"It might do them some good," Éowyn agreed, in all seriousness. "Most are not evil, I deem, but only ignorant and shallow. A taste of the loss they inflict might not go amiss." She would have liked to give more than a taste of loss to the ones actively responsible for her imprisonment, of course. But as she had been coming to realise over the few days she had been here, not everyone here was responsible. The vast number of those one saw in this place were slaves as much as she was - it was only that their shackles were cast out of wilful ignorance and careful misinformation. To blame them for their foolishness would have been like blaming her uncle for his heartsick attendance to Wormtongue's counsel; it was to ignore the infection, and blame the symptoms.

That didn't mean she didn't hate them, of course. Their vanity and complacency sickened her. But they were, in the end, only fools.

"I wonder," she said after a moment, thoughtfully, and paused for a second before starting again. "They watch the fights, do they not? Yet I wonder how many of those gathered here have smelled a dead man's stench, or felt the strain of steel meeting flesh. For without that solidity, is it so shocking that our deaths mean as little to them as songs or tales may to us?"