"Uh, but..." He points to another bit of display, "this says that once killed storm elementals take five to seven months to be replaced. Wouldn't be easier to always kill them?"

"Nope," Fenris says, "because an elemental's first storm is stronger and you don't know its powers and what sort of weather patterns it defaults to. Sure, Stormlords only had to fight them two or three times a year, but the stormlords and their populations experienced a much greater mortality rate per storm. Stormlords had tons of children to compensate and they warred each other for space and power."

"While things are much stabler on the democratic side of things. Storm elementals don't change no matter how long they stay around, so you can plan around that, incentivize people to have children with the right gifts so they are useful when their obligatory military service comes around. Having people tied up in a place every other month also did some things to keep skymages busy and not warring against each other. So their numbers grew even thought the birth rate was like, a third of the Stormlords'. And they're more prosperous in general."

"In other words, the Stormlords were outcompeted because their way to fight the storms was worse than not fighting the storms. And that caused the fall of their aristocracy and then democracy came along."

"How come another aristocracy didn't take their place instead?"

"Oh, other Stormlords would totally invade each other's territories. The problem is that those Stormlords wouldn't adapt and kept killing the storm elementals. Or some tried the new way, but didn't have the numbers to pull it off while fighting other Stormlords and the democratic coalition."

"Yeah, tradition is a horrible thing. And I guess there was a sense of pride too. Not becoming like your enemies and all that."

"Sounds like it was luck more than anything that democracy won out."

"Yup! If the Stormlords had adapted sooner, or if the democracy side hadn't, then the Stormlords would've stayed and me and Fenris would be princes."

"Oh, you're royal family. Must've sucked to lose all that nice power."

"Well, you can't be a skymage without being related to some sort of nobility."

"Yes but lots of nobility had second-cousins-in-law, being a prince is something else."

"Are you literally a prince? I assumed you were being hyperbolic."

"We mean direct descendants of Stormlord Estaminir Dalkaila, last Stormlord to rule Dalkas, the dawnlight island."

"So sad that democracy triumphed. Fenris would be so glad to be waiting in line to rule the island with an iron fist."

"Would he?"

"Oh, I would be terrible. I would gather all the power that the position grants me and use it to improve the lives of my subjects as best as I could."

"Presuming his personality stayed the same."

"Well, if you're going to propose alternate universes where the two of you still are born."

"Power corrupts, surely he would become an evil despot."

"Yes, and I bet with that sort of resources I would do evil things like break the natural order and fund research to end death itself. Like a true villain does."

"I'm not sure princes have that much power and money. Admirable goals, though."

"I could help repair relations with the Witchlands and then we would have a united magical world that would be better at turning their energy towards constructive ends."

"Are relations with them particularly bad?"

"If you ever wondered why the magical polities don't do more to help the planet or why they never even conquered it, you can blame that on the fact that Stormlands and Witchlands are too focused in posturing that they can defend against each other."