To Be Lawful Or Good / Literature

Examples of characters forced to break from "lawful", or whose status as such is called into question.

• 1Q84: Aomame thinks that the illegality of her actions are a trivial detail when compared to the very real harm done by the men she kills.
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Huck spends much time dealing with the fact he wants to free Jim, a slave, but has been raised to believe following the law is necessary to be good, that hell awaits lawbreakers as they are evildoers. Huck ultimately decides he'd rather go to hell than support the law.
  "It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right, then, I'll GO to hell" — and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog."
• Beast Tamer Knight sub-captain Stella Enplace slides all the way into Chaotic Good. Her knight order is honor-bound to the petty and tyrannical Fromege family with the heir Edgar being so entitled that he just walks right up to people in broad daylight and demands women be handed over to him and responds with violence when they don't, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. She seriously bends if not outright breaks several codes of chivalry in order to help protagonist Rein Shroud bring the Fromerge family down.
• In The Caves of Steel, R. Daneel Olivaw initially doesn't even understand the conflict — he is programmed to seek justice, a concept he defines as "that which exists when all the laws are enforced". By the end of the novel, he develops a more nuanced approach, letting the murderer off the hook partly because the murder was unintentional and partly in the interests of a more important cause.
• Chronicles of a Reluctant Necromancer features a protagonist manipulated in that he is asked to steal a corpse of a rich man's daughter (by the dead daughter herself) in that if he doesn't help her, he is violating his oath to The Goddess and will go to hell for it.
• Discworld:
  • Commander Vimes firmly believes that sticking to the law is what makes him a good man, but when Lawful and Good conflict, he'll choose Good without a second thought. He will then work out why what he did was actually Lawful in the circumstances, and go back to being The Fettered without missing a beat. (In Snuff, his justification was "this should be against the law; I have enough influence to make it against the law; therefore I can deal with the situation now in the assumption I'm acting within the law as it's going to be." Vetinari has to tell him it doesn't work retroactively. His wife solves the issue by using her own influence to change public opinion so that everyone agrees about the Good part and Vimes escapes prosecution.)
  • The witches have a tendency towards Neutral Good anyway, but there are rules they're supposed to follow, chief amongst which is that they're not supposed to meddle in politics. Wyrd Sisters is all about them meddling in politics, and when Magrat questions this, Nanny basically says they've never needed to before.
    "So what you're saying," said Magrat, icily, "is that this 'not meddling' thing is like taking a vow not to swim. You'll absolutely never break it unless of course you happen to find yourself in the water?"
    "Better than drowning," Nanny said.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Small Favor
    • Police officer Karrin Murphy finds herself in this. She is helping hero Harry Dresden on a case to find a missing mob boss because Mab, the Dark Queen of Winter wants it and refusing this request will be bad for Harry. But some of the boss' goons look to take over in his absence and try taking out Harry, resulting in a shooting with mob guys injured. Legally, Karrin should keep everyone there and Harry would be arrested for shooting the men. He would be cleared by the law in time, as it was shooting in self-defense, but Harry cannot be delayed. So, she doesn't call it in and Harry and she continue on their way, while warning the mob guys to not try this again.
    • Harry finds himself in this as well. As Warden of the White Council, he is bound to uphold their laws and responsibilities. When he calls in to tell his superior Commander Luccio about the mob boss' kidnapping, as the mob boss has signed the Geneva Conventions equivalent of the Supernatural world, and the man's second-in-command and aide are asking for help as the kidnappers are also signatories, Luccio is reluctant to send in help on this matter. She sees it as Evil vs Evil and the Council has enough on its plate already. Harry then implies by not doing this Queen Mab will pull her permission for the Council to cross through her territories, while in truth Mab would only focus retribution on Harry. This moves Luccio to send the paperwork to file the formal grievance. When his Knight of the Cross friend Michael makes comment on this lie, and it could result in his death if discovered, Harry notes that the people who took the mob boss are also Michael's long time foes. If Harry can lie to get him more help fighting them in this case, so be it.
  • In Turn Coat Donald Morgan, one of the most senior Wardens is accused of being the mole in the upper echelon of the White Council and assassinating one of the Senior Council members. He ends up hiding with Harry, who he has tormented as Harry's paroler and would-be-executioner should Harry have broken the Laws of Magic again. During the course of the book, Morgan witnesses Harry's apprentice Molly, who is now on similar probation, break the Laws of Magic by invading the mind of a woman without her permission. However, Morgan never tells anyone of this because he knew Molly was right to suspect this woman as the real assassin. Morgan never tells anyone of this incident, sparing the life of a person.
• Good Omens: After six thousand years, in the End Times, Aziraphale and Crowley have to choose between unquestioningly obeying their superiors as they've done since the world was created and trying to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. Crowley chooses the latter; Aziraphale also does, but only after convincing himself that Heaven wouldn't have a problem with it anyway.
• Hermione of Harry Potter starts off as a well-meaning but very lawful student, always mindful of the rules and scornful of Harry and Ron's breaking of them. (In the case of the midnight duel, quite rightly.) However, circumstances eventually force her to loosen up on the Lawful side as it becomes clear that quietly following the rules is not always going to help matters. (Harry and Ron's breaking school rules to save her from a troll probably helped that conclusion.) Eventually, this makes her not only willing to break the rules, but possibly the most imaginative of the trio in terms of how to go about breaking them effectively.
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Hermione, who has been made one of Gryffindor's new prefects, chooses good over lawfulness, thinking up the DA and committing to it after Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four retroactively forbids it.
  • Percy always was a lawful student, even making Prefect and enforcing the rules. He then goes to the Ministry where he ultimately chooses the Ministry propaganda over Harry and Dumbledore's stories that Voldemort's is back. He finally comes to the good side after Voldemort's forces take over the Ministry, but by then it was too late as defecting could be suicide or even harm his family.
• Horatio Hornblower, while an admiral in the Caribbean, has the choice between letting a ship full of armed Napoleonic sympathizers get away to go free Napoleon, or cut them off in a small boat and stop them by lying and claiming Napoleon has died. Rather than face decades more of war, he opts for 'good' over 'lawful' and sacrifices his honor. When he goes to turn himself in, he gets a miracle. Napoleon really has just passed away.
• In the fifth Jedi Apprentice book, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are sent to rescue a Jedi named Tal who was injured while trying to mediate a generations-long war on the planet Melida/Daan, where the planet's youth form a third faction (called the Young) trying to stop the bloodshed, and they help the Jedi. Once they rescue Tahl, Qui-Gon says it's time to go, which would leave the Young on their own. Obi-Wan decides to leave the Jedi to help them succeed. (They eventually do, but with tragic cost, and Obi-Wan decides he has to rejoin the Jedi.)
• During the fourth book of the Journey to Chaos series, Neuro of the Brotherhood of Death faces this dilemma. He must obey the rules of Lord Death while also granting the mercy of Lord Death because going too far in either direction can lead to problems with the circulation of souls. In Zettai's case, the lawful decision is to execute her for her many death violations but the good decision is to pardon her by killing himself instead. He ultimately chooses good.
• Inspector Javert of Les Misérables believes throughout the book that Lawful is itself Good, but is forced by Valjean to confront the possibility (not the relative merits but the mere existence) of being good without following the law, and that some of his own choices fell more into evil territory. Which is ironic, as Jean Valjean himself had followed the law as a small-town mayor and business owner, and likely would have stayed that way were it not for Javert's rigid insistence that criminals are criminals, always and forever. This is later what kills him. Word of God confirms that Javert's rigid adherence to the law and his self-righteous arrogance as a result are his Achilles' Heel. When Valjean saves Javert's life, this puts him in the dilemma of owing his life to Valjean and also his solemn duty to recapture Valjean. Upholding either means abrogating the other, and either choice he makes means admitting that he has destroyed his own life by either breaking his moral code or living by an utterly unjust one the entire time. It's hinted that he is tending toward believing the latter, as he thinks that the appropriate way to pay for a transgression is through resignation to a higher power. He doesn't resign from the police, thinking instead "But how was he to set about handing in his resignation to God?" He finds a way.
• A common quandary for Shadowhunters in The Mortal Instruments. The Clave is often rather clueless, even about the actions and motives of its own members. As a result the heroes must often struggle with deciding whether to follow the Law, or do what is necessary and/or right.

• The Ramona Quimby books have this, though it's downplayed. Instead of a huge moral quandary, the title character of the books is between the ages of four and ten, depending on the book's point in the series, and has to choose between things that would, at worst, be minor annoyances to an adult. For instance, Ramona once had to choose between sitting still and being quiet at a wedding like she was told to do, or speaking up to tell an adult where the missing wedding ring was. She chose to get down and retrieve the ring from the heel of the bride's shoe, and ended up being praised for finding the ring.
• A recurring theme of the Retrieval Artist series of sci-fi detective novels: humankind has treaties and a legal system of The Federation-like Earth Sphere Alliance, under which humans can be extradited for alien crimes, many of which would not be crimes under human law or morality, for which the punishments are very severe. Disappearance services and Retrieval Artists work to protect these people from the law. The protagonist, Miles Flint, starts out as a cop who entered the force because he believed in justice. When a case involving a family that had Disappeared forces the question on him, he chooses good, afterward leaving the force and becoming a Retrieval Artist. His partner, Noelle DeRicci, is faced with similar dilemmas and even though she resents the laws and believes they're wrong, elects to keep working under them because she has trouble accepting that breaking the Law can be Good.
• While Sherlock Holmes isn't exactly a paladin, he is generally depicted as someone who respects the law and tries within his investigations to uphold it. However, as he himself notes at one point, he's not an official agent of the police and involves himself in his cases primarily for the thrill of the puzzle rather than to uphold the law or a moral principle. As such, he is generally shown to value justice and "goodness" more than strict adherence to the law, and so is quite willing to either break the law to ensure justice is done or enable a guilty party to go free if doing so is the more virtuous option. He does nevertheless usually leave the evidence available to the police for them to reach the correct conclusion (which they pretty much never do) and will point out to a guilty party that all deals are off should an innocent party find themselves on the hook for the crime.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • A question posed throughout the series, especially to the Starks. Chessmasters and Magnificent Bastards rule the kingdom, but the Starks believe that following the law is the only good. This leads to many, many instances of Not Quite the Right Thing. It would seem that being "good", or at least pragmatic, is the smartest choice. Eddard Stark ends up beheaded when he supports Stannis over Joffrey to follow Robert's will, to do what he sees as right and to protect children. Robb Stark gets backstabbed by the Freys when he marries a girl he bedded in a moment of grief instead of honoring his agreement. Jon Snow survives being a Fake Defector, Bran and Rickon survive abandoning Winterfell, Arya thrives (arguably) in her newfound freedom and Sansa, at least, is still alive (more of an achievement than it sounds). Catelyn swayed both ways in her time, and her fate is likewise neither/nor.
    
    Nor is it always clear what the most Lawful option is, as when Jaime faces conflicting oaths (his Kingsguard oath to protect the king, his oath of fealty to his father and liege lord who is in rebellion against that king, and his knightly oath to protect the innocent, whom the king was threatening to harm en masse in a fit of spiteful madness). Or when Robb has a lawful obligation to punish murder and treason, a traditional obligation to carry out the sentence (death) with his own hand, but doing so arguably violates a quasi-religious taboo against kinslaying. However the author has said that the lord he was executing was really stretching the definition of kinslaying on this instance, being a very distant cousin.
  • The prequel novellas Tales of Dunk and Egg have this as an even more central conflict. The plot of the first book revolves entirely around Ser Duncan doing something that is considered a crime, but is also very chivalrous and in line with his vows. The crime is laying a hand on one of royal blood. However, he does this to protect a defenseless woman from the beatings of said royal.
  • Fire & Blood: During the Civil War during Maegor the Cruel's reign, two of Maegor's Kingsguard switched sides to his nephew Prince Jaehaerys. Jaehaerys sent them to the Wall on grounds that he didn't want oathbreakers in his Kingsguard. After Maegor mysteriously died and Jaehaerys was crowned, he ordered the remaining loyalist Kingsguard to choose between execution or the Wall, on grounds that they broke their oaths by not disobeying Maegor's orders (also for one of them failing to protect Queen Tyanna), even though they had also sworn to obey the King. Noting the contradiction, Ser Harrold Langward demanded a Trial by Combat instead, and died fighting the King's Champion.
• In the second book of The Spirit Thief Miranda is faced with the choice of either obeying the Spirit Court's order, which makes her a Spiritualist no longer, or doing a Spiritualist's job and going to Gaol to protect the local spirits. She ultimately goes with the latter, as her sense of duty is too great.
• The Stormlight Archive, two of the ten orders of Knights Radiant have oaths which represent opposite sides of this choice. The Windrunners prioritize good over law and the Skybreakers prioritize law over good, and any who stray from their oaths will lose their associated powers. Naturally the two have historically had something a rivalry. Resident Windrunner Kaladin has a period of struggling with how to deal with wanting to see someone brought to justice versus his oaths to protect people no matter what. Resident Skybreaker Szeth finds a neat little trick around the decisions by swearing to follow the Laws of a good person, namely Dalinar.
• In the first book of The Underland Chronicles, Ares is forced to choose between saving the hero or his bond, who has just proven to be a traitor. The repercussions last for the remainder of the series.
• A lighter take on the Warhammer 40,000 cruel universe is Ciaphas Cain (Hero of the Imperium!), who could wear this as his hat instead of his usual Commissar's Cap as the official Commissariat policy seems to be to act like a Jerkass. Ciaphas ignores this and goes the other way around, making sure to be as friendly and lenient as possible, going so far as to become A Father to His Men. How much of this is due to a rare, true example of decency in a grimdark world or a simple desire not to get shot In the Back is uncertain though. To give an idea about this, in one novel, a bunch of idiot Red Shirts are swarming an enemy tank and taking this thing out is absolutely crucial. The standard operating procedure for this would be to order his aide to shoot the tank, idiots be damned. Cain doesn't think about doing this for a second.
• The Lord of the Rings has a brief example in Éomer, who when we first meet him is faced with the law of the land not allowing strangers to wander free around Rohan: he should bind them and take them to the King. He instead decides to let our heroes go free, and gives them horses to boot. There are six similar instances through the book.

Examples of characters who fall from "good" status or do questionable things due to lawful constraints.

• Beast Tamer: Jill Stregger goes all the way to Lawful Evil. Bound by his knight oath and having several members of his immediate family held hostage by his liege, the Fromage family, he not only hides evidence of their crimes and pressures witnesses to silence, but rewards members of his knight order for being corrupt, or replaces them with corrupt knights if they can't handle it. He remains conflicted enough that he intentionally sets himself up to be arrested by his sub-captain the moment she has a winning chance, so he can take the evil Fromage family down with him.
• Percy Weasley in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix sides with the Ministry of Magic ("Lawful") when they run a smear campaign against Harry and Dumbledore to deny Voldemort's return, which also puts him at odds with his family. He switches to "Good" in Deathly Hallows.
• In The Mortal Instruments, this is the default stance of the Clave, although some members take it all the way to evil or just plain Lawful Stupid. Maryse Lightwood also counts, as she allows the Inquisitor to behave rather barbarically towards Jace, her adopted son, until the Inquisitor openly violates the Law and she can justify defying her.
• A downplayed version of this occurs in Ramona Forever as a dose of Age-Appropriate Angst. During a wedding that 10-year-old Ramona is attending, the wedding ring gets lost because it was stitched to the pillow it was carried on too tightly, and when the bride pulls it loose, it flies into the air and gets lost. Ramona eventually finds it on the heel of the bride's shoe, but because she was told to "sit still and be quiet," Ramona struggles with either speaking up to stop the search or doing as she was told. She doesn't speak up, but she doesn't sit still as she's told either; she personally gets down and retrieves the ring from the shoe, and she's praised for retrieving the ring.
• The Silmarillion: Some of the sons of Fëanor wrestle with this, having sworn an oath to recover their father's Silmarils. Some of the brothers seem to have no scruples at all, but the two eldest consider forswearing their oath when it causes them to slaughter innocent people. They still end up trying to fulfill their oath every time. (The problem is that they made the mistake of swearing by Eru, the supreme god in the Tolkien verse, so only Eru can forgive them the oath. Eru never enters into his creation. It's impossible for Elves to leave it. Whoops. Lampshaded when the lesser gods reclaim the Silmarils and the sons of Fëanor consider just forgetting about the oath; they eventually decide that it's just too risky to piss off the Almighty that way.)
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, one of the three plotlines is a multi-sided war of succession. One of the candidates is Stannis Baratheon, who makes it clear that he does not want the throne. So why's he still fighting? Because he's next in line of succession, so it's his "by rights"... and because he is so focused on following the rules, he's willing to do war, black magic, even murder to put himself on a throne he doesn't want and wouldn't know what to do with if he had it. However, things become a bit more complicated when he abandons the main theatre of battle in order to save the North from a wildling invasion, "saving the kingdom to win the realm" rather than "winning the realm to save the kingdom".
  • And then Melisandre comes along and tells him he's The Chosen One, which doesn't help matters.
  • Made even worse by how the other possible prospects, his nephews and niece... are not his relatives, but born from the twincestuous relationship between their mother, Stannis's sister-in-law Cersei, and her brother Jaime. And Stannis is among the first ones to find out. And then, the eldest kid King Joffrey dies messily.
  • Jaime Lannister lands here, as well. In trying to regain some of his lost honour, he pulls some crazy Exact Words, Rules Lawyer, almost-Guile Hero shenanigans in the Riverlands to dispense actual justice — if of a rough, blunt, rude, top-down and often unexpected nature, since laying down the rule of law feels good (and is certainly going to be an improvement for the smallfolk on roving bands of warlords and anarchy if he can make it stick). The problem is, he's trying to improve himself by doing all this "justice"... while still propping the corrupt (and actually illegitimate) Lannister-and-Frey regime up in a region still actively smoking and bleeding as a direct result of his own father's laundry list of brutal injustices against it, some of which he took part in and has yet to publically acknowledge any culpability for... while still using said father's previous decisions on policy as a foundation for his own take on them. Why is he doing all this? The Lannisters do, indeed, currently hold the throne (however they got it), so actively ruling the realm in some form of consistent manner is kind of what they actually should be doing, by both law and tradition and needing to keep it. And, somebody does need to, you know, start the clean-up process in the Riverlands while not being, you know, Cersei about it. BUT.
• Arthur struggles with this throughout The Warlord Chronicles. If he declared himself King and killed his opponents when they are vulnerable he could become one of the greatest rulers Dumnonia has seen, and perhaps savior of all Britain, but he refuses to because of an oath he swore. His probably darkest moment is when he allows Prince Tristan to be killed and Queen Isolde burned alive for infidelity even though her husband, King Mark, was an absolute monster, because the law demanded it.
• In The Wheel of Time, Galad Damodred is a Knight in Shining Armor of the highest caliber. His sister Elayne finds it revolting that he always does what is right. This makes her seem like an idiot, until she explains that Galad doesn't care who gets hurt or what the costs are in his pursuit of doing "the right thing". Then she looks sane and he looks scary.
  • On the other hand, Galad joins the Whitecloaks, an organization that is supposed to be good and orderly but is usually Lawful Stupid instead, and makes them live up to their ideals. After the Lord Captain Commander proves to be treacherous and dishonorable, Galad defeats him in single combat and takes his place. Later, he tells his men to set aside their prejudices about fighting alongside Aes Sedai and wolfbrothers. Or else.

Examples of characters who Take A Third Option

• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson has an interesting example of a subverted third choice. Judge and a gentleman Fang is politely but hotly on the heels of illegal nanotechnologist Dr. X. They both enjoy strictly classic Chinese outlooks: they dress in Confucian style, have traditional tea ceremonies, and are ostensibly friends. Then Dr. X invites him onto a ship he's bought, filled with every unwanted girl baby in China that parents wanted to sell/abort (and there were a lot) and explained how he mass copied the hyper intelligent Young Ladies Primer for each. Judge Fang knows he should arrest him, but seeing the absolute good being done, says he can't because they're in international waters... to which Dr. X replies he's moved his fleet into Chinese territorial waters. Judge Fang has a breakdown and sides with Dr. X in the upcoming pro-nationalist Chinese revolution to return to the Celestial Kingdom style of government... with super nanobots!
• The Dresden Files Skin Game has the archangel Uriel facing this dilemma with serious consequences. He is forbidden by God's Law from interfering with Free Will and any of a dozen or more Laws about how Uriel can act around humans. When he is forced to watch a retired Knight of the Cross choose to sacrifice himself to an old human enemy to save the Knight's hostage-held friends, Uriel can neither smite the evil nor halt this plan. While it would be Good, as the line goes, the road to Hell is paved with Good intentions as breaking the Law will cause him to Fall from Grace. He ends up taking a third, and considerably radical leap of faith, by giving his Grace of God to the old knight, healing him of all his wounds, and giving him the strength to fight once more. Uriel cannot influence a human's choice but he can help a human with a choice he has already set himself on. The consequence is if the Knight misuses the Grace, Uriel would fall.
• Star Wars Legends: Wedge Antilles tends strongly to favor option one, but he's lucky, skilled, Famed In-Story, and connected enough that he doesn't have to just throw his position in the New Republic hierarchy away.
  • In Dark Force Rising he freely offers Luke Skywalker the use of his X-Wing, even knowing that this should mean being court-martialled; Luke pulls strings and finds another way.
  • In The Krytos Trap, he chooses to leave the service in order to pursue someone who can't be touched by the New Republic as it is, even though he has no chance of bringing her down without its resources... and he magnetically assembles a force which includes active members of the New Republic and uses them in an extremely successful op which is retroactively sanctioned.
  • In Wraith Squadron he lies to protect a subordinate, but clearly states in the narration that if it comes to a trial he will not commit perjury for her — however, he doesn't think it will come to that.
  • In Starfighters of Adumar he's sent as a diplomatic envoy to a planet that all but worships superb pilots in an attempt to get it to declare for the New Republic. Wedge is told by his liaison that in order to use his clout most effectively, he should be killing the inferior pilots flying against him, just as the Imperials are; by only flying against the locals with training lasers and paint bombs, he is being extremely disrespectful. But Wedge refuses, since he values sentient life and is unwilling to kill people who aren't his enemy. He tells the liaison that he will only start if he gets word from his superior, General Cracken, who he doubts would agree... but privately Wedge has to decide what he'll do if Cracken does agree, and in the end he decides to Screw The Rules, I'm Doing What's Right. If it comes to that. In the mean time he confronts his opposite number, an honorable Imperial who has been ordered to start bombing the world if it doesn't declare for the Empire, and talks him into a third option.

Characters who end up swinging between options, or are hit by this dilemma twice and are inconsistent on the issue.

• Rana Sanga, the Worthy Opponent in Belisarius Series is caught between an oath and his knowledge that the regime he is sworn to is commanding him to put his sword in the service of tyranny. He ends by making a Heel–Face Turn.
• In The Night Angel Trilogy, Logan Gyre, now King, has to choose between sentencing his best friend to a painful death, or showing that he is willing to ignore the law when it benefits him. He chooses BOTH, publicly sentencing Kylar to death, but privately hiring a wetboy to spring him from prison before his execution. Kylar ignores the help, determined to help Logan remain just.
• Captain William Laurence of the Temeraire series spends the first few books struggling to reconcile his sworn duty to the British Empire with his increasing discomfort at the Empire’s amoral, self-serving pragmatism. When the British government plans to spread a plague among the French dragons that will likely spread to kill off most of the dragons in the world (all dragons being sapient, this is nothing less than genocide), he feels morally compelled to bring the French the cure, even though it's an act of treason against his own country. And after all that, he's still Lawful enough to go right back to Britain and let himself be arrested for it. Indeed, he expects to be executed for it, and rejects merely going into voluntary exile to save his skin. He transgressed and had to face the music. His view ultimately seems to be that, if being good trumps being lawful, then the law must be changed to align with good.
• Protector of the Small's Keladry of Mindelan is quite lawful and very good. She believes in an idealized form of chivalry in which those with power take exacting care of those without and help to lift them up, without condescension. As a page she mostly manages without contradiction - faced with the choice of rescuing her maid instead of attending the big exams or attending the exams and allowing her maid to suffer, she chooses the former and is fully prepared for the consequences, even if she hates them. She protests when her training master, impressed by her devotion, waives those consequences.
  • As a knight, she takes in an abused stableboy and threatens the innkeeper who abused him with consequences, only to be sneered at; the innkeeper and the magistrate who'd look into that are friends, after all. Then one of Kel's peers illegally bespells the man and as a well-bred and well-connected knight flaunts the fact that he'll see no consequences himself. Kel approves and thinks of this as a good deed.
  • Kel is put in charge of a refugee camp, which is eventually swarmed by the enemy, who kill many of the refugees and take most of them, including hundreds of children, over the border into enemy territory. Kel's superior orders her to leave them. She goes rogue instead and heads off to save them, with many friends and allies breaking ranks to help. Returning them to Tortall, Kel submits to her superior, expecting to be executed as a traitor and just hoping that by taking responsibility she can spare those who helped her. Her superior tells her that he knew about her devotion to those under her care and should have known better than to order her to abandon her people, an order he should have known would be disobeyed. Kel tries to protest that she broke faith and there should be consequences, and is hushed by her friends.
    • While on that rescue mission, she faced off against an enemy mage who'd been making killing devices Powered by a Forsaken Child. A Dirty Coward, rather than fight her he surrendered and told her that he'd defect and work for her king instead. Rather than accept his surrender and capture him at worst, Kel kills the unarmed man and tells his corpse that she thinks her king wouldn't accept his services, but doesn't want him to be tempted.

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