“When people heard tales about kingdoms, they often imagined grand palaces built in the center of sprawling cities. The reality tend to be harsher, as more often than not smaller kingdoms out there had ‘palaces’ that were often smaller and humbler than the mansion of a baron in a larger, better-off country. All they really had going for them was their lofty titles and status within their lands, really.” - Ignacius Blomvqist, Archivist and cartographer based off the Clangeddin Empire

After Aideen left the Holy Kingdom behind, with some notes in her book, she entered the territory of Ezram, a small, poor kingdom further north. The moniker of Ezram being a poor kingdom was not undeserved, as their people did indeed live in rather poor conditions, not as bad as some of the worst villages she had seen in Posuin, but not far from many others there.

Even the cities she visited were more a small collection of wooden or mud houses built within the confines of a palisade to keep the beasts out, with no better city wall in sight. After she saw how even the capital city was little better, just more of the same at a larger scale, she understood why the land managed to remain independent despite its proximity to a superpower like the Clangeddin Empire.

The small Kingdom was simply too poor to bother conquering.

While the soil was fertile enough to grow enough food for the kingdom and even create a small surplus for trade, it was just that. Mediocre soil that the far larger Empire next door would not have blinked an eye on, as any single one of their breadbasket regions would have produced many times more crops than the entirety of the small kingdom put together.

Similarly, the iron mined from the hills near their capital city provided the locals with their tools and weapons, but iron was far from valuable enough to attract greedy eyes from their neighbors. It was just a common metal that everyone else had in abundance anyway, most definitely not worth going to war for.

All together, that self-sufficiency and their soldiers actually having decent armament meant that the small kingdom was a rather tough nugget for a country their size, which when combined with the lack of desirable features made it a very poor target for conquest. In that manner they stayed stable and independent even as wars broke out between their neighbors, even when most of them eventually became part of the Clangeddin Empire.

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To be fair, it was not like the commoners were poor while the nobles gorged themselves fat on their suffering, as the nobles of the Ezram Kingdom were pretty much just as impoverished as their people overall. Their slightly fancier “mansions” were worse than normal dwellings Aideen had seen in Ptolodecca, and by that she meant the commoner’s dwellings there, not the sort of houses like the one she lived in.

For what it was worth, most of the populace seemed to share a willingness to advance or retreat together with their rulers, whose similarly humble lives helped garner the sympathy of their subjects. They were perhaps poor, but the populace was far more united than many nations Aideen had been to, and their rulers held in high regard overall.

During her stay in their royal capital Aideen even ran into their king by complete accident. She was having lunch at the time in one of the city’s larger food halls, when a small commotion happened as many of the guests stood up and bowed to someone who just entered the place, and the unmistakable cries of “Your Majesty” made it clear just who elicited such a reaction.

The King turned out to be a mellow-mannered middle-aged man who was polite even to his subjects, who sat down just like any other customer and ate the same rough bread and mostly-vegetable stew the others dined on with relish. If Aideen saw any special treatment, it was at most how the proprietor himself brought out the old man’s food with haste, and how the cook made sure to scoop up some extra chunks of meat for his stew.

He even paid for the meal and thanked the cook when he left, acting just like another old man, which was something that honestly impressed Aideen. The vast majority of nobles, much less the actual rulers, she knew of would probably rather die than act like the King did just then, their pride preventing them from humbling themselves so.

While she was at the capital, Aideen also noticed how the guards on patrol wore proper chain mail with coifs that covered them from the head all the way to their mid-thighs. The small kingdom’s rich iron mine gave them enough surplus that they could afford to properly armor their soldiers, which were better equipped than many regions in the much larger Kingdom of Posuin to their west.

Similarly, their weapons and shields were properly made, with shields entirely made from metal and well-forged swords and maces hanging from their waists. It was definitely far better equipment than such a small nation would usually gear their soldiers with, which helped discourage their neighbors further.

Granted, they practically only bordered the Holy Kingdom - which had mostly isolated themselves as they focused on rebuilding - and the Clangeddin Empire - which was already massive and found them not worth the trouble to conquer - as their neighbors. Their western side bordered both the Forest of Despair and the swamplands Aideen had been to, and from the forts set up on that side of their border, they were clearly accustomed to the occasional beast attack from those places as well.

When Aideen traveled further north and left the small Kingdom behind her, she honestly wished them the best of luck from her heart. A hope that the kind, persevering people managed to keep to their spirit even into the future and not fall into the pits that many other nations had fallen into despite being far more prosperous.

It was an unlikely hope, but she held the sentiment nonetheless.