Interesting post. I appreciate taking the time to lay that out.
It's entirely plausible, I just felt that specific in-comic evidence for Shojo doing good were kind of thin on the ground, and, as you point out, they were not reacting to the succession in a typically Lawful fashion.Because Lord Shojo was such an out of the box thinker, he was able to thrive in this lawful environment and be a great ruler because he rose above the system, found ways to do good in spite of the system when it got in the way.
Perhaps an overly lawful society sometimes needs a chaotic ruler.
It also struck me as strange that more of the bickering between the nobles didn't spill over into the everyday lives of the citizens, since **** has a tendency to roll downhill. (I of course don't claim that Azure City is, on the whole, comparable to drow society, but that doesn't make their particular style of politics any more palatable.)
Well, I wouldn't say the author didn't give this some thought. I just get the feeling that he may have been thinking different things at different times and places. I mean, sure, I can get absolutely aboard with the idea that Tarquin is lawful by western continent standards, but that doesn't make him particularly lawful on an absolute scale, and having local standards trump a personal code has implications elsewhere.I realize Rich wasn't thinking of any of this when he wrote the story. He was simply trying to tell a good story and all the background is just that -- background to give more depth, the way a landscape in a painting makes a portrait more real than a flat white background. But maybe the story needed this because that's the way humans *work*.