"I think it does matter - if you imagine two countries, one of which is ruled by a wise king and one by a wise elected leader, if you assume they are equally wise and choose equally good laws and that their successions are equally certain - I would certainly prefer to be a subject of the latter. I suspect many people won't think there's much to choose between the two, but of those who do care I think most would choose the one where the leader is elected. Independent of a government being good, there is something valuable in a government being chosen by the governed. I prefer to be subject to a somewhat worse government, in terms of laws and policies, that was chosen by its people rather over one with better laws that was imposed by heredity or force of arms or divine intervention. Part of this is the thing Élie is saying about being ruled seeming corrosive to the mortal spirit. I think that's true even when the ruler is good and just - but you know that already, you know what I think of most paladins."

"I agree that all else equal it's obviously notably better for a government to be chosen by the governed. I'm not sure how much worse I'd think was worth it, but - a bit worse, sure. But I think ideally you design a state whose leader is simply not very important, a state where the meaningful freedom of its citizens just does not depend on the outcome of any vote or the personal merit of any appointed ruler.

And - I really really want the people of Lastwall to make high stakes decisions. It is approximately the entire thing I want them to do. I just think that whether they have children and what they do with their life genuinely is a high stakes decision, that how the taxes get spent is a high stakes decision, and that in a well designed state, who is in charge of it isn't.

- backing up slightly. I would hope that many of them will share my values. To the extent that this is so, them being competent to make high stakes decisions, and actually making them, on a routine basis, is just enormously good by my values. Obviously, they're going to have somewhat different priorities and emphases than I, and within a reasonable range of priorities of theirs, this is still clearly the best thing by my values, and those people being more competent to make high-stakes decisions is still clearly very good. If some of them are Asmodeans or Rovagug cultists, then, yes, it's inconvenient how they got better at making high-stakes decisions, but that would have to be astoundingly common in the population for it to be true that there's any sense in which I don't want the people of Lastwall to make high-stakes decisions because it's counter to my interests."

"I would dearly like to know how you plan to design a state whose leader doesn't have much power, and whose stability comes from deeply ingrained inherited institutions, and which is capable of decisively redirecting itself in the face of new threats – but that's not fair. A state whose citizens vote on every decision that really matters is the thing I want, and that I think is worth fighting for. 

I worry that if we keep talking you're going to get a distorted view of what Lastwall is, because I'm really not the most impartial observer, but I've already told you what I think of how well you succeeded." 

"I've been thinking of it as - the primary problem being the leader's advisors, the mechanisms by which the leaders can learn things. Wise men still make for terrible kings because of who surrounds them, and similarly if you have good mechanisms for getting information to people then maybe you can get good decisions so long as they have some minimum requisite level of wisdom. The weak version of this seems true to me, that I'd rather live somewhere with a mediocre but well-advised ruler than a person of sterling moral character stuck with Ostenso's court.

It is not your duty to bring me only tidings perfectly filtered so I'll learn correctly from them, but mine to learn correctly from what I get."

"We agree there – and I think a republic fixes this problem by arranging things such that it's in the leader's interest to know what their citizens really think of them, and ideally to share the same interests in common. And of course a leader here needn't be one person. In fact, it almost certainly shouldn't be

– if it's your duty to learn correctly, surely it's also mine to inform you accurately. At least to the best of my ability."

"Sure. I - think you're trying, and we're missing - some important ideas that might make all these things ultimately not contradict each other, or else make it clearer where they do. 

If you have lots of leaders, each with individually limited responsibilities, trying to act on their values with a wide range of human concerns and priorities represented but some filter for not being Asmodeans, with a conception that they can and should make high-stakes decisions but that sometimes the wise way to make high-stakes decisions is to ask someone smarter, or some mechanism that reliably gives useful answers, then I'd expect that goes well nearly however you got the leaders."

"That sounds plausible. I'm less confident than you are that that works, though, just because - when designing a state, or doing anything else that hasn't been done very much before, most ideas that sound good when you're talking over them fall apart when put into practice. Like you said, Absalom turned out much worse than Aroden hoped."

"I am really very curious what you know about what Aroden hoped." 

"Well, I don't actually personally know in much detail but I have to imagine it's better than what we got!"

"He wanted - I guess you could call it a Republic, though they didn't have the term yet  - the important institutions of civic life to all have leadership on the council, and no massive landholders, and people expanding the island by their own magic if they wanted to call a place on it home..."

"And what he got was - I'd be cheered to learn this is fixed by your day, but I don't have my hopes up - the pilot's guild has been making the harbor more dangerous and harder to navigate, so that people have to use their service more, and the council has failed to do anything about this for the last decade."

"Do they have the axebeaks yet?"

"They have the axebeaks."

"We've told the city government they can have their very own permanent teleportation circle just as soon as they agree among themselves where it should go. ...I'm not holding out hope." 

"I don't find it nearly as upsetting a place as Oppara, but it's - definitely not at all what Aroden was hoping for and He doesn't see any worth-the-expense way to fix it. I have been somewhat accordingly unambitious, with Lastwall and bold new social ideas of mine, but of course that - has costs too."

"Probably it's best for – Lastwall to be Lastwall, and the rest of us to try our ambitious social experiments someplace else."

"But not in Belkzen? You'd ask me not to reevaluate whether to conquer it?"

There's really no good way out of this one except the most straightforward. 

"I have good reasons to believe it wouldn't matter. I don't think I can say more than that." 

"You don't need to. 

I think on some level I'd hoped that there would be - a dozen Lastwall variants, if the Empire fell apart. People who had all kinds of theories of what I did wrong and how to tinker with it. Once there was an example of it working."

"Well, people have all kinds of theories. Getting the countries is harder." 

"It took some doing. - I wanted Molthune Province too, couldn't swing it."

"Personally I mostly have the opposite problem. People keep offering me duchies and things. I can't imagine why. I can't begin to think what I'd do with one."

"Oh, that's much easier to get, yes! The problem with duchies is that they are offered to one by Kings or Emperors who want oaths of fealty."

"Oh, is that it? I don't usually let them get that far." 

"- the Emperor of Taldor is not a stupid man, and not an Evil one, and I would say we understand each other pretty well, at this point, and have worked hard to have our ambitions be compatible. The last time we spoke of Molthune, I said to him that the oath he asked of me is one I would not make even to Aroden, and he said that the thing I wanted he wouldn't grant even to Aroden, and that's where we left it."