The Beaver King, Cautionary Tales of Medieval Dysfunction

This record concerns the years before the name “Brave” could be spoken, and the conditions under which it was delayed.

Before he was ever called Brave, Baylor was called Bound. Not as a title. Not formally…But bound all the same.

He entered the record of Solipsia not as a hero, nor even as a cautionary tale, but as useful. Strong hands. Quiet endurance. A boy shaped early into labor and expectation, placed inside systems he did not design and loyalties he did not choose.

Baylor the Bound did not learn exhaustion in Beaverton. He learned it at home. Their father believed strength was not inherited—it was forced into the body. Baylor and Brentin were driven past fatigue as routine. Rest was indulgence. Injury was weakness. Pain was proof the lesson was working. They hauled, lifted, pushed, and strained until joints failed and growth was interrupted. What did not break outright was simply worked again the next day.

All the while, their father did nothing. He sat. Well-fed. Unmoving. Watching. He did not demonstrate the work or share the load. He surveilled it. Orders cost him nothing. Exhaustion was something he observed. Pain was something he assigned. He grew soft as the boys grew wrecked, idleness reframed as command.

He beat the Little Lords as well. With fists when they were close. With whatever lay within reach when they were not—wood, iron, leather, tools meant for work turned into instruments of correction. There was no warning. Violence arrived as punctuation, not instruction.

It did not go unseen. More than once, the condition of the boys was reported to Vireholt. Bruises were noted. Swelling observed. Limping recorded and poorly explained. The reports were filed because procedure required filing, not because intervention was expected.

When questioned by the Magistrate of Domestic Order, the boys lied. They were taught to lie. Their father instructed them calmly and in advance. He told them they would be taken. Separated. Scattered into unfamiliar households. That they would never see each other again. Fear completed the lesson.

They said they had fallen. They said they had misstepped. They said it was nothing. The answers were accepted because they were convenient. Each inquiry ended the same way. The boys were returned. Each time, the punishment for being questioned was worse than the beating that prompted the report.

The older boys were not raised. They were conditioned. Little Lords Baylor and Brentin were shaped under a doctrine never applied to the younger two. Where the younger boys were permitted softness, delay, and partial protection, the elders were subjected to instruction. Obedience was safety. Questioning was betrayal. Endurance proved worth. Pain proved loyalty.

The beatings became reinforcement. The words became doctrine.

Their father despised the Handbound Stewardship practices of Solipsia—not out of principle, but because they demanded consistency and effort. He job-hopped, bristled at obligation, and taught the boys that institutions were enemies. When reports failed to remove them, he used the outcome as proof: See? They do nothing. Only I keep you together. Fear was the lever. Repetition was the method.

Emotion was forbidden. Fear was weakness. Grief was indulgence. Crying was mocked. Anger was permitted only if it pointed downward.

Men don’t do that.

They were also denied independence. They were never taught domestic tasks—how to clean, cook, tend a space, or care for themselves. Not oversight. Design.

Men don’t do that.

They could labor endlessly, but they could not tend their own lives. Their usefulness was maximized. Their autonomy was not.

Brentin the Beneficiary absorbed the lesson as promise.

Baylor the Bound absorbed it as warning.

And through all of it, their mother went along with it.

Four unruly boys with no manners. A volatile husband. A household in constant disrepair. She was disheveled, exhausted, and simply going through the motions. Nothing was planned. Things happened when they happened. Corrections came late or not at all. She did not intervene—not out of cruelty, but depletion. Stopping it would have required energy and confrontation she no longer possessed.

Above her sat the Dowager.

Dowager Queen Brynda enabled her precious Beaver Crowned Lord without hesitation. His volatility was reframed as temperament. His failures excused. His contempt for stewardship treated as independence of spirit. Resources flowed downward. Consequences did not.

The father raged. The mother drifted. The Dowager smoothed everything over using her 3 Shield Strategy straight from the Beaverton Rule Book (The One Good Tooth, Selective Hearing Loss, and False Religion.)

What resulted was not discipline or tradition. It was chaos—sanctioned from above and absorbed below.

Baylor would not understand the full shape of this loss until much later, when he took up with This Minstrelle and discovered—quietly, painfully—how much he did not know. How to wash dishes properly. How to tend a privy so sickness does not linger. How to exist among others. How large the world was beyond his father’s narrow contempt for joy, culture, and connection.

By then, he knew he would never return to ignorance. Because once a man learns that the world is wider than the one that was enforced upon him, the smallness of that enforced world becomes unbearable.

Baylor the Bound was not weak. He was contained. And containment, in Solipsia, is the most dangerous thing a kingdom can attempt.