The Beaver King, Cautionary Tales of Medieval Dysfunction

The Beaver King did not cook often. This was widely regarded as a mercy.

He maintained, however, that this rarity was not due to lack of skill, but rather to the simple fact that lesser cooks had already occupied the kitchen. In his own estimation, he was not merely competent — he was superior to the Queen Consort, superior to common recipes, and certainly superior to the concept of restraint.

To the King, cooking was not a domestic task. It was an experiment. Seasonings were not meant to complement one another. They were meant to collide. Spices were added not with intention, but with curiosity, as though the pot were a laboratory vessel and the family unwilling test subjects. Combinations that had no known alliance in culinary history were introduced with confidence and stirred with theatrical conviction.

What emerged was rarely edible. But the King loved it.

And when he ate these creations, Frankenstein assemblages of clashing flavors and aggressive ambition, he did so with great ceremony, narrating his own brilliance between bites, praising the complexity, the boldness, the innovation, while those around him contemplated whether politeness required swallowing or whether survival required endurance.

The Vegetable Soup Incident occurred in the height of summer.

Not a gentle summer evening. Not a cool reprieve. It was the kind of oppressive heat that drained strength from the body before the day was even done. The older boys had spent hours in the sun performing labor that would have exhausted grown men, their energy spent and their patience thin from heat and hunger.

What they needed was water. Rest. Something cold. What they were given was soup.

The pot itself was massive, suggesting not nourishment but obligation. The contents did not improve matters, a thin yet heavy tomato base, barely softened vegetables, aggressive seasoning that announced itself before the spoon even reached the mouth. Wet, yet pasty. Filling, yet unsatisfying. There was no meat, no substance to justify the effort required to consume it.

Only expectation.

They sat around the table, bowls in front of them, the air thick with heat and reluctance. No one reached for a spoon at first. Each glanced at the others in silence, a quiet standoff of willpower and dread, as though the first person to begin would be surrendering to something none of them wanted to acknowledge.

The Beaver King did not notice. He was already eating with enthusiasm, smacking, slurping, and savoring his creation with theatrical approval, lost in his own performance. To him, the meal was a triumph.

To everyone else, it was a test.

Baylor the Brave, by some unspoken misfortune, moved first. Two bites were enough. The soup did not settle so much as announce its refusal to cooperate with the human body. His stomach turned immediately, the warning unmistakable. This was not discomfort that could be ignored or powered through. It was the kind that promised consequences.

He asked, carefully, if he might be finished. The answer came without hesitation. He would eat the entire bowl. No exceptions. No negotiation. The matter, in the King’s mind, was settled.

He tried to comply. Fear made compliance feel safer than refusal. He forced himself to continue, swallowing against instinct, determined to finish so the ordeal would end.

It did not. Everything he had eaten that day came back into the bowl in front of him.

The anger was immediate.

“You’re being ridiculous. It’s just vegetable soup. You’re going to eat it.”

The bowl remained in front of him, the contents now beyond any reasonable expectation of consumption. Baylor was crying. He pleaded to be excused, to be allowed to stop.

Instead, he was seized by the front of his shirt and dragged from the chair onto the floor. The impact drove the air from his lungs. Before he could recover, he was pinned down, held in place with the full weight of the King’s determination.

The bowl was retrieved.

The intent was clear. The soup — altered, spilled, and now everywhere — was going to be forced into his mouth.

It had spread across the table, the floor, the boy himself. The smell was overwhelming in the heat-heavy room. Baylor struggled beneath the grip, turning his face away, gasping for air through sobs and panic.

In the chaos, a piece of vegetable lodged in his throat. His movements changed instantly, no longer resistance, but desperation for air. He was flipped over abruptly and struck hard between the shoulders until the obstruction dislodged and breath returned in ragged gulps.

Once the choking stopped, he was turned back again. The command had not changed. He was forced to swallow several more bites. During the struggle on the floor, attention shifted entirely to the confrontation between the King and Baylor.

In that brief window, the other boys acted. Bowls were quietly tipped. Soup disappeared over the edges of the table, into napkins, onto the floor, into whatever space could conceal it. It was not rebellion so much as survival. By the time the King’s attention returned, the evidence had already been obscured.

Except for one.

Little Lord Bucker, the King’s favorite, was not required to participate at all. No bowl was placed before him with expectation attached. While the others endured, he remained untouched by the ordeal entirely.

At last, the Queen Consort spoke. For a moment, Baylor believed she might stop it.

She did not. She said only, “Can’t you just get him a new bowl?”

A new bowl was placed in front of him. Only half full this time.

It took nearly half an hour for him to finish it. When it was done, he left the table quietly and sat on his small bed for the rest of the night.

Later, the physical evidence revealed itself. The collar of his favorite shirt had been stretched and torn. A long cut ran from his collarbone down across his chest. No one came to clean it. No one came to check on him. No one came to ask if he was all right.

The house returned to quiet.

The Minstrelle’s Reflection

A king is measured by how he treats those smaller than himself.

On that night, there was no greatness in Beaverton. No strength. No discipline. Only a grown man proving that power without restraint is nothing more than cruelty with a title.

The boy survived him.

That is the only victory worth recording. 📜