11 November 3014

Most Dread Sovereign,

While I await your response to my last dispatch, I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss at least in brief a strange incident that I witnessed while I was accompanying one of the royal princes on a short diplomatic trip through some of the remote territory in the northern part of Bravia. I must admit that this is not a part of Bravia I had thought to see, as it is far away from our concerns, and once again demonstrates that Bravia has interests in a lot of areas that keep it from focusing on our particular neck of the woods. Indeed, the more one sees of Bravia, the more frightening it becomes as one realizes just how diverse the Bravian people are without seeming to suffer at all because of their fondness for living in all kinds of different ways while remaining at peace with each other.

Before telling the story, I think it would be good to talk a bit about the context of how it is that I came to be involved in this act of diplomacy. The Bravians have a close relationship with a native tribe who happens to live within the forests just north of their homeland. This people is not related by blood at all to the people of Bravia, but they met at the edge of the forests the tribe (which has an unpronounceable name to us, and are simply called the Foresters by the Bravians) found out that they and the Bravians share a particular approach to law, culture, as well as the forest. The upshot of the deal was that Bravia gained a nation with whom it is in free association. The Forest people rule themselves autonomously and have full self-government under their own laws, but since their legal basis is the same as that of the Bravians, despite their own very particular environmental procedures, there is a great deal of similarity in how things are run in both places. Furthermore, the Bravians are in charge of the foreign affairs of the Forest people, as they are of the people of the Free Port of Bravia, but the relations between the peoples are governed with a sense of diplomacy rather than a feeling that Bravia owns the territory in question.

I have not spoken much about the people of the mountains of Bravia much up to this point and there are a few reasons for that. One of them is that they are among the most alien of the various groups within Bravia to us, and another reason is that they are the least relevant to our own national affairs. The people of the mountains of Bravia are called High Bravians, not because they are the highest in terms of prestige and culture and class but on the grounds of mere topography. Indeed, this seems to be the way that Bravians in general conceive of their areas. High areas are high in terms of terrain, low areas are close to sea level, and middle areas are those in between, whether plateaus or rolling hills or something of that nature. The people of High Bravia speak their own language, which as I understand it is descended from Northern Appalachian, which is a pretty rare language group in our place and time, and the people who inhabit the region, at least those I have seen, are in general a people who is largely materially poor, extremely independent-minded, and very proud, to the point where their dwelling in largely remote and rural villages in the valleys or on the sides of daunting mountains working in mining or herding or high-altitude farming or the rudiments of trade in what passes for towns in these parts is not something that needs to be a concern to those outside of the country. I have been told that there are farmhouses here that double as fortresses, and I would wholeheartedly believe these people to be capable of turning their farmhouses into death traps for their enemies. We can be confident, though, that these people are not the sort of people who we are likely to meet, as they do not seem inclined to travel to any great degree, for which we can consider ourselves fortunate.

Far more relevant to us than the strangeness of the mountain folk of the Bravians is the strangeness of the Bravian royal family. As I have noted previously, the Bravian royal family does not at all behave like most royal families. In general, royal families serve as one of two types, either those which are monarchies that tend towards the absolute which are remnants of past families that more or less formed their nation’s identity and which have substantial control over the political order, or those which are largely ceremonial and have fancy homes that draw tourism and help to encourage the tourism of the places where they live at minimal expense to the people at large. To be sure, the Bravian monarchy has some elements of both–their monarchy is not burdensome and expensive to the people at large, but at the same time it is hard to imagine that tourism to the Bravian royal architecture will ever be something that draws a great deal of interest. The Bravian royals have built no massive castles or palaces that are visible from afar, but rather live in comfortable and cozy but hardly luxurious cave palaces that indicate a very deep concern for privacy and security that is hard to understand. But neither is the first reason the case either, at least in full. Bravians are deeply interested in genetic ancestry, in knowing how they are connected with the past as well as with each other, and it was playing to these connections that allowed the Fremen to achieve a home as well as a place within the Bravian commonwealth despite their different appearance. I do not know the exact circumstances, but I am sure that the Bravian royal family has had a key role in shaping the culture and identity of the Bravians and serves as one of the main unifying factors within the country as a whole, along with Bravia’s religious beliefs, which are shared throughout the populace, and the widespread bourgeoisie culture that one can find all over the nation of Bravia as well and especially in its trading ports and merchants’ quarters in foreign countries.

What, then, can we make of the Bravian royal family? What purpose does it serve, if it is not an all-powerful force within the political realm–and it is not–nor a glittering ornament that brings the country praise for high culture and luxury? From what I have observed, the Bravian royal house has chosen a very difficult way of providing a positive moral example for its people through its behavior. A great deal of attention is placed on the Bravian royal princes and princesses, and their behavior is put under heavy scrutiny for the way that it portrays Bravians as a culture. Bravian princes and princesses royal are also raised with the expectation of serving the well-being of their people, sometimes in glamorous ways but not always. When there is a great social cause that needs to be answered, it is usually brought to the public attention by some sort of generous service on the part of one or another member of the Bravian royal family, and this in turn sparks the imitation of other members of the Bravian elite, such as it is, and on down to ordinary Bravian citizens, who are not necessarily on the lookout for ways to serve but certainly respond to the example of their social betters who provide them with positive behaviors to emulate. The royal family is by no means a handsome family–they look fairly plain, with a frequent tendency to stoutness and a history of suffering from hereditary health issues like nosebleeds and gout and mango allergies, at least from what I have been able to determine. Still, although they are not a widely fashionable set of people, they are people who are focused on serving the well-being of their fellow Bravians, and that has enough to make them a very beloved house without having led to the sort of power that would destroy the complex free government that the Bravians have, and which places in general a very low burden on the general population as a whole.

While it might be thought that a royal family with such love from their people could be a threat to the well-being of other royal families or other governments, the path that the Bravian royal family has taken is of such great difficulty that there is no worry that others should feel the need to repeat the example. Most royal families dislike the scrutiny that comes from the free press, and are prone to control access to their ordinary lives except when they want others to see what they are doing. Instead, the Bravian royal family is seen by people on a pretty regular basis. The Bravian exilarch sets the example by spending a large amount of his time directly talking with those who have come to see them, answering their concerns and showing an interest in them, which must be very tiring. He also spends time interacting with diplomats as well as the elected political leaders, besides being active in working with the high priest and the priestly council that rules over religious and cultural affairs. The other members of the royal family follow his example, as I will detail to you.