"Fair enough! I think we're going with 'Princess,' that's standard for a ruler's sibling back home."

"Here too, I think. Though the Elves seem to mostly call themselves whatever they can get away with."

"It's kind of ridiculous," she agrees.

"They seem to coordinate pretty well for all the politics behind the scenes, so perhaps why break something that's working?"

"I don't intend to break it. It's still ridiculous."

"What do you want to accomplish? In terms of international politics?"

"Hmm, on what level? I think the Elves have a point about seeing Morgoth dead being the most important thing, but that's mostly addressed on our end by 'Odette does things' more than 'we implement foreign policy.' It's important to be seen as our own nation, rather than 'oh look Fingon decided to park some humans over there, isn't it cute how they're playing dress-up' or even 'Fingon decided to pretend all the humans are relevant and autonomous because one is super magic and he wants to be on her good side; this is a good idea let's emulate it'. Ideally I'd like to set precedent for non-Elven independent rulers and female rulers. I also want to be completely open to refugees and have separate rules for handling citizens and handling non-citizen long-term residents--someone suggested at one point--Odette told you about what happened in Estolad, right?"

"Yes, she did."

"Someone suggested moving--relevant persons--away from the frontlines and Odette suggested that Beth Miqlat would be safe and someone else pointed out that the relevant elves as applicable weren't going to transfer fealty and she suggested some kind of rules for people in that situation and I don't know if that in particular would be a good idea but it's probably a good idea to anticipate something relevantly similar before it happens."

"Makes sense. I think the Elves' policy is agreements among each other that they'll hold their subjects accountable for obedience to local authority while they're living there. Unless you expect people will try spying, that might work."

"That seems reasonable, if there's already a system in place, but I might want to think about it for a while--I don't want to assume that the system that exists is the best possible one, or that I can't improve on it."

"Fair enough."

"Having a fresh perspective on the situation should help make up some of the experience gap. I hope."

"And different goals than the current system was built to fulfill."

"That too."

"It's hardly the most pressing question on the diplomacy front anyway."

"Yeah, that's definitely true."

"In peacetime that'd be trade agreements, as it stands it's probably defense. I imagine you've read through how the Elves do that, too, but there are some problems..."

And they talk about that for a few hours.

Andreth is just as helpful in person as by proxy through books, hooray!

"I think you'll do well at this, your highness."

"People keep saying that. It doesn't help my nerves as much as it probably should."

"What are you nervous about?"

"...Screwing up and getting people killed."

"Happens to everyone. No one's expecting you to be perfect."

"A month ago I would never have dreamed of having this kind of responsibility."