Of the Various Provinces That Concern Us
The chapters that follow concern every place with a bearing on Your Grace’s position. These may bear directly, as neighbors and trading partners, or indirectly, as powers whose arrangements determine Daub’s fortunes from a distance.
A demarcation first. To the Singhapura mind, the North means Wattle, Daub, the Great Northern Waste, and even Ealdorfold beyond; thus, the frontier, the periphery, the place that is always in the process of being managed. To a northern mind, the South means Singhapura entire: the empire, its dominions, its long shadow.
Your Grace is in the unenviable position of inhabiting both frameworks simultaneously, answering to Wattle while presiding over a city that the Empire treats as a chess-piece on a board it controls. It is my hope that, by demarcating these lands and their affairs a little more closely, this work might be of aid to Your Grace in such matters.
I had intended to include a great deal more on geography and historical development; however, upon careful review, I have discarded much of it. The arrangement of streams and hills are pertinent, but they do not necessarily recall the present, nor can they be counted upon to reliably augur the future. I have instead endeavoured to furnish Your Grace with an account of political realities: of what how each place is governed, where its pressures may lie, and what its current course means for Daub.
Singhapura is the largest fact in Your Grace’s world, and I have treated it accordingly. It is the primary condition against which everything else is measured. Yet I have not treated as remote lands the western powers. Lusian money is already inside Daub’s commercial life, as it is inside every significant economy in the known world. Rosantic free companies appear in Daub’s streets. Both powers offer Your Grace something that the empire cannot easily replace: alternatives and obliques. I have endeavoured to document both their strengths and weaknesses herein.
Ealdorfold is further and less immediately pressing, but I have included it because it is culturally foundational to the North. Culture is a hidden force, at once both weak and strong; it may flee before an army, but given time, topples kingdoms. Therefore I beseech your Grace to consider this with import. Tangowan I have included as an object lesson rather than a partner; Your Grace should read that chapter with Daub in mind throughout.
The Dvorak Elves maintain the most comprehensive geographical and political record available; I have recommended obtaining a copy of the Annales Historici, and I do so again here. For those who prefer a living source to a written one, the Lesser Theoretical University and the Daub Merchants Guild, between them, can produce an expert on almost any subject covered in what follows. Both are worth consulting, but I would caution that neither should be consulted exclusively, as men who have great wisdom in only one subject often are great fools in others.
Folio IX · The World
Transcribed by Victor Konara