EXCERPT FROM THE DEBATE OF THE ARCHROYAL DIET

Hall of the Archroyal Diet, Kellenburg, the Nineteenth Day of February, in the Year 205 of the Crowned Era

Baron Sigismund von Austenberg.
Honourable Lords, my fellow Sigislandians! The Archroyal Diet is the oldest and most august of all political bodies within our Archkingdom. Beneath this venerable dome, since the days of the Founder himself, have sat the delegates of all Sigisland, summoned to offer their counsel to the Archking in the guidance of our glorious realm.

When my father first took me to behold the Archking, the Restorer Himself spoke these words to him: “Let the young baronet first see the Diet, that he may hear the burdens of the Archkingdom—only thereafter let him behold the splendour of Erzkoenighaus.”

I remember that first coming here as though it were but yesterday—those were the years when some of Kellenburg’s magnificent cupolas still lay in ruin, and when one of the twin towers of this stately edifice was bereft of its upper half, a sight that filled my heart with such sorrow as remains one of the most vivid sentiments of my earliest youth.

In those days, the seating within this chamber was arranged by estates, not by categories as now; yet the feeling that then possessed me is the same that I feel this very moment, and that I feel whenever, upon the golden throne beneath the purple canopy before us, our Sovereign listens to the deliberations of her faithful nation: it is the purple loyalty—that sacred principle upon which the whole Nation stands.

I remember how the representatives of the vampiric nobility, seated in the first row, intoxicated by goblets of blood which they had the audacity to bring even into this hallowed place, spoke coldly and mockingly against the rebuilding of Kellenburg—under the pretence of concern for the preservation of “authentic monuments”—desiring that it remain forever a ruin of fire and earthquake, as it had been since the calamities of the year 87, amidst which they held their infernal feasts.

Then my father accused them before this assembly—that for an entire century they had striven to seize power for themselves; that whilst the good Archkings and their servants slept, they, beneath the veil of night, slew and drank the blood of their peasant subjects to prolong their lives, and bathed in it to preserve their youth; that by day they bribed officials with their gold, securing impunity and ever-greater influence; and that it was they who had financed and conspired, together with the werewolves, to raise the underground republic in Guntreland.

All eight estates acclaimed the Archking and applauded my father’s words, and upon the faces of the vampires there appeared, for the first time, the pallor of fear. They withdrew from this chamber, for the warmth of purple loyalty had vanquished the chill of their bloodthirsty malice. That same warmth soon melted the gold which the vampires had gathered for their wicked designs into the radiance that now illumines the domes of Kellenburg and into the ornaments that throughout our continent proclaim the splendour and might of the Crown of Torches.

Today, we are blessed to behold upon that Crown a ruler both wise and vigorous, adorned with every virtue; yet we are also cursed, for around Her Majesty have gathered certain persons in whose breasts lie the writings of republican scribblers, instead of the loyal hearts of true Erzroyalists.

It is for that reason alone that I stand before you now, speaking these words—instead of sitting within the basket of a command balloon of the Archkingdom, with the hilt of my sword in hand and armour upon my breast.

The vampires, who failed to subjugate Sigisland—for purple loyalty defeated them—have now, with their werewolf brethren, seized dominion over Guntreland, whose people possess no such virtue to defend them.

Let me remind you: before the fall of the Armada, I fought for a year as a volunteer in the ranks of the Guntrelandite monarchists, and seldom have I found among foreigners those qualities I had deemed the exclusive birthright of Sigislandians—chivalric devotion to their sovereign, self-sacrifice, and scorn for the inhuman might of the enemy. There a republican shell wounded me, whose scars I yet bear, while many of my comrades fell.

It is unworthy of Sigisland to abandon such brave men to their doom, battling against the darkness that engulfs them. Yet the duty we owe them transcends even the sympathy we feel for their noble service to their King.

Our ally, His Majesty King Alphonse, has formally sought the aid of the Crown of Torches, upon the authority of the ancient Compact of the Elizine Congress, by whose letter all rulers of the world acknowledge our Archking as first among them.

Loyalty to Her Majesty and to Her pre-eminence, reverence for the names of the Founder and the Restorer, and mercy towards mankind itself—all these command but one course: that we advise Her Majesty that the soldiers of Sigisland take their place within the congressual and monarchist army already assembling upon the still-royalist and unsullied peninsula of Schwenz, and upon the isles encircling the continent of Guntreland.

Therefore I venture to lay before this exalted Diet the proposal of such a declaration—not out of arrogance, but as a faithful servant of the Crown, eager to do, at this very hour, what Purple Loyalty and the name of a Sigislandite nobleman alike demand of him.

Jens Kering.

Representative of the Crafting Category of Evenlon Province.

Your Excellencies, Delegates of this Exalted Diet!
I stand before you as the representative of the craftsman’s estate of the Province of Evenlon—our proud Northeastern homeland—and I shall speak not merely my own opinion, but the unanimous voice of all my provincial and categorical brethren with whom I conferred ere setting forth for our radiant capital.

For we, the men of Evenlon, though we spend our days in diligent labour, are not strangers to the affairs of the world, nor to those tempests that rage across seas and oceans; how could we be, when we have felt upon our very flesh the keenest edge of great world politics?

Five years ago, I lost a son in Ferdinand’s Armada, for the Crown of Torches was then fulfilling its obligation toward the King of Guntreland. I do not wish to lose my second son because King Alphonse cannot govern his own subjects. Had he possessed the wisdom and justice of our own Karolina-Louise, he would have granted his people proper categorisation and good and righteous laws, and there would have been no rebellion against him.

That thankless despot, instead of coming to Kellenburg to kneel before our entire Nation and beg forgiveness for the loved ones we lost because he failed to rule his realm aright—and to swear before our Archqueen that henceforth, in what remains of his dominion, he shall follow her example alone—he dares demand that we shed more of our blood to sate his ungoverned ambition.

The people of Evenlon do not wish to die for a foreign king; they wish to live and labour loyally for their Archqueen, their Fatherland, their families, and themselves. This long-suffering nation has already paid for its sins—past and future alike—and now awaits the age of happiness and success which by its own exalted virtue it has earned.

The Archqueen, who has ever stood beside her people, feels this truth in the depths of her noble heart. Feel it likewise, and stand by her when she faces the pressures of insatiable despots who, beneath the cold formulas of dust-covered congressional compacts—those parchments red with our blood—will demand of her that she send still more of her subjects to death.

Let us therefore declare that the Archking’s Diet believes all congressual duties of Sigisland toward King Alphonse were fulfilled five years ago. And if King Alphonse seeks the support of the Archqueen’s Army, let him search for it at the bottom of the Ferdinand Sea—he shall find there enough brave warriors, with the purple ribbon about their necks and the Crown and Torches upon their hearts—there, where rest all that we once had in life, all that we held dear and beloved!

(A multitude of fingers raised toward the dome.)

Baron Sigismund von Austenberg.

Gentlemen, compatriots, brothers!
It is, alas, no marvel that such opinions should be heard within the Archqueen’s Diet, when it can so happen that a carpenter sits nearer the throne than a Baron of the Archkingdom—owing to the rule that the seating of the categories must rotate monthly, that all might feel themselves equal.

I honour every subject of the Archkingdom; yet precisely because I honour him, I believe he must occupy that station which Nature has assigned him. I stand for the Reform, indeed, for I stand for whatsoever is the will of my Sovereign—but I would have that Reform preserve what makes us what we are.

If you say that the King of Guntreland is himself to blame for the rebellion of his land because he enacted not the laws our Archqueen has bestowed upon us, you thereby declare that, had our Archqueen by some mischance failed to give such laws, rebellion against her too would have been permitted. Such notions have no place in this High Chamber.

Master Jens proclaims that one of his sons fell in Ferdinand’s Armada. My own father fell likewise—the ninth Baron of Austenberg. Tales of my father’s valour shall be told by candlelight each year in my house, while the world endures, as in yours, good Jens, shall be told the tales of your son. The same holds true for all our brethren who perished gloriously beside them. Their lives shall inspire generation upon generation of Sigislandic Ercroyalists, and they shall live so long as Sigislandic candles burn.

But we must consider what posterity shall think of us—of you and of me—how long our remembrance shall live beside the candle’s flame; and posterity will judge us by what deeds we perform in our own lifetime.

Can you speak of your son knowing that his death is yet unavenged? Can we speak of our joy in being Sigislandians, and not avenge the slaughter of Sigislandic travellers, butchered and devoured in the dungeons of Guntreland in the days before the Armada—those to whom life was offered in exchange for renouncing Sigisland, but who chose their grim fate that they might dwell forever in the eternity of our culture?

War, brothers—glory and vengeance—not peace and cowardice!

And let me add this, gentlemen: we are not like the Bautians, who find glory in heroic death yet know nothing of art and beauty, and whose deaths are as hollow as their souls.

What, I ask, could be more truly Sigislandic than that—after all our tribulations—we should once more perish, if in that perishing there be a beauty that ennobles the world? The curse of Sigisland is its blessing; for even the ruin of Sigisland is an art—that is what the sacred words of our literature proclaim, and those words bind us still.

Our fathers and brothers lie not at the bottom of the Ferdinand Sea—they are the food of Balster’s Kraken, who, in heralding his feast after two centuries of fasting, heralded nothing less than the renewed banquet of the Sigislandic Nation upon the nectar of heroic glory—that crimson nectar with whose hue alone the new Balsters may worthily inscribe their epics.

And mark also these words: the city of Balsburg, raised by the King of Guntreland to immortalise the imperishable scenes of our Sigislandic literature—literature so exalted that it conquered the Guntrelandic court itself by its refinement—has been burned to ashes by the revolutionaries; Kellenburg porcelain—that noble art by which even the greatest among the most privileged nation fill her rare hours of leisure—lies shattered in fragments throughout wretched Guntreland at the hands of those shameless kingdomless men.

Do you not see that they are the enemies of all that is Sigislandic and fair in this world? Do you yet wait to draw your swords and bring an end to kingdomlessness, to overlordlessness, to inhumanity itself?

(A multitude of fingers once more raised toward the dome.[1])
— To war, my lords, to war!

Heinz Jute.

Delegate of the Industrial Category.

Gentlemen, Representatives of the Categories of the Sigislandic Nation, united beneath the Crown of Torches of our Archqueen!
I beseech you solemnly to lend your most attentive ear to the humble proposal I am about to set forth.

I ask you: why should not the wisdom and nobility of Karolina-Louise the Archqueen—within whom dwell the wisdom and nobility of the entire Sigislandic Nation—be extended to other continents as well?

If King Alfons desires our aid, let us grant it! Let us send forth our legions to subdue the savages who tear down castles, burn the works of art, shatter the harpsichords, massacre the innocent and drink their blood upon the streets!

Why not, I ask you? It is the very essence of the Erzroyalist spirit to bring civilisation to those who lack it; so spoke the greatest minds of the Sigislandic soul. But let the King of Guntreland first swear that he himself shall be civilised!

The progress of history has brought mankind to that enlightened stage wherein human society must be ordered as an organic community of categories, in which each person receives his place according to his natural and acquired abilities—not by the blind accident of birth into a rank or estate.

We honour the former order as a necessary historical phase through which, by the decree of Nature, we had to pass; we revere the achievements of past ages and the sovereigns who embodied them. Yet we see no reason that such a structure should persist in our own day—just as we revere the inventor of bow and arrow, yet now employ muskets and grenades.

Therefore let us declare unto the King of Guntreland: we shall aid him, but only if he pledge himself to institute in his realm the very same system that flourishes in ours. Should he refuse, our assistance will avail him nothing; for the people who are governed by an obsolete and outworn order will continue to rebel—and surely he cannot expect that every time his fallen throne collapses, it shall be raised again upon the waves of Sigislandic blood!

From us, he shall have no greater or nobler aid than the example we already display before him: the model of good and enlightened governance, a system wherein he who rules the Nation is at once its first servant.

That a Sigislandic man—who rises each morning with the sun and labours faithfully until its setting for the greatness and glory of his Fatherland, who by that labour has raised himself after every ruin—should lay down his life for the frivolous pleasures of a Guntrelandic noble or royal favourite, men who arrogantly create and exploit the misery of their own countrymen and by such folly provoke rebellion—this, to my mind, and I trust to yours as well, has no particle of reason.

I thank the Honourable Diet for its gracious attention to my modest proposal. – Some fingers raised.

KARL TALMAN.

Tenelonian Representative.

Gentlemen!
We here deliberate upon matters of war and peace; yet one question of supreme importance to the Archkingdom has not been discussed at all. That question is the inner cohesion of our realm—without which it is vain to speak of wars upon foreign soil, however just or honourable they may seem.

I hold, indeed, that it is a matter of Archroyal honour that we send our army in aid of King Alphonse; yet before that, we must ensure that our own house stands united.

We Tenelonians—and I believe I may speak also for the other three southern provinces—wish to feel the Archkingdom of Sigisland as truly our own country. But for that to be so, we must see ourselves truly treated as such.

Why is it, by the name of the southern wind, that at the banquets of the very Sigislandic court there are served the juices of the piratical archipelagic fruits, and not our southern wine—the noble produce of our fertile soil?

And what, moreover, are we to say of the treaty with the Federal Kingdom, by which tariffs upon Sigislandic textiles—an industry belonging solely to the northern provinces—are greatly reduced in the markets of Neuland, while in exchange the Archkingdom abolishes all duties on Neuland fruit, from which those same foreign juices are made, supplanting our southern wine?

We further demand that the remembrance be permitted of those valiant men who fought upon the Sigislandic side during the Twenty-Four Years’ War, but who, owing to later disputes concerning the succession, unhappily took part in the rebellion of the four southern regions against Archking Eugene.

We desire that their merits in the founding of the Archkingdom not be erased from memory. We believe they have been punished enough—by loss of life or estate—and should not be deprived also of eternal remembrance in the flame of Sigislandic candles.

I humbly entreat the Diet to consider these modest petitions, that all Sigislandians may live henceforth in harmony and unity.

A moment of solemn silence follows; the assembly listens gravely, several heads bowed in thought.

Stefan Vaffer.

Representative of Vilaron.

As a true Vilaronian, faithful to the oath that the people of my province swore to Archking Ferdinand the Founder when they became part of the most magnificent polity the world has ever known, I must rise in reply to the shameful petition of the preceding speaker. Before the Archqueen herself and before all the Categories, this audacious man has demanded that in the Overkingdom of Sigisland a candle be lit in honour of the traitors of their own continent and of their own sovereign — that the flame most sacred to us, the flame that symbolizes the Torch-Crown whose radiance adorns our sceptre, be set ablaze to celebrate perpetrators of high treason, the vilest of crimes.

By the oath of Stefan Birger, we true southern Sigislandians, if ever we learned that in any household the Ferdinandine flame had been profaned by being kindled in honour of one of those traitors, we would enter that house and consign both the flame and the dwelling to the torch — and deliver up all those audacious wretches who dared such an offence.

Every family among us today can name several hundreds of ancestors who lived from the founding of the Overkingdom to this day; and if any among their descendants chooses to celebrate the man who committed the greatest of crimes, and to fashion the spiritual identity of his house upon such a person, we must ask, gravely and without indulgence, whether that man possesses, in any measure at all, the purple fidelity.

(A great many fingers are raised toward the dome.)

Baron Sigismund of Austenberg.

Yes, my lords, countrymen, brethren! This is what happens when we fail to smite treason abroad: it creeps back to our own soil, beneath the very dome of the Diet, there where we had thought the purple fidelity so strong that even the notion of treason would be choked within the heart. First we heard the timorous murmur of cowardice; and when we answered it not with iron, treason found no reason to spare us and instead mocked us to our faces, even in the presence of Her Majesty the Archqueen. For what else is it but treason to desire the celebration of traitors?

But lift up your heads in the very direction in which you now lift your forefingers, and behold what is painted upon the interior of the dome above you. Do you see? The twelfth of February, the eleventh year before the Elizian Congress — the conclusion of the Indissoluble League of eight provinces, from which our Archkingdom arose; the oath of Ferdinand the First, who in that bloodless war displayed his superiority over the rulers of the other provinces, that he and his heirs by their armies would defend the interests of all Sigislandians across the world; and the vow of the captains of the four southern provinces to be ever faithful to him and his lawful successors. Oaths which some of them kept no longer than twenty‑eight years — and now it is proposed that we permit those very men to be celebrated!

(Many fingers are raised toward the dome.) — Let shame befall those who broke their oaths, and let glory and honour be upon our loyal southern brethren who remained true to their pledge, and who together with us northerners make the Most Glorious Realm.

THE ARCHROYAL ARCHCHANCELLOR REBER.
Your Excellency, Baron von Austenberg, the Government of the Torch-Crown holds the deepest and most solemn respect for your ardent zeal in the struggle against the Guntrelandish insurgents — all the more so in view of the grievous family tragedy which has befallen you in that very struggle, a tragedy shared by nearly half of our Nation, while all of us together mourn that this calamity has bereft us of the Great Archking-Restorer and the Chivalric Heir to the Throne.

Yet from the tragedy of the Two-Hundredth Year our Nation received also an infinite consolation — the radiant, unbounded solace bestowed upon us by our new Sovereign. And it is solely by Her that the sacred thought has been fulfilled — that the curse of the Sigislandians is itself a blessing, for their perishing is a work of art. The age of Karolina-Louise is art painted in the noble blood of our former sacrifice; let that blood not have been spilt in vain, but used instead as the pigment with which our Golden Era shall be illuminated.

Before us lie great works of creation: the draining of vast marshlands to prepare the ground for new cities and settlements; the construction of canals that shall solve the problems of irrigation and bind together the distant limbs of the Archkingdom with navigable veins of prosperity. The ambitious and visionary enterprises of Her Majesty in the realms of culture and education likewise demand abundant means.

War, gentlemen, is a costly endeavour — one we cannot at this moment afford, nor from which we could derive any tangible benefit. Allow me to remind you that the foreign kings who wage this conflict do so chiefly from their terror of revolution spreading to their own irrationally governed and tyrannical realms. Our Sovereign, unlike them, reigns enlightened; She has no personal stake in the quelling of foreign insurrections.

The weakness and disunity of Guntreland — our greatest competitor among nations — and the exhaustion of the military and economic forces of other foreign powers engaged in the Guntrelandish war, open to Sigisland the glorious prospect of ascending above them all: to become, in due time, the true hegemon of the world, whose word shall be final in all international affairs. This will secure for us a privileged share in the world’s resources, and thus prosperity for all Sigislandish subjects.

The blockade of Guntreland has left our fishing fleet without rival — a circumstance which must fill with joy and gratitude our seafaring brethren from the four southern provinces. We have recovered from the fall of the Armada and now command again a respectable force; yet we are still far from realizing our full capacities. Revolutionary Guntreland, through incessant mobilizations and drills, possesses a larger army than ours — one far more seasoned and ready for combat — while Bautia remains ahead of us in both military science and technology.

The wars that consume the rest of the world, and the vast potential of our own continent, pave our path toward supremacy. We must not gamble away that destiny by sending our troops into a foreign land, against a frenzied people who know every hill and river of it better than we do. For in a war against revolutionary Guntreland, one must count not only its active soldiers but its entire population — forty-two million souls united by the same fanatical creed and the same readiness to perish for it.

Our mission, gentlemen, is not to pour out our blood upon alien soil, but to fashion our own realm into such a bastion that, whatever the order of things abroad, Sigisland shall remain the most powerful among nations — the most perfect for human life, and ever ready to defend itself against every menace.

As for the question raised by Mr. Talman: the trade accord with the Archipelago was concluded under excellent terms, securing for the whole Sigisland a steady supply of fresh and wholesome tropical fruit at fair prices; and the Archkingdom steadfastly demands from the Archipelago the punishment of all those responsible for the attacks upon Sigislandic vessels. Concerning the treaty with Neuland: we export what they most need of ours, and they supply what we most desire of theirs — guided throughout by the common interest of Sigisland, not by any provincial partialities.

What is certain is this: at Court, as in an ever-increasing number of Sigislandic homes — for the prosperity of our Nation grows day by day — both the noble wine of Tenelon and the tropical juices of the Archipelago are drunk. These two beverages differ, yet neither displaces the other; and that, my lords, is itself the very emblem of the flourishing harmony of our Archkingdom.

I therefore beseech all subjects of the Crown to show patience and to give their utmost strength for the common triumph of our continent.
(A great number of fingers are raised toward the dome.)

Alichard Roff.
Mr. Archchancellor, I will put but one brief question to you: what if we do not intervene in this war, and revolution triumphs everywhere in the world — a possibility you yourself have not been shy to admit — and if all those revolutionary republics, united, turn their arms against the Archkingdom in the very fashion that the crowned kingdoms now assail the so-called republic of Guntreland? Is not the congressional system itself the surest guaranty of Sigisland’s security, since all kings recognise the Sigislandic Archqueen as their presiding sovereign?

ARCHROYAL ARCHCHANCELLOR REBER.
The truest guaranty of Sigisland’s safety lies, paradoxically, in the perpetual condition of war and in the jealous rivalry among other powers — in their continual wasting and attrition on every front, and in the longer maintenance of such a state among them. If the revolutionary tide should indeed swell so high as to threaten the thrones of all sovereigns — a prospect from which we are, I hold, as yet very far removed, for even without our participation the Guntrelandic Republic, hemmed in by a total blockade, sinks into wretchedness — then there may come a moment when we must lend aid to the monarchs, should a danger appear that those republics might concert together to our detriment. But that, I am convinced, remains a remote and uncertain eventuality.

FRIDRICH ZOBL.
Your Excellency, Archchancellor — your reasoning would carry weight, were it not for one most important fact which you have neglected: who stands behind the blood-soaked Guntrelandic Revolution, and to what dark ends that insurrection truly aspires. We do not face a mere native uprising sprung from Loransburg or Eustate, nor solely from the Guntrelandic forests that concealed lycanthropic presses spitting forth pamphlets printed in blood for that subterranean-woodland republic; the threads of this conspiracy run also from Blutwig — and, why should we not say it, from certain castles upon our own continent, the infamous Velstein among them, while some of their ancient dwellers yet lingered there. For two centuries these cabals have laboured at a deliberate design, and they will not rest in their criminal purpose until every throne and every crown in the world lies toppled, every ancient law and custom swept away — all that stands between them and a limitless tyranny bathed in human gore. This is a blood they thirst for as men thirst for water; such blood will, they hope, consummate the vampire’s dream of triumphing over the sun whose light has ever revealed their wickedness.

Who, pray, is the leader of the Guntrelandic Revolution? Henscher, Hrebs, or Masden? We hear these names, and yet we know not that the true master does not sojourn upon Guntreland’s soil at all, but sits in Blutwig — by day lying as one in a tomb, by night stirring conspiracies over goblets of human blood, feeding his plot with gold and pulling its strings. This is no enemy that we may conquer by letting him bleed slowly in distant wars; he does not bleed himself — it is his marionettes and his deluded followers who are bled, their sacrifice foreordained by his design. What the Archchancellor praised — eternal war and ceaseless strife — is precisely that which our foe most desires, for it provides him with an unending fountain of human flesh and blood and a sure path to the overthrow of kings.

Do you know what the Guntrelandic revolutionaries have renamed one of Eustata’s principal squares? The Crown Square — where kings, at their coronations, vowed to the people to shield them from monsters — they now call the Square of the Broken Crown, for there the Guntrelandic crown of two hundred years, the emblem of the “most humane king,” was ritually shattered with a mallet by a lycanthrope, who thereupon snapped the royal sceptre as well. Nothing of this is accidental; the roles are distributed with cold intent. I fear that mighty Sigisland, land of greatest splendour and honour, is being assigned the part of a mute spectator: to stand idly by while the very values that made her great are cast down before she herself crumbles.

We must help our Archqueen show the world that she is an absolute sovereign whose crown and scepter shine with the radiance of the sun — not a vassal of the forces of darkness, who would seize upon her youthful benevolence with seductive and monstrously false doctrines of human equality. Before the Restorer, vampires’ gold too often satisfied the ambition of our exalted Monarchs; they celebrated their names and made Kelenburg, then Ferdinandshafen, the world’s capital of culture — yet they did not go everywhere the royal blood and the royal power were needed to defend the Man against the Vampire. Let them not now, by their perfidious gold or by their nauseous, beguiling lies — that men are born equal and entitled to the same rights — succeed in wrenching the people from the protection of their Archqueen.

In war with such forces there can be no waiting, no tactical dalliance, no sending others into the front to die in our stead: these are precisely the instruments our enemy employs, his very nature and the field in which he is unsurpassed. We must strike with all our strength, as Ferdinand the Restorer once struck — without mercy — and with the full force of civilisation crush this enemy of mankind and complete the Work so violently frustrated. Every day we delay the foe grows stronger and nearer to final victory. Over our eastern coasts last month the haunted balloon of Ferdinand’s Armada appeared again and again — transparent as air, bearing the Archroyal arms of crown and torches that still gleam upon it — a balloon that will wander the heavens until the Restorer is avenged. Do we need a clearer sign to remind us of our duty?

THE PRESIDENT.
Gentlemen Delegates of the Categories, it is the ancient custom that when the Archking—or in our blessed age, the Archqueen—sets the Crown upon the Royal Head during a session of this High Assembly, all debate must forthwith be suspended, that we may attend to Her Words. I therefore call upon you to rise, for Her Sovereign Majesty, the Archqueen Karolina-Louise of Sigisland, will now address Her Royal Assembly.
Your Majesty, the floor is Yours.

HER ARCHROYAL MAJESTY, ARCHQUEEN KAROLINA-LOUISE.
Honourable Delegates of the Categories,
I have heard it said within these walls that it is my bounden duty to defend the shaken thrones of other Congressual Sovereigns, and the royal rights that attend them. Yet let it be remembered: to every royal right there must also be joined a royal obligation—to govern in the true interest of one’s people and to heed the righteous claims and grievances of the nation.

As Overqueen of Sigisland, I feel that my foremost duty is to safeguard humanity and justice wherever they dwell upon the earth—to protect men and women who are my subjects, both direct and indirect. Kings must ponder deeply why misfortune has visited their crowns, and they must give due weight to the legitimate arguments of their peoples, if they wish to preserve their power with honour.

For now, I shall not make any hasty decree that would cost my subjects their lives. But neither shall I leave Guntreland without succour. I am ready this very moment to send to King Alphonse my people—physicians to attend his armies and tend to the wounded on all sides, especially to civilians; unarmed servants to bring food, garments, and medicine to the suffering; and engineers and masons to rebuild the ruined homes. Such is the form of aid most worthy of our Nation. It does not—permit me, Lord Archchancellor, to speak plainly—it does not make us joyful or grateful that others should starve, and we shall surely find ways for our ships to bring in abundant fish without the necessity of a blockade upon the Guntrelanders.

Let me state clearly: the purpose of our assistance to Guntreland is the establishment of peace and the acknowledgement of the people’s cause. When His Guntrelandic Majesty shall show me how he intends to amend the condition of his realm—what he is prepared to do for his own subjects, that no new revolt may arise—I shall then decide whether, and in what further manner, I may extend aid, even to the point of arms. If King Alphonse requires that I fulfil my obligations, then he too must fulfil his own.

It is of no use to stitch together a wound still festering with infection; one must first drain and cleanse it, and only then sew it shut without pain. So too must it be in this matter: only thus can military assistance be rightly given. A language must be found to reconcile ruler and people, lest the same revolution rise again, even were it once subdued.

That is my decree for the present. I call upon you all to demonstrate your true purple loyalty—not by questioning or debating my words, but by doing all within your power that my will may be accomplished, for the good of all Sigislanders and of all mankind.

Baron von Austenberg, your ardent love of Sigislandic culture moves me deeply; yet I am persuaded that the Guntrelanders did not destroy Balsburg out of hatred for Sigislandic art or letters, but because it stood, in their eyes, as a symbol of the reckless extravagance of their king and his consort, who thought only of their pleasures while unpunished injustices made life wretched in their realm.

As for my subjects in Tenelon, my wish is that all provinces of the Archkingdom may be equally prosperous, and that all my subjects may live well and want for nothing. That is why every Category and every Province has equal representation in this Assembly; therefore I wish that, in calm discourse, we may seek solutions to whatever divisions threaten our inner harmony.

Founders who took part in the making of the Archkingdom, yet betrayed it before the completion of their lifetime service, shall be honoured—but in their memory shall be lit candles whose wicks are inwardly shorter than those of the other Archroyal candles, that they may not burn to the end. For they were once faithful Sigislanders and companions in the epic of the Archkingdom’s founding, alongside the Founder himself, Francis and Eugene, yet they fell away before their earthly duty was done. This is my decree, and those who are truly loyal to me will not hinder its execution, whatever they may have earlier spoken in this hall.

I call upon all my subjects—nay, upon all my compatriots—to unite around the Crown, and together to labour that our realm may be the foremost among all nations; for only in unity may great deeds be accomplished. No country can be the best whose people are divided and at odds with one another.

To those who today spoke of vengeance for our countrymen who perished in the catastrophe of the Armada, I say this: there is no higher tribute we can pay to our fallen than to make our country ever nobler and more prosperous. What we do for our homeland will be a far brighter wick for the flame of their candles than any conquest of a nation they once set forth to subdue before meeting their tragic fate.

We grieve for our travellers who perished in Guntrelandic dungeons and we shall not forget them; yet we must be just and admit that Ferdinand himself once decreed fire for any republican captured by the victorious Armada.

If we truly believe that the Sigislandic Crown stands above all crowns of the earth, and that it is our right to guide the world’s destiny, then our aims must be the betterment of all humankind, and the universal rule of order and justice—within Sigisland, and throughout all the nations of the world.

Baron von Austenberg, I entreat you, do not scorn the counsel of the delegates of other Categories, for I hold every one of my compatriots in equal esteem in matters that concern all Sigislanders alike.

That is all for now. I beg the delegates’ pardon for exercising my right to intervene in your debate, and I express my sincerest hope that what you have heard from me may serve you well in your continuing labours.

— All delegates of the Assembly raised their forefingers toward the Dome of the Hall.

[1] According to tradition, in the Archroyal Diet, agreeing with the speaker was not expressed by applause or loud shouts, but only by raising the hand with the index finger directed towards the dome of the Diet above the great hall.