Chapter Two

It is quite possible that the people were right about the ruler, too – I have not lived there and then, so I do not know – but the problem was that after they killed the ruler and all his family, which they shouldn’t have done anyway – they could have sent him to prison, or out of the country instead - after they had killed all these people, it did not get any better. Only, now everyone was poor, and the people who formerly had been rich where treated especially harshly. As if it was their fault that they had been born into a wealthy family!

But the people who had killed the ruler said that everything they did was for the good of all humans, and that a period of poverty and misery was necessary so that they could build a Paradise on Earth, were everybody would be rich, and everybody would be treated fairly. And since they wanted to bring this earthly paradise to all humankind, they started to make war on the neighbouring countries.

Now one of the first countries that the new rulers of the Great Empire to the East made war against was the Eastern Kingdom – the one that lay right next to their borders. And they came with tanks and lots of soldiers with guns and other horrible weapons, so the people in the Eastern Kingdom were overrun quite easily. They had been living peacefully with their neighbours in the Western Kingdom for so long that few people kept arms in their houses, let alone that they knew how to use them. And they had quite forgotten about the Great Empire to the East – after all the ruler had been friendly with them too, mostly because he really enjoyed the beer and wine and the sweet pastries which the people in the Eastern Kingdom used to make, and he wanted the people in the Eastern Kingdom to make him a good price for them. But now, of course, the ruler and all his family were dead, and the people from the Great Empire had always envied the people from the Eastern Kingdom for their wealth and the peace they lived in, and for the fact that they had time not only to make beer and wine and sweet pastries, but also to enjoy them.