"I would be ashamed of my representatives!"

Giggle.

That is a good smile that she has.

It is the smile of being adorably mindcontrolled!

The mind control is a problem but the smile is still very cute!

Yes. "What's the Esmaarlan government like?"

"Eh, I don't know, governmental. I'm pretty sure I don't still have a civics textbook lying around or I'd point you at it. There are appointed representatives who can be got rid of via referendum and you need to have some form of magic to be one and the country's demilitarized because what with the emphasis on magic our wards are sufficient to put a stop to any attempted invasion."

"Huh, the magic requirement is interesting. There's a little country on my planet where all the politicians have to touch an artifact that makes them incapable of lying. And lets them see in the dark, but that's not why they have to touch it."

"Oh, I like that one. That is a good country."

"It's not actually a very good country but it hasn't collapsed yet."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Well, most people don't want to be literally incapable of lying even in their personal lives so the selection isn't great, and they can't keep state secrets effectively in the hands of the politicians - if one of those politicians even just refuses to answer a question you know something's up - so they have some appointed positions for people to know secrets in but then those people can just tell the politicians 'it's important, I can't tell you why, do this', pretty much on their own recognizance... and the reason they do this is they had a lot of preexisting problems with corruption and it turns out some people are good at being corrupt even without telling any lies..."

"Aha. I was imagining something more - voluntary, approached from the direction of 'let's see if this has interestingly positive effects', not 'maybe if they literally can't lie they will stop fucking everything up'."

"Nope."

"Well that's much less delightful."

"Alas. Maybe you could borrow the artifact if there's somewhere riper for a positive social experiment about."

"I'll keep it in mind in case I run across an opportunity."

"Are there a lot of different countries on this planet?"

"I don't know how many is 'a lot' - let's see, there's the six merfolk nations, six countries on Espaal, Mryne and Pleia and Nirlan and I guess wolfrider territory on Nanela, Mekand being its own thing, Dragon Island sort of arguably a polity, eight nations of the tropics, and then, uh, some number of countries on Anaist - something in the vicinity of twenty? I think it's nineteen. Which adds up to - forty-five or so?"

"Sort of arguably?"

"It's where the Dragon Council meets, and they're... a governing body in a sense, but they concern themselves with all the dragons on the planet, Dragon Island doesn't have citizens so much as some residents and a lot of visitors."

"Huh."

"Yeah. So it's not exactly a country but it's not exactly not a country."

"I think we have more countries than that."