"Maybe. I know Aroden wanted to build - Azlant, not Taldor, and when He wrote History he was unsure whether it was his deficit, or the intervention of the gods against Azlant, which produced Taldor instead. Obviously I would build Azlant if I could; I think I am, compared to him, disadvantaged at trying. But I can try to build a country that means to rival Taldor for might and for conquests, easily enough, and I'm trying not to. And I think that I could, in fact, be persuaded that this is a mistake - that as little as I want to build another Empire, or rule the first one, the alternative is ultimately Taldor's decay into rule by Hell and so I'd better do it. If your argument is that Lastwall needs to be an empire - I am contemplating that, based on what you've told me, and you might in fact be right. If your argument is that Lastwall needs to possess the ambition of any Empire but none of the avarice - I think I do not believe you that this can be attained by letting men pick their commanders, or in fact at all."

"What should it possess, then? Not Azlant, not Taldor, not an empire, not a stopper on Tar Baphon's grave – what is it you actually want your country to become?" 

"...I want the people in it to be safe, to be able to make important decisions about their lives without expecting them turned upside down when some distant stranger dies or has a disagreement with some other. I want its laws to be simple, and clear, and fair, and apply to everyone. I want everyone to have somewhere to turn for appeal, when they are wronged. I want participating in the government to require tradeoffs, but not evils - no bribes, no overlooking misconduct you can't afford to pick a fight about, no closing your eyes and pretending that the people you turn in are not tortured. I want it to be possible to bargain with the government fairly, and expect them to keep the deal. I want people to be able to choose their oaths and mean them and not break on them and not find that their oaths preclude them from all meaningful political power because it requires so much lying to take and to hold. I want people not to be - dirt beneath the wheels of a vast and inhuman thing that enriches others at their expense. I want them to be free. 

And I want the rest of the world to witness it, and know that if they're not doing better it's because they don't want to, not because it can't be done, and I want people everywhere to hear of this place and come and live in it, or make the places they live more like it, as makes sense."

"If that's not what you would call ambitious, I think we have very different understandings of the word ambition. 

...For what it's worth, I think you do get most of that, and even I can't say it's an inconsiderable achievement. At least, everyone knows that the harbormasters at Vellumis don't take bribes, and if you want to be anybody you have to join the army but once you do there's some notion of promotion by merit, and the lord who owns your farm will take no more than his established tithe. There's a great deal of predictability, which isn't exactly what I'd call freedom, but counts for something all the same. 

I don't know if the reason more countries haven't copied yours is because it can't be done without a deity at the helm, or because the rewards aren't very obvious in themselves, to kings." 

"I'm not going to tell you it's enough. And if you have ideas for how it can pull off better I do want to think about how we can try them. But I'm glad that it's that.

Is it important to you that people vote on their leader? Would they get some of the benefits from republicanism as you see them if they vote on additional levees to fund fighting the forests some more, or on matters the leadership disagree on?"

"When we discussed this earlier, I got the impression that for you an ideal government should be invisible – not that the people don't know it exists, I mean, but that it's something they'd think about or pay attention to as little a possible, while the better part of their lives goes on in peace and safety. And I – 

– Well, in the first place, I do think it matters if the people who rule a country actually answer to their subjects. But I also believe there are important liberties which can only be exercised in and through public life. An invisible government doesn't answer to anyone, in the end."

"I think I would say that the decisions that are the most consequential in a person's life - the ones I'd have them devote the most time and energy to - are for the overwhelming majority of people going to be - private ones, if you like. Whether and who to marry; whether to move to the city, or pick a fight with the forests; how to educate your children. A person has very little power over their government even if they vote to form it, and the most important decisions of their lives should be ones they do have power over."

"The last time you made that argument, I accused you of wanting to found a country where nobody makes any real decisions. You'll have to forgive me for that – I know you better now. I think you want to create a world where the most important decisions a person can make are about where to make a household or how to raise their children. That would be a good world. It's not the one we live in. Galt and Andoran didn't defeat Cheliax because a few extraordinary heroes destroyed their armies in a rain of meteors – we won our freedom because a very great number of ordinary people were willing to die for it. Not one of them alone had the power to do anything except die pointlessly. Plenty of them did. If they'd thought only of themselves and their farms and their children, those children would have gone to Hell. 

And when we come for Hell, we'll need many millions more to think of what they can do for the world beyond their own little village. So how should they learn it? Where should they practice seeing the world as it should be and not as it is? What is the state not an attempt to coordinate the collective interest of its disparate citizens?"

"A church is that. That coordination is very important to me and I think people ought to be enabled in it, and I have tried to build institutions that do precisely that, but I have to say it seems like madness to me to try to do it with - everyone who lives in a region - except insofar as that is absolutely necessitated like in matters of law and security."

"Ah. I've never been much for organized religion."

"Aroden's church strikes me as vastly more suited to the purposes you describe than any state could be."

"Provided one agrees with Aroden about what one ought to be building."

"I don't, and I'd really say it's suited me fine all the same. But of course it is important that there are many many powers with different concerns; it would be insufficient if it were only Aroden's."

"Of course. And my interests are my own, not those of any power of any kind. 

– I'm not saying that the primary interest of Galt or Lastwall or anywhere else should be a millenia-long war against the forces of Evil. If nothing else, I can't imagine such a policy would last long in the assembly. I only mean that the state I live in will decide how my taxes are spent and what laws I follow – well, not me personally, but most people – and in exchange for these really rather significant impositions, I'd like a voice in deciding the ends toward which they make those demands of me. When Aroden's church starts demanding my tithes I'll start demanding a vote on Aroden's laws."

"It's interesting to me that you think of a vote as constituting such a voice."

" - Knight-Commander," says Arnisant, tiredly, "I think we're far afield."

"Yes, sorry. We can get dinner afterwards."

The three of them sit down to dinner in a fresh mansion after the funding discussion and updates from the fronts are done. (The fronts are doing well. The Crusade has taken Ardis and started cutting a road through the Witchgate.)

"I believe the two of you were discussing whether voting for their leaders gives people a voice in their government. Personally, it seems to me that a vote - through some layers of delegation, perhaps - seems possibly insufficient to the task, but I struggle to think of something that would perform better, even in theory."

"The thing Axis does seems philosophically satisfactory. Different governments everywhere, and you vote by going only to the ones run how you like it. Unfortunately I don't think you could get it to work for humans. A vote seems inadequate to me, and not just inadequate but - having already embedded the answer to most of the important questions? If the population of an empire votes to go to war, does that mean they should go to war? Should the people they're invading get a vote? What if the people of the empire mostly want to go to war but don't care very much and the people they're invaded care passionately? Is justice done if a country meticulously holds a vote on whether to slaughter all orcs, counts the ballots in favor, and does it?"

"I don't think that voting is sufficient for a free society, but at least in this mortal world is certainly does seem necessary. Do you think the way kings and emperors choose to go to war now is better?"

"Of course not. I think that all countries should be committed to only defensive war under nearly all circumstances and have a leadership structure that holds them to it, and I've attempted to build one."

"How's that incompatible with voting? If you want to forbid offensive war, your constitution could proscribe it."

"Your constitution?"

"The document which establishes a state's fundamental principles of governance and the rights of its citizens. We've written some very pretty ones, in my time. 

...Enacted fewer."

"If you have one of those binding on whoever you put in charge that removes many of my reservations about elections but I think at the expense of robbing people of all the choice you meant to give them in the first place. Ought they have the right to decide when their leader goes to war, or not? If they ought to, isn't it just as much an evil to write in a constitution that they may not?"