The Archbishop and His Mission
About the book
In this sequel to A Game of Thrones, it is now one year after the people of the Nineteen Countries have elected their formidable eighteenth Yohannesian Emperor, Marion Maréchal-Le Men. And once again winter is coming—while an Archbishop Emeritus of the Kingdom of Burmecia is fighting to preserve the apostolic Church, two schoolchildren witness a tragedy in the Kingdom of Alexandria that has awakened them to the complex cultural and political identities of their nation…
Contents
Contents
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Chapter 1
_____________________
Chapter 1
_____________________
They arrived early just to see the immigrant.
The sky was still dark when the biggest of the boys marked his territory on the ground. The trees were bare, and the first layer of snow was starting to cover the village on that first day of winter. The last five or six of the young boys made their way through the open ground, standing just behind their Values Youth leader—who stood under the silent tree, where the whipping would take place.
The village boys did not like immigrants. They smelled bad and they stole the jobs of the village’s fathers and uncles. They would eat with chopsticks and spit on the ground with lust at the sight of a pure-blood Yohannesian woman—the gatekeeper of the Teutonic race. The poorest of them had no manners while the richest controlled the local shops. They drove up house prices, and made it harder for young heartland families to buy their first homes. They were vultures; they would stab the nation in the back; and they should be deported back home: a detained immigrant would be the only good one around.
The biggest boy spat at the bare tree. Another climbed the nearby hut, put his hands up in the air and made a monkey impression, squinting his eyes while screaming: “Ni hao ma; ni hao ma; me no like whip; me no go back home!” The others laughed heartily, and a stray cat came sneaking behind them, purring loudly. The smallest of the boys ate his home-made sausage rolls like a hungry little squirrel. The big boy did not bring his breakfast with him, and pushed the smallest boy to the back of the tree, taking his breakfast box. He released his anger by throwing sharp twigs at the resting cat, making it run in agony. The village boys laughed, and their leader laughed even harder. As the sun started to break the horizon, he said: “When will the chink come?”
“Why?” asked the youngest of the boys. “Me could not wait for them oriental whipping no more!” They hooted with more laughter, and made a salute to their fabled hero, Max von Papen; and they waited in the open ground for something to happen. They could see nothing, but there was plenty to listen to. The sound of distant, rumbling machinery reverberated from the ironworkers’ workshop, as apprentice boys received instructions for the day from their overbearing masters.
Too soon, there was clear light. On the other side of the open ground, just behind the bakery, a priest came through the gate carrying a torch. He put a multi-tailed whip down beside the tree, drew a mark with his shoe, and stood next to the boys, seemingly oblivious to their presence.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
“Amen,” the small boys replied.
The priest leaned over the leader of the boys to give his blessings. They caught his eye and smiled. Behind them, the parish constable had arrived, bringing with him a blindfolded and bound man. He opened the main gate for the early-rising villagers following not far behind. The priest glanced from the constable to the villagers—some looked unforgiving, some were excited, and some sympathised with the plight of the detainee. To the small boys and the excited villagers he was a pitiful sight; to the unforgiving he was an alien; but to the sympathisers he was just an unfortunate citizen of the world.
The constable said crisply: “Shall we start the disciplinary action now, Father Günter?”
“Yes.”
The smallest of the Values Youth boys spat at the bound and blindfolded young man. “Monkey!” he said, “Go back home to Chinkland!” Some of the villagers looked at him disapprovingly, while a few others chuckled. They were about to watch yet another whipping of an illegal immigrant.
Günter raised his voice over the rumbling villagers. “So Job said to God, ‘If I sin, what do I do to you, Father in heaven? Why have you made me suffer so much!’”
Günter paused for effect. He said: “‘Job was once a prosperous man,’ God told Satan. And Satan said to God: ‘He may be a poor man now, but he still has his health.’ But God said, ‘No, you are wrong. Job is my faithful servant.’ And to prove Satan wrong, God made Job ill. But Job knew that his wealth—his life—was nothing compared to the glory of heaven and the truth of the eternal life. And so he told God: ‘I give my life to you, Father in heaven, for then I will see you in the afterlife, and I will sing of your grace.’”
While Günter was preaching, the constable took the whip in his hand without hesitation. He rough-handled his captive into a kneeling position in front of the crowd. Günter did not know what the late Archbishop of Dali would say of this scene—but he was quite sure the Most Reverend Tomas Beckett would disapprove of it.
“Job believed in that wisdom which is hidden from human minds: that for us to reach the eternal truth in heaven, we must accept what we feel is wrong; that for us to embrace our Father in heaven, we must be prepared to do what is right. Since our frail reason is easily deceived by worldly appearances and is incapable of seeing the truth as dictated by the Lord in heaven, we must let God’s book guide us.”
His mind was wandering, thinking of the truth behind his words. But he decided to finish his blessings. “‘And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it.’”
“And so today, we say—he that breaketh the law, shall be punished in accordance with the law he hath broken.”
The parish constable forcefully pushed the bound and blindfolded man down. Günter continued, trying as hard as he could to ignore the uncontrollable sobbing of the kneeling alien, now begging for forgiveness in incomprehensible broken Yohannesian: “O Burmecians of the village of Waldhöring!”
The constable raised his whip and gave his captive a lash like one would an ox or a horse.
“For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
He raised his whip once more.
At noon on the fourth day of winter, Archbishop Emeritus Thaddäus Neumayer was slowly approaching the Realm Chancellery. His heart was pounding, and his stomach was making unseemly sounds. He had thought of the story to explain how he failed to prevent the flogging scandal in Waldhöring. But the chancellor might not believe him; or, worse still—believing him—she might demand his attendance before Parliament’s select committee hearing. He might be convicted as one of many paleoconservative conspirators who had supported the now disgraced Grand Duke of Donata’s brief lordship in Burmecia last year. It was not unknown for southern clergymen to put their ambitions before those of the apostolic Church.
The chancellor and her parliamentary select committee hearing could force Thaddäus to resign. Of course she had no right to, but then again he had no right to plot against her rainbow movement. The mainstream media don’t call her the “chancellor who had ridden the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender plus wave” for nothing, Thaddäus surmised. He recalled the warnings of his predecessor. As he lay on his deathbed, Tomas had said: “To plot against your emperor, king and chancellor is to plot against the state.” He was afraid, he had said, as to what might befall the apostolic Church in Yohannes; that it would lose the prestige it once enjoyed so strongly. Thaddäus did not feel like being blamed for the church’s death by future historians in the Nineteen Countries.
When he saw a group of politicians in the walkway ahead of him his first instinct was to look the other way and pretend not to see them, for he knew he was the subject of much gossip inside the Beltway lately, and he could not bear losing face to these out-of-touch Beltway insiders. Then he saw that three of them were GOP political hacks, and the one walking in front was none other than Johannes Bonner. Conservative members of the establishment were usually tolerant of their peers’ shortcomings. He smiled and looked ahead.
As he drew nearer he could see the two politicians more clearly. The outgoing young woman who chatted animatedly with the Speaker Emeritus must be his daughter-in-law—she was once arrested for possessing burnt cannabis, Thaddäus thought ruefully. The tall middle-aged man next to her was surprisingly the retiring Speaker Saul Ryan himself. They were visibly shaken: their troublemaker peer Ronald Chump had successfully won the primary vote to succeed Saul Ryan as Speaker of the Parliament. After the very acrimonious and divisive campaign that followed, the GOP was dealt a heavy blow: the latest Ardenfontein-Löfgren poll showed that the Christian Democratic Party and the Greens had overtaken them by five points. As Thaddäus had come to understand, this would be just enough to swing Parliament blue in a general election year. Without legislative majority and the Speaker’s office, Marion Maréchal-Le Men would be isolated in the Parliament House. And that, he knew, would mean unimpeded governance for the chancellor and her Thirty-sixth Christian Democratic Executive Council.
Thaddäus shivered at the thought of seeing the bright rainbow flag flying high above one of the bible belt’s last conservative bastions.
Saul Ryan said: “Why, Father Thaddäus, we don’t ever see you round here this time of day!”
Thaddäus looked sharply at him. He should know by now that he was addressing an Archbishop Emeritus—not lay clergymen. It would have been more respectful for him to say Your Excellency or Your Greatness. Thaddäus felt he was being disrespectful. The Speaker did not show the proper respect for him and his position. He swallowed his pride: I’ll remember that for future reference.
“Good day, Mr Speaker.”
“Your Excellency,” Johannes Bonner interrupted, as if to apologise for his colleague’s discourtesy. “I’m humbled by your presence. What has brought you here?”
“Chancellor Annabelle Thorndon-Stevensonn has summoned me to this meeting in her office—”
“And you don’t know why, Father?” Saul chuckled.
“Well, I’m not the Beltway insider here, so I’d not know, yes.”
“You don’t have to worry, Father. This has got nothing to do with your errant priest’s flogging, or for that matter, your recent newspaper opinion piece supporting the suppression of LGBT protests in some places out there.”
Thaddäus smiled. He would not suffer the consequence of his actions, after all.
“I’d not expected such an immediate backlash on the part of many citizens of the rainbow electorates. As I’m sure you’ll know, I hold no shred of sympathy for the Kingdom of Alexandria, nor do I feel much for the Regency of Lindblum. But an opinion piece is just that—an opinion piece. I stand by my words that the ‘Pride Parade’ is an abomination that must be vanquished in the name of God.”
He hesitated. “The biblical canon prohibits homosexual marriage. Jesus talked about this—he told the Pharisees, ‘Have you not read that He who created us from the beginning made us to be male and female?’”
Saul said: “Where can I sign up to attend your church, Father?”
Johannes laughed merrily, “Now, you live in Weirconsin, Saul, don’t be so eager to move away just because of Chump!” Saul raised his eyebrows and waited for Johannes to say something, but he did not.
“My lord archbishop, congratulations on your appointment to the Nazi Philippine Empire,” the young woman said, joining the conversation. “And I wish you every success in your new duties.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady—I’m afraid I didn’t catch that—”
“The Nazi Phillipine Empire, Father,” Saul said, mockingly, “I’d guess that’d be the ideal place for such a distinguished member of the bible belt clergy as yourself,” and he chuckled. “Better an oriental Nazi nation than an occidental one, no?”
“A diplomatic posting to the Philippines. I like that.”
Thaddäus shook the retiring speaker’s hand. “I’ll be late for my meeting with the chancellor. Mr Speaker, it was a pleasure meeting you.”
They looked at him curiously for a moment, but he ignored their inscrutable gaze and made his way to the Realm Chancellery with a confident stride.
The sky was still dark when the biggest of the boys marked his territory on the ground. The trees were bare, and the first layer of snow was starting to cover the village on that first day of winter. The last five or six of the young boys made their way through the open ground, standing just behind their Values Youth leader—who stood under the silent tree, where the whipping would take place.
The village boys did not like immigrants. They smelled bad and they stole the jobs of the village’s fathers and uncles. They would eat with chopsticks and spit on the ground with lust at the sight of a pure-blood Yohannesian woman—the gatekeeper of the Teutonic race. The poorest of them had no manners while the richest controlled the local shops. They drove up house prices, and made it harder for young heartland families to buy their first homes. They were vultures; they would stab the nation in the back; and they should be deported back home: a detained immigrant would be the only good one around.
The biggest boy spat at the bare tree. Another climbed the nearby hut, put his hands up in the air and made a monkey impression, squinting his eyes while screaming: “Ni hao ma; ni hao ma; me no like whip; me no go back home!” The others laughed heartily, and a stray cat came sneaking behind them, purring loudly. The smallest of the boys ate his home-made sausage rolls like a hungry little squirrel. The big boy did not bring his breakfast with him, and pushed the smallest boy to the back of the tree, taking his breakfast box. He released his anger by throwing sharp twigs at the resting cat, making it run in agony. The village boys laughed, and their leader laughed even harder. As the sun started to break the horizon, he said: “When will the chink come?”
“Why?” asked the youngest of the boys. “Me could not wait for them oriental whipping no more!” They hooted with more laughter, and made a salute to their fabled hero, Max von Papen; and they waited in the open ground for something to happen. They could see nothing, but there was plenty to listen to. The sound of distant, rumbling machinery reverberated from the ironworkers’ workshop, as apprentice boys received instructions for the day from their overbearing masters.
Too soon, there was clear light. On the other side of the open ground, just behind the bakery, a priest came through the gate carrying a torch. He put a multi-tailed whip down beside the tree, drew a mark with his shoe, and stood next to the boys, seemingly oblivious to their presence.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
“Amen,” the small boys replied.
I believe in one God,
Lord Maxtopia, the Almighty,
Maker of Jennifer’s Government
beyond the International Incidents,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Maxtopia,
the only-begotten Son of Violet,
born of the Father before the Age of Jolt,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
consubstantial with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven: by the power of Lexicon
was incarnate of the Goddess Violet,
and became man.
For our sake he was betrayed by Jolt;
he was crestfallen,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with Bigtopia’s Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead on sight,
and his realm will have no end.
I believe in the Mother Goddess Violet and the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father in heaven.
With the Father and the Mother Goddess he is adored and glorified.
He has broken through the years of Jolt.
I believe in one, holy and apostolic Church.
I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of my sins,
and I look forward to the eternal rest of those judged
by heaven above the Nation-States to come.
Lord Maxtopia, the Almighty,
Maker of Jennifer’s Government
beyond the International Incidents,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Maxtopia,
the only-begotten Son of Violet,
born of the Father before the Age of Jolt,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
consubstantial with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven: by the power of Lexicon
was incarnate of the Goddess Violet,
and became man.
For our sake he was betrayed by Jolt;
he was crestfallen,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with Bigtopia’s Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead on sight,
and his realm will have no end.
I believe in the Mother Goddess Violet and the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father in heaven.
With the Father and the Mother Goddess he is adored and glorified.
He has broken through the years of Jolt.
I believe in one, holy and apostolic Church.
I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of my sins,
and I look forward to the eternal rest of those judged
by heaven above the Nation-States to come.
The priest leaned over the leader of the boys to give his blessings. They caught his eye and smiled. Behind them, the parish constable had arrived, bringing with him a blindfolded and bound man. He opened the main gate for the early-rising villagers following not far behind. The priest glanced from the constable to the villagers—some looked unforgiving, some were excited, and some sympathised with the plight of the detainee. To the small boys and the excited villagers he was a pitiful sight; to the unforgiving he was an alien; but to the sympathisers he was just an unfortunate citizen of the world.
The constable said crisply: “Shall we start the disciplinary action now, Father Günter?”
“Yes.”
The smallest of the Values Youth boys spat at the bound and blindfolded young man. “Monkey!” he said, “Go back home to Chinkland!” Some of the villagers looked at him disapprovingly, while a few others chuckled. They were about to watch yet another whipping of an illegal immigrant.
Günter raised his voice over the rumbling villagers. “So Job said to God, ‘If I sin, what do I do to you, Father in heaven? Why have you made me suffer so much!’”
Günter paused for effect. He said: “‘Job was once a prosperous man,’ God told Satan. And Satan said to God: ‘He may be a poor man now, but he still has his health.’ But God said, ‘No, you are wrong. Job is my faithful servant.’ And to prove Satan wrong, God made Job ill. But Job knew that his wealth—his life—was nothing compared to the glory of heaven and the truth of the eternal life. And so he told God: ‘I give my life to you, Father in heaven, for then I will see you in the afterlife, and I will sing of your grace.’”
While Günter was preaching, the constable took the whip in his hand without hesitation. He rough-handled his captive into a kneeling position in front of the crowd. Günter did not know what the late Archbishop of Dali would say of this scene—but he was quite sure the Most Reverend Tomas Beckett would disapprove of it.
“Job believed in that wisdom which is hidden from human minds: that for us to reach the eternal truth in heaven, we must accept what we feel is wrong; that for us to embrace our Father in heaven, we must be prepared to do what is right. Since our frail reason is easily deceived by worldly appearances and is incapable of seeing the truth as dictated by the Lord in heaven, we must let God’s book guide us.”
His mind was wandering, thinking of the truth behind his words. But he decided to finish his blessings. “‘And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it.’”
“And so today, we say—he that breaketh the law, shall be punished in accordance with the law he hath broken.”
The parish constable forcefully pushed the bound and blindfolded man down. Günter continued, trying as hard as he could to ignore the uncontrollable sobbing of the kneeling alien, now begging for forgiveness in incomprehensible broken Yohannesian: “O Burmecians of the village of Waldhöring!”
The constable raised his whip and gave his captive a lash like one would an ox or a horse.
“For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
He raised his whip once more.
-✨✨✨✨✨✨✨-
At noon on the fourth day of winter, Archbishop Emeritus Thaddäus Neumayer was slowly approaching the Realm Chancellery. His heart was pounding, and his stomach was making unseemly sounds. He had thought of the story to explain how he failed to prevent the flogging scandal in Waldhöring. But the chancellor might not believe him; or, worse still—believing him—she might demand his attendance before Parliament’s select committee hearing. He might be convicted as one of many paleoconservative conspirators who had supported the now disgraced Grand Duke of Donata’s brief lordship in Burmecia last year. It was not unknown for southern clergymen to put their ambitions before those of the apostolic Church.
The chancellor and her parliamentary select committee hearing could force Thaddäus to resign. Of course she had no right to, but then again he had no right to plot against her rainbow movement. The mainstream media don’t call her the “chancellor who had ridden the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender plus wave” for nothing, Thaddäus surmised. He recalled the warnings of his predecessor. As he lay on his deathbed, Tomas had said: “To plot against your emperor, king and chancellor is to plot against the state.” He was afraid, he had said, as to what might befall the apostolic Church in Yohannes; that it would lose the prestige it once enjoyed so strongly. Thaddäus did not feel like being blamed for the church’s death by future historians in the Nineteen Countries.
When he saw a group of politicians in the walkway ahead of him his first instinct was to look the other way and pretend not to see them, for he knew he was the subject of much gossip inside the Beltway lately, and he could not bear losing face to these out-of-touch Beltway insiders. Then he saw that three of them were GOP political hacks, and the one walking in front was none other than Johannes Bonner. Conservative members of the establishment were usually tolerant of their peers’ shortcomings. He smiled and looked ahead.
As he drew nearer he could see the two politicians more clearly. The outgoing young woman who chatted animatedly with the Speaker Emeritus must be his daughter-in-law—she was once arrested for possessing burnt cannabis, Thaddäus thought ruefully. The tall middle-aged man next to her was surprisingly the retiring Speaker Saul Ryan himself. They were visibly shaken: their troublemaker peer Ronald Chump had successfully won the primary vote to succeed Saul Ryan as Speaker of the Parliament. After the very acrimonious and divisive campaign that followed, the GOP was dealt a heavy blow: the latest Ardenfontein-Löfgren poll showed that the Christian Democratic Party and the Greens had overtaken them by five points. As Thaddäus had come to understand, this would be just enough to swing Parliament blue in a general election year. Without legislative majority and the Speaker’s office, Marion Maréchal-Le Men would be isolated in the Parliament House. And that, he knew, would mean unimpeded governance for the chancellor and her Thirty-sixth Christian Democratic Executive Council.
Thaddäus shivered at the thought of seeing the bright rainbow flag flying high above one of the bible belt’s last conservative bastions.
Saul Ryan said: “Why, Father Thaddäus, we don’t ever see you round here this time of day!”
Thaddäus looked sharply at him. He should know by now that he was addressing an Archbishop Emeritus—not lay clergymen. It would have been more respectful for him to say Your Excellency or Your Greatness. Thaddäus felt he was being disrespectful. The Speaker did not show the proper respect for him and his position. He swallowed his pride: I’ll remember that for future reference.
“Good day, Mr Speaker.”
“Your Excellency,” Johannes Bonner interrupted, as if to apologise for his colleague’s discourtesy. “I’m humbled by your presence. What has brought you here?”
“Chancellor Annabelle Thorndon-Stevensonn has summoned me to this meeting in her office—”
“And you don’t know why, Father?” Saul chuckled.
“Well, I’m not the Beltway insider here, so I’d not know, yes.”
“You don’t have to worry, Father. This has got nothing to do with your errant priest’s flogging, or for that matter, your recent newspaper opinion piece supporting the suppression of LGBT protests in some places out there.”
Thaddäus smiled. He would not suffer the consequence of his actions, after all.
“I’d not expected such an immediate backlash on the part of many citizens of the rainbow electorates. As I’m sure you’ll know, I hold no shred of sympathy for the Kingdom of Alexandria, nor do I feel much for the Regency of Lindblum. But an opinion piece is just that—an opinion piece. I stand by my words that the ‘Pride Parade’ is an abomination that must be vanquished in the name of God.”
He hesitated. “The biblical canon prohibits homosexual marriage. Jesus talked about this—he told the Pharisees, ‘Have you not read that He who created us from the beginning made us to be male and female?’”
Saul said: “Where can I sign up to attend your church, Father?”
Johannes laughed merrily, “Now, you live in Weirconsin, Saul, don’t be so eager to move away just because of Chump!” Saul raised his eyebrows and waited for Johannes to say something, but he did not.
“My lord archbishop, congratulations on your appointment to the Nazi Philippine Empire,” the young woman said, joining the conversation. “And I wish you every success in your new duties.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady—I’m afraid I didn’t catch that—”
“The Nazi Phillipine Empire, Father,” Saul said, mockingly, “I’d guess that’d be the ideal place for such a distinguished member of the bible belt clergy as yourself,” and he chuckled. “Better an oriental Nazi nation than an occidental one, no?”
“A diplomatic posting to the Philippines. I like that.”
Thaddäus shook the retiring speaker’s hand. “I’ll be late for my meeting with the chancellor. Mr Speaker, it was a pleasure meeting you.”
They looked at him curiously for a moment, but he ignored their inscrutable gaze and made his way to the Realm Chancellery with a confident stride.
-✨✨✨✨✨✨✨-
In Her Majesty’s Hands
President of the Electoral College
Elected Yohannesian Emperor
Honourable Members of
The Philippine GovernmentFrom the Terra Incognita,
In the Name of Friendship and Love;
Being desirous to create without interruption the representation at Your Excellency’s court of the interests of my people, and the Nineteen Countries of the Yohannesian continent entrusted by electoral right upon me, I have judged it convenient to accredit to Your Excellency my trusted friend and former parliamentary colleague Mr Thaddäus Neumayer in the character of my Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in the Nazi Philippines.
Having already seen with certainty Mr Thaddäus Neumayer’s fervour and talent for My service, I doubt not that he will realise the important duties of his Embassy in such a manner as to merit Your Excellency’s assent and esteem, and to prove himself worthy of this new mark of My confidence.
Please convey my warm thanks to the Heads of Departments of Your Excellency’s court for their message of sovereign greetings, sent on this occasion of joyous moment.
Your Friend beyond The Seas,
MARION M
By the Will of the Nation State,
Yohannesian Emperor and President of the Electoral College; Head of state of the Confederation; of the Beauty and Grace of the Realm; the Kingdom of Alexandria, Regency of Lindblum, and the Kingdom of Burmecia; the Grand Duchy of Dali, Grand Duchy of Donata, and the Grand Duchy of Kradenmark; the Noble Republic of Treno; the Merchant Republic of Alseca-Lorin, Duchy of Blomgren, and the Unitary Republic of Molander; the Merchant Republic of Landburg, Democratic Republic of Cederström, and the Principality of Ahlgren; the Royal Realm of Cleyra, Duchy of Gizamaluke-Grotto, and the Free City of Crescent; the Principality of Mandragora, Duchy of Ice Cavern, and the Free City of Coral. Defender of the Christian Faith in Yohannes the continent.
Office of Hon Margaret Larsson
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Embassy and Consulate Programme
Electorate of Oberluizen
28 June 2019
Dear Secretary of Foreign Affairs,
Thank you for your agreement of 31 January 2019 allowing for a Parliamentary Confirmation into agreement of embassy exchange between the Empire of the Nazi Philippines and the Realm of Yohannes. I am also responding on behalf of The Rt Hon First Lord Hilda von und zu Hartjenstein and The Hon Minister Emily Kirchweger to whom I report on the matter.
The Nazi Philippine Empire and the Nineteen Countries, I believe, share the same values of embassy and consulate partnership, of responsible government, and a history of open diplomacy—three important things to realising a harmonious relationship between two nation-states. I have been impressed also by the good manner of the Filipino people during my visit to the thriving city of Manila. It is for that reason that I would like to acknowledge the strength that you have shown, and are showing, in furthering the economic and social well-being of your people. Your governing principles align well with the eighth introductory principle of Economy and Industry of our nation-state. That is why I am committed to realising this embassy exchange agreement.
Following the discussion held by our respective diplomats behind the scenes over the last few weeks, I would like to clarify that Parliament did finally issue their assent on 17 March 2019, Parliamentary Motions—Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, which confirmed the letter of credence of His Excellency Thaddäus Neumayer in his place as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Realm of Yohannes to the Empire of the Nazi Philippines. A copy of the Executive Council’s response and Parliament’s final assent and report of stipulations in their entirety will be published on the Electoral Debates Hansard website shortly.
I am keen to encourage Yohannesian businesses to participate in the Philippines’ market. As I suggested based on the discussion at our last meeting, I believe that new commerce and trade between companies of our respective citizen sectors may offer new opportunities to maintain our respective nations’ growth target for the fiscal year 2018-2019.
I would like to finish by acknowledging the important contribution the Philippine Government is making to the cause of open diplomacy and the principle of open embassy exchange between members of the international community of nations and regions. I hope that I will be able to attend the Ambassador Introduction event next week, and I look forward to seeing you then.
Yours sincerely,
MARGARET
Hon Margaret Larsson
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Embassy and Consulate ProgrammeTelephone 585 3 714 3419Facsimile 585 3 714 3119Email m.larsson@ministers.govt.yo
Private Bag 15170, Parliament House Buildings, Royal Alexandria 3510, Kingdom of Alexandria, The Yohannesian Realm.
1 • The Archbishop and His Mission
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