Vigilantism and the Lawful Alignment in OotS

[tomandtish]

Part of my original thought was thinking that Soon's mistake was consolidating the two positions in the first place, since it creates the potential for a person to be caught in conflicting oaths. While that potential still exists (and came up for Shojo), in looking more carefully at Soon's supposed logic in 277 the reasoning for combining the positions was specifically defense. It appears that he wanted to make sure that anyone in charge of defending the city would also make sure the gate was defended and would not abandon it. I presume that the only way he felt certain he could ensure this was to have the positions be combined (that is, the leader has taken the oath of the SG). If Soon considered the risk of conflicting oaths he probably felt this need outweighed it.

Of course, since the Emperor is not a paladin they apparently don't give quite as much weight to the oaths of the guard and are willing to subvert them when needed to help the city. Thus creating the whole mess we find ourselves in.

So I still think part of the problem came from combining the two positions. I'm just not sure if there's a better alternative.

Edit: People refer to the Scribble's oath to keep the gates secret. In reading 276 and 277, they initially agreed that the gates need to be kept secret. The oath seems to strictly be that they won't interfere with each other's gates. So technically there's nothing about the Scribble oath (based on what we see) that says they can't talk about the gates with others. They just can't interfere with each other's gates. Now I certainly agree that openly talking is a bad idea, but it might open up possibilities.