The Beaver King, Cautionary Tales of Medieval Dysfunction

What Beaverton does to memory was not discovered by chance, nor inherited through ignorance, nor misunderstood over time. It was created deliberately, with care and forethought, as a solution to a problem Dowager Queen Brynda understood better than most.

She understood that intact memory carries weight, and that weight produces consequence. Consequence invites resistance. Resistance destabilizes control. Rather than erase the past outright, she altered the conditions under which it could safely exist. Memory would remain present, but stripped of its force. Events would be acknowledged without obligation. Harm would be named without requiring repair. In this way, nothing had to be denied, and nothing ever truly had to be answered for.

This was not accidental cruelty. It was governance refined into policy.

What Brynda conceived, the Beaver King expanded and normalized. Under his rule, memory correction ceased to be subtle and became expected. Discomfort was reframed as exaggeration. Precision was treated as aggression. Those who remembered clearly were not argued with so much as recharacterized, until their accuracy itself appeared suspect. Over time, repetition replaced truth, agreement replaced integrity, and silence became the preferred substitute for repair.

Beaverton adapted as all systems do when survival depends on compliance.

In such a place, accurate memory became dangerous. To remember clearly was to refuse absolution. To retain detail was to imply responsibility. Responsibility, in turn, was interpreted as an attack on harmony. Those who would not soften their recollections found themselves isolated, dismissed, or slowly rewritten by the community around them, until their testimony lost credibility through exhaustion rather than contradiction.

The town learned the lesson efficiently. Forgetting was safer than telling the truth.

Baylor the Brave did not set out to dismantle this system. He did not confront it directly or attempt to expose it. He simply refused to participate. He carried his memory forward intact, declined reconciliation that required erasure, and would not edit himself into something easier for others to live with. In doing so, he stalled the mechanism, if only briefly, because it depends entirely on cooperation to function.

That interruption came at a cost. It was tolerated only temporarily. It was not forgiven.

With his removal from the pattern, the inheritance resumed its course. The heir apparent, Little Lord Brentin, has shown an early and intuitive understanding of the design. He has learned that memory corrected early prevents future inconvenience, that denial is more efficient than repair, and that control depends not on truth but on narrative consistency. These lessons were not taught harshly. They did not need to be. They were modeled.

And so the system continues, intact and unchallenged, not because it is questioned, but because it is familiar.

The record therefore states this plainly. Dowager Queen Brynda created the mechanism.

The Beaver King enforced it.

Baylor the Brave broke it once.

Beaverton will not allow a second fracture. In Beaverton, memory is not lost. It is engineered. And what is engineered can be inherited without ever being examined.

Marginal Note

Entered by Order of the Crown

Baylor the Brave is recorded as having refused correction.This refusal is to be understood not as principle, but as betrayal.

He is wrong. He was wrong in the moment of refusal, and he remains wrong for having wronged his family by choosing memory over harmony. His insistence on accuracy constituted a rejection of unity. His unwillingness to revise himself caused unnecessary strain. The injury, therefore, is attributed to him.

It is further noted that this wrongness is considered permanent.

And yet, reconciliation remains available.

The family would accept his return immediately, without hesitation or condition, provided compliance is complete. All ties to Masondonia would be relinquished in full. Name, loyalty, title, and narrative affiliation would be dissolved prior to reentry.

Upon return, Baylor would resume his former designation as Baylor the Bound, Heir of Beaverton. His previous abdication would be ignored entirely. It would not be recognized as an act of will or separation, but recorded as confusion later corrected. The record would reflect continuity uninterrupted.

This reclassification is considered merciful.

Acceptance of these terms would resolve the matter entirely. Memory would be softened. Conflict would be retired. Harmony would be restored through proper placement.

That Baylor might object to this arrangement is already accounted for.

Resistance, once corrected, is no longer resistance.

He was always happiest when he belonged to us.