If the law is deemed of such magnitude that it was first enacted by a king with the sanction of nobles, priests, tenants, or what have you, then Kull has some work ahead of him and he might lose. But at least it wouldn’t mean the law is eternal.

So for me the question is, who enacted the law in the first place? Then whoever holds these offices and exercises these powers in the present must have the power to enact differently.

Well, law has three components: statute, interpretation, and enforcement.

What the king needed was one of our modern liberal SCOTUS members to give him the interpretation he needed.

Later as an undergraduate studying old regime French history, I was struck by how often French laws were regarded as unchangeable, and how often this frustrated seemingly sensible policies even of notionally absolute monarchs. Obviously not as rigid as Valusian laws, but then French kings never hauled out the barbarian axe either.

Now, looking at it as a modern, this makes no sense to me. We believe in, more or less, selected unchangeable laws when fundamental rights are at stake. Everything else is merely a legislated means to determined ends in particular circumstances. But some times and places seemed to believe that absolutely everything in the web of rights and customs was unchangeable, not merely by executive whim, but by any means whatever even where the ruler’s claim of divine authority was fully believed. And every solution to every problem was, once determined, never to be reviewed or adjusted. Or, at least, the circumstances had to be exceptional in some way.

I remain fascinated by the frequency of this cultural pattern. Even where the given laws were known or assumed to have been the mere product of human decisions, they are considered permanent and unchangeable, even by the successors of those who handed them down, even if the method of the ruling was known and could be replicated.

It struck me as an insane notion, even in a society that experienced and expected little technological, economic or social change over time, but there it is.

I suppose that in any culture that lacks the notion of a fixed process to amend laws or replace them, there will be a permanent oscillation between the unshaken power of the stone tablets and the irresistible power of the axe. Or the guillotine.

Sociologically, the oscillation between Weber’s Traditional and Charismatic modes of leadership, without even the dregs of the rational/legal element that even many classical societies could manage.

Metaphorically, I suppose, it could be cast as the oscillation between Moses and Nietzsche. But even that isn’t quite right. Even Moses could be considered a Nietzschean figure. It isn’t even an oscillation between Moses’ royal and eventual rabbinical [or Christian priestly] heirs and Nietzsche, if only because the rabbis and the churches maintained mechanisms to elaborate, interpret, and even change the rules in a sort of common law fashion.

Still this idea of unchangeable, yet merely human, law fascinates me. If that is the nature of the law, then the axe is the only source of balance.

But then Howard was a bit of an extremist on these points.

Sorry to ramble.

Last note: Kull was an interesting character. He was more fascist and more purely barbaric in this story than Conan. He was also, in other stories, much more philosophical and introspective and even intellectual than Conan. For that side of him, I’d recommend “The Striking of the Gong”, “The Skull of Silence”, and “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”. Arguably also “Riders Beyond the Sunrise”.