Excerpt from ’Plight of a Thousand Dumb Prisoners and Some Royal Schmucks’
Recording for my newest book, this is Agnes Fa. I’m researching some rather poor news above a frozen waste of a planet.
One should consider leaving them [prisoners of a royal employment] unmolested, well cared for, and all their valuables left alone – even if they hold a weapon capable of killing their captors. This is to ensure that there exists no reason that war between the families incites drawn out, bureaucratic fuss on the proper way to handle royal prisoners.
I spent some time on a way station above a quaint planet of hardened ice, mostly inhabitable by most Hub life, even the Rimmers, as they’re called. To reach a conclusion on a foregoing investigation into the missing members of the royal council from Ululu. In fact, Ululu is the planet I find myself huddling in low orbit. This station’s only restaurant carries nothing but the sustenance afforded one from Ululu’s... boundless selection leaves me with less will to live than I have to finish this report.
It should be known, while I stay here for another orbit or two, that the bar staff have been looking at me for a while. Previous information I’ve garnered from other visitors on the station allow me to conclude the bar staff are a rather vicious and volatile species of plant-life called the Tymopys. Anyway, I don’t see how they could be responsible; most sources regard them as sub-species. Not to mention their low intellectual reach. They would find little reason to target royalty more than, say, any other schmuck on this station. Or even planetside.
Basic evidence reports suggest the Ululu council and family members were forced to listen to their captors sing, for a period, until they were summarily killed. There are no records of such actions taken by species in any archive or report I could find.
I should clarify that the council and royalty of Ululu found no reason to defend themselves from such a brutal end. That is because mandates, understandings, and some agreements create pause for any who capture royally employed, or royally related prisoner before they consider killing them. I believe once my sources return a positive answer, I’ll be able to confirm that these taboos and partially unspoken rules stem from the nasty Royal War that occurred over seven hundred years prior. No one wants to repeat that particularly brutal event in Hub history. If royalty is harmed, I feel another way is inevitable.
I suppose most royal emissaries or councils or guards of various statuses see capture as a sort of... surprise vacation. As they tend to fill their day with responsibilities, being captured allows them a stay of such work.