You wouldn't have lost face...?

[DewiMorgan]

[I like your system that suggests long comments go to the forums - "in fact, we insist!" Nice.]

I'm now confused. I read the whole scene differently to how Queen Moraine seems to be reading it. Or at least, differently to how she's telling it to Hunter.

The way I read it, was:

I got the feeling that everyone in the court knew basically what had happened: Puck's words didn't leave any more scope for anyone to fail to get what was going on, than they left scope for Hunter to accuse the Fae.

So, the face-saving white lie effectively indebts the Fae (especially the perpetrator, who's name I forget) to Hunter: they will like this far less than if he had openly accused them and given them the chance to indignantly deny it and demand proof. So, he's essentially pissed them off and got himself in more trouble.

But when I call it a face-saving lie, that only covers public face, of course: publicly, the lie downgraded the offense from Assange-level breach of diplomatic protocol, to a minor social embarrassment. Privately, everyone knows, and everyone *knows* that everyone knows. Puck would hardly make an entertainment if nobody could know about and appreciate it! Well, he might, but he's Puck: he'll maximise his audience if he can.

So, since everyone knows, the perpetrator will now be punished far worse in private by the Winter Queen, than if she'd been demanding evidence from the detractors (since punishing her champion would have been contradictory).

Puck's words were carefully chosen - they drew the whole court's attention to the clear facts of the wrongdoing, and to Hunter's covering for his attacker: as manipulation goes, they were blunt, obvious and open.

By being so blunt, they gave Hunter a way to tell that lie without losing any face himself. Also, Hunter is a little dense:  he sort of *needed* a clue-by-four to point him in the right direction. I've a feeling that Puck doesn't dislike Hunter at all, and even delights in his pluck (and OK, his susceptibility to manipulation): this is someone with whom Puck can see himself having a LOT of fun! Not saying he likes or admires Hunter at all: just that I think he appreciates Hunter's potential for mayhem in all the right places.

And because of Puck's words, the Summer Queen will naturally gain a ton of status relative to Summer's real opponent, the Winter queen: Winter's vassal nearly screwed everything up for everyone; Summer's jester saved the day. So the whole entertainment was most likely engineered by Puck in order to boost his queen's status in a contest far older than man. This seemed writ large in the 2012/07/13 triskelle page: there was a clear winner, standing benevolently over her champion; and a clear loser, gripping hers.

That's how *I* had been reading it, at least, and I'd been astonished and delighted at the way the art and action had shown these undercurrents without needing to call them out: I'd been thinking that the only oblivious one was Hunter, and that maybe even he got it at the end, but just played along because it gave the best outcome for humans. But now, with the queen's words, I'm not so sure that I was reading it right.

[Edit:
But thinking about it, maybe I'm reading it right after all.

Queen Moraine's pissed at him, not for being used, but that he let himself be manipulated into a lie. Even though he's easily manipulated, so long as he remains honest and doesn't let himself get sucked into the complex multileveled untruth of Fae life, he'd remain largely immune to it: but as soon as he starts to play that game of secrets and lies, he's gonna get wiped off the board, because he sucks at it. This is why both prince and queen mentioned it as their main problem with his actions: the main strength of the agents is their open honesty.

But Moraine's also pissed at the Fae queens, and we see that both in the triskelle pic and here. She's pissed because her role in that triskelle was just as witness to the point-scoring of the others, to make the victory public: Summer showed, in that little point-scoring against Winter, at a meeting that was meant to be about the Humans, that she and the humans weren't as important as their own internal struggles (and showing that would score Summer more face in the Fae court, I'm sure). That is likely what she's referring to in the "didn't have [their respect] in the first place" thing.

But really, Summer *is* scoring points against Moraine, by NOT scoring points against her. Which shows the Fae do respect her enough to make her lose face. It's complicated!

Hunter's line "you wouldn't have lost face..." just shows how totally he doesn't get any of it (which is his strength): not that the queen herself doesn't.]

[joshofspam]

You might be trying to over think this just a little.

From what Darc has already said about the terms of owing a Fae for a favor. The terms for an "I owe you" are made by a form of mutual agreement, both parties recognize the favor before or after its done and the ower pays later.

In this sense, no favor was recognized. What you really have here is Puck playing the political scene and just simply playing his tricks. Remember Fae's are known for more then just asking for something in return.

And as Moraine has said, Puck is the Trickster of the Summer court. This most likely makes him a person that won't play favors when he can simply "play" a person in general. If he can make Hunter and Gavin look like immature children in front of everyone, then he's doing his job well.

[DewiMorgan]

You might be trying to over think this just a little.

Who, me? I have no idea what you could possibly mean.

[innocent smiley goes here]