By: Nealan (Neal) of Queenscove, who, of course, refers to himself in the first person throughout this essay.

Submitted to: Lord Wyldon of Cavall, the most feared training master in the history of civilization. (No hyperbole intended.)

At: A moment before the eleventh hour as commanded in order to avoid writing another essay twice as long as the one following the proper report heading.

Essay Topic: Disobedience in case it slipped my lordship's mind, because my enlightened training master has obviously never heard of a valuable and mysterious reference tool that most scholars refer to as a dictionary, and so is unaware of the distinction between "insolence" and "disobedience." However, any magistrate judging my case should be aware that I was guilty of insolence, not of disobedience as my lordship claims.

Essay Title: "A Rousing Defense of the Oft-Maligned Disobedience" (guaranteed to be, if the free-speech-loving Lord Wyldon doesn't rip it to shreds before anyone else can read it, among the best-loved essays in jails and other vice dens).

Body of Essay (I bet you thought it would never come, but you see I proved you wrong. You should also be aware that the heading counts toward the word count of this essay. Therefore, I have dragged it out as long as I possibly could without making it blatantly obvious to even the most inbred of nobles what I was doing. If a university education taught me anything, it was how to use a lot of words to say nothing at all.) : Disobedience is a concept that has often been condemned by those who do not truly comprehend it. Parents are always scolding their children for it. Teachers are forever punishing their pupils for it, even while they declare that they are encouraging intellectual development and fostering independent thought in their students. Military commanders are always insisting that whole legions of soldiers perish on the battlefield because of it. Religious authorities are always lamenting the fact that a vast majority of humanity will be sentenced to eternal suffering (here the word "eternal" does not actually mean "endless," but rather something along the lines of "not before the person suffering was even conceived and not during the person's time in the Mortal Realms, since most scholars believe that the Mortal Realms aren't supposed to be a punishment by the gods per say") for their rebellious tendencies, which are, you will remember through the confusing knot of clauses I created, the real topic of this paper. Kings are always chopping their subjects' heads of for the mere thought of defiance.

Given the fact that just about every legitimate authority, as described in the lengthy above paragraph, frowns upon disobedience (and a cynic would ask why wouldn't they when it is in their own best interests that everyone obey them unquestioningly?), one may very well be tempted to conclude that defiance is a human depravity that should be stamped out as rapidly as possible.

However, a wise person (who would often take the form of the cynic I mentioned in the parenthesis of the previous paragraph) would consider looking at what our great writers and philosophers have said on the subject of disobedience. Unsurprisingly, given that "eccentric" is often the most charitable term employed to describe such intellectual giants, most of these writers and philosophers have come down in the favor of disobedience. According to these brilliant men, humans actually have a right to have independent thoughts and to act according to these ideas as their conscience dictates.

In this essay, while I polish swords in the armory for the third bell in a row, which is a thoroughly stimulating task for someone of my intellectual caliber, I wish to add my voice to the chorus of those defending the oft-maligned virtue of disobedience.

Not having the brains of a squash, I recognize that the intended audience of this treatise, my esteemed Lord Wyldon of Cavall, will not approve of this thesis. Indeed, I am aware that when he assigned me this essay, he hoped that I would end up declaring that disobedience is a characteristic unbefitting of a knight or even one in training. No doubt, he would have liked me to make reference to the fact that he has often said that disobedience can get a knight and anyone serving with that knight killed (and there, as more astute readers will observe, I have made just such a mention). Perhaps he would have even been able to overcome his loathing of me enough to feel a momentary surge of approval for me if I had managed to work into my paper a clever (if not so original) assertion that a knight should obey every order he receives, because by some cruel twist of fate, it could turn out that the order he chose to defy would be the one that was intended to save his neck. Unfortunately for Lord Wyldon, I refuse to write an essay arguing that the best knights are those who obey orders blindly.

After all, this is an essay, and essays were devised during the Thanic Empire as a literary venue by which one could express one's thoughts on a particular subject. Therefore, when Lord Wyldon of Cavall commanded me to write this essay on disobedience, he was asking for my thoughts upon that subject. Although, since he despises just about every bright idea that my genius has ever concocted, I cannot be certain why he has asked me to share the thoughts he so detests with him. The most solid conclusion that I can arrive at is that he has assigned this paper to me as a more refined means of torture than the ones he typically engages in when training pages. However, if that is indeed the case, it might do his lordship well to contemplate the fact that I received academic honors every semester that I was enrolled in the university. As such, reading my essay will probably be more of a punishment for him than writing it is for me. Maybe when his lordship finally procures a dictionary, he will be able to look up "irony," as well as "disobedience" and "insolence."

Anyway, since an essay is a literary venue by which one expresses one's opinion of a particular subject, I decided that I should be nothing less than honest about my opinion. Therefore, I can only hope that Lord Wyldon, who believes that the Code of Chivalry is more than a collection of ought-to suggestions, will respect me for my honesty even if he wants to disembowel me for everything else.

As I am currently in the business of being as frank as possible, I wish to state that it is my personal opinion that the realm's most valuable knights are those who are capable of independent thought and who appreciate the importance of taking initiative. After all, as my vaunted grandfather Emry of Haryse has explained to me more times than even the most talented mathematicians could count, once a battle starts, everything goes wrong, and, thus, the most valuable warriors are those who can think on their feet. People who can think on their feet are the sort of individuals who can weed good orders from stupid ones, thereby saving not only their own necks but also the lives of those alongside them who may not have the courage to defy a dumb command otherwise or who might lack the intelligence necessary to spot a foolish order for what it is. Furthermore, it is the people who can think on their feet who are able to recognize when an old tactic isn't working and who will take responsibility for creating a new, effective one, even if they are disobeying orders by doing so. Therefore, it is clear that it is the disobedient warrior, rather than the blindly obedient one, who wins battles and wars for Tortall.

This, of course, is a bold declaration. As such, it is undeniably a supposition that requires some evidence to back it up. That being established, I will draw on three examples to support my thesis, because I have been taught at the university that three is the magic number of examples that all essays should have, since one example could be nothing more than a random occurrence, two examples could be ascribed to nothing more than mere coincidence, and more than three examples would make a very dull reading experience.

The first example I wish to discuss is Lysander of Blue Harbor and his famous actions in the Battle of Bloody Spear during the Bazhir Wars in the reign of King Jasson, who perhaps is most famous today for the number of statues commemorating him in Corus. Now, during the Battle of Bloody Spear, Lysander of Blue Harbor received orders from his commanding officer (who most military historians now believe liked to make all of his command decisions while intoxicated) to fight the Bazhir in the usual method. Essentially, this method entailed refusing to acknowledge that the Bazhir fought differently than most armies in the Eastern Lands, and, thus getting slaughtered because tactics that worked spectacularly against other peoples did not work well against the Bazhir. At the Battle of Bloody Spear, Lysander finally got tired of seeing his soldiers massacred because of foolish orders issued by his commanding officer. It was then that he came up with the novel concept of using the Bazhir tactics against the tribesmen. By doing so, he transformed the Battle of Bloody Spear from an ignominious Tortallan defeat to a glorious Tortallan victory. In the process, he helped conquer the Southern Desert for Tortall, and, although his commanding officer tried to have him executed for his disobedience, he ended up being promoted to supreme commander of the desert operations of the Bazhir War, while his previous commanding officer was relieved of command. Therefore, in the case of Lysander of Blue Harbor, his defiance not only saved himself and his men, but also provided a tremendous boon to his realm for which he is justly remembered by teachers who struggle valiantly to cram boring historical information into the thick heads of their students.

The second example that I wish to examine transpired during the war with Tusaine during King Roald's reign. As anyone with even a smattering of history knowledge is well aware, during this war, the squire to Prince Jonathan (who is, of course, married to the woman who is generally classified as the most beautiful woman in the world and is also the present king responsible for many reforms that make the average conservative simply apoplectic with rage) happened to be kidnapped. King Roald issued orders that nobody was to cross into Tusaine in an attempt to rescue the prince's kidnapped squire. However, Prince Jonathan was devoted to his squire, and, so, with several knights (and their loyal squires), he snuck across the border to Tusaine. After a very brief battle, Prince Jonathan and his companions were able not only to rescue the prince's squire, but were also able to capture the King of Tusaine's brothers. With his brothers hostage, the King of Tusaine was easily convinced to surrender upon terms that were highly favorable to Tortall. Thus, by defying orders and taking initiative, Prince Jonathan and his valiant accomplices were able to end the war with Tusaine more quickly than if they had obeyed orders, not only sparing the Tortallan lives that would have been lost had the bloodshed continued, but also securing that the peace terms agreed upon were very much in favor of the Tortallans.

Finally, I would like to examine a case of admirable disobedience during the recent conflict that has come to be referred to as the Immortals War. During the Immortals War, one of the many places in the realm that was attacked was the Royal Palace itself. When the Royal Palace itself was attacked, Lord Wyldon of Cavall received very specific orders that he was to remain upon the ramparts during the battle. However, when the noble Lord Wyldon spotted hurrocks invading the royal nursery, he did not hesitate to abandon his post to rescue the younger royal children. In doing so, he showed his understanding of just how valuable those children were to the country and a comprehension of the fluid nature of warfare situations. That is, he understood that the orders from his superiors would have been very different if his superiors had foreseen the attack upon the royal nursery, and he acted according to that knowledge. The king and queen, far from being furious at Lord Wyldon for disobeying his orders, were grateful to him for saving their regal offspring, although the Lord of Cavall resolutely maintained that he did not require any reward from the Crown for his heroism. Apparently, he regarded the scars he received and the loss of the use of one arm for a year as a prize enough, as any truly humble knight would.

In conclusion, based on all these instances of a well-timed act of disobedience saving lives and benefiting all of Tortall, I would suggest that defiance is, actually a virtue, not a crime. Moreover, I would encourage everyone to develop the independent streak and the sense of initiative that it requires to not blindly accept orders that will only result in death and destruction. I would also urge readers to remember that the ability to think on one's toes that is so characteristic of disobedience is a very important quality for a warrior to possess as soon as a battle starts and all the best laid plans of generals begin to go awry. In short, I suggest that would-be knights emulate the acts of disobedience that I outlined, assuming, of course, that they can overcome the rebellious tendencies which would prevent them from following anyone…