[miltonyorkcastle]

*nods in agreement with Wintersheart* Doing something outside of your alignment once in a blue moon, especially over something like moral conviction, does not really show an entire alignment change. Granted, such things are at a GM's discretion, but it usually takes something extremely drastic, or a series of events betraying your alignment to actually make the change.

For example, Random King A is Lawful Neutral. When it comes to abiding by the law, he is the ultimate voice. One day, however, his son is caught with a peasant woman. The law states that "the bloodline shall not be tainted by less than noble blood." The penalty for such an offense is death for the "less than noble." The king loves his son, the son professes love for the peasant woman, yet the king is obliged to abide by the law, however rediculous it may seem to him at the time. Loving his son, he searches for a loophole, to spare his son the grief of the woman's death. Upon finding none suitable, he decides to throw out that law, and "taint" the bloodline, for the sake of his son.

So, then, is this king now True Neutral or Chaotic Neutral because of that one action? No. He is still very much Lawful Neutral. On a scale, he may have slid a little away from LN, but not far enough to slide into the next alignment. It can also be argued, that while he did not abide by the laws of the land in the end, he sought any possible way to do so before resorting to an outright override.

This is just how I have come to understand things, and, as Wintersheart suggested, alignments are guides, not definitions, for character behavior.