Chapter 605: Royal Compromise
By the ti that they returned to the Manor, the issues between the Kings were starting to take a productive turn.
"Dominic, just in ti. Co this way. The Royals are gathering for dinner early. There have been so decisions made, and they directly affect the Duchy."
Dominic sighed. "So, escaping to show the advisors the city didn’t slow anything down, did it? Alright, I’m ready for whatever they’ve co up with."
Alexis laughed. "It’s not all that bad. You already got the brunt of the big news with the Governorship announcent. Compared to that, this is a much smaller announcent."
Dominic followed her to the dining room, which was rapidly filling with guests from the Emissary teams and a number of other Royals that Dominic didn’t rember being here when he left the house.
He took his place at the side of the Cygnian main table, and waited patiently for the announcents to start, while the staff hurried to get everything set up for a larger than usual formal dinner.
Claudius ca over to greet them, stopping to shake Dominic’s hand before hugging his sister.
"I do wish that they would have called
earlier. And now look, I get one day to visit you, but Alex has been here for weeks." He complained.
"We were being kind. There were a lot of books involved." Alexis joked.
"Though I suspect that there would have been far fewer tos involved if it were not the two of you doing the work, I do respect your consideration for my more practical and less theoretical approach to problem-solving."
Dominic knew that the number of books involved wouldn’t have dropped by too much. Most of what the Second Prince had been involved in was international laws and treaties, with a side of trade balance calculations, and tax impact assessnts.
All of that was numbers and data based, with a lot of legal jargon.
The Crown Prince got enough of that already, with his duties to the Kingdom, and the workload that he was picking up for his father.
Especially when the King was here.
But Dominic could see that Claudius was a bit hurt that his sister hadn’t called him here anyhow. His fondness for his sisters was well known all through the capital, and he was entirely unwilling to accept that they were growing up now, and no longer needed his protection.
While Alexis was a Royal Paladin, and an accomplished war hero of the nation, in the eyes of her big brother, she was still that sa little girl swinging a sword in the back garden, and entirely too young to be out of his sight for more than a few hours.
Fortunately, he did still have one more little sister left to pamper at ho.
But when that was over, he was in for a rough ti.
Slowly, everyone took their seats, and the first course was brought out, along with wine that Dominic could tell was not their local vintage, but sothing brought from the Royal Cellar.
It had that unique flavour of "Well aged and expensive" to it that the local wines did not.
Dominic smiled to himself as the soup was brought out, and the sound of the guards in the kitchen went silent.
Dave must be too busy eating to patrol, but with him sitting on the other side of the door, nothing was going to sneak into the room anyhow.
Only when they were nearly finished the main course did the King finally decide to address the room.
"Thank you all for coming here today, as we announce the most monuntal act of international cooperation in many generations.
Today we have signed, along with our peers from Mitfield, Axbridge, Dagos, Chip and Keria, what should go down in history as the turning point of continental relations.
The treaty of Wistover is more than simply a trade alliance.
Within its pages, we have an entirely reworked import tariff agreent, where every nation has agreed to forgo self-interest and match tariffs with the nations they are trading with.
But that is not all.
The Treaty of Wistover includes a strategy for the future, where international trade will no longer be a restriction on national prosperity, but a thod of rebuilding all that has been lost in the past few decades.
Toward that purpose, we have agreed to form the six nations banking alliance, to be headquartered here in Wistover, to provide funding at a national level to help mbers overco tis of drought and disaster.
These loans will guarantee that the region will no longer lack the ability to handle the refugee crisis.
Each of the mber nations has agreed to provide the funding as needed to help nations in need, with agreed terms for long-term repaynt. The first transfer will be made to the Kingdom of Dagos within the week, to assist with the rebuilding of their capital.
Military forces have been dispatched from the six nations alliance, along with Shersdonia and Ar, to rid the capital region of the undead horde. Once that is finished, rebuilding will comnce.
The first city on the schedule is Albroles, with Kinewen to be rebuilt soon after.
However, there is an additional condition related to the city of Kinewen, due to the ongoing curse on the region. Once the floods have receded, Kinewen will be rebuilt as a Special Administrative Region, self governed by locally born and raised delegates approved by the alliance.
Our hope is that this will allow the residents to move ho as quickly as possible, and prevent any future disasters on the scale of the curse triggered storms that have ravaged the northeast this season."
The King paused, letting the scribes catch up.
This was mostly for them, as most of the politicians and senior Nobles had been present for the negotiations. But once it was transcribed, copies of the declaration would be posted all over the region, so none could claim that the new rules were unknown to them.
But Dominic wasn’t certain that a trade agreent and special status for the Capital was going to be enough to save Dagos.
What they were going to need was a miracle to get refugees to actually go back and repopulate the nation. Fully half of their people were dead, and many more had fled.
If they couldn’t manage that, what was the point of rebuilding an empty city?
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