It could be worse; if the situation were reversed I wouldn't forgive him but would pretend to.

Well, I don't think he's planning a double coup.

Not really his style, is it?

Nope.

If I could have had everything in place in time to stop my father from burning the ships I'd have done it. I can't think of anything less that would make it worth it.

Mm.

...comment?

Not particularly verbal pensive mood over here.

Your mother?

I'm not popular enough to pull off a coup, especially not when Thor's older and more locally exemplary and also not secretly a frost giant sorceress. My plan was always to wait for Odin to die and then be queen if she'd named me successor, elsewise advise Thor insofar as I could and sort of seek my fortune in the broader galaxy. I was always the one who fielded ambassadors and people requesting foreign aid and anthropologists and interplanetary merchants and people like that; we have to let a certain number of them in to not fall into such obscurity that people start thinking nobody would care if they started a war with us and to maintain a certain standard of knowledge about the galaxy we live in, but Odin found them tedious and Thor would have found it worse and I always really wanted to talk to them. I'm not grafted to my home planet the way you are to your family. I could just leave and stay gone, if it wasn't the most efficient place for me to progress.

I considered bailing early, but 'not actually ruled out as successor to queendom of a planet' is a fairly efficient place to be for many purposes.

I can imagine. Where would you have gone?

Depends. I have a soft spot for Midgard and could have tried to joggle it along in its development - hopefully less, erm, explosively, than was called for here - but only if Odin didn't care what I was doing. Midgard is sort of loosely a protectorate of Asgard in almost the sense that Elu could be said to rule people outside the borders of Doriath on the continent of Beleriand except that a couple of times Asgard did actually drive invaders off the place and the Midgardians by and large don't know we exist. I could have dug up another less protectoratelike planet in similar straits. I could have gone to some really cosmopolitan political unit, Nova or something, explored my options there.

I suppose for the details I should consult all these lovely books you've brought me.

I don't have anything in there about Nova, it seemed even more thoroughly incidental than the fiction, but I can print some up next time I'm bored of spellcraft in the acceleration hole.

I'm not planning to immediately meddle anywhere, I'm going to build us our own civilization and help make sure Father's ruling it responsibly and then find somewhere where I'm actually wanted as help.

If Odin means to leave me poised to end the war with the frost giants I could use help there for sure.

He can park in orbit in a nice warm spaceship?

I actually do not have a very clear picture of what he will want. A nice warm spaceship might be a good start.

I don't know that Jötunheim isn't one of those places where ambassadoring is typically done in couples, I guess that would be inconvenient.

Are there places like that? And it'd be fine if the couple were-

There are - according to the ambassadorial couple I talked to it's a very effective strategy, if narrowing of one's pool of diplomats - and depends on the place.

Findekáno will be unhappy relegated to taking care of me while I flit around conquering things that seem to require it, and has a higher standard for things requiring conquering enough to motivate him to take up a sword - or equivalent - but if the work was interesting and important not as an accessory to mine he might like it.