PREVIEW

 

 

This still is not a blog post: there's stuff I could blog about, but not yet. This is a preview of the first few paragraphs of The Prince Must Die.

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      No one thought it would happen.

      Not members of Parliament, the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the Green Dragon Party, the Neo-Utopians, the Post-Life Allegiance, the Bretish Congregation of Demi-humans, and many other innumerable factions—all had made the same prediction. Not the former Grand Chancellor, not the Bishop of Ashberry, nor the outspoken Lord Rutherford. Not the Bretish Society of Freethought, nor their followers. None had foreseen the great tragedy. It was preposterous, unthinkable, intelligent and cultured men argued.

      And all had been proven wrong.

      It was like the work of dark magic; a thing that none had foreseen, like some sort of curse or blight that defied every seemingly rational expectation.

    But when the morning had dawned, cold and bleak, and gray over the great metropolis of Londarium, everyone awoke to what seemed like a world separate and alien to the one in which they had retired to their bedchambers the previous night. To some it seemed like a glorious new dawn. To others, many, many others, in fact, it was quite the opposite.

     But it was terribly, unmercifully true. The impossible had truly occurred.

     Self-made nobleman Colton Grant had been elected Grand Chancellor.

      How could it have happened? How, his innumerable political foes wondered, could it have happened, especially in this new, modern world of 2000s? This was an era of tolerance and inclusion, not hatred and social divisiveness! Why the people selected Grant in a modern world, when magic had worked wonders in the service of human kind, where science had invented steam engines and motorcars, which were very likely to make the hansom cabs thing of the past? This was a world of magi-meters, and spectacular magical stage plays without real actors! This was the world of 2014, not 1714!

       Grant had, throughout his campaign, made statements that evoked an earlier, less tolerant era. His speeches were broadcast on Magi-Vision, in thousands of homes, and messages on Magi-phones had spread like wildfire. His public forum speeches caused roars of approval, and from the protesters gathered just outside the confines, howls of derision and revilement. Sure, Grant was beloved among his supporters and constituents, but the country as a whole? It just couldn’t happen, not a chance in Arallu.

       Or so they thought.

     A Grant Victory? Absurd! The very height of absurdity! People like him could rant and rave on the fringes, and often did. But actually become Grand Chancellor? The highest and most esteemed office in the land? It just wasn’t going to happen. Those who feared the country would be run, come November of this year, by a man who would become surely the vilest despot in Bretish history, possibly the most brutal dictator Bretan had ever known, could rest easy.

     Or so they thought.

      During his campaign, Grant had made statements that were shocking, even absurdly so, in this age of supposed tolerance. He had insulted Gypsies, probably the largest group of human immigrants in the country. He had made terrible, stereotypical comments in regard to bugbears, kobolds, and boggles, all groups of demi-humans, who were still regarded with unfortunate suspicion by many of their human co-inhabitants. He had referred to goblinkind in general as having fangs like rats, and as “tunnel-dwellers,” very much stereotypes, even though most goblins, whose skin and eyes were sensitive to the light, preferred, indeed to dwell underground.  All bugbears and boggles, shared this characteristic to an extent, almost all of the formerly- despised and persecuted goblinkind, had assimilated well into human society. Sure, human prejudice was still around, but enough to gain Grant a victory?

      And if that hadn’t been enough, Grant had joked about “dragon skin,” a clear reference to the illegal slaughter and trade of the few remaining dragons on the Continent. There were very few left, most draconic species believed extinct (as they had been in Bretan since Arthur’s days), and the demand for dragon blood and powdered bone for magic uses, and folk medicinal uses was still very rife. Some countered that Grant had supported conservation causes in the past with his vast wealth, and he was just trying to agitate his opponents. On the other hand, lavish décor of Grant’s Needle sported the thick, luxuriant, frost-white pelt of a Scandinavian Snow-Wyrm, a highly endangered relative of dragonkind, and that didn’t improve matters.

     Grant had also insulted a human political foe who had boggle-blood in his veins, calling the man a gobble-blood.

 

             Did Grant really mean what he said? Maybe, maybe not. But his comments had wounded thousands deeply. Everyone supposed that Grant’s inflammatory ravings would spell the end for him.  But in spite of it all, against all predictions for his crushing defeat, Grant had prevailed.

      Or maybe those comments had the exact opposite effect of what was predicted.

  Some blamed the magical media.

      Others blamed a simmering hatred and prejudice for goblin kind and gypsies among Bretish humans that had remained dormant until now.

      But many agreed the most likely reason for Grant’s devastating and unanticipated victory came down to one thing: Vampires.

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