Ivrea Throws the Oranges, and Files the Revolution.

Each year, in the weeks before Lent, the Piedmontese town of Ivrea files a revolution and settles it in citrus.

The paperwork behind the throw is unusually literary. A miller's daughter, remembered as Violetta, is said to have refused a local lord the wedding-night tribute he claimed as his right, relieved him of his head instead, and touched off a rising that left the tyrant's palace in flames.

What the desk receives now is the reenactment. For three days, teams on foot, nine of them and several thousand strong, take up the role of the rebelling townspeople, while opposing crews ride through the squares on horse-drawn carts as the tyrant's armoured guard.

The oranges do the arguing. Hundreds of tonnes of them arrive from the south, past their prime and destined for the pavement, and are hurled between cart and crowd until the medieval streets run with pulp.

The desk wishes to record that the fruit is anachronistic; earlier centuries threw beans, and the citrus is a comparatively recent import to the ritual. The grievance, however, predates the ammunition.

A red cap on the head is the town's oldest opt-out clause, honoured on all sides.

The consent mechanism is admirably plain: anyone unwilling to be a counterparty wears the red Phrygian cap of the revolution and is, by long convention, left unpelted. The desk regards this as an exemplary consent architecture, publicly worn and universally read.

Duty of care extends to the horses and their drivers, who are shielded, veterinary oversight standing by and teams penalised for striking them. Bruises, welts, and the occasional split lip are the accepted human cost.

The closing throw is quieter than the rest: the streets swept, the last of the fruit carted away, the town returned to a peace it stages in order to remember it was once won.

Compliance verdict: an ungoverned grievance discharged through a scrupulously governed throw, opt-outs honoured, protected parties shielded, and a four-hundred-year-old point about tyranny made annually in orange. Cleared, with a standing note on ammunition sourcing.