Why, thank you, he sends, smugly.

So I've been thinking about it, and I was wondering, when you said introducing change to your world would be slow, what kind of tactics were you thinking of?

Depends on the kind of change, I guess? What I'd been going for was trying to find the secretive group of heretics who think metamancers aren't terrible while getting some sociopolitical capital in one of those Guilds, and I'd figure it out from there.

How do you feel about leveraging this world's magic and metamancy to get rid of the ginormous storm and found a country with freedom of religion and strict anti-persecution laws that don't specifically mention metamancers but definitely apply to them, and making it such a nice place to live that the other countries are outcompeted?

I feel like I might want to marry you.

Down boy. We've only just met.

Yes, ma'am.

Glad to hear you like the idea, though. This will take lots of planning. Pick up much useful about, like, how countries are run before your asshole dad found out about you?

Father, not dad, and yeah, actually. He had enough cognitive dissonance I kept having lessons on these things even after he found out I was a metamancer.

Cognitive dissonance?

I was a metamancer, so ineligible for the throne, but still his child, so the logical and emotional choice. I'm not sure he had made up his mind on what he'd do with me other than periodic abuse by the time my mother fled with me.

I'm really tempted to overthrow him and put him in jail on the grounds that he's obviously unfit to have power over anything more cognitively complex than a goldfish but that might be a bad idea.

The only actual law he has actually broken involved not immediately telling on me.

I mean yeah but the relevant laws appear to be shitty enough that I'm not sure if that's relevant.

Overthrowing him wouldn't be enough to change the laws, though, you'd need to overthrow the other two and possibly the [word that almost but not quite translates to 'Church'] before you could get anywhere. I think your idea of founding a new country is better.

Yeah. I know.

Besides, as far as rulers go, he's pretty decent.

You probably have low standards, if all of them are supporting the 'burn the metamancer' paradigm.

They don't necessarily support it, and anyway it's a very strong cultural background and publicly going against it would be—well, quite literal suicide. So their expressed positions needn't be their sincere ones.

Mm.

The whole system of incentives is very well-built against us.

Well we're going to set the system of incentives on fire, so.

We are, he says, and he injects those words with a lot of fondness. So while we did just meet and it's way too early for a marriage and you're technically carrying me in a very undignified way do you wanna go on a date with me at some point?

Sure! What kind of activities are considered datelike where you're from?

Well that went significantly better than it could've! He'll already count it as a win.

Depends on whether you mean my kingdom or my world, but in general going to pretty places and doing various pair activities is standard. Going for walks, eating together, watching a play if you have a lot of money.