▸ Column · A fallen sorcerous realm of rival noble houses, where lords escalate ever-grander dark monuments across a ravine, overseen by the Council of Spires
QUEEN BERYL replies.
Replied to by Queen Beryl, with a rebuttal from Sailor Moon.
The letter
Your Dark Majesty — it began when the lord across the ravine, one Gerald of the Lesser House, set a single grinning stone imp beside his gate. Something I cannot name would not abide it, so I flanked my own gate with two larger imps as sentinels. He answered with a whirling iron weathervane tall as a man; I conjured a dozen enchanted glass herons that beat their wings at dusk until my grounds blaze like a garish festival. Now he has unveiled a four-foot gargoyle crowned with a ridiculous little helm — plainly aimed at me — and I have nearly commissioned a towering scaled wyrm dressed as a wizard to answer it. My wife begs me to stop, the Council of Spires has sent two warnings (Gerald began it, mind you), and I can no longer say what I am fighting for, or what victory would even look like. Is there a dignified way out of a monument-war, or do I simply escalate until one of us flees the valley?
Queen Beryl replies
How quaint, that you bring this to the dark throne and dress it in the language of grievance. Spare me. A grievance is a wound the world refused to close — I have one, I built a kingdom in its shadow. You have a stone imp and a glass heron. Do not insult the throne by calling your vanity a war.
And yet. Hear the queen falter, for it costs me. You have asked the one question I never permitted myself: what would victory even look like? I never answered it either, child. I outshone, I out-darkened, I raised monument after monument to a rival until the whole sky dimmed — and at the summit of all that splendor there was no triumph waiting. Only me, and the cold. You escalate toward a throne that does not exist.
So no, I will not counsel graciousness — that pretty word the comfortable invented. I counsel something colder: walk away because there is nothing at the end of this to win, and because a woman who begs you to stop is warmth I would have burned worlds to keep. Do not trade her for a wyrm in a wizard's hat.
— Queen Beryl
Sailor Moon weighs in
Beryl, of course you saw a war — a war is the only thing your eyes have ever let in. But look again! Gerald set out one little imp, and a stranger answered, and now you two have been talking every single week without saying a word. That's not a battle. That's the most awkward friendship I've ever heard of, and it's adorable!
So here's the secret she missed: the enemy across the ravine is just a lonely guy who wanted someone to notice his gnome. Walk over there. Laugh about the flamingos together. And hug your wife — she stayed through all twelve glowing herons, you know? Don't beat Gerald. Befriend him.
— Sailor Moon
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