The Beaver King, A Cautionary Tale of Medieval Dysfunction

Drucelia enters the record quietly, as many women do in Beaverton.

By the time Little Lord Brentin settled more permanently into the Log Cabin Castle, the coming and going of tavern wenches and whores had ceased to be remarked upon. Faces changed. Names did not linger. It was understood that youth, status, and boredom made their own arrangements, and the household learned not to ask questions it did not wish answered.

No one can say with certainty where or how Drucelia first met him.

Some claim she was already known to the outer keep. Others insist she arrived later, folded into the castle’s rhythms without announcement. What is known is that she was suddenly there—present at meals, lingering near corridors she had no business lingering in, learning quickly when to speak and when to keep her eyes lowered.

She was young, eager, and painfully aware of the distance between herself and the world she had entered.

Brentin, for his part, appeared untroubled by the transition. His attentions had always wandered. That they eventually settled—if only temporarily—was taken as evidence of nothing more than convenience.

Drucelia is believed to be in her very early 20’s. She keeps unnaturally orange hair, but poorly maintains it, causing her mousy brown hair to be exposed at the roots. It is generally worn in a ponytail of loose poorly secured sections. She is mostly seen with flyaway strands with uneven tension. There is rarely evidence of deliberate styling. She wears large round glasses that dominate her face, a wide smile that makes your gaze instantly focus on her pronounced, uneven, and uncared for teeth. A smile of which is frequently displayed and feels moderately uncomfortable. Her facial expressions tend to linger longer than one would expect. Her nails are typically overgrown, long and pointed rather than neatly shaped.

She is slight of frame, but well fed. Her movements appear forward or eager, rather than grounded. She does not carry herself with ceremonial awareness. You can most always see her in ill fitting worn garments with fabric that appears stained, frayed, or roughly repaired. As a general rule, her clothes run on the tighter side, due to her recent indulgences with the young Prince.

When seen as a whole, Drucelia (Drucy) appears visually discordant with her environment and feels unpolished beside the Nuevo Riche wealth and structure of The Log Cabin Castle. Observers notice her, but never know what to do with her.

It is said that Drucelia is still actively trying to impress the Beaver King, her soon-to-be father in law. She laughs louder when he speaks, she performs eagerness in his presence, and she mirrors his moods more than Little Lord Brentins. She seeks approval thu attention, novelty, and availability. The Court has observed that she appears to believe that King Robert’s favor equals safety. No one has told her otherwise. What young Drucy is not assumed to know, though it is widely understood but never spoken aloud is that His Grace’s interest in people follows a very specific pattern.

When someone amuses him, reacts openly, provides novelty, or supplies emotional stimulation they are kept close. They are not protected or valued, just simply kept close. Those familiar with the King, including this Minstrelle, assume that the next phase will follow naturally. When our young Drucy becomes familiar, stops surprising him, hesitates instead of reacting, or no longer entertains him effortlessly, he will grow bored, start provoking conflict, will introduce doubt subtly and encourage resentment quietly. As we have already witnessed with Faylee.

Unlike his sabotage with Brentin and Faylee that had a motive to isolate his Little Lord back to the nest, this will be for the Beaver Kings pure amusement. It is not to separate them, but watch them fracture. He simply cannot help himself.

Drucelia unfortunely had an early taste of the “Beaverton Betrayl” at the hands of the Dowager Queen Brynda. It was the Kings own Mother who gave the matter its name aloud.

When she introduced the gossip to the Court it was not with accusation—never that—but with concern. The kind that carried weight simply by being spoken first.

By the time Drucelia had been properly introduced to the household, the town had already begun its quiet accounting. Tavern talk had reached the market. The market had reached the wash basins. And the wash basins, inevitably, reached the ears of the Parish Physicker, who confirmed what many already knew and none wished to record plainly.

The Quiet Punishment had passed through the castle before. It had passed through Brentin. But this was never how the story would be told.

Brynda spoke gently, publicly, as though offering protection rather than judgment. She mentioned cleanliness. She mentioned propriety. She mentioned the importance of addressing matters before they became distractions. She did not mention timing. She did not mention origin. She did not mention her grandson. Instead, she spoke of Drucelia. That the girl must have arrived already burdened. That such things did not appear uninvited. That it was unfortunate, but revealing. That Beaverton was a place of standards, and standards required clarity.

The Physicker’s confirmation—quiet, reluctant, long known—was repurposed into proof of character rather than cause.And so it was decided, almost instantly, that Drucelia would bear the full weight of it. Her treatment was discussed openly. Her virtue was discussed freely. Her body became a cautionary tale before it had ever been allowed to be a person. Brentin remained untouched by the conversation and silently took his daily treatment of scalding herbal soaks and bitter tonics.

At the time, Drucelia did not recognize the shape of what was happening to her. She was too eager. Too relieved to be chosen. Too in love with the idea of belonging to question the cost of arrival. When the Quiet Punishment was first spoken of, she believed—truly believed—that it was an accident. An unfortunate crossing of paths. The sort of thing that happened when lives brushed too closely together and no one meant harm.

She assumed everyone involved wished her well. She accepted the explanation offered to her because it was delivered gently, wrapped in concern, and framed as something that simply occurred. No one spoke of patterns. No one spoke of precedent. And Drucelia, unaccustomed to being protected by power, did not yet understand how easily power protects itself. She bore the treatment with compliance and gratitude. She apologized where no apology was owed. She took the humiliation as proof that she must try harder, be cleaner, be quieter, be more deserving of the place she had been allowed to stand.

What she could not yet see—what no one warned her of—was that this was not misfortune. It was rehearsal. The first Beaverton Betrayal is rarely recognized as such by the one enduring it. It arrives disguised as misunderstanding, as love tested by circumstance, as a mistake everyone promises will not happen again. Drucelia believed them.

It would be some time before she learned that accidents do not repeat themselves so precisely—and that in Beaverton, what begins as silence almost always ends as strategy.

For our young Drucy, her fate was sealed the moment she met Lord Brentin. In the Log Cabin Castle favor expires and conflicts are cultivated deliberately. This will keep Drucelia unknown but not stupid, King Robert fully predatory without exaggeration, and LLB positioned as the eventual weapon, and most importantly the system intact and inevitable.