Dragons, Dystopians, and Denial

"Technically, they're tiaras." She smirked at how bewildered he seemed by the revelation. It was almost like he could accept that she was an assassin better than he could accept that she was a royal. "And I got mine confiscated after I threw it at Biryn's face one day. Even though he deserved it."

"And most of us don't become queens." She shrugged. "There's a limited number of princes to go around, and even fewer of them are heirs. We just get shipped off to whatever noblemen that can pay the highest dowry for his son -- for a political alliance of course."

She soured. "Although technically I should be the queen right now. My father was Crown Prince which means I'd be next in line. But noooo, Atraya doesn't allow women to be heirs, so Levin took over when Father died. Because he's clearly so much better at ruling than I would have been."

Jerica wasn't even sure why she was so annoyed that Levin had all but stolen the throne from her. She didn't want to be Queen any more than she wanted to be King's Assassin. But it still irked her that Levin sat on the throne nonetheless.

Elias slowly took all of this in even though his mind was like a slow-moving sludge right now. He was learning so much about Jerica, and he needed some time to piece what he knew of her together, even if it was something as small and simple as her royalty history.

His mind kept lingering on one thought in particular, though. As awful as Earth was, it seemed that Beirania was a millennial behind equality for people. It was almost funny thinking that Earth had good equality, but at least he didn't get discriminated upon based on how he looked.

"Being a woman in Beirania sounds awful," he said with a million other thoughts running through his mind, and then plopped the rest of the bread in his mouth.

“I mean, it wouldn’t be quite so bad if we got rid of men,” she said dryly.

Elias raised a brow at her, not quite expecting this kind of response. It took him a while to answer since he had to chew and swallow.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just change the rules so that women have equality?" he finally asked.

“Hah. Not while the men are still around,” she snorted. “Noblemen are the literal worst. And they’re the ones who make up all the rules. I’ve been trying for years to put an end to arranged marriages and have gotten nowhere. It’d be so much easier to make things fair if the men weren’t here to try to make things as unfair as humanly possible.”

Elias looked down at Mellie, and she even appeared to return the long look. He then scratched the back of his neck, trying to think of an appropriate response. Clearly Jerica felt very strongly about this.

"Well, men aren't like that on Earth," he mumbled mostly to himself, but then decided move on and say his next words louder. "There are some arranged marriages on Earth, too. It's a shame, really. I can see why you'd be upset about that."

“How do you arrange marriages if you don’t have kings?”

Elias slowly blinked, not sure if he understood the logic of her question. What did kings have to do with arranged marriages? He wasn't sure how to answer her question, honestly. Maybe it would just be easier to explain the concept of arranged marriages?

"Uh..." he began, knowing he wasn't exactly the expert on this topic to begin with, so his answer was going to be muddled at most. "Well, there are no kings on Earth, so I don't know how to answer that. But arranged marriages are not very common, anyways. It only exists for people with certain powers to keep the pure bloodline going."

“That sounds like royalty to me,” she answered simply. “Kings send off their princesses to someone else’s prince, and then they make little royal babies and the game repeats. Levin would have sold me to one of his Barons by now if I hadn’t been so intentional on terrifying all of their sons.”

Elias squinted at her, even leaning forward on his saddle. He was trying to understand, but he simply had no idea what she was talking about.

"I guess, uh..." he began, trying to find the right words for this weird conversation. "It's kind of the same thing, minus the royalty."

Jerica hesitated. She wasn’t sure how you could be royalty minus the royalty. That was more concerning to her than their arranged marriages. “Wait so who is the king if you don’t have kings?”

"We don't have a king," Elias repeated. Was this really that hard to understand?

He sighed. "Earth is run by a government with representatives from each town, called sectors," he explained. "So, not a dictatorship. Not a king."

“Dictatorship is different from kings,” Jerica snorted. She tried to think of how this strange earth system lined up with Beirania. Their sectors sounded like fiefdoms. “So your Barons just tule together and aren’t overseen by a king?” She frowned a bit not quite sure if that was a right comparison. “How do they decide who is in charge when you’re talking to other countries?”

Elias never thought he'd ever have to explain how the government worked on Earth, but yet, here he was. Technically, he worked for the government, so he should be able to answer these questions.

Should.

He didn't go to military school, so he didn't know much more than the average citizen. Well... maybe below average. This wasn't a topic he excelled well at school, among other subjects.

"... What's a Baron?" he asked, deciding to start simple.

Jerica looked at him dumbly for a long moment. He really didn’t know /anything/. She took a deep breath deciding to explain the system so he stopped just repeating that they didn’t have a king and instead explain what they DID have.

“Most people are peasants. They just are farmers or merchants or blacksmiths or bakers or whatever. They live in townships. And there’s a Baron who is in charge of a certain piece of land called a fiefdom and all the townships on it and all the peasants who live there. So, Atraya has 12 fiefdoms, so 12 Barons. And they all have to answer to Levin — one king. And then Levin has to deal with the kings from all the other countries. That’s the normal way of doing things.”

She took a deep breath, thinking about the one exception. “Lytias IS a dictatorship though so Makata doesn’t have barons he just split his country into sectors but he’s in control of them all.”

She looked at him curiously. “So would all of your Barons go off to argue with all the barons of another country instead of it just being the two kings? That seems inefficient.”