Revision: Evil Pinned Down

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: A running problem with the revision has been trying to make Evil Lord Evil's behaviour make consistent sense that doesn't boil down, on closer analysis, to "Everything I do, I do it cos I'm Stupid Evil!"   Yes, he is what at least in parlour-psychological terms would be called a high-functioning sociopath; but, hello, high-functioning!

But I've finally worked out what he's about, and why he's always slipped out of my grasp like a greased pig up till now.  I've been thinking of the less-evil antagonists as the cautious, canny, reluctant modernizers, and Lord Evil as the defender of the worst of the bad old ways - he is, after all, pretty much the poster boy for viciously irresponsible aristocratic privilege.

Actually, everything he does starts making a hell of a lot more sense now I understand him as the modernizer - the improver - the guy who's really good at figuring out how to make oppression pay and look shiny, instead of cost and smell stinky.  His rivals are rationalists, but they're conservative mediaeval rationalists: not his kind at all.  But Lord Evil's found the hole in their law-web, and - for all his early mistakes - he's found a 'progressive' way to mine money out of it, at the peasants' expense, without destroying them.   And it's an exploit that only a certain sort of... focused... mind could have thought of.

In a way it's the inverse of Our Heroes' existential challenge to the old manorial regime.  Our lad might be really at home today, in the ministries and boardrooms of the prison-industrial complex.

Anyhow, now I know where his policy's coming from, and why some of his existing advice goes the way it does.  From where he's standing, Katy & Co. just threw the Dale-Lords the opportunity of three lifetimes.

And I think he's finally thrown me the master-clue to the Revised Political Plot.