Chapter 74

And with King Oswald’s passing, we enter into a new era with his heir, King Aethelbrande, leading the way into the future. In this biographical inquiry, this author will not entertain nor explore any rumors surrounding King Oswald’s death as this author personally views that discourse as purposeless. This author originally began researching King Oswald’s life and authoring this inquiry because the policies he implemented during his reign were still positively influencing the Nasaar Kingdom years after his death. Therefore, although this author greatly laments the demise of King Oswald and the loss of his genius for the rest of mankind, this author will end this inquiry by recognizing and celebrating King Oswald’s legacy and his contributions towards mankind instead. On a final note, this author would like to take the opportunity using King Oswald himself as the greatest example to remind the audience that although the surface of a lake may seem turbid and dull, purposeful currents could be brewing underneath just like with King Oswald and his benevolence. 

And with that, I finally finished The Foolish Sage just as we reached Ocean’s Rest. Dear gods I spent nearly four months on this one book but admittedly I only spent about an hour or two every night reading it and the whole thing is as thick as a wooden mug is tall. Kapri was right though. King Oswald truly does deserve his postmortem title of Benevolent even if this book was cut into two and half of his accomplishments were forgotten. 

It’s already night by the time we reached the outskirts of Ocean’s Rest. We’ll enter the city bright and early tomorrow morning which gave me just enough time to finish reading The Foolish Sage before I went to sleep tonight. Although the book was difficult to parse through at times, I feel like it really helped me understand the kingdom at large rather than stay ignorant of the things happening outside of my view. 

For one, I didn’t know King Oswald was such a divisive figure in this kingdom. Though it seems his reputation now has had a complete turnaround with The Followers glorifying his name, at the beginning of the book, the author, Monoclais the Wise, said the majority of the population at the time he first started his research thought King Oswald was an imbecile. They legitimately thought their former king had some sort of mental disability or deficiency. Going solely by his actions at the time, it really seemed that way and it wasn’t until years after the fact that we could catch a glimpse of a hidden agenda behind his moronic behavior. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning when this all commenced. King Oswald the First was forced onto the Nasaar Kingdom’s throne at an early age of 12 winters when his father, King Earlswith the Third, passed away unexpectedly. The year was 8920 in the Iazari calendar when he became the first king of his name. From the time he became king until his death, he was known as an extreme eccentric who only abided by his own whims and did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Who could stop him? He was king. 

For instance, one day he was being driven in his royal carriage through the streets of Nasaar’s capital, Everview. Suddenly, his coachman abruptly stopped the carriage because a pair of orphan siblings were accidentally shoved onto the dirt road in front of the carriage’s horses by a crowd of gathering onlookers who wanted to catch a glimpse of the king. Infuriated, King Oswald did the only reasonable thing he could think of and instituted the kingdom’s very first public school to house the ruffians, as he called them, so that those situations would never happen again. 

Schools aren’t new on the Alaulin continent but a public school funded completely through the kingdom’s coffers and was specifically targeted for the common blooded and the low blooded was unheard of. The school, which King Oswald named Saplings’ Nurturing, had mandatory attendance for children under the age of 15 winters unless they were already trade apprentices. Parents couldn’t even try to weasel their children out of attending as tuition fees and expenses for teaching materials came straight from the Nasaaran treasury. I think this is one of the best stories in The Foolish Sage that showcases King Oswald’s personality because for such a minor inconvenience, he implemented such a grand and extravagant solution. 

It also makes sense why most of the kingdom’s citizens thought he was a buffoon. Who in their right mind would fund the construction and implementation of an entire school system using the kingdom’s budget just to make sure no one got in his carriage’s way again? However, Monoclais supposes the idea that King Oswald wasn’t angry that day at all and wanted to create such a school from the start of his rule but he was just waiting for a perfect opportunity exactly like that to put his plan into motion. 

Monoclais speculates King Oswald took that incident as a way to discreetly push his own agenda forward while making the public underestimate him and think he’s nothing but an idiot. Though it might have been too effective since that became the public’s overwhelming opinion of him until The Foolish Sage was released. The reasoning Monoclais gives for his unique notion is King Oswald lacked critical supporters at the time considering he took the throne at such a young age and the majority of the kingdom’s nobles were eyeing his throne maliciously. 

Instead of focusing on the nobles laced with avarice, King Oswald sought to win the support of the common blooded and the low blooded. By providing free education for the people who have the largest population in his kingdom, King Oswald could earn their loyalty while at the same time educating his supporters and elevating their place in society. Monoclais somehow obtained the school’s registry and found out many of the school’s graduates ended up in important positions of power in the kingdom’s industry, military, and political spheres. 

He also figured out Everview’s economic situation improved sharply a few years after the school was created and more than made up for the costs that went into building and administering it. Although he can’t say with absolute certainty the school is the sole factor for the economic improvement, he asserts the school is at least a main reason for the upturn. Aside from that, Monoclais dived deeper into the school’s impact on Everview and found that after the school was built, public order improved significantly. 

The month before the school was built, Everview had over 300 new cases of children going missing assumedly due to human traffickers. The month the school was built, those cases dropped to around 200 and a month after that, they dropped again to below 100 new cases. Even to this day, Everview has one of the lowest rates of missing children in the whole kingdom and Monoclais attributes those statistics to the school and King Oswald’s efforts. By the way, the pair of siblings who initially caused the incident ended up becoming the school’s principal and vice principal and they’ve been staunch King Oswald loyalists since they graduated. 

Throughout The Foolish Sage, Monoclais explores every outburst King Oswald ever had and intently examines those incidents and the end results. For every incident, Monoclais would give a summary of what happened to the king, how the king responded to it, the effects of that response at the time and after a period of time, and conclude with how it was the king’s genius ploy all along. It seems every time the king did something ridiculous, he’d create a policy that would become extremely relevant to the kingdom’s success in a few years’ time. The last incident that the book investigates is also the last one before the king died and to start it off, Monoclais stated verbatim, “The incident on the Basteb peninsula would ultimately lead to King Oswald’s downfall and his eventual assassination.” 

20 years ago, before I was even born, the Nasaar Kingdom and the Ribier Kingdom were at war once again just as King Oswald was entering his 40th year on the throne. The Nasaar Kingdom and the Ribier Kingdom have been warring against each other ever since the two kingdoms were founded. In the beginning, it might have had to do with the Nasaar Kingdom being polytheistic and worshiping multiple gods while the Ribier Kingdom was monotheistic and only believed in one god. However, with the amount of bad blood and hatred that’s formed over the centuries of the two kingdoms warring, religious differences were tossed to the wayside long ago. 

The two kingdoms can’t allow one another to exist and due to the two kingdoms having similar military strength, we come to our present predicament of periodic wars with no end in sight. It seems if you’re a civilian living in either kingdom, you can expect a new war nearly every generation. The war that began and ended 20 years ago wasn’t as bloody as any of the previous conflicts but it was the most infamous because it ended with both kings assassinated by their own courts. 

The war 20 years ago began when the Ribierian king bribed the Loran Mercantile Alliance to impose high tariffs on the Nasaar Kingdom’s lumber and firewood imports. Enraged by the fuckery from the two countries, the Nasaaran king immediately declared war on the Ribier Kingdom in response and ordered for the colonization and industrialization of the Basteb peninsula. 

Although the Basteb peninsula was always considered a part of the Nasaar Kingdom, due to the impassable Basteb Mountain Range, the peninsula was considered a vestigial portion of the kingdom despite its vast natural resources like lumber. With that in mind, King Oswald ordered the largest construction project the kingdom had ever seen and devoted hundreds of thousands of gold coins toward the project directly from the kingdom’s coffers. He hired every miner he could find, he recruited every architect who was worth a damn, and he employed tens of thousands of laborers and got them to start digging an undermountain tunnel that he would later name the Basteb King’s Road. 

Once the mountain was dug out, he began building a town that would be split into two halves on each end of the tunnel that he would name Mountain’s Toil to commemorate the blood, sweat, and tears that had gone into digging the tunnel. King Oswald would also incentivize the kingdom’s citizens to move their families onto the peninsula’s virgin land by promising not to collect taxes from them for three years. To make sure they could survive, he gave traveling merchants subsidies as long as they frequently visited the newly budding villages and towns. Of course, the kingdom’s council wasn’t happy with their king. 

Starting a war out of nowhere and then proceeding to immediately empty the kingdom’s treasury for what they thought was an attempt to outpetty the Loran Mercantile Alliance was the last straw. With the adventurers’ guild’s support, due to King Oswald openly voicing his disdain for The Guild and his intentions to nationalize the adventurers’ guild, the king’s councilors stabbed him to death with daggers on the last day of Undecimber, just before the new year. 

On January 1, 8961, King Aethelbrande the First became the first king of his name, just like his deceased father. Kapri seemed to think King Aethelbrande had a hand in his father’s death and I can see why because although Monoclais claimed he didn’t want to ruminate rumors in his conclusion, he sure does imply it. I think the specific line was, “With The Guild’s support, King Aethelbrande ousted his competitors and took the Nasaaran throne just like the kingdom’s councilors assassinated King Oswald with The Guild’s support.” Won’t entertain rumors my ass. 

The same day King Aethelbrande was enthroned, he would draft a letter and send it to the Ribier Kingdom, asking for a ceasefire due to King Oswald’s untimely passing. A few weeks later he would receive a reply from the Ribier Kingdom’s newly enthroned King Norchitis. It turned out the previous Ribierian king had died on the same day King Oswald had died and they were settling their own turmoil which meant they were more than happy to call a ceasefire. The Ribierian king had been bludgeoned to death in his sleep by his wife with a silver candle holder. Two kings in two different kingdoms dying on the same day, what are the chances?