate behaviour for unwed women. An unwed woman going off anywhere alone—especially with a man—is highly unlikely, she would always be accompanied by a chaperone, generally a septa if she follows the Seven. If she is not chaperoned, someone will notice. Keep in mind that there are unnamed NPCs all over the Keep and they do gossip.

We do not want to limit anyone’s roleplay but we do want roleplay to fall within what is thematically appropriate. We also do not want to end up in a situation where, once Baelor is back in King’s Landing, some characters may end up being rendered unplayable because they’ll be sent home, sent to a Motherhouse or—later on—locked up in the Maidenvault. But if those consequences are brought on by IC circumstances, they will be enforced.

We also want to stress that this does not just apply to unwed women; they are the most vulnerable to having their reputation tarnished, but to succeed at court under Baelor, everyone will need to watch out.

This includes men as well. Even Prince Aegon will be forced to keep his bad behaviour well hidden from Baelor, so debauchery coming from men could very well lead to them being recalled from court by their families since they will be seriously damaging the reputation of their houses in the eyes of Baelor. As with women, we do not want to render any character unplayable, but we will be enforcing IC consequences when necessary to ensure that Baelor’s reign has an accurate impact on court.

We hope that everyone will see this as an opportunity rather than a limitation; a religious fanatic as king is an obstacle that should generate a lot of tension and complexities.

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