SUENIK THE BELEAGUERED
CHAPTER 45 - BLESS THE LITTLE CHILDREN
(1146-1149)
Monarchs often have a reputation for being miserly. They'll lavish gold upon themselves and their families, but never on the good people that they rule over.
Not me.
I’m going to show the good people of Suenik just how much I love them by spending all the hard-earned gold that I was drooling over last chapter on making their lives richer and more spiritually fulfilling.
Or, to put it another way, I’m going to buy my way into Heaven…
But first off there’s a little problem with the locals in Tabriz who somehow think that by building churches and not mosques that I’m in someway discriminating against them.
I take a moment to pause and consider their views. After all, they may have a point. Maybe I am being too hasty. Maybe I should consider the views of all my subjects and not just the Christians.
Only kidding – I order another round of mass hangings and encourage street urchins to throw rotten fruit at their limp corpses.
Then I make the ungrateful bitches clear up the mess they’ve made.
One of my courtiers is having issues, and she comes to me and loudly proclaims the fact that she has turned her back on the indulgent, sinful, carnal pleasures of the world, and has instead chosen to live as a Bride of Christ.
Riiiiight. So the single, thirty eight year old, never-married-with-no-kids, depressed, frigid (sorry – chaste!) fundamentalist pauper has DECIDED to never have sex again.
Are you sure that’s not just called “accepting the inevitable”? I’m surprised she waited this long.
As I’m debating how to spend all my shiny coins news reaches me that a bunch of rebellious Italians have decided to call themselves the KINGDOM of Jerusalem.
You’ve got to admire their guts I guess. Five will give you ten that the Egyptians have smashed their “kingdom” in a few years time.
So, first up in the spending extravaganza is a church for the good people of Tabriz.
Maybe the sight of such a glorious house of the Lord will convince the whining Arab population that Christianity is the thing for them. Failing that I’m sure it will attract its fair share of intolerant firebrands who will help me with “converting” the locals.
Zealots are great.
While I’m marvelling over the drawings the Royal architect has drawn up my step-mother (now head of the Royal nurseries) bursts into the room, wide eyed and pale. She paused for a few moments before screaming at the top of her lungs and collapsing in a pathetic, sobbing heap.
I dismiss my advisors, sit down next to Ardai and ask her what’s wrong. After all, looking after children can’t be that hard, can it? She gives me a stare that great Aunt Mira would have been proud of and then begins to explain why working in the Royal nurseries of Suenik is the educational equivalent of fighting on the front line against the Turks…
Ah…
So it seems that the good blood of the Gardman-Aghbanias has shifted from creating gibbering, drooling lunatics to instead fashioning an entire generation of serial killers and religious fantatics.
Oh well.
I give her a hug and tell her that I really appreciate the effort she’s making and the effect she’s had on their formative years. She doesn’t stop crying for a good while.
A few months later I receive a visit from this poor, harassed looking individual.
I ask him why he’s so sad and he explains that…
I nod sympathetically and point out that since he’s right next to Torosland and surrounded by rabid Arabs that perhaps the best approach for him would be to trade one tyrannical master for another.
He agrees.
AND he’s got a good Armenian name. He’ll fit in perfectly.
Skip on a few months more and the Christian minority in Constantiople have their monastery back!
For this first time in a while the Church are actually saying good things about me.
Praise be!
And with the erecting of this bad-boy the local clergy are positively bubbling over with praise for what a pure, wonderful Christian ruler I am (rather than saying “That Aboulgharib. Sounds a bit like
Abd al Gharib if you ask me!”).
I can’t wait to see what they say when the beauty I’m having built in Tabriz is flung up!
Finally, I’ll leave you with something you don’t see everyday…
Will Aboulgharib be welcomed back into the Church? What of the next generation of Suenikians? Has Aboulgharib turned his back on war? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Suenik - Land of the Beleaguered!