CHAPTER VI:
ALL HAIL VOLTEI
Inset 1: Modern-day image of the keep from where King Tanden Voltei X woke up to the Revolution
King Tanden Voltei the Tenth stared out of his open french windows at his glorious capital city. His eyes were wide, as if terror was steadily overcoming him. He held his fidgety hands together, rubbing them nervously, as if cold or anxious. You see, the king was currently giving new meaning to the phrase "shaking in your boots". He was an immensely large man, his belly protruding grotesquely from the frilly white shirt he wore under his blood-red royal vest. He was uncomfortable in every imaginable way. His tiny legs quivered in the expensive leather boots too big for him. His legs swatted the sides, creating a steady, shaking sound.
His brow was a cascade of sweat, sweat brought about by many reasons. By the eerie absence of wind. By the burden of itchy, hot, heavy clothes he thought fantastic when he was in power. By the fact that his security had been compromised. By his crumbling structure of power. By the blackness of the smoke rising out of the fortresses in the distance, guard houses that he once thought impregnable. By the roar of the distant, furious mobs coming for him.
A noise reached his ears. He gasped lightly. He turned to his door. "Your Highness" said the manservant in his doorway, "your carriage is ready". The king gave a sigh of relief. "And my wife, my children?" the king said in a booming voice, waddling out of his room and heading down the hall to the foyer stairway, "They are in their carriage. They will be right ahead of yours" said the manservant, following close behind him. "The country manor, is it stocked?" "They sent word ahead a few days ago: they are fully supplied for at least four years, and an underground trade line has been established should ever the need be".The king grunted curtly, as though he was pleased, but in a hurry. He exited his keep through his grand front doors and immediately headed for the empty carriage behind the carriage where the Queen and the three princes sat.
He did not look inside the front carriage, he did not look behind him, did not look at the scornful look his disgruntled Guards gave him, did not look at the main gates; this was not to be, despite his constant use of it, his final exiting place. This time, he was to use the maintenance gate at the back of the castle, where supplies were brought in. It was simple, with a set of moldy wooden doors keeping out the numerous pests of the island. He jumped into the carriage, set himself, and signaled his drivers to move.
The wheels of the carriage began to creating a ricketing sound, shaking the cabin wildly. Tanden panicked slightly at first, but then figured the wheels were merely bouncing on the stone road, and would seize shaking the cabin once he touched smooth dirt. He breathed heavily, put his head back, and sighed. He closed his eyes and slowly drifted off into sleep. He felt the cabin seize shaking, and the wheels quiet down to a smooth draft...
Inset 2: the grand main gates of Voltei Castle... through where the King did NOT exit royally
Meanwhile, the fighting below was in it's last throes. After almost 12 hours of fighting, the gunfire had receded somewhat. Who was victorious? Well, it is 7:00 AM. The casualty list for June 1st were as follows: for the Rebels, around 1,300 lay dead, and 3,000 trodged along, wounded. For the Royal Guard, 4,543 were dead, and more than 10,000 were wounded. The remaining able-bodied 5,000 Royal Guard, however, were entrenched along the other side of La Capital, waiting both for the Rebels to try and enter that sector of the city and for reinforcements to come in from other parts of the country. However, because the King was safe, they did not expect for the Rebels to know that. Samantha Stein, half-naked, her lower body covered in bandages after a doctor offered to treat her, looks up at the objective that she had hoped would win the long, hard fight for her comrades. However, her heart sank as she noticed that the castle and the area around it were abandoned, it's inhabitants long gone. "I felt... as if my soul had committed some great evil" she wrote in her war log for that day, "I'd lied to all of my friends, and... so many had been hurt for it. I felt as if I belonged with them, a bullet through my heart." However, Samantha's troops did not share her sorrow. In fact, they were mesmerized, because, as one soldier put it, "I've never been inside".
The great halls of the castle were almost magical for the humble workers. Indeed, before the Revolution, only the King's staff and Guard could ever hope to walk inside. Samantha Stein's troop treated the castle with a respect that both shocked and moved her. They looked at their ruined faces in the silverware. They very delicately opened cabinets to observe their contents. They made sure not to stain the enormous Persian rugs by walking on them with their dusty boots. In such haste did the King leave that several of his staff and servants were left behind. Although the staff was terrified of the Rebels, so much so a young woman pled with them not to rape her, their fears were soon dispelled by the tired humility of the Rebels. They bowed to the maids. Each one shook the Butler's hand as they passed him. When the Rebels asked which bed was the most comfortable, a band of servants took them to the King's own bedchamber. There they laid Lady Stein to rest. When asked why she wept, she responded, "Don't you feel it? The goodness that you have carried here... has transformed this evil place".
Inset 3: Royal neighborhood of La Capital after the end of the initial fighting.
The Main Rebel Force arrived at the Castle in full at least two hours after Samantha's own Convention force. Together, there were only around 8,700 people still alive after the end of the fighting. Samantha Stein's co-conspirators were not as relaxed when they saw that the King had not been captured or killed. Alexandra Justan cowered in a corner, sucking on tea leaves. Charle Shore paced up and down the halls of the castle, punching at walls and cabinets and doors. Nikolai was in heated debate with Samantha Stein, trying to mount a defense for what he predicted would be a massive counter-attack. However, Lady Stein highly doubted such a counter-attack would be mounted, arguing that the former subjects of the King would rally behind their cause. Entrenched within the castle, the Rebel force waited for six days for an answer. Soon, news was coming in on public opinion.
Reactions to the uprising were mixed, to the dismay of Samantha. On one extreme, and unbeknownst to the original revolutionaries, their own uprising had sparked copycats throughout the Kingdom, and which were a lot more succesful in quelling the chapters of the Royal Guard stationed there. A grand total of 100,000 new revolutionaries had risen against the King, mostly in the rural areas around La Capital. Royalist casualties numbered into 50,000, and prisoners 150,000.
There were also rumors of spies in the sectors of the island still under Royal control, and word was that they were on the King's trail. As hundreds of thousands of new troops poured into the former capital of the Kingdom, Samantha Stein was asked to usher the newcomers in. However, she asked that they'd rather travel to the castle, because, as she quoted, "I'm not the happiest to see you here". Legend has it that Nikolai Asimov had fainted when he'd heard the news that thousands more troops were coming into the city. On the other extreme, however, every political party in the Isles were voicing their opposition for the uprising. Royal Nationalists, in particular, called it "high treason" and that "the people will be glad when our great King hangs every revolutionary and burns down their base of operations in the old capital". These statements, however, backfired, as now every citizen within La Capital feared for their lives, and decided to side with the Rebels in the defense of their city. Instead of a few hundred thousand, close to a million people were part of the Revolution.
In the middle were the subjects who had survived the fighting, or were nowhere near the fighting when it occured. A large group were horrified at the amount of violence seen in La Capital, while another were glad to see their cruel King ousted from power. However, the largest part of the population was neutral, merely wanting to live their lives free of the political clout that was occuring. This bit of news gave Samantha Stein an idea to get public opinion on their side.
Inset 5: A few of the Second Uprising Rebel Force wounded, happy to be alive after days of fighting
"I wanted to speak to them. I wanted to reassure them that they didn't have to have any part in this. They just needed to let us be, and we'd let them be. But at the same time, I needed to let them know a little secret: if they helped us, we would help them as well". Beginning in June 10th, Samantha Stein began writing letters to each of the main provinces around the island, sent to governors, Royal Guard commisioners, newspapers, and the like that would spread the letter around for their own benefit. While nobody remembers exactly what the words in the letters were, they do remember in summary: generally, the letters said that the revolutionaries were people just like the ones reading the letters: hard working men and women, dissatisfied with the Kingdom, and that the course of action they took felt necessary and the only way out of their dire situation.
She also advocated a "people's government", essentially saying that if a single man could run the country, then everybody in the nation will run it even better. She called the Kingdom "antiquated" in some, and "archaic" in others. She also mentioned that the problems of the Kingdom went far beyond the Taxing issues of years past, and that only with the combined effort of the entire people of the nation could the harm the old ways had done be repaired and allow progress to arise.
In total, Samantha Stein wrote 48 letters over a period of 20 days. By July, responses were coming in from everywhere. And, all in all, they were overwhelmingly positive. Three chapters of the Royal Guard decided to turn in their banners, and were willing to support the new government. All but three of the provinces supported Samantha's words, but, in the end, all wanted the same thing: they were holding Samantha's new "people's government" to her word. They were sending representatives in order to establish laws suitable to the conditions of the people. While Alexandra Justan called the First Constitutional Convention "dodgy" and "dangerous", Samantha Stein called it something else entirely: "historic".
Around 128 representatives arrived for the Convention. They were an incredibly motley collection of people, everything from bankers to Royal Guard captains to clothiers to jewelers to shoemakers to miners to fishermen. While schismed in the Revolution, their opinions of Samantha Stein were without bitterness:
"An amazing woman" said one Margaret Cho, a clothes designer.
"Stunning, powerful, dominant... a bit manly, though" said Michael Rodman, a salt miner.
"Women of her caliber may as well be exctinct", said Carl Lovegood, bank owner.
The Convention was called to order. The most important question was asked by none other than Samantha Stein herself: what kind of government did the people want. Unanimously, each and every representative described a moderated republic as the vision of their provinces. However, the mass of bureaucracy suggested by Asimov actually came up during the Convention, but Samantha Stein convinced the assembled otherwise. Instead, she opted for a single temporary body, where the elected would have to run in terms. While she'd rather not support, she eventually had to agree with the assembled that something more permanent was needed to establish. Samantha proposed that, for the moment, a high council of four with an elected leader be suitable, and the assembled agreed. Samantha then asked who this leader would be.
The great hall within the castle where the assembly was held suddenly fell into a deep, deep silence. Eventually, snickering, laughter, and muttering began to crackle in the hall. Samantha, confused, turned to see her own co-conspirators with amused smiles on their faces. "What is so funny?" Samantha asked. "Don't you get it, you ditzy fool?" said Alexandra Justan, "You are the leader!" Samantha Stein turned to face the hundreds before her. The entire room erupted into laughter as she, too, began to laugh.
After the Convention, Samantha invited the assembled to a humble dinner, where bread and local, salted meats and home-made wine was served. As the assembled carried on casual conversations, a drunken Alexandra Justan stood in toast. "Firshhtly" she said, "I wanna... wanna toast to our great new King, Sam Purlalah Shyse!" All laughed as they raised in mock honor of their new leader. "Next, I's gonna toast... all them guys an' gals that protected us from all them bullets!" Laughter this time was scattered. "Ands lasshhhly... I wants to shoast, toast, our new country... the Brand New Republic... of the Voltei!" Everyone, including Samantha, Nikolai, and Charle, applauded and cheered at this.
And so, dear readers, in drunken, bloodied stupor was born the New Republic of the Voltei Isles.
Here, here!