Dueling in the Star Kingdom is not the same as historical dueling. It's not that David "forgot" anything, it's that dueling arose in the Star Kingdom due to its own circumstances, and consequently its own rules. Its closest analogue would be like gunslingers out in the Wild West meeting to settle things at sundown, because, when dueling arose, the Star Kingdom was very much a frontier colony system where law enforcement could be hours away.
Furthermore, Paul
did have control over the protocol, as the challenged party, which is why he selected the Dreyfus protocol. Duels in the Star Kingdom were fought with firearms (hence the Wild West analogy), so there's nothing else for him to choose.
For additional context, here's an unarchived post from David regarding the origins of dueling:
While I regard that statement as one of the great and fundamental truths of the Western World, the real reason for the reemergence of dueling in the SKM is the sheer bloody-mindedness of the human creature in a frontier environment.
The SKM has always been very "2nd Amendment" friendly, largely as a result of the fairly conservative North American DNA in the original colonists, who were fleeing a Solar System in which they felt the Nanny State had become tyranical. Another consequence of their origins was that they had something of a fetish about self-reliance, standing on your own two feet, and other cliches to that effect. And they were settling on planets much of whose surfaces were then (and in HH's day still are) hazardous for the unarmed/unprotected. (Don't forget that as late as HH's time, people who go wandering in the bush on Sphinx take along some hefty firepower, and even the planet of Manticore has less than 2 billion citizens, quite a few of whom (like the majority) are concentrated in a relatively small number of urban enclaves.) In the earlier days of the SK -- post Plague but way pre-Honor -- the practice of well-armed citizens settling disputes on their own (and before the cops could respond, given some really long response envelopes) -- reemerged. It was not officially sanctioned when it did, but juries tended to refuse to convict if they could be convinced that the dearly departed "needed killing."
In time, the precedent was pretty well established that a homicide was "justifiable" as long as it was "a fair shootin'" and both sides had participated voluntarily while taking precautions to protect innocent bystanders. In other words, "If you two lunatics really want to shoot at each other, more power to you. The gene pool will be improved whichever of you we manage to remove from it!" Once it became an acceptable practice, laws were passed (beginning on Sphinx, I blush to disclose) codifying it in the interests of conrolling and minimizing it.
Honor thinks it's a Really Bad Idea (despite the fact that she's resorted to it twice herself), but not because she thinks you shouldn't be allowed to settle disputes with a certain degree of . . . finality if both parties agree. Her objection is that the shaming aspect of it has turned it into something that drives/forces/convinces otherwise putatively sane (and honorable, decent, etc.) people who otherwise would know better than to do such a stupid thing (like Paul Tankersley) into situations that get them killed by the scum of the earth. She has no objection in theory to settling things on the dueling grounds (and was willing to use the "shaming" aspect of it herself to get to Pavel Young), but is actually doing all she can currently to support the growing reform movement to abolish the practice in the SEM.
I should, perhaps, point out that she would have been entirely willing to shoot Pavel without aid of the code duello if the code hadn't been there to be used. Lord knows I love the girl, but I certainly wouldn't wamt to get on the bad side of her with blood in the water. Moderation under those circumstances is not precisely her strong suit.
Oh, and who says you can't settle disputes on Montana with a shootin' iron, Pardner?
