The Good King
Once upon a time there was a prince who would be king, save that a usurper did as usurper's do and took the crown from him. The prince had been a boy at the time, always an easier job for a usurper to levy, and so the prince found himself thrust into the wide world with only a horse and a bag of gold. The prince wandered, and as he did, he grew heavy with it. From each town and each village he took away with him far more than a usual passerby. For a prince that would have ruled, he saw the failures of the usurping monarch's reign as did no one else. At first, he bemoaned his lost throne with a sorrow and an anger that filled him with a rage that had no where to go. And then he set his hand to the till, and worked. As the prince worked, he improved, ever so slightly, the form in which he worked. Agricultural yards gained steadier yields. When such improvements spread, he turned to mill wheels, and to villages and their small communities' comm...