"I can do that, but I don't think polymorphed armor will actually do very much to make the Opparan court more tolerable. What's the trouble this time, are the Greens pushing the Emperor to cut funding again?"

"We're very expensive, see. ...really, though we spoke almost entirely of funding, I think the subtext was that he's wondering if he really has to let me have Lastwall. With Arazni alive, he clearly did. With her gone, he probably didn't. With some new archmages..."

"Are you sticking with that name? Seems kind of defeatist...Have you been trading on my willingness to back you in a hypothetical independence war without even asking?"

"No, no, I hope to call it something else, I just don't want to confuse Elie. I have been meticulously close-lipped about whether anyone at all would back me in an independence war. I suppose I have suggested to Kydonus that you probably won't back him."

"I suppose I'm not very committed to the territorial integrity of the Taldane empire."

"I am."

"I know. I really expect that we'll be able to work something mutually satisfactory out, but it's the Opparan way to decide the division of one's gains from trade by who appears to be carrying the biggest stick."

"Can't argue with that. Just do try not to reason-like-the-gods right up to your men drawing swords on their fellows."

"I don't have any desire to involve myself in Taldane politics" – isn't that an understatement – "but for all its shortcomings, I'd much rather have Lastwall than another Taldane province. If you must use my name to get it, I won't object." 

"Thank you. If you remember anything about how it worked out last time, it'd be useful, but - Kydonus is an intelligent man, and doesn't want a war. I have been reasonably sure all along we can arrive at something with which we are both equally dissatisfied."

"I think Lastwall might have been a nominal protectorate of Taldor until Cheliax broke off? At that point they didn't have the energy to fight it when you declared independence too."

She nods. "A lot of the details will probably have to wait until the war is over - it matters if the country is burdened with guarding Gallowspire or not - but I don't particularly mind if it's a protectorate. I just don't think it's possible to build a just government that ultimately answers to the Emperor of Taldor." 

"I can't say it's ever been done."

"But perhaps you'd say you can't build a legitimate government that answers to anyone else, either."

"One can maintain a principle opposition to tyranny while acknowledging that some tyrants make better governors than others."

"Kydonus is excellent at his job, as they go. I certainly couldn't do better. I think the fault in the Empire is mostly structural. ...though there have been a good number of horrendous Emperors, and that certainly didn't help."

"I don't have any reason to believe that Taldane emperors should be any worse than others, and it is true that breaking away from the empire has been broadly good for the former provinces' civic health." 

" - huh, that actually startles me slightly. I am not surprised that I can do better here, because the Crusade is wealthy and functional and has land to distribute and allied Lawful churches, but I would've predicted that the typical resident of the typical river kingdom would be better off as part of the Empire, and that most breakaway provinces would regress to resembling river kingdoms."

"It's not a very strong statement. Cheliax was stronger and better-managed than Taldor when it broke away, or it wouldn't have been able to. And – Cheliax is a bit of an unfair comparison – but Andoran and Galt and probably even Druma before the whole place got lit on hellfire are better places to live than Taldor now." 

"They're only one generation broken away, though, right? - Taldor in your age might also be worse than in ours, if the intelligent and ambitious people ended up in the Western Empire and then annihilated. I think the river kingdoms strike me as worse places than Taldor to live because it's harder to travel, and less likely there'd be any kind of response to, say, a dragon preying on people, and just as many ruinous civil wars. But I haven't done a very careful comparison."

The people of the river kingdoms do not broadly seem to agree with that. She's not sure whether to mention that when most of the people in the room don't know she's been paying attention to the region... she can speak more generally, though.

"I've hardly done a comprehensive survey either, but I think that belief is much more common inside the empire's borders than just outside it."

"Outside the Empire they tell their children we eat babies."

"Oh, you don't?"

"Must be a southern Imperial thing. I never heard anything about Taldane baby-eating as a child, just the never-ending conquests."

"If you were going to try to check it I think you'd want to get some peasants from inside and outside the border, give them translation, let them compare notes, and it still probably wouldn't work because people prefer their rulers to foreign rulers and their gods to foreign gods - and aren't wrong to, but it makes it hard to answer the question of whose rulers are better while not I think making the question meaningless."