Kevin's Watch

The Dissection just examined Linden's actions under the Elohim silence. Plainly she lacked self-awareness and the ability to distinguish the present from the past; according to at least one commentator, she actually misheard Ceer as asking to die as her mother had.

(BTW, in general I'm a major friend of Linden. This was the only part of the mythos where I suddenly found it very difficult to remain so, because I also hold dual Haruchai citizenship!)

My question is this. Under the various legal frameworks in force in the RL countries we Watchers represent, would Linden have succeeded in a temporary insanity defense or its equivalent?

In the mythos, she didn't get due process under anyone's constitution; it came down to a pure conflict of justice vs. mercy (SRD's thought experiment in moral theology? ) , with a side-dish of a struggle of male wills (Brinn & Cail vs. Covenant) for dominance. I hope I never see a Haruchai Inquisitor.

Ceer's death scene is one of the hardest to read in all of the Chronicles.

It is clear that Linden's mind has been strongly affected by the Elohim mindspell. I am not familiar enough with the laws, however, to know if that would count as temporary insanity in our world or not.

Of course, we don't have such mindspells -- what would be the closest equivalent we would have to such a thing, and how would it count under the law in a case of attempted murder?

We don't have mindspells; we certainly have adults who suffered serious abuse as children or even witnessed similar parental deaths as Linden did. That experience does not always, or even frequently, result in the capacity to attempt murder, but it certainly can create a lifelong legacy of damage that sometimes includes retaliatory feelings and flashbacks in which present and past briefly converge.