#it doesn't make any sense unless it was *specifically* a plot to kill stede and everyone is unhappy about how they are going about it

[ladyluscinia]

Pretty boring take on the whole deal between Izzy, Spanish Jackie, and Badminton to me is when people kind of imply it was an above board arrest of pirates on the Navy side.

Like - ok, first, I do have completely genuine and serious thoughts about the whole thing I alluded to here where Chauncey is acting as a person who wants revenge and not an agent of the empire and that accidentally screws him over on a narrative level (in a different way than being the empire would) by allowing everyone around to be people too. But beyond that...

This isn't a real arrest! It's a bunch of dirty cops doing an off the record meeting with mobsters in a warehouse! There's lots of fandom discussion on Izzy's deal with the devil but Chauncey did the same thing! Not much of a bitter deal for him if the extent of his sacrifice was having to enter Jackie's bar.

No, Chauncey is not operating with the full control of the situation and enforced power of the British Empire, and you can tell.

I mean, The Plan - prior to Edward and the Act of Grace - was for Chauncey to sail over, make a big show of arresting and interrogating all these pirates to confirm what he already knew (that Stede killed his brother), hold a sham trial to tell Stede dramatically that he was going to die, kill Stede, and then leave all the other pirates and the ship with Izzy, Ivan, and Fang entirely free to go about their business. (Like, they do this. No one on Stede's crew is even bound during the episode and none of them need an Act of Grace.) Izzy can be dumb sometimes, but it would be entirely new monumental levels of stupid to have no guarantees that this was going to happen beyond an Admiral's pinky promise, and even stupider on Chauncey's part not to immediately renege on this deal and arrest / kill every pirate on the ship. Unless he couldn't. And it becomes really fucking obvious that he couldn't once Edward gets caught too.

(If I'm going to speculate, that's probably what Spanish Jackie is bringing to this deal. She's negotiated with the Spanish Navy before. Presumably she has a way to ensure the Brits don't do something like just arrest everyone as soon as they have Stede - just like how Geraldo can safely head home from the Spanish ship despite apparently being an infamous gang member.)

Chauncey literally has Blackbeard in custody happily admitting to death penalty crimes and he's just announcing mid "trial" that Edward will be heading out with his First Mate on Stede's ship without any sort of punishment or supervision? And no one questions this at all? Yeah, no fucking way are the actual events of this day in any way official, nor do I buy that Chauncey did not already have his hands tied in some way making him just let Edward go. The "legal record" stuff is all just pageantry / falsifying evidence for the story later and everyone's in on it. Also why Stede's Act of Grace doesn't mean shit unless Edward signs too. This isn't a real arrest that Stede's legalese-ing his way out of. It's just Edward making a better offer (+ required narrative spin) to the other British officers than Jackie and Izzy did.

Somehow - and this is a comedy so we're going to waive the actual how - the only person whose fate was up in the air was Stede. Which works really well in terms of all the antagonists getting together to make an "enemy of my enemy" deal, and for Chauncey getting blinded and eventually screwed over by his quest for vengeance. If he'd done things officially, as a pirate hunter going after a pirate, then he wouldn't have had Edward and Stede's crew just hanging around in the peanut gallery to screw him over. Probably wouldn't have been doing this in an isolated spot in the middle of nowhere at all. But he made a deal instead, and sacrificed control of the situation for it.

Which is why I find it kind of lame and boring to read the situation like Chauncey did have the power to just do whatever he wanted, and instead simply chose to let everyone go and not screw over Izzy for giggles or weird antagonist solidarity. As if he had the opportunity to put "guy who executed fucking Blackbeard" on his list of accomplishments but wasn't feeling it that day, so might as well just release him.

This definitely throws a wrench in blaming Izzy for all the hypothetical stuff that could have gone wrong in a real arrest (and for stuff that didn't happen like "selling" Edward - a British citizen who can't just be sold to some guy by the Navy even if he was actually in custody), but it actually makes sense as a deal all these people would make instead of Izzy, Ivan, and Fang just strolling onto a ship with fingers crossed that arresting bonus pirates is not a priority today.