"Then let's build some."

"Once we get where we're going," she agrees. "I don't fancy trying to convince the horses to carry them."

"I have a cousin who could probably swing it. But yes. I don't suppose you aspire to rule a kingdom? We could certainly set you up with one if that was what you wanted."

"...I cannot say the thought had ever crossed my mind, and now that it has I have rather intensely mixed feelings on the subject. Would it help anything?"

"The problem where all the mortal kingdoms are our vassals or anarchic disasters. Some people regard that mostly as a humanitarian emergency, in which case it's fixable by learning how to treat mortal diseases and so forth, but some people think it's a bad idea in principle and in that case we could put some Men who are probably not going to die and give me a headache in a few decades in charge of Nevrast."

"...I'll think about it. Off the top of my head I can think of several reasons to say yes and several to say no."

"Certainly. Your sister?"

"...Probably a worse choice than me, largely because she's determined to become as magically powerful as possible and balancing that with administration wouldn't be very efficient."

A knowing grin. "No."

"If someone tried to put her I charge of a country anyway I think she would find some people who would do better at it than her and then delegate almost everything, so it's not as bad as it could be, but we do in fact have better options, so."

"I doubt my cousins will try putting her in charge of a country. Their policy towards Men is officially and as far as I can tell unofficially one of benign neglect."

"Better than some approaches," she shrugs.

"My cousins on the other side have been avidly playing Eru. It's useful to have two extremes to walk between, at least."

"Playing Eru how?"

"They changed the Men's names to ones in our language, take their leadership for a decade of personal mentoring, insist all the Men be taught Sindarin and use it in all public contexts - we do that too, actually, administration is much harder otherwise, but most of ours speak both languages, most of Findaráto's now only speak Sindarin. They decided it was inefficient for Men to try doing agriculture so they live off Elven grain, too."

"I suppose it's possible that it would work better for you, but, um, back home that kind of thing generally ends badly, one way or another."

"What sort of problems should I look for as a warning sign?"

"The most common problems are abuse of power, which is why I said your cousins might not run into it. Although a lot of people would say that forcing other people to adopt your culture over theirs was...already problematic. Also if you don't know enough about why some things are the way they are changing them can have their own problems, like, if Elven crops had every nutrient except one and humans were relying on their preexisting crops for that nutrient, suddenly they don't have it anymore, as a specific example. Er, take all this with a grain of salt, World History classes were never my favorites and I've forgotten a lot of information that could be relevant."

He nods seriously nonetheless. "We will keep that in mind, thank you. And - I trust my cousins, and in this specific case the concern may not be warranted, but I don't think Elves in general are immune to the temptation to abuse power."

"I'm going to be completely honest and say that I'm erring on the side of diplomacy by adding qualifiers to a lot of things when I'm referring to your family members that I wouldn't bother with if we were talking about strangers."

"My family members include at least a half-dozen mass murderers, I am unlikely to lose my temper if someone suggests an unkind interpretation of their motives. Unless it's unkind along specific lines we've discussed, but that really does not seem to be your problem."

"I assumed these were different cousins," she shrugs. "Anyway I don't have a large family so it's entirely possible I'm overgeneralizing from the way I feel about my sister and parents."

"Yes, these are different cousins. If I suggested that your sister were behaving irresponsibly, you'd react so badly that I'd be wiser saying 'if someone less infallible than your sister did this, the failure modes would be such and such'?"

"No, but I'd probably be upset if someone said 'I think your sister is liable to abuse power'. Actually come to think of it that's probably because someone did say that and then tried to kill both of us, I have been overgeneralizing. Oops."

"If you try to kill my cousins I will be annoyed."