The Beaver King, Cautionary Tales of Medieval Dysfunction

This particular song steers us back to the Beaver King—back to his fixation, his grievance, and his long misuse of the Concordant Standard. Those who have followed the songs already know this part.

It has been circled before, never shouted, allowed to surface only where melody could carry what open accusation could not. In earlier verses, it was made clear that King Robert had once been answered by the Standard itself. Not crowned. Not affirmed. Corrected.

In Solipsian record, this failing is not named stolen valor in the common tongue. It is called Assumed Bearing: the act of claiming harmony without consent, of standing beneath a sacred measure that did not rise for you. It is not theft by force, but by presumption. And presumption, in Solipsia, is among the most unforgivable of errors.

The Concordant Standard corrected him. Not with spectacle. Not with humiliation. The Standard does not rage, it withdraws. It falls silent. It grows heavy. It refuses to answer false hands. That refusal, hinted at in earlier songs, wounded a man whose sense of worth relied entirely on reflected authority.

That wound never healed.

Unable to reclaim favor directly, unable to compel the Standard to return its regard—King Robert redirected his fixation. The obsession did not fade; it curdled. It descended. From the Three, to the Standard, to the Forge, and finally, to his sons.

What emerged was something Solipsian doctrine quietly recognizes as profane.

It is known as Profane Bearing: a moral disorder in which symbols of service are fetishized, suffering is mistaken for virtue, and authority is desired for its appearance rather than its obligation. Service becomes proof. Endurance becomes righteousness. Bodies, especially young ones, are pressed early, bent deliberately, as though strain itself might sanctify what consent would not grant.

King Robert did not merely want his sons to serve. He needed them to bear, as though proximity might retroactively cleanse his own correction. This fixation did not originate in a vacuum.

It was originated by an uncle that still lives. He remains near King Robert even now, close enough to be consulted, deferred to, and quietly admired. By all surviving accounts, he is a hard man, skilled, efficient, and deeply unpleasant to know. His name is Montrec TaylorBlack, Trapper and Lord of the Stillwood.

The Stillwood lies beyond Beaverton’s cleaner borders, a dense forest where traps outnumber paths and silence is considered proof of order. The land itself is said to be haunted—not in the theatrical sense, but in the way places go wrong when something old is allowed to linger. Animals behave strangely there. Fires die without wind. Men who stay too long return sharper, colder, or not at all. Montrec thrives in it.

He is widely credited as an exceptional trapper and survivalist, and just as widely known to be an absolute bastard. Cruelty is excused as practicality. Isolation mistaken for wisdom. His continued survival is taken as evidence of virtue, rather than what it truly is: compatibility with a land already bent toward harm.

King Robert still looks up to him. Whether out of loyalty, fear, or unfinished hunger for approval, no one can say. But it is from men like Montrec TaylorBlack that Robert learned to confuse endurance with righteousness and silence with strength.

Naturally, Baylor the Bound was first. He was the eldest. The proving child. The body upon which expectation could be tested without precedent or mercy. Old enough to labor, young enough not to question. The Forge was introduced to him not as consequence, but as purpose, an honor. Service framed as destiny. Completion framed as love.

Baylor accepted this willingly.

He had not yet been shown that a life could exist outside His Grace’s wants and needs. Obedience felt indistinguishable from virtue. To serve was simply to be useful, and to be useful was to belong.

What he discovered…slowly, and without language for alarm, was that his body was failing him far too early.

During the pre-training for the Forge, Baylor’s joints began to weaken under weight never meant for a still-forming frame. The labor was relentless. The hours were wrong. Knees swelled. Wrists burned. One shoulder, overused, over-laden, and never allowed rest, began to slip and grind in ways no growing boy should know.

His strength did not grow cleanly.

It bent around injury.

Before the Forge was ever permitted to begin, King Robert escalated his efforts. What he called preparation was, in truth, a series of hellish workouts punitive in nature, designed to test submission rather than build capacity. Baylor’s body could not keep pace with demands layered atop old damage. The strain only confirmed what the Standard could no longer ignore.

He was deemed ineligible to serve.

This should have ended the matter.

It did not.

Because in truth, brutal truth, Baylor had never wanted the Concordant Standard at all. He did not want banners, or bearing, or inherited absolution. What he wanted was out. Out of the Log Cabin Castle. Out from beneath the constant pressure of his father’s control.

He did not enlist.

Instead, a quieter arrangement was made.

Baylor was permitted to leave the castle under the authority of the Dowager Queen, taking up residence within her Holding. It remained, technically, land of the Beaver King, but distance matters. Walls matter. And for the first time in his life, Baylor slept beneath a roof where his presence was not a test.

It was not freedom. But it was removal.

It was during this interval, this narrow window between departure and truth—that King Robert committed the act that cannot be softened by doctrine or custom. He summoned a Royal Portrait Artist in secret. The meeting took place within the castle grounds, away from court record and outside the knowledge of the subject himself. The artist was provided no sitting. Instead, King Robert supplied existing portraits of Baylor the Bound as reference: earlier likenesses, cleaner faces, an imagined strength, and issued precise instruction.

The portrait was to depict Baylor the Bound in full Forge uniform, the ceremonial dress worn by boys when they depart for the Forge journey. The posture was formal. The bearing confident. The future implied, not earned.

A plaque was engraved to accompany it. It declared that Little Lord Baylor the Bound, son of King Robert, First of His Name, Lord of the Beavers, was leaving to complete the Forge and enter service beneath the Concordant Standard.

Neither the portrait nor the plaque was commissioned with Baylor’s knowledge. What the Queen knew—if anything—remains unclear. And those who knew her then have never suggested she would have intervened.

When the work was complete, King Robert did not keep it hidden. He had both portrait and plaque transported to the town center gallery—a public commons where announcements are displayed, births recorded, departures honored. A place meant for shared truth. A refined bulletin board for the life of Beaverton.

There, the lie was mounted carefully. Framed. Polished. Presented as fact.

Word spread through Beaverton like wildfire. When word reached him, Baylor was working heavy equipment for a local builder, guiding a stone-hauler rig into place with careful hands and a damaged shoulder he no longer ignored. At least ten of his close friends rode out to find him.

“Congratulations,” one said, uncertain.

“I’ll miss you, buddy,” said another.

A third frowned. “I thought you couldn’t go. Didn’t they say you were injured?”

You can imagine what went through his head.

“What the actual fuck is my father lying about now? And why am I being dragged into it again?”

Baylor returned to the town center alone. He wrote a statement by hand—large enough for any passerby to read—and affixed it directly over the portrait’s center. He was angry. Clear. Done.

He would not allow his name to become a lie.

Baylor the Bound emerged intact. Strengthened, even. King Robert’s reputation, by contrast, had nowhere left to fall. There was little left of it to damage. The town had long since learned how to read him.

Only one person refused to see it.

The Dowager Queen, ever loyal to her son, dismissed the entire affair as misunderstanding. Queen Brystal, as usual, chose avoidance over action. Brentin saw no advantage in involvement and withheld himself accordingly. Little Lord Bucker and tiny Lad Brystin the I were far too young to grasp the shape of the moment.

But Baylor knew. And he would not forget.

King Robert found him soon after. There was screaming. There was rage that echoed off stone. Accusations of betrayal and humiliation. He tried to corner Baylor as he always had—to loom, to threaten, to make the body submit where the mind would not. Hands were raised. Voices broke.

Once, this would have shattered him. But time away from the Log Cabin Castle had changed Baylor. The yelling no longer sounded like truth—it sounded like panic. The fury rolled off him now, landing nowhere.

And in that moment, Baylor understood something colder than fear. He was learning to hate his father. Not loudly. Not blindly. But clearly. He saw what King Robert was. What he valued. What he destroyed to protect himself. And he knew—deep where loyalty once lived—that he would never again lie to preserve that man.

The Concordant Standard heard of it.

King Robert was terrified—not of the town, but of correction. It is believed Montrec TaylorBlack’s connections were used quietly. That favors were called in. That Virecrowns changed hands. No records survive.

As usual, King Robert escaped consequence. But something irreversible had happened. For the first time, a lie bearing Baylor’s name had been publicly refused. For the first time, the Beaver King’s authority was denied not by crown, nor court, nor Standard—

—but by a son who no longer feared him.

And that is where Baylor the Bound ended, and the path to Baylor the Brave had begun.