"Thanks. The thing where you touch letters so they appear is really clever."

"It is! They spent a long time on designs so people could write on a pocket everything fast, since people do so much writing that way. More than on paper, most people."

"Makes sense. Paper is new, you can make it with wood magic but before we had to write in clay, which would have been so annoying."

"So many new things, it must be such an exciting time."

"It is."

Someone brings illustrated Anitami children's history books.

She picks her way through them and asks questions.

Anitam was a poor country all privately owned by dukes and duchesses with big estates where other people worked as farmers! There were cities for trade on the coast but no way to get to them if you didn't live on a river and they were mostly not governed at all. Anitam got trains and power plants and started growing up, but then the mean evil Oahk Empire invaded. Their soldiers hurt people and they had cruel rules about children. This half of Anitam didn't let the soldiers come and there was war for a long time. Finally the Empire collapsed of being mean and evil and Anitam was free! They worked very hard and became a rich happy modern country with enough for everybody, and now they are safe and strong so no one can attack them again.

"Approximately how dumbed down is this?"

"Exceptionally so - it's not false, but the intended audience has a sophistication to match their vocabulary - do you want clarifications -"

"Yes please."

"Lots of pre-modern countries had a government arrangement with - a monarch, but a relatively weak one, who ruled mostly by appeasing local rulers and could be overthrown if the local rulers managed to coalesce around a different one. Anitam was like that. The local rulers had more-or-less arbitrary control in their lands as long as they paid taxes and raised soldiers on request. That gets you a - patchwork government, a good ruler could be very good and their people thrive, but a bad ruler would not be held to account unless it got so bad their people started flooding into their neighbors' lands. Few places do that today - the downside is too bad - though some do a weaker version where regions can set their own laws as long as they meet basic standards of rights for their populace."

"Okay."

"Anitam was - less developed technologically than most of our neighbors, we industrialized late. That and the weak central government meant weaker population enforcement - it was set differently by region and you could subvert it by moving, and regional dukes and duchesses could have as many as they wanted. We had wealthy trade cities and good farming, our children weren't starving, but the Oahk Empire was invading anyone who didn't have strict enough rules and we didn't. They conquered -" map - "this part. The mountains and this coast were resource-poor and had poor infrastructure and they weren't really worth conquering; occasionally a general would have a go and the locals would shoot back and they would slaughter a few towns in retaliation but it was never properly under Imperial control."

Nod.

"The Oahk Empire really was evil - war generally is, but unusually so even for that. And their child credits system was very coercive - you got them for service to the Empire, so people who objected to what it was doing or wanted a quiet role doing something less harmful could do that but they'd never have children."

"I get the sense that's a really big deal here. Maybe more than for humans."

"Maybe. It's - a really big deal. People save up their entire lives to afford a credit, in civilized countries where credits are available for purchase. In the Oahk Empire, they - started wars, committed horrible crimes, planted evidence of horrible crimes by others so they could get credit for stopping them, betrayed their loved ones, followed all kinds of evil orders - and some didn't, and those died quietly alone with no children."

"...I think humans are different but it's hard to be sure."

Nod. "So the Oahk Empire - the book says they died of being mean and evil? It's not too far off - blues needed the personal approval of the Empire to have children, and so they were constantly starting or suppressing internal rebellions, plunging all their money into long-shot military weapon projects, framing people for sedition or for assassination plots, created an atmosphere where the Emperor was constantly hearing about enemies internal and external - it had started out well-run, if evil, but it got worse. Eventually there was a coup. After the coup they granted secession to everyone with a claim and Anitam reunified. It was - not in good shape, post-occupation, although some very nice well-funded universities were established in that time period. Tapa - our neighbor - invested lots and lots of money in getting us modernized, because it was inconvenient for them to share so much border with a country with instability. It worked very well, we modernized, we became a democracy, we wrote good laws. There are international agreements - about when to go to war and how to conduct yourself in wartime, about how to be transparent with your population controls, about how to manage pollution and hazardous materials and trade standards - and we are a signatory to all the important ones and good at compliance, which is important, wars are avoided best when countries are known for keeping their word."

"Some of that sort of thing happened when our Empire fell apart. I think less formally."

He nods. "More useful than the book?"

"Well, the book is more useful for learning to read but you're more useful for learning history."

"Fair!"

Giggle.