[ Gunna take those little claws, wrap them up in tape, and hang her by her little leggies over the bucket. ]
Good. Then... I suppose you must understand who I was. What Jhansi was.
[ Her tapping resumes, and the tone is removed, and perhaps that is easy to understand, old as she seemingly was. ] As you know, I became Queen when I married. I was 13 at the time, my family was very poor and we were servants of more powerful men. But my husband was a good man, he did not care for my upbringing, even if it was seen as unorthodox by many. Jhansi is not a big land, a small kingdom in comparison to some. Despite that, it was an important stop between larger cities, and itself - because my husband was very dutiful, it was prosperous. So the British had long desired it. I suspect they hoped he would be childless even after we married.
Secondly, these details may bore but they need to be understood. It is not like your lands, or even here, like Orlais. Every day, we would hold open petition for members of our court to come to us, they would tell us their problems, and we would decide upon them. Similarly, they would give us gifts, we would take them, into inventory, calculate and redistribute them amongst our people to disperse wealth. This was done personally by the rulers, with help from our treasurer, on every level. Whether that was to our aristocrats, suppose you would say, or organising with our temples to host large banquets for a thousand once a week. All told, we had upwards of a thousand retainers that would come to us, personally, for their funding.
[ This at least, is mirthful. A happier time is always easy to talk about, she supposed. ] I do not say we were perfect, we were not. I was austere and often unforgiving of people who acted in a way I deemed wrong. [ Lakshmi, that hasn't changed. ] My husband was lavish and doted on mindless trinkets. Once, despite my saying I needed no grand gifts, he snuck about to build me a palanquin of silver he designed himself. The expense was - ridiculous, but he said he could not bear to see his Goddess dressed in anything less -
[ Kitty didn't need to know those details, she realises, and she clears her throat. Moving on. ] But we tried our best, for all of our people, is what I mean, every day we tried as much as we could. Our land is one steeped in thousands of years of tradition, practises, it is not an easy thing to live in accordance with them, and the needs of your people, and being fair to all of them, but we did our best.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-01-11 02:15 am (UTC)Good. Then... I suppose you must understand who I was. What Jhansi was.
[ Her tapping resumes, and the tone is removed, and perhaps that is easy to understand, old as she seemingly was. ] As you know, I became Queen when I married. I was 13 at the time, my family was very poor and we were servants of more powerful men. But my husband was a good man, he did not care for my upbringing, even if it was seen as unorthodox by many. Jhansi is not a big land, a small kingdom in comparison to some. Despite that, it was an important stop between larger cities, and itself - because my husband was very dutiful, it was prosperous. So the British had long desired it. I suspect they hoped he would be childless even after we married.
Secondly, these details may bore but they need to be understood. It is not like your lands, or even here, like Orlais. Every day, we would hold open petition for members of our court to come to us, they would tell us their problems, and we would decide upon them. Similarly, they would give us gifts, we would take them, into inventory, calculate and redistribute them amongst our people to disperse wealth. This was done personally by the rulers, with help from our treasurer, on every level. Whether that was to our aristocrats, suppose you would say, or organising with our temples to host large banquets for a thousand once a week. All told, we had upwards of a thousand retainers that would come to us, personally, for their funding.
[ This at least, is mirthful. A happier time is always easy to talk about, she supposed. ] I do not say we were perfect, we were not. I was austere and often unforgiving of people who acted in a way I deemed wrong. [ Lakshmi, that hasn't changed. ] My husband was lavish and doted on mindless trinkets. Once, despite my saying I needed no grand gifts, he snuck about to build me a palanquin of silver he designed himself. The expense was - ridiculous, but he said he could not bear to see his Goddess dressed in anything less -
[ Kitty didn't need to know those details, she realises, and she clears her throat. Moving on. ] But we tried our best, for all of our people, is what I mean, every day we tried as much as we could. Our land is one steeped in thousands of years of tradition, practises, it is not an easy thing to live in accordance with them, and the needs of your people, and being fair to all of them, but we did our best.