Your Holiness,
Just as mine burgundy blood has afflicted the daughters of Aaun with the Curse of Klarov, this blindness to remind of our blindness to the past - the ways of the Aaunishmen, this strife that is the only constant in its history, has brought ruin time and again to the heartlands. This petty intercession of the church and its princes, the creation of a regency and the exile of my eldest, cannot be enough.
My late husband sought to unite these Heartlands of ours; he dreamt of times long past when he drew the plans for peace upon the banks of the Constance, of an age in which peasants were born and died without fear of the flames of war. Finding him little wanting as a ruler and diplomat, the strife of our children took the world as a storm. Their infighting did not begin this year, or last; it is inherent to the Aaunishmen, to the House of Alstion.
A child deserves the love of their parents; mine I hope to say I gave in full. Yet so too must those destined to rule require a proper education, one of politic and piety and warfare, and that duty was made to fall to Jean de Rennes and the lords of Aaun. We as a royal couple knowing that a Veletzian education would never be accepted, and John believing with charming naivete his friend a servant of GOD; it was through their tutelage that hatred was bred into their cores. Jean taught of Aaunish primacy at the cost of all else, of intrigues and theft. This education was given to all our sons save James, whom we hoped would one day enter the priesthood; though it broke John’s heart when James left, ‘twould little compare to that of our children.
What I mean is that a regency alone could not hope to quell the chaos in the heart of Whitespire. It is a problem pervasive throughout the Apostolic Kingdom, from its pettiest lords to the Throne of Paradisus. It infects its sons, its daughters. The history of Aaun is one of assassinations and plots and forgotten pledges. As surely as it infected Charles it shall infect little Godwin.
I petition that the Throne of St. Daniel take true primacy throughout, and a greater papal state be formed of the Apostolic Kingdom to cleanse these sins.
The Holy Mother Church need not accept the lip service of lords so tainted - instead teach and enforce piety truly in my adoptive home, the kingdom so named for the realms of Exalted and Saints. Pull it from its roots and remind Horen's sons of the lord most high. Return the heartlands of Man to His light, and let us laity honor truly the names in whose shadows we wallow. Let this discord not continue on into the future ever after.
GOD Guides,
HRAM Amelya of Middelan,
Dowager Queen of Aaun