Ursula LeGuin: The Royals of Hegn

The Royals of Hegn by Ursula K. Le Guin

Hegn is a small country, an island monarchy blessed with a marvelous climate and a vegetation so rich that lunch or dinner there consists of reaching up to a tree to pluck a succulent, sunwarmed, ripe, rare steakfruit, or sitting down under a llumbush and letting the buttery morsels drop onto one’s lap or straight into one mouth. And then for dessert there are the sorbice blossoms, tart, sweet, and crunchy.

Four or five centuries ago the Hegnish were evidently an enterprising, stirring lot, who built good roads, fine cities, noble country houses and palaces, all surrounded by literally delicious gardens. Then they entered a settling-down phase, and at present they simply live in their beautiful houses. They have hobbies, pursued with tranquil obsession. Some take up the cultivation and breeding of ever finer varieties of grapes. (The Hegnian grape is self-fermenting; a small cluster of them has the taste, scent, and effect of a split of Veuve Clicquot. Left longer on the vine, the grapes reach 80 or 90 proof, and the taste comes to resemble a good single malt whiskey.) Some raise pet gorkis, an amiable, short-legged domestic animal; others embroider pretty hangings for the churches; many take their pleasure in sports. They all enjoy social gatherings.

People dress nicely for these parties. They eat some grapes, dance a little, and talk. Conversation is desultory and, some would say, vapid. It concerns the kind and quality of the grapes, discussed with much technicality; the weather, which is usually settled fair, but can always be threatening, or have threatened, to rain; and sports, particularly the characteristically Hegnish game of sutpot, which requires a playing field of several acres and involves two teams, many rules, a large ball, several small holes in the ground, a movable fence, a

short, flat bat, two vaulting poles, four umpires, and several days. No non-Hegnish person has ever been able to understand it. Hegnishmen discuss the last match played with the same grave deliberation and relentless attention to detail with which they played it. Other subjects of conversation are the behavior of pet gorkis and the decoration of the local church. Religion and politics are never discussed. It may be that they do not exist, having been reduced to a succession of purely formal events and observances, while their place is filled by the central element, the focus and foundation of Hegnish society, which is best described as the Degree of Consanguinity.

It is a small island, and nearly everybody is related. As it is a monarchy, or rather a congeries of monarchies, this means that almost everybody is related to a monarch or is a member of the Royal Family.

In earlier times this universality of aristocracy caused trouble and dissension. Rival claimants to the crown tried to eliminate each other; there was a long period of violence referred to as the Purification of the Peerage, a war called the Agnate War, and the brief, bloody Cross-Cousins Revolt. But all these family quarrels were settled when the genealogies of every lineage and individual were established and recorded in the great work of

the reign of Eduber XII of Sparg, the

Book of the Blood.

Now four hundred and eighty-eight years old, this book is, I may

say without exaggeration, the

centerpiece of every Hegnish household.

Indeed it is the only book anybody

ever reads. Most people know

the sections dealing with their own

family by heart. Publication

of the annual Addition and Supplements to the Book of the Blood is awaited as the great event of the year. It furnishes the staple

of conversation for months, as people of the Levigian House with the death exciting possibility of an heir to the eminently suitable marriage of Endol the unexpected succession of Viscount Fob due to the untimely deaths of his and his cousin all in the same year, (by decree of the Board of Editors-

discuss the sad extinction of old Prince Levigvig, the Swads arising from the IV and the Duchess of Mabuber, Lagn to the crown of East great-uncle, his uncle, or the re-legitimization Royal) of the great-grandson

of the Bastard of Egmorg.

There are eight hundred and seventeen kings in Hegn. Each has

title to certain lands, or palaces, or

at least parts of palaces; region isn’t what makes a king crown and wearing it on certain another king, and having

but actual rule or dominion over a a king. What matters is having the occasions, such as the coronation of

one’s lineage recorded unquestionably in the Book of the Blood, and edging the sod at the first game of the local sutpot season,

and being present at the annual

Blessing of the Fish, and knowing

that one’s wife is the queen and

one’s eldest son is the crown

prince and one’s brother is the

prince royal and one’s sister

is the princess royal and all one’s relations and all their children

are of the blood royal.

To maintain an aristocracy it is necessary that persons of exalted

rank form intimate association only

with others of their kind.

Fortunately there are plenty of those.

Just as the bloodline of

a Thoroughbred horse on my planet can

be tracked straight back

to the Godolphin Arabian, every royal

family of Hegn can trace

its ancestry back to Rugland of Hegn-

Glander, who ruled eight

centuries ago. The horses don’t

care, but their owners do, and

families. In this sense, Hegn may

be seen as a vast stud

farm.

There is an unspoken consensus that certain royal houses are slightly,

as it were, more royal than others,

because they descend directly than one of his eight younger have married into the central unshakable connection. Each incomparable claim to distinction, the semi-legendary conqueror or a family tree never sullied duchess but exhibiting (on the

from Rugland 6;s eldest son rather sons; but all the other royal houses line often enough to establish an house also has some unique, such as descent from Alfign the Ax, of North Hegn, or a collateral saint, by marriage with a mere duke or

ever-open page of the Book of the Blood in the palace library) a continuous and unadulterated flowering

of true blue princes and processes.

And so, when the novelty of the annual Addition and Supplements at last wears thin, the royal guests at the royal parties can

always fall back on discussing degrees

of consanguinity, settling of Agnin IV’s second marriage, same prince who was slain father 6;s palace against the could not, have been the King of Shut.

such questions as whether the son born to Tivand of Shut, was or was not the at the age of thirteen defending his Anti-Agnates and therefore could, or father of the Duke of Vigrign, later

Such questions are not of interest to everyone, and the placid

fanaticism with which the Hegnish

pursue them bores or offends that the Hegnish have absolutely themselves can also cause offense, is all the Hegnish know about are too polite to say that but if they had to think about

many visitors to the island. The fact no interest in any people except or even rage. Foreigners exist. That them, and all they care to know. They it is a pity that foreigners exist, it, they would think so.

They do not, however, have to think about foreigners. That is

taken care of for them. The

Interplanary Hotel on Hegn is in Hemgogn,

a beautiful little kingdom on the west

coast. The Interplanary guides. The guides, mostly the Alternation of the Watch the blood, wearing magnificent daily. The Agency also offers kingdoms. The bus runs softly along among sunlit orchards and wildfood bus and look at the ruins, palace open to visitors. The but unfailingly civil and the Queen comes down and actually looking at them and instructs invite them to pick and eat orchard, and then she and the of the palace, and the the bus. And that is that.