January 2026: From the Private Papers of Celine, Duchess of Wulfram
5/14/614
I have written to my father again, in one last attempt to convince him to take up a position as Councillor-Militant.
The objections he has henceforth raised regarding the possibility seem increasingly spurious to me. It is true that he has always expressed a horror of Cortes politics, but a position on the Privy Council does not obligate him to sit the Chamber. If anything, one might think that it would provide him an excellent reason for abjuring the whole institution. He would need simply make himself unavoidably detained at Grenadier Square, or schedule some tour of this fortress or that shipyard whenever his presence might be requested.
And there is the fact that he is most eminently qualified for such a role as well. None can deny that he is a man of no small military experience, that he has bled for Crown and Kingdom, that he is not anything if not courageous in the face of a determined enemy. There can be no questioning his adherence to duty, his honesty and integrity, and his ability to find the middle ground in any dispute. The other Cunarian lords respect him, the King respects him, and his officers and men almost universally revere him – a not unimportant distinction given that at least one of them now regularly sits the Cortes.
Perhaps most importantly, it is he above all who must understand how ruinously expensive the maintenance of a body of armed men must be, how such expenditures may create exigencies that weaken the state, how even those actions meant to protect a country from foreign arms may make it weaker to the attacks of foreign coin and foreign subterfuge. While Havenport burns sheepfolds and breaks children on wheels in his own homeland of half-savages, his chair at Grenadier Square and in the King’s Privy Council Chamber sits empty. At its arm, Hawthorne stands and speaks so endlessly of army reform.
Hawthorne seems so certain that such reform is necessary, regardless of its expenditure. He speaks of economies and efficiencies, but it does not take a great master of policy to understand that he intends to reinvest the proceeds of those economies into the army itself, as a sailor might cut down spars in a calm to make oars. It seems to me all the more likely that he remains affected by the loss – disappearance, as some insist – of his son at Blogia, and that he is of a purpose to ensure that no other father should ever suffer the same loss needlessly. E. thinks that it may be all stuff, and that Hawthorne is too much a man of numbers and lists to be motivated thus. Yet I have found it is often those who seem the coldest in publick who are apt to show the most feeling within their own thoughts.
Even still, one man’s grief cannot be allowed to deepen this country’s ills, especially when that grief’s product is given the force of a King’s backing. The Commission for Army Reform will meet. Neither E. or I are resolved to oppose it. The Commission itself will cost little, and be funded out of the Royal Household. It, at least, is a cost that might be borne – but only if a man of restraint and reason is able to maintain its equilibrium.
If father will not be that man, then we shall need to find another.
——
8/10/614
Hans, it seems, has delivered me something of a dilemma.
It has become clear now that he has found himself in a position of some submission in regards to Amalia. This would, I suppose, be a matter of course given that she is much the older and now quite increased in size. Unfortunately, Amalia has taken it upon herself to teach the poor boy what she must consider to be humility, and much like her ancestress, she is possessed a will and a temper which quite easily resolves into the use of her fists and feet.
She is, of course, not incorrigible. With a combination of encouragement and discipline, she will learn to respect the persons of others, most of all her own little brother. She is old enough and enough of a creature of reason to quickly conclude that striking her brother is a very swift course towards being bereft of sweets and cakes for the remainder of the week, and of new dresses for the remainder of the year.
But she is of an age of willfulness, and that age will pass as the newly formed passions of her blood begin to mature into something which she may master. It will not be long now before she is able to use them as a tool, rather than be carried off by them like a tide. No, it is Hans who poses the greater issue, for he is still quite young, young enough for his experiences to be very formative to the shape of the man whom he must become, and this is of doubly grave significance if that man is to one day become Duke of Wulfram.
Therein lies the problem. It would be most suitable if Hans learned to defend his person and his honour with the greatest firmness. This is how E. was taught as a boy, and I cannot deny that the result has been not unsatisfactory. Yet E. possessed only brothers and cousins of the male sex. He did not mingle informally with the other until such a time as his mind and feeling were already tightly disciplined and shaped to his advantage. Our son does not have the benefit of this benign phase of isolation. He has been delivered into a state of contention with his sister from birth. Honour and dignity would demand that he defend himself against her jibes and teasing and especially her blows, yet Amalia is also a Lady of the Blood, and it would be unacceptable for Hans to come to the conclusion that it be appropriate or acceptable to raise a hand against a lady in any circumstance.
Were he perhaps four or five years older, such a thing would be much more easily handled. E. was instructed in the appropriate form of behaviour in mixed company only in theory until he was perhaps fourteen or fifteen when he was already of more than sufficient wisdom and discipline to respond to any such discourtesy appropriately. Likewise, I do not think I have ever behaved as shamelessly towards my own younger brothers as Amalia now occasionally does – though perhaps R. or L. may correct me on that point!
Regardless, it is clear that both E. and I must undertake some course of instruction for Hans. He must understand how and when to defend himself – and when such a response might not be appropriate, no matter how tempting.
——
11/19/614
My name is Johannes. I am nine years old.
My father is Ewen, Duke of Wulfram. My mother is Celine, Duchess of Wulfram, but she is also from Cunaris, where -Granpa- Grandfather is from.
Father tells me one day I will be Duke of Wulfram, but only after he is gone away. -I should not like to be Duke of Wulfram then, because I do not want father to be gone away, even though he says that every man must go away to ride with the Saints one day.-
-Wen- When I am old enough, father says I should -obzer- observe the -cou- Cortes, which is where all of the -eduka- wise men of the kingdom give advice to the King. He says that sometimes, the Cortes has to insist their advice be followed, because the King is only a man and can sometimes be mistook like any other man. He says I must learn to speak -elokw- well, so that the King can be -konvins- convinced that he has erred.
I asked mother why we could not simply hold the King’s arms and dunk his head in a well until he -chanje- changed his mind, but mother said that this was not a good way to do things, -beekuz- because it would mean that the men who were best at dunking people’s heads in wells would rule, and not the men who were the wisest.
This makes sense to me, because Amalia used to dunk my head in the well to make me change my mind until mother and father made her stop, and Amalia is -very stupid- not very wise at all.
I think mother is very wise though, and that maybe she should be in the Cortes too. Father smiled and said he thinks so too oft-times.
——
5/7/615
I spoke with Izzy again, perhaps that was a mistake.
The hope was to kindle some degree of reconciliation, and perhaps create a bridge over which her brother and E. might be able to discuss their differences in private counsel. His Majesty being so famously reclusive in regards to matters of policy, I had hoped that he might at least listen to the entreaties of one of the very few people whose counsel he seems reliably willing to trust.
It began well enough. There was a reminiscence of old times, during the war, when we all seemed to be of the same mind at least in nine times out of ten. However, it was that tenth point which always seems to prove the most consequential, like a chicken bone lodged in a throat.
The argument was the same one, and it carried on through the same course, just as it had all those years ago, when I first suggested that the Cortes be given the power to propose as well as approve budgets.
“That would place the power to bankrupt the Kingdom into the hands of a narrow group of Lords, who would seek foremost their own interests,” Izzy had said, as if the Lords of the Cortes were some pack of venal scapegraces and not the heads of the most illustrious Houses of the realm.
“Surely it would be better than to place the odium of new taxation solely upon the Crown,” I had replied.
“Then let the power be placed with those who must actually shoulder the tax,” Izzy had answered, with an earnestness that shocked me. “If the King cannot be trusted to act in the interest of the Commons, then let the Commons act in their own interests.”
“But the Commons have no interests, not ones worth entertaining!” I had insisted. It had then been a new opinion at the time, burning hot with the fervour of a fresh revelation. I had seen how the sectional and pell-mell interests of individual grocers and smallholders and tenants and shipowners had turned the Parlements of Cunaris into a body so chaotic that it possessed no meaningful powers of discernment at all. Likewise, I had then seen how the Estates of Wulfram, so carefully pruned of any such malignant factors, and restricted to men of property and education and breeding, had so responsibly used their own powers. It had been clear to me – as it is now – that most men are unsuited for even the most rudimentary power of governance, and that to open the floor to the mob directly was as foolish and irresponsible as to hand a young boy a loaded pistol.
Cunaris had opened its Parlement floors to the petitions of the mob, and it had become an irrelevancy, leaving the work of administration to an overtaxed office of the Ducal Household. Wulfram had ensured that only the best of men entered the Estates – those with the blood and the wisdom to justify their place – and had prospered. Had Cunaris done the same, it would have been thrice as wealthy as it was.
But Izzy did not listen. She did not listen then – and when the matter was brought up once more, she did not listen again. “The Common people have a natural right to the direction of their own destinies,” she proclaimed. “To safeguard that right is the obligation of the sovereign, and if he cannot do so by acting freely in the Commons’ interest, then he must do so by giving them the power to defend themselves against those who would otherwise use their names and their fortunes to overawe them.”
And that was the end of the discussion in any meaningful sense. She did promise to convey my message to her brother, but I have little conviction that it will be heeded, nor that she will act with particular energy to see it heeded.
I fear that it will take more direct measures to see this breach healed now.
——-
8/1/616
Are we not now all paragons of the bitterest ironies? I who have spoken so firmly on the dangers of pandering to the mob find myself now complicit in inciting it to a violence which I had hoped never to see. Izzy, who spoke so passionately in defence of the rights of the Commons, must now defend her brother’s orders in sending out his Grenadiers to massacre them in the streets.
What a pair we must make.
I am sending the children back to Silverhall for the rest of the year. It will be hard on them, to be separate from us, but we are still needed here, to help make some sense of the mess these riots have made of the city, to help whom we can, and to render whatever aid we might to the civil power and those who might be better placed than we to offer succor. Certainly, it will be difficult and likely impolitic for the Duke and Duchess of Wulfram to be seen involved in such efforts publickly, but that does not mean there will not be places where a great fortune and the influence of a great house will be much wanted.
Yet the children must go. They have been distressed enough from the smell of smoke and rotting flesh, and by the sight of the King’s soldiery marching in warlike companies down the streets upon which they have so often played. Fresh air, open skies, familiar faces, and the serenity of a much loved countryside will do them no small amount of good after the tumult of the past few months – and as much as I would hate to admit it, events now move too quickly to allow either E. or I the time to supervise directly their educations. Amalia must be brought to learn her accountings and her calculations and the other disciplines needed for the management of a Great House, and Brockenburg has made plain his belief that Hans must at some point be made proficient in the saddle and with the sword.
They will stay the autumn and the winter in the north and return in spring, when – I should hope – the matter will be wholly resolved.
Saints help this Unified Kingdom if they are not.
February 2026: From the Private Notebooks of Jeanne Zeyaunne, Head Chef to the Rendower Club
Duck Baie’yanne was supposed to be a simple dish.
Three centuries ago, it was. The cursed thing wasn’t imperial cuisine, it wasn’t high culinary, it wasn’t even magistrate cookery. Demon tree, it wasn’t even the kind of thing a peasant wife cooked if she had enough money and land to actually feed her children something other than rice and corn slop. It was camp food, the kind soldiers ate on campaign. Some wretched sentry would tell his friends to cover for him, go out into the reeds, spear a duck, then bring it back to camp – still hanging from his halberd. After that, the soldiers would gather around, pluck the animal, all-but thrust it into the big company fire until the skin crisped, and then cut it open to eat with whatever buns or greens they were issued. Simple, easy, adaptable. You could see it being done in a hundred different ways: southern cavalry did it with vultures and buzzards, shooting them out of the air with their horse bows. In the east, they did it with boar. Some regions in the west even used chickens, although I can’t imagine you’d get much meat off of them.
That was what the Duke of Zi’enne loved about the dish so much, that you could use any ingredients, and do it anywhere you could find an animal with even a sliver of fat on it, and enough fuel for a big fire. It meant his troops could cook quickly while on campaign, and it meant that even in the Northern Kingdoms – where rice does not grow – and at times of war – when it cannot be transported reliably – those same soldiers could have a convenient dish of grains, meat, and greens, all eaten without need for chopsticks or bowls or plates.
Then, of course, the stupid bastard had to become the greatest general in a thousand years, and get himself made Master of the Dominions and General Who Repels the Point-Eared Devils and Appointee of Heaven.
After that, everything that the Emperor touched became high court fashion. His soldierly habits became the new code of conduct for the Grand Staff. Camp stools became the only way the great seal-holders could sit. The heeled boots which officers wore to keep themselves in the stirrup made themselves fashionable court dress by virtue of becoming impractically high. The battle maps which Zi’enne had planned his campaigns became the Quie boards of the Emperor’s courtiers because the old rules from the time of the Great J’ouwe were not complex enough. If the Great Emperor had scratched his ass, they would have made it a court tradition. No, more than that. They would have made a ritual out of it, with ivory and silver ass-scratchers all carved to look like the claws of dragons, and then made it so that only those who held the rank of Count could possess an ass-scratcher with three claws, and only those who were Dukes would have four, and perhaps only those who commanded a Grand Division of the Imperial Banners could dare touch an ass-scratching implement which was exalted with the shape of five.
I do not think I would be so bitter about this, if the elements of this tale are not now conspiring to ruin my life. If the fashion of ritualising everything had confined itself to clothes and furniture and board games, then perhaps I would be content. I am, after all, a simple boy from the hinterlands, to whom a town of ten thousand had been a great city and who had only gone to the capital at twenty-two to sit the examinations, who failed those same examinations because of a misplaced stroke of a brush which gave away the fact that the court script had been my third language and not my first. A cook – even a chief of cooks – does not need to worry about court dress, or court furniture, or the diversions of the great officers of the Grand Staff.
What he does have to worry about, however, is food – and this case, food was also a victim of the Duke of Zi’enne’s unwanted elevation to master of the Court of Sun and Heavens. The simple camp fare which the Duke of Zi’enne ate as he sat among his soldiers was now to be elevated. Preserved meats were to be jellied in rare broths, greens were to be grown a particular way, the animals which were to be butchered were to be raised and fed and pampered in conditions which most mid-ranking Commandery officials would have envied.
And the sauces, the eru-venne cursed sauces. Everything was to have a sauce, a glaze, a confit, some kind of liquid made of fat and spices and sugar and salt and a hundred other things, just to make it expensive and exclusive and so that rich, pampered men and their rich, pampered concubines could slide it into their rich, pampered mouths in little dainty slivers and be warmed by how they were one of the few people in Creation who’d ever have the privilege of tasting such a thing.
Duck Baie’yanne as no exception to this. From that simple soldier’s dish, made from some stray bird speared by a sentry’s halberd, comes what we know today – and here, lies the source of all of my sorrows and vexations.
Old Master L’eanne told me that knowing all this was a curse. When I had first entered his apprenticeship after failing my examination, he told me that the years of study I had undergone had made me ask too many questions, read too much into things which should have been simple. “You do not need to know the past, only the present and the future. A good cook does not need to know where the knife was forged, he only needs to know how to carve the meat.”
Perhaps that was why it was I who was chosen for the Marquis of Quiejouwe’s kitchens and not he. Perhaps that it why the Ironfolk* hired me in turn to cook for their great lords in their distant, rainy little kingdom. Perhaps that is why they ask me so many questions and pay me so well in gold and act so indulgent towards my wishes that one could almost forget that I do not have the sorcerer’s blood which is for them the only real requirement for lordship and great office.
But now, that does not seem so much of a blessing, for these same great lords have charged me to cook them Duck Baie’yanne, the way it is cooked for the Emperor himself in Hwuo’shanne, as if it were as easy as going out into the reeds with a halberd, and spearing a duck for the fire.
No, the modern Duck Baie’yanne, the kind which the Ironfolk lords have so blithely ordered me to serve up for them is an entirely different thing. It requires a specific breed of duck – which does not grow here – raised in a particular sort of enclosure to ensure it does not grow so agitated as to toughen the meat. It must be fed a certain mixture of certain types of grain and lemongrass – neither of which grow here – in a certain proportion to ensure both a particular aroma, and to allow the animal to accrue enough fat to render its skin perfectly crispy while not making the whole dish too greasy. After it is slaughtered, it just be cooked over a particular sort of fire stoked with a type of bellows which is not used in the Northern Kingdoms, fed by a particular kind of charcoal which releases a particular smoke made from a particular type of wood – which also does not grow here.
After cooking, the duck must be glazed with a sauce made from the renderings of its own fat, a specific type of clove – which does not grow here – a particular sort of pepper – which not only does not grow here but must be ground by a device which does not exist here – as well as the zest of a specific breed of orange which – naturally, does not grow here. The greens must be of a particular sort of cabbage grown in particular sort of field, neither of which exist here. They must be seasoned with yet another sauce requiring spices which can only be found at enormous expense. Even the buns must be cooked in the steam of a sort of rosewater made from roses which only grow on the grounds of the Imperial Palace itself. The only stage of the preparation which I am even partially capable of performing at this point in time is the carving, and only then because I have brought my own cleavers with me – yet even then, I shall have to have them sharpened with a particular sort of whetstone which I have only one of. Should it prove unsuitable for the task, I will need to send to the Homeland for another.
If the Duke of Zi’enne – as the young and vigorous and tough-skinned soldier that he once was – could see how his descendants have so greatly ornamented and gilded and over-refined the simple soldier’s food he enjoyed so greatly, the Ministry of Military Discipline would censor any accurate account I could make of his reaction.
But the order has been given: Duck Baie’yanne in the Imperial Style, without substitutes, or compromises. The Dukes of Wulfram and Warburton themselves have given the direction. Naively, they tell me that they will make allowances for every shortage, every potential ingredient, and every unexpected cost, so long as the dish is ready to serve in full splendour the night after the Cortes opens.
The Cortes opens in two weeks.
I think I will have to triple my order of tabac this month.
Paul Wang 