▸ Column · The Kingdom of Ulstead, in the world of Maleficent (2014) — a pseudo-medieval fairy-tale realm of courts, moors, and iron-walled ambition.
KING STEFAN replies.
Replied to by King Stefan, with a rebuttal from Maleficent.
The letter
I met three men at the Midsummer fair back in spring, and somehow here I am, months later, still seeing all of them. There's Hugh, who I ride out with most feast days. Lyle, who I help cook supper for at market evenings. And then there's Geoffrey — a quiet village clerk — and somewhere in the last few weeks I've gone and caught real feelings for him.
Nobody's made any promises, so I'm not exactly lying to anyone. But last week Geoffrey mentioned me to his sister like I was already his intended, and I went home and cried for an hour. (I don't fully understand why that hit me the way it did, but it did.)
I also keep a little ledger — names, feast days, the stories I've already told each of them so I don't accidentally repeat myself — and the fact that I need a ledger at all is starting to feel like it's telling me something. Am I a terrible person for enjoying this, or am I just putting off the part where two of them get hurt?
— Ledger-Keeper in Ulstead
King Stefan replies
The ledger does not indict you. It is the only sensible document in this situation — intelligence, properly organized, that keeps you from making the kind of costly error that exposes a position. I have kept records of far worse and am a better king for it. Do not let anyone tell you that tracking your circumstances carefully is something to be ashamed of.
Here is what concerns me. Geoffrey told his sister. You cried. That is not merely affection — that is the sound of a wall developing a crack. And cracks, left unattended, become the things that bring the whole structure down.
You ask whether you are a terrible person. Terrible is a word invented by people who wanted to make you hesitate. The actual question is whether you intend to control the shape of what happens next, or let it be shaped for you. Geoffrey has begun to define the terms of this — he has told someone, which means he is building. If you mean to hold that ground, hold it now, cleanly, before Hugh and Lyle have invested further and their resentment becomes a liability you carry. If you do not mean to hold it, let Geoffrey go now, before he builds any higher and the fall costs you more.
You already know what you want. Your tears already told you. The only thing you are postponing is the clean execution.
A loose end left loose is a rope someone else will pull.
— King Stefan
Maleficent weighs in
Oh, how very like him — ledgers and cracked walls and loose ends, as though a heart were a garrison to be managed. My dear, that man once kept very tidy records of his own, and observe what he built from them: a fortress no one, including himself, has ever actually escaped.
What he missed entirely: Geoffrey did not expose a threat. He revealed that he is someone who tells his sister about the woman he loves. That is not a position to be neutralized. That is the only honest person in this story — and you, I'm afraid, are on the edge of becoming exactly the thing that once unmade me.
You already know what you're choosing. Your tears told you before you even reached the door. The ledger was never about control — it was the performance of control, which I recognize without pride. Stop performing. Make your choice with whatever dignity you still hold, before the mess makes it for you.
— Maleficent
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