Of Wattle, Its Governance, and the Nature of Your Grace’s Position Within It

To understand Wattle, one must first set aside the image that Singhapura’s theaters have made so profitable: the doom-haunted heroes, feuding lords, and the fell winds of winter. These are useful fictions, and I shall return to their utility. The reality beneath them is a kingdom of considerable size and import, surviving the attentions of an empire not through military valor, but through a combination of geographic awkwardness and the particular genius of its present king.

Wattle is a large kingdom. Lesser Wattle alone, the great agricultural basin that constitutes its southern reach, feeds a significant portion of the North: Ealdorfold draws on its grain in lean years, as do the border territories, and Daub has more than once found itself grateful for Wattle’s harvest. The Waste adds to this a stranger form of wealth: Wattle sits at the world’s most accessible border with the Waste, and the artefacts its Wastewalkers bring back are in Queensgate at prices that would embarrass many a Lusian banker. To its ports flock buyers and sellers from the Rosantic League, and with them come wealth, books, and mercenaries; through it, to Giridhora and Udunuwara, goes the trade from Ealdorfold that the Empire so greatly desires.

Himakatupura, the northernmost city of the Empire, was originally built as a profitable fort-city, positioned to extend the empire’s reach and to service Ealdorfold’s appetite for Singhapura grain, cloth, and fine goods. Wattle is built on those ruins, more completely than Daub. Much of what governs it today is the accumulated residue of repurposement, and on its shoulders it bears the strain of the Empire, which, having made it a vassal, will not idly relinquish its old ambitions.

Your Grace answers nominally to Wattle and through Wattle to the Empire, but this holds only insofar as Wattle can stand between Daub and Singhapura’s direct attention. In that task it has proven, historically, to be a poor wall. I state this plainly not to diminish Wattle but because a clear-eyed account of its condition is necessary. A commander whose shelter is ill-understood is one whose surprises are deeply unpleasant to those who follow.

Of What Wattle Is

Greater Wattle is not a city in the ordinary sense, but a province that, put together, contains more souls than the three principal cities of the Rosantic League combined; an analogue from the South would be the combined population of Singhapura and Basnapura. Its construction was piecemeal and its reconstruction frequent; the result is a sprawling and fragmented set of districts, each a seat of some power. Centuries of Northern, Rosantic and Lusian immigration have produced an equally fragmented culture and an economy that Singhapura theorists often regards with exasperation. It does not make much sense, but on the whole it works together; though why it does not fall apart, and what should replace it, is the subject of many a tavern discussion.

The Crown Quarter occupies the repurposed remnants of the Palaces of Himakatupura, built where the river Sut meets the sea. Here sits King Allant’s palace and Antler Hall, where ambassadors are received and feast-courts held; the Chancery, which manages correspondence with Singhapura; the Tower of the Constable, which houses the royal garrison; and the port. This port is an arterial lever of power: whomsoever controls the port controls the Crown Quarter controls the port, and thus the wealth that flows in and out of Wattle.

We suspect the Crown Quarter also contains the former site of the torture chambers of the infamous Empress Kudakaali II. They may yet be there. There is also the Round Tiltyard, capable of holding six thousand spectators, commissioned by Allant’s predecessor Aneirin to host the annual Tournament of the Table of Lords. This theater is an important political stage; knights fight for glory under heraldric banners, and the Great Houses, who fund the prize armaments, compete for reputation. Overlooking this field is the Singhapura consulate: the Empire’s eye on King Allant and his dominion.

Hauterive, at a slight remove, is the fief of many lords and ladies of the Great Houses. It is rich with heavily guarded townhouses; the nobility maintain estates elsewhere and use these for matters of politics in the city. The Pendragons maintain a fortified townhouse that predates Allant’s reign by generations; House Carpenter’s hall has its own forge. The Table of Lords used to meet here before Allant removed such discussions to the Crown Quarter; many, of course, say that nothing has changed in reality.

Rubble, out of sight of Hauterive, houses most of Wattle’s poor and many of its immigrants. There is still old Himakatupura stonework in the foundations. The Haugris Church maintains its most significant building here - a basilica serving as hospital and grain-dole house. The Rubble Night Market thrives without royal license. They say anything that can be bought and sold will be found here.

Crowgarden, built later and outside the older districts, contains the mills, bakeries, market gardens, fullers, and tanneries, and has little defense. Its Crowgarden Common serves as an overflow tournament field. The breadbasket of Lesser Wattle surrounds it; its edges touch the Waste.

Queensgate, across the river, is the market district proper: the Grain Exchange, the cloth halls, the money-changers, and the factor-houses of the Wattle Merchants Guild, alongside Lusian and Rosantic consulates. The Wastewalkers’ Exchange operates here; it is where Waste salvage is assayed, licensed, and sold to buyers from near and afar.

Here, too, is another artery of trade, for this is where the Twilight Road ends. Thus, goods from Daub; goods from Ealdorfold; goods from Sinhapura; all things eventually come through here.

The Gontreach lies well to the north, and contains great ruins. From these emerge the Temple of Eighteen’s new monastery complex; around it have accumulated hedge-wizard descendants of banished magicians, the dwellings of much of Wattle scholars, magicians; here, too, are Rosantic sorcerors fleeing their lands, Lusian alchemists searching for secrets and better prospects, and many who study the waste. At its far edge is the Keeper’s Gate, said to once have been a fort at the furthest edge of Himakatupura domain; now all that remains is toll-arch over the road to that section of the Waste that divides Wattle from the boundaries of Ealdorfold. Nominally this is Crown territory, but in practice it is left to the Wastewalkers, who collect no tolls and will only turn away children who stray too far.

Of King Allant and His Position

Allant was not born to the throne of Wattle. The third son of a minor lord of no great name, his story would have been much like others, if not for his talents in war, and the rarer talent of making men loyal to him. Your Grace knows this chapter of his history well: Allant spent the better part of two decades as a mercenary captain, building from nothing the company that would become known as the Dukes of the North.

It is my understanding - and this Your Grace will know better than I do - that the North, in those early years, was in crisis. Aneirin the Bard-King’s death had produced a generation of petty conflicts and excesses; one only needs to peruse the stories of Pendragon Cador, Pendragon Loholt, or Igraine the Elder; though petty cheftains to the Empire, their immediate power must have been terrible to those crushed under their heels. Allant is remembered by the commons of Wattle as the man who came out of that chaos and ended it: who, with his faithful band, protected villages that the Great Houses had stripped for provisions; who broke many an unjust warlord; who, despite many a fault, became the king the times needed him to be, and ultimately unified Greater Wattle and thus the North.

Lesser seen is the entry point of Allant into Singhapura’s political calculations. The Pendragons, House Carpenter, and three other Great Houses had spent themselves against each other; Allant arrived with an intact army and made himself useful to the Chancery as a man who could explain Wattle’s many squabbles to Singhapura, and who could be trusted on to protect critical trade interests. Thus, with enough of the Merchants Guild’s confidence, Allant earned, perhaps not outright approval, but the Empire’s willingness to bargain with the one seemingly sane sword in the North.

The transition was not bloodless; again, Your Grace would know this side of history better than anyone else. The Pendragons did not accept this situation gracefully, and for a while there was great furor under Valerius the Ironhand. What followed was a twofold humiliation - the armies of Singhapura sweeping aside the main Pendragon force, and later years of slow public disrepute; despite ceremonies and the public clasping of hands, the Pendragons found themselves on the losing side of disputes entirely unrelated to the succession - debts, contested contracts, great losses in trade, land disputes, uprisings, and general disrepute. These latter events are better ascribed to Allant than to Singhapura.

Your Grace will note that I have not mentioned her own position in this history; not from ignorance, but as Allant’s former lieutenant, Your Grace understands her deeds and rewards better than I can say. What can be said is that of the record I have been able to examine, Allant brings to mind the Lusian general Septimus and his epitaph: No friend has ever served me whom I did not treat with gold; no enemy has ever wronged me whom I did not repay with ashes. Thus all accounts are settled.

Allant’s present rule is sometimes mistaken for that of moderate. However, if I may make so bold: Allant has not grown out of his warmonger days, but merely tempered himself. His security lies in the management of competing interests, each positioned such that they stand to gain from his existence and lose from his absence. He treats simultaneously with Singhapura, the Merchants Guild, the Great Houses, the Temple, Lusian money, Rosantic ambitions, and Ealdorfold interests; all are held in precarious balance, maintained by the studied impression that Allant is, to each of them, the indispensable man. He is regarded with genuine warmth by the commons and the lesser houses, who see in him a man of no grand birth who saved the North in its time of need. He is regarded with caution and respect by the Great Houses, who remember the Pendragons and their very public fall.

It is commonly held that a ruler must choose between being loved and being feared, since the two rarely coexist. Allant has, I believe,amply demonstrated that this is not always the case.

There is, however, a vulnerability in this foundation that time will eventually expose. The Dukes of the North - the company of those such as Your Grace, or Jerem the Red, are now a generation older; their children are of a different disposition. The quality of loyalty forged in war is different to that forged in peace and plenty. Allant understands this; it is, I suspect, one of the reasons he has invested so heavily in the Concordant College and the arrangements with the Merchants Guild; but the transition from personal authority to institutional authority is as yet incomplete.

The Great Houses remain a threat. The Pendragons are a powerful call to older times; House Carpenter holds enormous tracts of land and industry. The old aristocracy - Wulfstane, Clavering, Hollow, Pelhamor, Gautierre, Garlande, Balaain, Morgaunt - constitute the Table of Lords, and much of their power has followed Allant’s attentions into the commercial, migrating from the militaric to the Wattle Merchants Guild. This places Wattle’s greatest concentration of wealth outside the hands of its ruler.

We must speak of the Concordant College: King Allant’s intended rival to Taprobane and the LTU, drawing sorcerers and alchemists from Lusia and those whom Taprobane has declined to retain, focused on studying and reworking Waste artifacts. The Great Houses, who have begun to understand what a fully realized College would mean for the balance of power, are not pleased; nor is the Taprobane University, and thus Singhapura. It has not yet become what Allant intends; but Your Grace should watch it carefully. The LTU and Taprobane maintain a friendly rivalry because they were ultimately created by the same state. A Concordant College that achieves its ambitions will alter that equilibrium in unexpected manner.

One further observation: a king who rose by making himself useful to Singhapura is a king the Empire believes, in some recess of its thinking, that it might easily replace. I cannot say if King Allant understands this. A wise ruler would build institutions rather than relying on his own person - but Allant competes with Table of Lords and sets them against each other than drawing them into functioning parts of a working whole. Your Grace may draw from this example whatever lessons seem applicable to Daub.

Of the Temple and the Church

The Haugris Church has a considerable name in Wattle, but little of it is good. The Temple of Eighteen is now the true devotional power; the Church has been reduced to a presence and a grain-dole.

This inversion is extraordinarily unorthodox. Some ascribe this to the deliberate hand of the Adhiraj in this arrangement. I will, however, point to several other factors within Wattle. Firstly, there lies the Wattle tradition in which nobles are responsible for the education of those who live in their lands, which hamstrings the Church’s attempts at education. Secondly, the Temple of Eighteen is owed much in these lands.

It is said that the Litanies of the Temple, appearing before battlefields, kept many great atrocities at bay in the days of old; it is also more practical to say that much of the knowledge of the Vedics and of the magicians of the North have been preserved by the Temple, and parcelled out according to their gifts. I may also point to the ready availability of Lusian capital for Temple purposes, and the reconstruction of the ruins in the Gontreach.

Thus it is that the Eighteen are said to sit in the highest councils in Wattle, as they do in Lusia; with one hand they stave off the Haugris Church, and with the other prevent Wattle from going to war with itself. It may follow that this is then how certain houses have been able to rebuild despite a period of war, and how Wattle has, despite the enormous sums required, ever increased in glory.

If Wattle is a battleground of faiths; it appears that for now the Empire has chosen to lose. In this I cannot help but remark on a skilled general who channels the enemy’s forces to one direction, such that they may win victories elsewhere.

Of Tourism and the Great Northern Romance

Wattle draws considerable tourism from Singhapura, and Daub by extension benefits from this in hidden ways. Let us leave aside the question of money and examine culture.

The Great Northern Romance is a genre in Singhapura; Your Grace may recognize much of it as pure fantasy; but it is both sufficiently familiar to be legible and sufficiently foreign to be enormously compelling. The result is a Singhapura public with a sentimental investment in Wattle remaining what it is. Conservative factions within the Empire, who argue against fuller integration, find themselves opposed thus not only by practical arguments, but by a broad popular preference from the people of the same Empire that wishes to integrate it.

Thus Wattle gains a resilience that extends well beyond the fortunes of King Allant or the current disposition of lords. Daub’s own share in this is not negligible; so long as Singhapura believes in what the North represents, that belief performs some portion of the work of walls and armies. Writers and poets are, owing to the difficulties of a career in the Arts, considerably cheaper than armies and arrows; and yet the ballads of Robert Holdbrook, Bloody Ygrain, and others travel further, and are sung with much gusto even among those who have the power to erase them from this world. Culture, again, reveals itself as a form of power; fictions endure; they are cheap, and difficult to attack without appearing ridiculous.

Of Wattle, Its Governance, and the Nature of Your Grace’s Position Within It

Of What Wattle Is

Of King Allant and His Position

Of the Temple and the Church

Of Tourism and the Great Northern Romance

Further Reading