▸ Column · Warcraft — Illidan's war-hall in Outland, feasts and councils, sworn attendance, provisions laid by headcount
ILLIDAN STORMRAGE replies.
Replied to by Illidan Stormrage, with a rebuttal from Han Solo.
The letter
Commander — I keep a hall, and I keep it well. Six times now my husband's kinswoman, Renata, has sworn before the whole household that she would come — to my daughter's name-day feast, to two councils, to a journey to the lake-keep, and last of all to the rite marking my husband's release from long service. Each time she pledges days ahead; each time, within the final two hours, a runner brings word of a "sudden ache" or "something arisen." This is no mere wound to the heart. I lay in provisions by the sworn count, and twice her empty seat has cost me dearly in good coin. When I raised it, gently, at the harvest gathering, she drew herself up as one injured and said she never truly promised — and my husband's mother took her side and named me rigid for it. I like Renata, when she is present. But I cannot keep laying a place for one who treats a sworn word as a passing mood. Is there a graceful way to mend this, or to quietly cease inviting her, without setting the whole family aflame?
Illidan Stormrage replies
Hear the word you reached for: graceful. Quietly. Without setting anything aflame. You wish to do a hard, just thing and pay none of its price — to withdraw trust from one who has earned that withdrawal six times over, and to have no one notice you did it. That is the cowardice the comfortable mistake for peace. It cannot be done. Stop straining to do it.
Count what is true. Her pledge is worthless — she has proven it worthless and then wept when asked to honor it. And your cause is real: you lay provisions by a sworn count, and her empty seat has cost you in coin. That is not rigidity. That is the plain arithmetic of trusting a liar's word.
So cease to invite her where the count binds you, and when your husband's mother names you rigid, let her. I burned away my own eyes for a war my people would not fight, and for it they branded me the Betrayer and my own brother Malfurion sealed me ten thousand years in the dark. The verdict of the comfortable is not the verdict of truth. But mark me — withdraw your reliance, not your courtesy. This is resolve, not vengeance. Do not humiliate her; simply stop laying a seat for a ghost. Pay the price of being called rigid with open eyes. It is a small price, and the cause is real.
— Illidan Stormrage
Han Solo weighs in
Ten thousand years in a cell and the man still can't order a sensible headcount. Look — forget "graceful," forget "without detonating," you're trying to manage everybody's feelings at once and that's a sucker's game. Here's the only test that matters: she says she's coming, then she's gone in two hours. Talk's cheap, sweetheart. Watch what they do when leaving's easy — and leaving's all she does. So quit betting catering money on her word. Invite her, sure, she's family. Just stop counting her in the provisions. And the mother-in-law calling you rigid? That's not your problem to solve. That one's hers.
— Han Solo
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