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

To understand Wattle, I must first bring Your Grace’s attention to bygone times: Himakatupura, the northernmost city of the Empire, was originally built to be a profitable fort-city on the northern frontier, positioned to both extend the empire’s reach in that direction and to service Ealdorfold’s appetite for Singhapura weapons and cloth.

Wattle today is built on the ruins of Himakatupura, more so than Daub. Much of what governs Wattle 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 first to Wattle, and thus to these pressures. I state this plainly not to diminish what Daub is, but because a clear-eyed account of Wattle’s actual condition is necessary; a commander whose weaknesses you do not understand is one whose mistakes will surprise you.

Of What Wattle Is

Wattle is nominally a kingdom and substantively a vassal state. Centuries of northern and Lusian immigration have produced a culture and an economy that Singhapura administration regards with exasperation, which is why the empire has largely chosen accommodation over direct control.

Key to Wattle is the city. The provinces outlying Wattle are known as Greater Wattle; but the heart-city is what concerns us. Unlike many others, Wattle does not exist as a discrete entity, but, owing to its piecemeal construction and reconstruction, becomes the city over a period of several miles. In between the rambling roads and houses, therefore, are several key points:

The Crown Quarter are the repurposed remnants of the Palaces of Himakatupura, built where the river Sut meets the sea. This district is now the heart of administration and ceremony. Here sits King Allant’s palace and Antler Hall, where the King receives ambassadors and holds feast-courts; the Chancery, which manages correspondence with Singhapura; and the Tower of the Constable, which houses the Master of the Keys and the royal garrison. Attached to the palace’s eastern flank is the Round Tiltyard, an enclosure capable of holding six thousand spectators, commissioned by Allant’s predecessor Aneirin to host the annual Tournament of the Table of Lords.

We suspect this to be the former site of the torture chambers of the infamous Empress Kudakaali II; they may yet be there. The yard is an item of theater; knights fight for glory here under heraldric banners, and the Great Houses, who fund the prize armaments, vie for reputation. Overlooking this field is the Singhapura consulate: the Empire’s eye on King Allant and his dominion. Hidden in the least corner is the Concordant College, in a converted wing originally built as a barracks of some sort; King Allant wishes to keep these cards close.

Queensgate, on the other side of the river, can be said to be the market district in the proper sense: the Grain Exchange, the cloth halls, the money-changers, and the factor-houses of the Wattle Merchants Guild operate here. As do Lusian and Rosantic consulates. The trade fairs that draw Singhapura tourists fill the inns and the docks below. The Wastewalkers’ Exchange is also here: a low-ceilinged warehouse-hall where Waste salvage is assayed, licensed, and sold.

Hauterive, at a slight remove, is the fief of many lords and ladies of the Great Houses. It is rich with heavily guarded townhouses; my understanding is that many nobles have estates elsewhere and use these places for matters of politics in the city. The Pendragons maintain here a fortified townhouse that predates Allant’s reign by generations; House Carpenter’s hall has its own forge; others have their own foibles, as both trophies and statements of power. The Table of Lords meets here, some say in defiance of Allant’s attempts to convene them in the Crown Quarter. This tells us much.

Rubble, out of sight of Hauterive, houses most of Wattle’s poor, and many of its immigrants. It has been razed and rebuilt many times; the architecture therein is a stratigraphic record of everything that has happened to Wattle. There is still old Himakatupura stonework in the foundations. The Haugris maintains its last significant building here — a basilica that serves as a hospital and grain-dole house. The Rubble Night Market thrives, despite operating without royal license. They say that anything that can be bought and sold will be found here, from the cheapest meals to artefacts ordinarily reserved for princes.

Courverdie sits well outside. Having built later, it contains the mills, the bakeries, the market gardens, the fullers and tanneries — but has little defense. It also contains the city’s largest open ground, the Courverdie Common, which in practice serves as the overflow tournament field: melee events, archery contests, and the horse-racing that accompanies the Tournament of the Table all happen here.

The last significant region is Brocéliande, well to the North. There are great ruins here, and from them has emerged the Temple of Eighteen’s monastery complex. But the district has accumulated other things: hedge-wizard descendants of banished magicians; the dwellings of many of the military and the staff of Wattle; the hunting lodges and kennels of the royal chase. At the district’s far edge is the Keeper’s Gate — a toll-arch over the road into the Great Northern Waste. Officially, this is administered by the Crown, but in reality this responsibility falls to the Wastewalkers, who have never collected tolls here and will only turn away children if they stray too far into the Waste. Brocéliande is popular among the tourists: the romantic ruins, the monks, the sense of a world older and stranger than home.

Wattle’s edge of the Waste is ripe with magical artefacts. It is lethal, and those who can make the journey must be skilled; but this confers on Wattle a strange and rare economy. While Wattle produces little in the way of great works of craft, the wonders it can draw from the Waste are lucrative and much-loved across the world. And while Singhapura armies have defeated the knights of Wattle many times over, the Waste provides a ready bolt-hole; and from this come the legends of bandit knights such as Robert Holdbrook and Bloody Ygrain. Wattle is thus easy to take, but hard to keep. Your Grace should take this into account.

Of King Allant and His Position

King Allant, who rules Wattle, needs no introduction to Your Grace, who so closely worked with him. He displaced storied predecessors — Pendragon Loholt, Pendragon Cador, Valerius the Ironhand, Aneirin the Bard-King, Igraine the Elder — who were, by most accounts, more vivid figures than he is. Allant remains, clever and mercurial.

In my observation, Allant’s security lies in his skilled management of factions, and in the clever positioning of each in such a manner that, however unwillingly, they stand to gain from his existence and lose from his absence. Thus he treats with Singhapura, its Merchants Guild, Wattle’s own guilds, Wattle’s royal houses, its population, Lusian money, the Rosantic League, Ealdorfold interests — all in precarious balance. Unlike the storied heroes of old, King Allant is given neither to the pursuit of glorious deeds, nor to ruinous quests; Singhapura rewards him thus with its presence and might. Love and fear can rarely exist together, and political theorists advise us that it is far safer to be feared than loved; King Allant, however, understands how to rouse enough of both for his works.

There are factors that vie with this state of affairs. Chief among them are the Great Houses. The Pendragons remain a force; they are a powerful call to the times of old. House Carpenter holds enormous tracts of land and industry. The old aristocracy — Wulfstane, Clavering, Hollow, Pelhamor, Gautierre, Garlande, Balaain, Morgaunt — these are the rest of the Table of Lords. Much of their power has migrated from the military into the commercial, concentrated in the Wattle Merchants Guild. This places Wattle’s greatest power outside the hands of its ruler.

Allant’s response has been to build the Concordant College, a rival to Taprobane and the LTU. The College draws sorcerers from Lusia and Ustaad rejects from Taprobane, focused almost exclusively on studying and reworking Waste artifacts. This reveals something about the king’s cleverness: he understands the power of durable institutions and the advantages conferred onto Singhapura and Daub by its magicians and scholars. Yet the College is currently underfunded and caught between Allant’s ambitions and the Great Houses’ interest in limiting those ambitions. Its Wastewalkers are individually formidable, but as an institution, it has not yet become what Allant intends it to be.

It is my recommendation that Your Grace should watch this College carefully. The LTU and Taprobane have an established rivalry that keeps both manageable; a fully realized Concordant College may change that equilibrium and the fortunes of Wattle, for good or ill.

Of the Temple and the Church

The Haugris Church has a considerable name in Wattle, but little of it is good. Thus the Temple of Eighteen is now the true power, and the Church’s position has been reduced to a presence. This inversion is instructive; despite the backing of Singhapura, the Haugris Church struggles; despite the Temple’s original position of weakness, it sowed much and reaped well.

Of Tourism, and What It Actually Protects

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.

In Singhapura, Wattle is understood through the theater — the Great Northern Romance as a genre, with its icy winters, doomed heroes, feuding nobility, and prophetic doom. It is sufficiently familiar to be legible and sufficiently exotic so as to be compelling. The result is a Singhapura public with a sentimental investment in Wattle remaining what it is. Conservative factions within the Empire who argue for fuller integration find themselves opposed not only by practical arguments, but by a broad popular preference for the thing as it exists.

Again we return to this motif of culture as power. Indeed, Wattle thus gains a durability that extends well beyond the foibles of King Allant, because its stories do not depend on the disposition of lords arguing around a table. I would not rely on it exclusively — sentiment shifts — but Your Grace should understand that Daub’s own share in this is not negligible. So long as Singhapura’s population believes in what Daub and Wattle represent, that belief does some portion of the defensive work of walls and armies. And, might I add, that due to the difficulties of a career in the Arts, writers and poets and painters are significantly cheaper than high walls.

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 What It Actually Protects

Further Reading