Twin Kings

Two kings.

The mere thought was enough to drive the most rational man to a fit of apoplexy.

Two kings. Preposterous.

Twin brothers. The elder, whose claim to inheritance was the legally sanctified one, was an unpopular Revolutionist, who held ideals that appealed to the intelligent, educated elite. The younger, a Traditionalist, popular and charming, who held firmly to ideals that pleased the wealthy.

Historians would one day call it inevitable. At the time, though, it seemed unthinkable.

Surely, surely, calmer minds would prevail. Surely reason would win through and the true heir would rightfully claim the crown and the throne. Surely it would never, not in a thousand years, come to open revolt.

Of course, the kingdom as a whole had only been so for less than a hundred years, when the Twin Kings' great-grandfather and his armies had hewed their kingdom with axe and fire from the Great Empire, seizing a land to call their own where they would be free from religious zealotry and crippling taxation to fund wars of mindless pride and ancient rivalry.

And now it seemed as though the kingdom were about to crumble, split by forces of history, as the world changed around them and the elder twin sought to bring the kingdom into the forefront of the new century, and the younger twin sought to placate the wealthy, who feared change more than any force, for change meant they may lose some of their riches.

When their father grew sick with the wasting disease and it came time to consider the crowning of the elder twin, the wealthy, whose holdings were centralized mainly in the western portion of the kingdom, began rumbling ominously about the possibility of finding a king more to their liking. A king that would support their so-called traditional values.

The educated elite, who were found mainly in the university towns of the east, were calling for change, for a revolution in thought and government, for a time to embrace the new ideals of the new century. Many of them had become friendly with the elder twin during his time in the university at the capital city, when he himself had published many treatises on those ideals, proving himself to be a Revolutionist in thought if not in actual deed.

The younger twin had also been educated there, but he had spent much of his time making friends and gaining influence among the wealthy, for he saw that only with riches can a kingdom thrive, and only with the support of the wealthy can a kingdom continue to operate. Taxing the peasantry is all well and good, but nets only pigs and potatoes. To gain the coin necessary to run a kingdom, it was necessary to have the support of the wealthy.

Civil war was on the horizon, and on everyone's lips. Education versus wealth, some said. The peasantry knew different. It was wealth versus wealth, they knew. And they knew they, the poor uneducated, would bleed for it.