[40th Year of Foresai, Upper Fire Month, Day 10]

Renner felt the absence of her emotions pointedly, and yet by no means desired their return. The last few days had produced clear thinking beyond what she had ever experienced, and she was in a way grateful for such a complete dispassion in her cognition.

What surety of thought I’ve had. It reminds me of how I was before I adopted my persona as princess. Such masks are useful, but stifling.

There were greater heights to be reached, however, and she decided on taking a walk outside the palace. With her was Knight MacNamara and Climb, both for the purpose of guarding her as she walked through the streets of the Kingdom. Renner had taken many such walks in her life, partly using them as ways to inspire her thoughts about the Kingdom and its populace, often for pleasure. This time was no different, although she muted herself of such joys.

Seeing him in that armor is… pleasurable. I wonder what ends his mind is running to; most definitely pride, plausibly embarrassment and anxiety. Alas, I’ll have time to obsess over his form later. This outing is to be used for making progress, not savoring its fruits.

She lazed a circuitous loop, intending on spending a half day abroad the walls of Valencia. The capital was a large city, and even an hour of brisk walking would not permit one to cross from one gate of its walls to its opposite pair. Renner was thus to visit a few of the quarters in closer proximity, for they would be the only practical adventures. She wore a more practical outfit than her typical dresses, a split skirt and top that imbued her with the necessary freedom of movement. At this moment, she was moving tangent to the Illithica Exchange, the most opulent of such bartering halls in the city. It was a domain where merchantmen, not nobles, were sovereign. She had no intention of entering it, but it was on the east-west thoroughfare. Her presence had drawn a crowd, and she gave polite smiles and waves at frequent intervals. Conversations were haphazardly cut off as she passed, perceptive people turning and remarking a twip too late to those around them.

Ironic that I should be so hated by my contemporaries yet so admired by their subjects. The lower a person stands in the rankings of blood lines, the higher they see my existence. Gazef comes to mind. Ah, of which he’s in the borderlands. Some new crisis, an Imperial incursion by the reckoning of my father; Although I suspect it is a machination not of Baharuth, but Slane. I’ll need to speak to him upon his return.

The roads near the exchange were crowded with merchants. Wares from the breadth of the Kingdom and beyond made their way here. Olive skinned merchants from Roble carried finery, tapestries produced in the Arglands, furs hauled up from Abellion. The street wafted with the scent of borderland herb traders, arguments breaking out between alchemists over the price of Galgenmaennlien, Ajina, and Enkaishi. In a quixotic site, a grim dark elf was hocking armor made from the exoskeletons of some creature unknown to Renner, in a thick accent speaking of its flexibility and litheness. Street kitchens buzzed, woodfire stews, porridges, and baked goods sold for coppers.

It’s certainly vast, but this city is none too cosmopolitan as Arwintar. I wonder if I’ll ever have the ability to travel Baharuth? Not without a general peace. I doubt we get even a quarter of the variety and scope of goods as does that place. It's a veritable metropolis. How pitiful Re-Estize is to that.

Knight MacNamera twitched his nose in distaste. This was not uncommon among highbloods, a sense of cultural superiority pervading the ranks of men and women who consisted of the upper-crust of the Kingdom. Even Renner fell susceptible to this on occasion, and had it not been for Lakyus’s efforts to educate her on the culinary traditions of other nations, she would have mirrored MacNamera’s actions.

Ahh how insular much of our nation is. Even my favor towards tea receives its unfair quantity of questioning. Knight MacNamera, you can stomach the harrowing nature of battle, but not an overly spiced dish? You can bear to look at death, yet turn your nose up at an elf? What a pitiful state of being, yet it pervades our national character.

The crossover points between districts were often indistinct, but the boundary between the richer neighborhoods and the poorer ones was clear. Although the thoroughfare remained paved, the side streets slipped from brick into mud. Gracefully, the zenith of the summer days had all but totally sundered the ground from its moisture away, and the quagmires of spring and autumn fell into its biannual hibernation. At this sight, El-Nix’s words rang once more through Renner’s head.

It was a consortium of nobles who fought against me on this issue, no? I created a rare moment of faction unity in rejecting such an idea as paving all the roads in the Kingdom, royals not willing to stick their neck out for another of the Golden Princess's. Even the capital itself they are content to let sink into a swamp. What a strange thought. They don’t seem to realize that the low and no-bloods of the Kingdom are vastly more important than they. Don’t you want your serfs to admire you? Embellished tales of far flung glories against the Empire for accomplishments that were not your own, but those of the sons and fathers that you rip out of house and home, dress in ill-fitted breastplate, and send to die somewhere on the Katze Plane, only to be rejected by the earth next lunar nadir will do little to improve their view of you. But making sure they no longer track mud into their domiciles every rain? Now that is popular. That is rulership. That is power.

What was it that Lakyus said? “Eight Fingers does not think like you do.” That applies far more broadly than she let on, and any person or ground can take the syndicate’s place in that sentence. To think I have bemoaned such an advantage on the altar of loneliness. Foolish behavior. Nay, even in my lamentations, I stride forward. Still, it is more than a fair measure of annoyance that I receive at these rejections. I -

Renner caught the gaze of a pauper. He was a child, gaunt, and although perhaps double the age of her Climb when she took him in, reminded her deeply of that day. It was an overwhelming sensation, mirth cum melancholy. Although by her eye, she still preferred her Climb, her newly awakened self-awareness told her that had she not met him that day, she would have taken this boy now instead. She smiled and nodded at the boy, who’s eyes grew wide in admiration. To have the princess look upon you in joy was an event that one could not understate, and Renner knew he would remember this moment for the rest of his life.

No, the subjects of the Kingdom don’t simply admire me, they worship me. Not only am I a royal, but I’m one that cares for their daily plights. Father fights his wars, and Barbro plays at them, but in practical terms I’m the only one who’s truly considered their needs. The construction of roads, paving of existing ones, crop rotations, swords-to-plowshares, promotion of the adventurers guild, subsidies for monster hunting; all my proposals, and with the exception of the outlaw of slavery, all failures. I always saw these measures as promoting the stability of the Kingdom - indeed if they passed they would - but people grow bitter in rejection. The mind holds more ire at what was lost than joy at what was had, and so many of my proposals have slipped through the fingers of the populace. I had always seen the material benefits as the paper increase in crop yields, logistic reliability, fundamental matters of national existence; but perhaps they are only paramount.

Renner turned to Climb. The dust of the hard packed road had settled onto the shin guards of his armor; this had disappointed him to no end, and he looked on in slight shame. When he finally caught that Renner was looking at him, he straightened himself with a start.

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Climb. What do you think of the populace of the Kingdom?”

His face blanked with confusion.

“Uh, that’s a big question, Your Highness.”

“Let me rephrase. How do you think the people of the Kingdom are doing? Or rather, what do they need?”

It took him a few moments to formulate a response.

“...Peace, Your Highness?”

“Yes.”

“Your Highness?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I wonder if we’re doing enough. Me and my compatriots, the nobles and leaders of this nation.”

“Your Highness, you do more than enough!”

I’ve attempted to, and indeed if my proposals could ever actualize, I will have improved their station. But I haven’t, only made them more resentful.

“The ban on slavery was the only thing that passed.”

“Yes, but the rest would have if they hadn’t been blocked by-”

Climb cut his words mid sentence, and swallowed. MacNamera was glaring at him, reading his face for any sign of continuance.

You know that nobles block me, but I hazard that everyone else does too. That my policy drafts do not simply die, but are killed.

“Adjutant Guard Climb. Care to finish that sentence?”

The resentment in MacNamera’s voice was palpable, vileness pouring from his mouth. It was a cutting jab, and he tried his best to bait a response from Climb. He hated Climb, a hatred that had begun upon his first site of the boy and he had refused to relent. Seeing his hark had been ignored, he turned his gaze forward.

“Mm, well, my countrymen didn’t quite think them viable…”

Although the public may yet hold this secret in their hearts, they care for me more than the King, or any other member of the nobility. How could they not? They know me as the Golden Princess, she who wishes to bestow upon them what they pine for.

Renner halted herself, trepidation gripping her.

This is a dangerous line of thought. What dark and monstrous places will this lead me too? Malformed hazards of cognition. To consider this line is to consider perfidious destruction, not simply in actualization, but in conceptualization. Eyes above would watch bated. Aberration can not be hidden in obsequiousness in the matters of the divine. Problematic.

Renner did not know how to feel about the Gods. Although not atheistic in thought, she was skeptical. That they existed could not be denied. That they were omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent could. Scriptures sieved through age and distance from the Theocracy layed out a virtuous path of existence, proclaiming a utopian afterlife for those who abided by its tenants. Realms descended from there, with the pits of the world as ruinous places. Renner wondered why the Gods had not continued to intervene, or why they allowed their perfect message to stretch itself thin. The Eight Greed Kings were the strongest argument against the omnipotence of the Four Gods, or of the Six, and in the recesses of her mind she wondered if they were beings comparable to those. If perhaps such beings were like kin. She felt fearful, for she could not dismiss the idea that those beings could observe the inner-workings of her soul.

No, I should not let that stop me. My path after my mortal form snaps should not concern these actions now. I doubt my father truly holds a divine mandate, likewise for El-Nix, doubly so for Calca Bessarez of Roble. If the Gods are truly concerned in human affairs, why do they not simply smite sinners from on high? Such questions require greater consideration.

She steeled herself, bracing to openly embrace such perilous thought.

Jircniv, you ask why I let myself fail. I propose I am not failing. I propose that I do exactly what I intend. That through power, I sow division, and through that division I create opportunity for change. That through the introduction and denial of my ideas, I create anger. That the anger I create is useful, for it promotes my existence in the eyes of the populace. That while I may be entirely impotent in high circles, that I am mirrored below and potent in that mirror.

Renner looked out onto the crowd in front of her, the bustle of hundreds of lives, but a fraction of a fraction of the Kingdom’s millions. Each was entangled in a struggle for existence, as meaningful to them as were Renner’s to her. She knew this in an abstract way, but she failed to care. A sociopathy gripped her, and she felt in true control of herself.

I had long assumed that stability of the Kingdom was desirable, because it increased the chance that I could have a quiet life for me and my Climb. This was erroneous. I will not limit my actions to the benefit of the Kingdom.

Renner grinned.