Some blame disloyal servants

Look, a lord’s favourite excuse is rarely an excuse. It is a confession with better tailoring.

Right, give a man a bad harvest, a late raven, a missing knight, or a village that has somehow caught fire in the wrong direction, and he will reach for the same words he always reaches for. Some blame the weather. Some blame disloyal servants. Some blame the gods, which is a useful arrangement, since the gods are notoriously poor at answering back.

Look, that choice tells you his temper more plainly than any feast-day speech. A lord who blames weather believes the world is an enemy with no face. A lord who blames servants believes every failure is treason waiting to be punished. A lord who blames fate wants credit for his victories and absolution for his defeats. You can hear the shape of his rule in the excuse he repeats.

And this is why I cannot leave the matter alone. Men spend years studying a lord’s banners, marriages, castles, and battles, as if power is something that hangs outside him like a cloak. Nonsense. Power leaks out in the little evasions. The favourite excuse is where the lord stops pretending to be grand and shows you what he thinks other people are for.

Right, the lord who says, “No one told me,” is not merely uninformed. He is offended that information did not crawl up the steps and beg to be noticed. He wants a court arranged around his attention, with every messenger responsible for carrying not only the news but the burden of making him wise.

Look, the lord who says, “I was badly advised,” has a different heat in him. He is the sort who welcomes counsel only when it arrives dressed as agreement. When the plan works, it was his judgement. When it fails, some poor councillor has apparently stolen it from him in the night. Such a man does not fear mistakes half so much as he fears being seen to own one.

Right, then there is the favourite of every lord with a temper too large for his treasury: “They forced my hand.” Forced it? How obliging of them. This is the excuse of a man who wants all the pleasures of violence without the unpleasant responsibility of choosing it. He is not cruel, he insists. He was compelled. The sword simply happened to be in his hand, and the edge simply happened to find a throat.

Look, I was raised in the Westerlands, where a man’s pride is often polished more carefully than his plate, and I have heard every variety of this. My father’s favourite was, “It was only a jest,” which may explain both his title and the unfortunate number of people who stopped laughing when he entered a room. I inherited the title. The jokes, regrettably, came with it.

Still, that excuse has a temper of its own. “Only a jest” belongs to the lord who treats other people’s pain as proof of their dullness. If you object, you lack wit. If you are angry, you are humourless. If you strike back, why, now you are the dangerous one. A joke becomes a little castle, and the lord retreats behind its walls whenever he has wounded somebody.

Look, excuses are not all equal, and neither are the tempers beneath them. “I did not know” can become humility if followed by learning. “I was afraid” can become courage if spoken before the blow, not after it. The revealing part is not the words alone. It is whether the lord uses them to repair the damage or merely to move himself farther away from it.

Right, watch what he does after the excuse. Does he ask who suffered? Does he pay the cost? Does he change the order that failed? Or does he search for another name to place between himself and the truth?

That is the measure. A lord’s favourite excuse reveals not what he thinks happened, but whom he believes should bear it. And if the answer is always somebody else, what else are we meant to call that but temper with a crown on it?