King Aldren Veyrath addressed the kingdom.
Not the Council — the kingdom. The distinction mattered. Council addresses were institutional: formal, procedural, delivered to representatives who would filter the content through their political lenses before transmitting it to their constituencies. Kingdom addresses were rare — reserved for crises, transitions, and the moments when the mortal government needed to speak directly to the 1.4 million people who constituted the kingdom's living architecture.
The address was delivered from the Royal Balcony — a stone platform jutting from the Royal Court's southern facade, overlooking Founding Square. Below: twelve thousand citizens who had gathered because the Crown's announcement had used the word *all*, and *all* was a word that the Crown did not use casually.
