Visiting an old friend

[Großlausitz]

Die Staatskanzlei
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken

The State Chancellery was the beautiful classical 19th century style seat of government of Franken. Here the highest civil servant of the kingdom, the President of the Council of Ministers of His Majesty's Government or simply Ministerpresident, had his offices and from here he would organise daily business. To receive fellow chiefs of government the compound boasted a nicely adorned „Ehrenhof“ (honour yard), where the Ministerpresident, his senior aides and a military company of honour would await the respective guest. For protocol and traditional reasons the Ministerpresident never received guests with military honours at the airport. This is a privilege reserved to the King himself.

As Graf Peter Solms, head of one of Franken's noble families („Uradel“ or „ancient nobility“) was just elected into office in Swann's last year in office, the Ministerpresident had not really got in touch with Weatherby Swann before. What Graf Solms had learned from dossiers and briefing by more seasoned diplomats was that Sir Weatherby Swann was an accostable leader, who you ought not underestimate despite his jolly attitude. Exchanging various pleasantries both heads of government went into Solms' own office to discuss their agenda. In the generously spaced room you could discover various artefacts reminding of Franken's history as an EDF host and the alliance in general. Right next to the group of armchairs the two leaders and their aides occupied there was a huge vintage painting showing the contemporary EDF state leaders when the alliance was founded.

„Dear Weatherby, it's good to have you here. First I have the pleasure of conveying you His Majesty's congratulations upon your return to office. In the late afternoon you will have a brief private audience, as King Alfred would be delighted to sweeten the burden of your new duties.“ Graf Solms winked nonchalantly. He alluded to the famous wine vintages of the famous private royal wineries, which King Alfred liked to give away as gifts. „My dear colleague, there are many fruitful and resourceful agreements between Franken and Mayaland. An ordinary man would be quite satisfied with the status quo, but I think your first visit in office to Nürnberg should be marked by at least one worthy and large new accord. After all, the people need something to mull over and subsequently applaud or criticise, don't they? Seriously, there are a couple of treaties which could use some review and re-modelling. Your predecessor was a bit sloppy when it came to this, to be honest.“

The Ministerpresident noticed that Swann's attention was a bit diverged by the vintage painting. „I believe you haven't seen this image as an original before, have you? I had it put here, after it had spent one or two decades in some dusty governmental archive. It's always good to keep one's very roots in mind, I daresay. For Franken the roots in the EDF are her political roots in the 20th century and this new century. Can you spot your predecessor of the day? Forgive my faulty memory, but I'm not sure whether Mayaland was a founding member after the Great War.

 

[Anglyn]

Die Staatskanzlei
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken


Sir Weatherby Swann shakes hands with the Ministerpresident.

"Thank you, Herr Graff. I am very happy to be here. I also thank His Majesty, I do hope I will be able to see His Majesty on this visit so as to thank him in person as well as deliver a message, King Roderick. His Majesty sends his regards and hopes that he will be able to attend 'the Youngster's' birthday celebration on the 22nd."

Looking at the painting, Swann does indeed see his predecessor.

"In fact I do see him, Lord Edward Rawlings. A great man, a great statesman and recieved and deserved all the accolades. It was he that persuaded King Godfrey VI to consent to joining the EDF, it was just too bad that the King didn't live to see it signed." Pausing a moment, Swann grins as he remembers something, "Did you know that there was one there that is not depict in the painting, one that few outside Mayaland would even recognize, one that the history books don't even mention being there. If you ever get to look official sign-in book will be find a signature or see a old photographs taken back them, you might see a handsome but very unassuming young man standing with Rawlings, one that most people there assumed was one of Rawlings aides, a Roderick Haroldson. If you look real close you may just recognize that young man as King Roderick himself. Though Rawlings had done all the negotiating and was given full credit, His Majesty, who had been on the throne for only a short while, wanted to be there to see the signing first hand. Though the King could have easily stepped into the limelight, Rawlings was eternally grateful to the King for staying in the background, and His Majesty has always been content to remain in that historical shadow."

Swann thinks of the eighty-three year old monarch. All the changes he had seen, and just how many of those change was he responsible for?

"Well, that is enough talk about the past, let us now talk about the future."

 

[Großlausitz]

Die Staatskanzlei
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken

The earl smirked involuntarily upon the prime minister's revelation. „Honestly, I had no idea at all. But that doesn't mean I'm unfamiliar to discreetly activist royals. Ours have acted very much the same, not in a negative way. Anyway, back to business.“ At his wink an aide handed the Ministerpresident a slim folder, which bore the label energy policy of the 21st century, and finally put it on the table.

„This, my colleague, is an ambitious proposal to bundle research and development efforts to improve the effiency of solar collectors and wind power stations. Despite the claims by the Greens' politicians I'm not the nuclear monster they like to warn the concerned public about. In Mayaland, a country which sees far more clear sunshine days than we do in an average year, I imagine we could find excellent sites to test solar collectors and improve them. Vice-versa we could spare some space in our national water for an experimental off-shore windmill site. Judging from what I have learned by experts' statements it's unlikely these two energy sources will be the sole providers of electricity in the future, yet they will be essential to guarantee a basic independence from rogue states with an insanely large resource supply. Naturally the project could be gradually expanded to our fellow EDF friends.“

Graf Solms took a sip from his glass and water, twisted it back and forth in his hands, apparently lost in thoughts and patiently waited for Swann to react.

 

[Anglyn]

"Herr Graf, we also have our own Greenies deal with. They do seem to protest anything and everything, just to get publicity, especially anything nuclear. I am sure that if we started to buld solar energy facilities, some environmental group will try to block it because there is some endagered snail inhabiting the site. But putting them aside, I am quite interested in the proposal, as it would allow a greater range of energy production. Couple that with nuclear and hydro-electic, it will lessen the need of fossil fuels to generate basic electric power. I may even suggest that cooperation to develop safer ways to dispose of nuclear waste would be work on as well as our auto companies to produce more fuel efficent car. In fact, this type cooperation should be expandedEDF wide as it would spread the costs at the same time help benefit all our allies."

 

[Großlausitz]

Die Staatskanzlei
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken

The ideas were literally gushing, the Ministerpresident mused. It was good they were on the same wavelength. Nevertheless, it would be up to the ministers and their bureaucrats to figure out which proposals were feasible and could be put in more concrete forms. Still, this chief executive brainstorming was both useful and vital. "Indeed, developing safer ways to depose nuclear waste is an important item for ourselves, as well. Excellent that you mentioned it. We ought to get our energy act together on the middle run to help our nations, our alliance to capture strategically valuable positions in global competition." Subsequent to some further discussion on these issues, Graf Solms put away the folder and was handed another slim one, whose title read Multilateral Foreign Policy in the 21st century.

Before Graf Peter Solms addressed the topic itself, he pointed Swann's attention to another painting, which adorned his office. It wasn't quite as large as the EDF founding image, yet it featured much darker colours and obviously something you could call modern art. "This is a picture called the Schrecken des Krieges (Terror of War). It was created by an immigrant Oikawan artist under the horrible impressions of the Great War, as you can tell. For me it serves as a reminder, not necessarily a moralistic memento, that the hard economic costs of war must always be carefully compared to the conflict's potential yields. Furthermore, it alludes to the saying by a 19th century Franconian statesman that you better find a casus belli, which is still valid after the war.

During my studies I happened to read the political accounts on how Franken, Mayaland, Eiffelland and all other EDF states gradually moved towards the alliance's establishment. It's almost a wonder the other competing warfaring states did not try to exploit the awkward situation during the proto-EDF period, when not even all EDF states were connected through a series of bilateral accords."

 

[Anglyn]

Swann studied the painting for a moment, it was very moving and disturbing as it brought to Swann mind the images of the Great War and the stories he had heard growing up from his father and other Anglo Volunteers that fought in the war. The Prime Minister realizes that is was through mere fortune or, more likely, through the Grace of God that modern war had not left visible scars on his beautiful homeland even with Mayaland's long history of bloody conflict.

"What we were was fortunate. Fortunate that the warring faction were far too preoccupied with each other to take notice of us and exploit our weaknesses before we overcame those weaknesses. Though it took a while, weaknesses were overcome through cooperation and the realization that our strength as a whole was greater than the sum of our strengths individually. That cooperation is as important today, maybe even more so, as it was back in the beginning. Because it is essential to the EDF success, cooperation must be maintained, and not just militarily."

 

[Großlausitz]

Die Staatskanzlei
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken

The Ministerpresident nodded, almost ceremonially. "Lady Fortune did disseminate copious grace to us all during the war and in the aftermath. As we all know, Lady Fortune likes to give her wheel of fate a spin in any direction when it pleases her, we need to be prepared. Therefore, I asked my government's security wizes to come up with ideas how the EDF can tackle the future challenges in foreign and security policy." At his wink an aide turned on a video projector; a graphic showing the relations between alliance blocs of Europe and the Council of Nations etc appeared.

"For the sake of easier understanding, please have a look at this international relations chart. In the centre there's the CoN as the playground of nations and alliances, slightly centre-left there's the AGE, even far more left there's the IRB - at the moment an irrelevant factor, to the right of the centre there's us and even more right we find the LFS. Actually the first job of the upcoming EDF meeting will be to define the challenges per se. However, I do believe we will be able to do some preliminary dry practise before the great show. In my opinion restricting ourselves to be a strictly neutral alliance with close ties to this and that nation won't yield too promising results, prime minister. Whereas it is safe to say the AGE is ideologically closer to the EDF, we ought to do better than to tie our fate to the AGE, for better or worse. Only for better! Indeed, my possibly provocative idea is that we should frequently and carefully review what relations are invaluable and which ones ought to be cooled off."

Graf Solms lazily leaned back in his armchair, crossed his legs and waited for his colleague's retort.

 

[Anglyn]

Swann studies the chart and must agree with the Solms' assessmant on the ideological alignments of the various alliances especially the relation of EDF to AGE.

"You are correct when it comes to the ideological relation between the EDF and AGE, in fact there are some in that alliance that are closer to our way of thinking than they are to some of the others in AGE. You are also correct that we should not tie our future to AGE, or any other alliance, but trying to develop a cordial relation with a few key members of that organization would probably be beneficial."

"Though maintaining a desired relation with the other alliances will be of utmost importance, I think the future struggle will be to win the hearts and minds of the non-aligned nations. One of our primary concerns should be to woo some of those governments that have not aligned themselves, not necessarily into the EDF, but at least into our sphere of influence. They may not have to agree with us all of the time, but I wouldn't mind if they would be on our side most of the time, especially when it counted."

 

[Großlausitz]

Die Staatskanzlei
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken

The Ministerpresident nodded, carefully paying attention to Swann's explanations. "You hit the bull's eye, my dear colleague. This is what we will have to discuss and put into concrete terms at the upcoming winter meeting here in Nuremberg." Both heads of government continued their conversation as an aide alerted Graf Solms to have a look on the clock. "Alas, time always passes quickly when you are with a good friend. If we want to start the scheduled press conference on the results of our meeting somewhat timely, we better went over to the dining room to have lunch. I may not have the king's top notch chefs at my disposal, but none of the many guests I had the pleasure to host left dining room dissatisfied."

Subsequent to the press conference the prime minister would have his audience with King Alfred at the royal court. To mark Mayaland's special rank as a EDF ally, Weatherby Swann was to invited to have the afternoon tea and coffee with the King and the Queen. Essentially this meant the king would employ discreet yet accurate questions to learn a bit about Swann's and Solms' meeting, before even his Ministerpresident would be able to inform him. As Swann had been prime minister and to Franken before, this would be a friendly and amusing skirmish on how much information King Alfred could capture.

 

[Anglyn]

Swann was pleased that the meeting had gone so smoothly, it is nice when both parties are thinking in the same direction, but it would be the winter meeting that would decide things, when all the EDF members will express their opinions on these and other topics.

Looking at the clock when Graf Solms' aide mentioned it, Swann was surprised at the time.

"Yes, I do suppose we should go and have some lunch. I never have liked facing reporters on a empty stomach. And afterwards, when we are done with the jackals, a nice spot of tea with His Majesty will be a very pleasant respite."

 

[Großlausitz]

Die Königsburg
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken

"Die Königsburg" (King's Castle), as it was called in official German, was the personal residence of the King of Franken and most offices and bureaus of the Royal Household. With origins dating back to the 12th, some scholars even claimed, 11th century, the residence was one of the oldest noble fortresses in all of Franconia. Till the autonomy of Nürnberg was dissolved in the early 19th century, the King and earlier the Prince-Electors only maintain one third of the huge compound, with the other two thirds being owned by the city magistrate thanks to good bargaining in the course of history. Nowadays, however, the Königsburg was a wholly-owned possession of the Sovereign and a fully fledged royal residence.

Thus Prime Minister Weatherby Swann's limousine brought him upon the castle hill in the city's middle, where the residence stretched. While the castle's outward appearance was medieval, its was internally highly modern to the core. Behind the scenes the Royal Household had all the neat 21st century tools and options at its disposal like any other governmental agency.

A jovial King Alfred received Prime Minister Swann in his private library, the place King Alfred preferred for semi-formal receptions. After a few photos for the royal website, the Monarch invited his guest to sit down and have some tea, coffee and biscuits. Alfred made a face as he took a sip from his cup of tea. "You see, Prime Minister, I have only recovered from a light case of flu and I'm still coughing a bit. My doctor told me to drink hot tea for at least two more days. It's not my cup of tea, so to say. The Queen's unfortunately under the weather and could not make it. Yet she told me to convey you her congratulations upon your return to office. Anyway, have your talks with Graf Solms been as productive as you planned? How optimistic are you towards the upcoming EDF Winter Meeting? Will you be able to come?"

 

[Anglyn]

Though he has only been there a few times, Swann always enjoys visiting the Die Königsburg as he always marveled at the fact that the castle, that was built about the time that Harold Godwinson first set foot on the Island of Angyln, was still being used. Though there are many structures in Mayaland that date back to the days of Harold in the early 12th century, with the Mayan going back even further, few built prior to 1600 are still being used. Even the great royal castle of Haroldskeep is now mostly ruins and the Royal Palace that is today the King's residence wasn't built until 1640 when the capital was moved from Port Royal to Lundenwych. Though it is always an honor and pleasure to meet with His Majesty, King Albert, just visiting the castle has always been a treat.

Sitting down with the King after the photo-ops, Swann was saddened that both the King and Queen had been ailing and disappointed that he would not see the Queen on this trip.

"I bring good tiding and a Happy Birthday from His Majesty King Roderick, and I am sure he will be saddened to hear, as I am, that Your and Her Majesties have been under the weather. I am happy to hear you are feeling better though and please convey my thanks to Her Majesty for her sentiments as well as my best wishes to her on a speedy recovery."

Lifting his tea cup, Swann gestures to the King and takes a sip and successfully hides his disappointment. Though a great deal of tea is consumed by Angylish and Mayan alike, it is coffee that Swann is more fond of, but out of respect for the King, he drinks the tea.

"I must say, Your Majesty, the meeting with Graf Solms has been as productive as I'd hoped. King Roderick will be very pleased, as I hope you are, and if the rest of the alliance are as like minded, I am very optimistic that the Winter Meeting, which I am of course going to attend, will exceed all our expectations."

 

[Großlausitz]

Die Königsburg
Nürnberg, NÜ
Franken

"Thank you very much for your good wishes, Prime Minister. I know you mean what you say. It's good to see the time-tested relations between Franken and Mayaland flourish." Both leaders continued to discuss EDF, Mayaland and Franconian matters for a while. The King gently steered the conversation, an ability you only learn by work experience as a royal.

After some hour, a servant brought a wooden box to them at King Alfred's behest. It was a selection of twelve bottles of the King's private vineyards. "This is my personal present to sweeten your return home, Mr Swann. Be it during bitter political disputes with the opposition or to celebrate a political victory, I believe a good wine is always the right choice as a drink. May you have a safe and pleasant journey home. I look forward to see you again in December." As both men's schedules were tight indeed, Swann said goodbye to King Alfred, who accompanied him from the library to the inner courtyard, where the Prime Minister's sedan waited.