"Their local lord might matter more, to the peasants. Not that I know a great many peasants."

"I suspect that the greater forces that make an Empire healthy or unhealthy often find expression in how good the local lords are. People who'll vastly outperform what's expected of them are rare, but you can expect quite a lot of them and get it."

"Is the current emperor of Taldor in the habit of expecting things from his lords? I can't say mine is."

" - well, even if we are more cynical than I actually find useful most of the time, he needs taxes and levies and a lack of embarrassing messes. And if I were trying to be fully descriptive I'd add - roads and temples and shipyards and things to take national pride in, the forests getting smaller -"

"Weren't you the one who said it was impossible to build a just government under the Emperor of Taldor?"

He doesn't mean to be short with her, really. But the question of how much there is to be gained by independence from Taldor has become rather more salient to him this week. 

"Yes, absolutely, but the reason I think that isn't that the Emperor expects nothing of his lords, or even very little, or that the Empire is completely useless compared to all plausible alternatives. If those were the problem they'd frankly be much easier to fix, you could try expecting more of the lords if that were actually the missing element, you could try doing what the plausible alternatives were doing if some of them were doing better.

The problem with Taldor as I see it isn't that it is without men of virtue who demand virtue of others, it's that the virtues it demands are structurally vices at least one lifetime in three, and that they're constraining virtues, you can't outperform much. The Emperor can be a man of extraordinary virtue and the results will be cripplingly limited, because his power to do good ends up far more bounded than his power to do ill, civilization being destroyed much more cheaply than it's built; everyone can be virtuous and this still will not channel their strength at an end worth having unless they also get very lucky. It is very nearly impossible to obey the imperial system or to disobey it in a way that changes it for the better.

What's your complaint?"

"I'm not familiar enough with Taldor in this or any era to dispute your claim – I would only add that you've described an inherent vice of monarchy."

"Well, yes. I'm against monarchy."

Huh. He wouldn't have expected that.

"I wouldn't have expected that." 

"I suppose in your day most people who think monarchies are structurally unsatisfactory as a form of government are republicans?"

"Oh, no. Most of them are merely tyrants of low birth."

"Well, there you go then, perhaps that's my problem." 

"Well, you do seem to think that the soundest means of allocating power is for you to handle it personally, forever." 

"Intervening is very costly, you actually want to minimize it at almost every opportunity. I think of the primary constraints on rulers as being that they have to maintain their legitimacy and appease whoever got them into power and actually competently run their land, and ideally most of what you're doing with intervention is reducing the intrinsic disadvantage that anyone trying to do - anything at all except remain in power - has over anyone who cares about nothing but that."

"What means of succession did you originally plan for Lastwall?"

"We don't have the state set up yet, obviously, but in my present drafts the staff council selects the commander, from any officer of the territory willing to take the oaths of office and expected to abide by them. They can ask me, or Aroden, or anyone else they'd like, how we think candidates would turn out, but it's not a Church-appointed position. Is that not how it is run in your time?"

"In principle as you said, but they consult you without exception, and you can override their decision. In practice, they always select one of their own number, and since they also typically appoint their own successors, the whole thing's all a bit opaque to those of us on the outside."

"Hmmm, so - that could be an arrangement by which a god gets to pick the rulers of a country without it being clear they're doing so, it certainly makes sense to me for it to be parsed that way. At the same time - the Crusade senior staff make important appointments by discussion among us. Were Marit at an inconvenient distance I'd consult him by Sending, and if he said 'absolutely not' to a candidate that'd be the end of it. This isn't because Marit secretly runs the Crusade - as far as I know - it's because he pays attention to different things from me, and I'd be derelict in my duties if I didn't consult him and see whether what seemed like a good idea from my angle also seemed like a good idea from his, and if I told everyone 'we're proceeding with this appointment over Marit's strenuous objection' I assume they'd all worry I'd gone mad.

This is also approximately how I relate to Aroden. It seems to me that there's a genuine risk that if people can consult their allies in Axis and in Heaven they'll - lean on them excessively - but that they should, actually, consult their allies for important decisions, and all you can do is emphasize that you want to reduce as much as possible the degree of reliance on the gods, and to teach that it's a positive virtue to avoid requiring divine intervention of any kind, that the greatest service you can do an allied god is to solve your own problems without them."

"I have never been personally involved in the governance of Lastwall, and it's entirely possible that they think of you just as you think of Aroden – a wise and powerful ally, but no more than that. I have met them, though, and it would surprise me a great deal. Your paladin who perhaps comes closest doesn't work for them directly, and I don't think that's a coincidence." 

" - I mean, I'd expect and intend that most of what the Church does it does separately from Lastwall, Lastwall's going to have a bunch of specific duties and obligations even if we do kill Tar-Baphon for good because it's a country. I will have to think about how to - encourage them not to relate to me unproductively. Maybe establishing more churches more firmly..."

Suddenly he feels very tired. 

"The problem with Lastwall is not that they're insufficiently catechized. They understand perfectly well about not wasting your effort. They don't understand, and I'm not sure you have a way to teach them, how to want anything more than just being you. Or maybe you can and it hasn't ever been worth your effort to correct, since trying to be you keeps them on the right path, at least for all practical purposes – 

– which might very well be the right choice, the world being what it is."  

" - well, ultimately we're going to need a lot more gods. But it's not - necessarily very depositive, that that hasn't happened faster. I assume good reasons exist why Aroden hasn't made more of them already and I do not expect those constraints to be ones I much lessen. ...it does seem to me like in fact there is a failure of understanding, if they want to be me. It is our birthright and our destiny to surpass the gods. I don't want to be Aroden."

"We were just speaking of how it's impossible to build a just society under the Emperor of Taldor. I do wonder why it seems so difficult to build an ambitious one under the ruling council of Lastwall." 

"And what would an ambitious Arodenite country look like? Taldor. Armies of Exploration. 'we're the best, so we may as well go rule everyone'. A country that encompasses, at minimum, Belkzen and the parts of Ustalav worth holding, and that eventually only in response to a serious provocation conquers its way all the way north to the ice, and then intervenes when the Empire splinters -

I don't even - know that that's an error, all things considered, but - it's an evil, whether or not it's an error, and it is what I witness of ambition."

" – If that's so, it seems like a failure of Arodenism more than a failure of ambition."