King Nydon has been defeated, the usurper and his elf compatriot have entered the palace, all his works in ruins. He strolls around chamber where his great arts are stored, and weeps for himself. -- Deathshead419
[AN: In reference to this: @internutter/challenge-04632-l248-better-than-perfection ]
All things considered, there were worse punishments for a deposed ruler than house arrest. There was a distant realm where, according to the tales, the overtaking ruler cut off his father's nose as a means of punishment[1]. And there was the classic public execution. So Nydon should be very grateful that he was alive, whole, and merely imprisoned under the watch of his former, faithful guard.
He didn't feel very grateful. He felt like they'd locked him in a storehouse because his parlour was gradually filling with his commissioned works of art.
Wasn't there a line in one of the depressing poems? Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. Nydon had banned it because it was too gloomy.
With or without the poem, he was feeling pretty gloomy, right now. Mostly because he had a lovely view of his kingdom as the pretender prince systematically destroyed everything Nydon had built. The ornamental gardens were being uprooted. Some of his vast and trackless lawn was already furrowed and turned to crops. Some of it was used as grazing for -ugh- work animals.
Disgusting.
How could the people possibly withstand such an eyesore?
He closed the curtains on the horrific sight of picturesque thatch being replaced with ugly shingles. Turning instead to his art. History in the making, meant to be seen by thousands, crammed into every spare space the guards could fit it. They'd filled his walls, stacked the portraits into five different corners, and replaced some elements of his furniture with the marble. When he inquired about the bronzes, they told him they'd been melted down to make useful tools.
That thought alone forced him to hunt sleep for a week.
A week in which they fed him peasant food, and the guards took him for exercise in a secure location. Nydon could also observe the accelerating regression into ugliness and disorder, but he preferred to keep his eyes on his feet. He'd worked so hard to make his kingdom perfect... to reshape everything in it for the best.
They didn't want 'best'. The ungrateful plebians.
They crowned the pretender prince, and married him to Connow the Reluctant. Who was not so reluctant now. Nydon had to sit in chains in an upper gallery to watch the pretender prince and that boy from Lunnarigan run to each other in the temple.
Didn't they know he'd banned that sort of thing? It sickened him to think that his precious realm was going back to the polluted, Elven ways of things. Not caring who wed who or how they'd changed their bodies, but preferring that they married for love.
That was not an efficient foundation for establishing political relations or a decent legacy.
They'd find out, possibly too late, that they had set the kingdom up for failure.
Nydon retreated to his art-crammed suite and flipped through a corner of paintings. His visage in the place of legendary heroes, all Human heroes, of course. He had his face supplanted over the images of legendary gods in scenes from the stories. All in a place of benevolence. All casting him as the benevolent father of his kingdom.
The peasantry - his loyal children - had to have been mislead to follow the siren call of this pretender prince. This Elf pretending to be Wraithvine was no more than an evil vizier. That was what had happened, he was sure.
He reached the last picture. Himself, giant-sized, symbolically leading his people from the dark ages and into the light of progress.
Nydon looked upon his works, and wept.
[1] This is a gross exaggeration.
[Photo by Jordyn St. John on Unsplash]
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