Would Milord Like Sauce With That?

Bah.  270 tedious words on the new chapter, which have no future except as construction lines.  The construction they imply is much more interesting, but that isn't accomplished yet.

I'm beginning to feel that my diplomats can go and stick diplomacy where the sun don't... Eh?  Beg pardon?

The question which sabotages is: how do you get a young and green feudal lord from an honour culture to engage with you at the same time as - from his point of view - (i) insulting him; (ii) threatening him; and (iii) undercutting the whole basis of his and his peers' legitimacy?  By 'engage' note that I don't mean in furious mortal combat, with either himself or his guards!  Guards!

Methods already foreseen:

(a) Give him something spookily incalculable, but evidently and unexpectedly real, to fear if things go bad.
(b) Set things up so that declaring hostility holds at least as many problems for his pride as talking.
(c) Give him both reasons and pretexts to make magnanimous excuses for your audacity.

These don't have to hold up for that long, because while success in the talks would be an extremely desirable outcome, it's not the most likely outcome, and is a pretty secondary consideration to their sheer distraction value.  Unfortunately, it becomes more and more obvious as I write that said methods are reeds too weak for their purpose.

So what I got out of my bad words this morning was chiefly

(d) Let him seize the initiative with a real genius plan to seize unlimited honour and dominion from this unpromising situation, in a way that only his heroic vision and forbearance could ever have dreamed of.

The 'real' part in that sentence is strictly optional.  But the way my antagonist jumped at that opportunity, as I plodded out the door to work wondering what next, reminded me forcibly of two things.  Firstly, what a consummate bred-in-the-bone predator a proper feudal aristocrat is - even a relatively 'nice' one.

And secondly, above and beyond all that, how very much this man is the son of the mother he never knew.  I'd thought he'd be far easier for me to nudge around, but now I'm none so sure.

I'll do well to get all these knots undone by the end of the month.

- Diplomacy!   PPPPPPPTTTTH!  I taunt it a second time; I fart in its general direction!