章 144: Arthur 48
293AC
Giving speeches was exhausting, I decided as I clonked down at one of the tables in the tavern. Leave it to the officers to negotiate with the owner, and the engineers had already landed to begin scoping out where the fort was to be set up. It was all happening so quickly now that it had started, I went from sitting on my ass in Dragonstone, to managing what I intended to be a new kingdom in its own right with no existing government to really take advantage of.
And even after years of theory and preparation, I was still the only one who knew what the fuck any of it actually meant.
'Fuck.'
It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted. A semi-absolute monarchy with a lot of democratic local autonomy, which could expand and thrive while including new territories and peoples.
But that was awful hard to spread to people without context, and using words half of which they didn't know.
At least the people here understood elections, sort of. Most Essosi governments were vaguely democratic within the upper class. It would be even harder in Westeros, if I ever ended up ruling any of it.
The nobility of Westeros had ruled unchallenged for thousands of years after all, without even a classical history to fall back on.
Still, based on the line that had formed, there were indeed questions.
Lots of them.
"Alright Jaerys," I shuddered, "send the first one up."
"Yes?"
"What do ya mean by "executive."?"
I stared at the man, before sighing slightly at his lack of decorum, I would need to get that worked out, exact status and all that, how people should address me.
"The Prince, King, or Supreme leader of the kingdom. It's meant to encompass all of those roles. The sole head basically."
"Huh."
This went on for hours.
I must have met the towns entire adult population clarifying things for them, explaining hoe I expected elections to work, why all people, including children who could speak, were being afforded a vote in them.
Obviously they would vote the way their parents did usually, and that gave a political incentive to having children, something I wanted given my empty lands.
Not that voting even had real power yet, with the way I had phrased things. Still, at least a good portion of the people here seemed excited about it, at least after I explained how things work.
I pressed my head down into my arms in the torchlight of the tavern in early evening, my eyes almost glazing over and my throat raw from talking so much.
"Would you like a mug of ale yer Grace? I'm afraid we don't have wine."
I stared up at the women, surprised she had used my actual title. She was fairly young, and reasonably pretty, if a bit overweight by my standards. The hormones in me were immediately drawn to her hosom, but they could override neither my love for Arianne, nor my exhaustion.
"Do you have cow's milk?"
"Yes Milord, fresh as well."
"I'll have a glass of that, alcohol makes fools out of men, young ones espescially." I turned up towards her. "Thank you."
She looked taken aback for a moment, before turning and moving away with haste, only to return with an enormous mug of lukewarm milk.
I thanked her again to another odd look, and began to sup at the beverage, almost falling face down onto the table as another wave of exhaustion hit me.
'No, no, none of that.' I called up the reserve of lightning inside of me, a clever trick I had learned since covering myself in liquid lightning that should definitely have killed me. I crawled upstairs to the largest room which had been reserved for me, and called it up, inside of myself.
Absolute focus was required if I didn't want to shower the rest of the room in lightning, and even then there would be sparks over my skin as I drew on the energy of it all to restore my own fatigue.
The sparks spread out from my gut where it all rested, surging through my body, an unnatural, but as far as I could tell, not harmful, way to extend my energy. A way to keep going when I would otherwise collapse, to manage a company an army and a research division at once.
Unfortunately the road to destiny didn't like to run straight.
"Your Grace, you forgot yo-"
The clattering slosh of a mostly full mug of milk falling to the ground was it's answer to my lack of caution..
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