The Diary of a Proud Josephite

[frill 2277]

 

T H E   D I A R Y   O F   A    P R O U D    J O S E P H I T E

 

So dictated by

 

Archduke Lord “Lordy” Owyn-be-Good Horen de Mardonnic-Metz

 

to his servant-girl who he assures the reader is paid the fullest amount required by Imperial law.

 

***

 

 

I find it the most perfunctory necessity of all matters of politics to make myself known as a common and good man, cut from noble stock but of finest poor-man disposition (without the scent, I beg!). Much like the serfs and servants of the common-land, I too was born to a small hereditary estate - although unlike the humble peasantry folk I did go forth to inherit it - which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in Godfrey Horen’s time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. It is here we were good humble and pious men who took to the errors of that Canonist rank idolatry, something a young up-and-coming labourer-duke saw as a subversion of all civil as well as religious liberty, and the utter disgrace of reason and of human nature. It is through the trials and tribulations of my peasantish upbringing in my family’s manor that I believe that it is the right of all Josephite men to worship any God, male or female, elven or Kha, that he may please.

 

Upon the death of my father, the eminent Knight-Duke of little New New Brelus-on-sea (although I stress that he preferred to be simply be called ‘sir’ than any other title of office), I was resolved to travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the broader empire, with the character of an odd unaccountable fellow, that had a great deal of learning, if I would but show it. I am sure that my stockings, breeches, wig of white, gentleman-sandals and doublet of finest padded linens made me the most common of worker-men that I had yet to see.

 

An insatiable thirst after knowledge carried me into all the countries of Asulon and beyond, in which there was anything new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that having read the controversies of some great men concerning the antiquities of Krug, I made a voyage to Kruggemare, on purpose to take the measure of a orc tomb-barrow: and, as soon as I had set myself right in that particular, returned to my native country with great satisfaction and a dab hand in wrangling orcs into voting for mineself politically. Through my schooling at the finest imperial colleges I was acquired to the most brutish of Haensetian or Orcish tongues, conversing with both these beasts with stunning degrees of flourish and splendored skill. 

 

I have passed my latter years in this city of Helena, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me, of all such paupery working-mens careers as Judges and Chancellors akin. There is no place of general resort, wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at the court Varoche, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at the lounge-rooms of Anpalais palace, and, whilst I seem attentive to nothing but myne fine-cut tobacco, overhear the conversation of every seat in the room. 

 

But it is through hard worker that I did inherit the position of my father, and his father and a seat on the highest board of politicks in the land, and implore the beastly Everardines to pull themselves up by thine bootstraps and achieve the same - for we were borne with nought and shall leave the world with the same, it is a pity to see these Everardine brutes so choose to be poor. If this success were not seen as some close-guarded secret I would not have to resort to canvassing Kha and other nasty beasts (but I am not brazen enough to give such votes to actual beasts of the field) to tick the ballot-boxes that my working-men of the empire would leave absent for favour of more ‘common’ parties.