7

You chew on the end of your quill, considering your options. You've got to decide what you're trying to say.

You can try to inspire ordinary people to do their duty and trust their ruler, or let them draw the reasonable conclusion that some rulers can't be trusted. You can encourage your audience to value love above anything that rulers say or do. You can portray the entire concept of duty and honor as outdated and worthy of satirical skewering. Or you can encourage them to believe that hope is pointless and life is all comic absurdity.

But how to do any of those things without writing a play that can't possibly be performed? It's the topic that's the problem, you decide after a few false starts, not your own writing skills. You're not sure how someone contrived to request the worst possible topic for a commissioned play. But it's too late to back out now. Matty has accepted the commission and the money. You've got to deliver a manuscript.

You know what happened in real life: the King of Icemere was a paranoid ruler who saw plots everywhere and sent his sons into a battle they couldn't win. They were both killed, his son's romance with a commoner ended in tragedy, and the king's grief-maddened final charge into battle resulted in his own untimely demise. What's going to happen in your play?