"What the fuck."

"What." 

"He's concerned I won't get to put my own stamp on the kingship if he's hanging around breathing down my neck all the time, and he thinks advising me won't be restful."

He makes an angry sound in the back of his throat and swallows the words that were going to come after it. 

"...I am really really glad my dad didn't decide to put me in charge of anything."

Wow, an opinion. Kaleva is very proud of himself.

"It's not that bad. He loves me, he wants me to be able to succeed on my own and not jut copy what he did."

"He decided ruling the world was too stressful for him, so he handed it down to his sixteen year old son and is planning to go on a two-year-long cruise because advising his, and I cannot stress this enough, sixteen year old son who he gave this job to, wouldn't be restful enough." 

"He wants me to be able to be independent."

"...Noooot sure it's helpful to argue with Ben about whether his dad sucks."

"—Sorry. I'll stop." 

Asher sends Chen a look that is intended to convey "but I am totally on board with you about this subject."

"...You should fix the tariffs."

"What?"

He gives Asher the same look back. 

(He still hasn't let go of Ben's hand.) 

"People keep doing really really high tariffs because they think the way to have a rich country is to have a lot of gold and silver in your treasury and that's actually totally wrong."

"It's... not?"

"They think trade is a zero-sum thing where one country benefits from getting more gold and silver and the other country loses out because it has less. But it's not. If I give you some money for a candy bar you didn't win the interaction because you got money, we both won because I valued the candy bar more than the money and you valued the money more than the candy bar, and the same thing is true for countries. And if countries do different things they can specialize-- it doesn't benefit anyone if Auradon City is growing its own crops instead of having Morgendammerung grow them, uh, that's a little complicated to explain but I can explain it if you're interested-- anyway everyone keeps trying to win at trade so the tariffs are really really high and if there were lower tariffs there would be more trade and everyone would be better off instead of walking around with a bunch of metaphorical candy bars they have nothing to do with."

"...What."

Kaleva is so good. 

"...You don't ever talk in class."

He remembers that he is talking to a room full of people who are soon to be the most powerful people in the world.

"Uh. Class is scary."

"You're really smart."

"No, I'm not. I just read a lot."

He tries to tell Asher I've been telling him this for a year and a half with his face at the same time as he tries to tell Kaleva you're very very good also with his face. 

"I want to hear more about why Auradon City shouldn't grow its own crops."