"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's 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 or is related to a monarch–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 discuss the sad extinction of the 
            Levigian House with the death of old Prince Levigvig, the exciting 
            possibility of an heir to the Swads arising from the eminently 
            suitable marriage of Endol IV and the Duchess of Mabuber, the 
            unexpected succession of Viscount Lagn to the crown of East Fob due 
            to the untimely deaths of his great-uncle, his uncle, and his cousin 
            all in the same year, or the re-legitimization (by decree of the 
            Board of Editors-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; but 
            actual rule or dominion over a region isn't what makes a king a 
            king. What matters is having the crown and wearing it on certain 
            occasions, such as the coronation of another king, and having 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 so do the kings and the 
            royal 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 from Rugland's eldest son rather than one of his eight 
            younger sons; but all the other royal houses have married into the 
            central line often enough to establish an unshakable connection. 
            Each house also has some unique, incomparable claim to distinction, 
            such as descent from Alfign the Ax, the semi-legendary conqueror of 
            North Hegn, or a collateral saint, or a family tree never sullied by 
            marriage with a mere duke or duchess but exhibiting (on the 
            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 such 
            questions as whether the son born of Agnin IV's second marriage, to 
            Tivand of Shut, was or was not the same prince who was slain at the 
            age of thirteen defending his father's palace against the 
            Anti-Agnates and therefore could, or could not, have been the father 
            of the Duke of Vigrign, later King of Shut.
            Such questions are not of interest to everyone, and the placid 
            fanaticism with which the Hegnish pursue them bores or offends many 
            visitors to the island. The fact that the Hegnish have absolutely no 
            interest in any people except themselves can also cause offense, or 
            even rage. Foreigners exist. That is all the Hegnish know about 
            them, and all they care to know. They are too polite to say that it 
            is a pity that foreigners exist, but if they had to think about 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 Agency 
            runs the hotel and hires local guides. The guides, mostly dukes and 
            earls, take visitors to see the Alternation of the Watch on the 
            Walls, performed by princes of the blood, wearing magnificent 
            traditional regalia, at noon and six daily. The Agency also offers 
            day tours to a couple of other kingdoms. The bus runs softly along 
            the ancient, indestructible roads among sunlit orchards and wildfood 
            forests. The tourists get out of the bus and look at the ruins, or 
            walk through the parts of the palace open to visitors. The 
            inhabitants of the palace are aloof but unfailingly civil and 
            courteous, as befits royalty. Perhaps the Queen comes down and 
            smiles at the tourists without actually looking at them and 
            instructs the pretty little Crown Princess to invite them to pick 
            and eat whatever they like in the lunch-orchard, and then she and 
            the Princess go back into the private part of the palace, and the 
            tourists have lunch and get back into the bus. And that is that.
            Being an introvert, I rather like Hegn. One does not have to mingle, 
            since one can't. And the food is good, and the sunlight sweet. I 
            went there more than once, and stayed longer than most people do, 
            and so it happened that I learned about the Hegnish Commoners.
            I was walking down the main street of Legners Royal, the capital of 
            Hemgogn, when I saw a crowd in the square in front of the old Church 
            of the Thrice Royal Martyr. I thought it must be one of the many 
            annual festivals or rituals and joined the crowd to watch. These 
            events are always slow, decorous, and profoundly dull. But they're 
            the only events there are: and they have their own tedious charm. 
            Soon, however, I saw this was a funeral. And it was altogether 
            different from any Hegnish ceremony I had ever witnessed, above all 
            in the behavior of the people.
            They were all royals, of course, like any crowd in Hegn, all of them 
            princes, dukes, earls, princesses, duchesses, countesses, etc. But 
            they were not behaving with the regal reserve, the sovereign aplomb, 
            the majestic apathy I had always seen in them before. They were 
            standing about in the square, for once not engaged in any kind of 
            prescribed ritual duty or traditional occupation or hobby, but just 
            crowding together. as if for comfort. They were disturbed, 
            distressed, disorganized, and verged upon being noisy. They showed 
            emotion. They were grieving, openly grieving.
            The person nearest me in the crowd was the Dowager Duchess of Mogn 
            and Farstis, the Queen's aunt by marriage. I knew who she was 
            because I had seen her, every morning at half past eight, issue 
            forth from the Royal Palace to walk the King's pet gorki in the 
            Palace gardens, which border on the hotel, and one of the Agency 
            guides had told me who she was. I had watched from the window of the 
            breakfast room of the hotel while the gorki, a fine, heavily 
            testicled specimen, relieved himself under the cheeseblossom bushes, 
            and the Dowager Duchess gazed away into a tranquil vacancy reserved 
            for the eyes of true aristocrats.
            But now those pale eyes were filled with tears, and the soft, 
            weathered face of the Duchess worked with the effort to control her 
            feelings.
            "Your ladyship," I said, hoping that the translatomat would provide 
            the proper appellation for a duchess in case I had it wrong, 
            "forgive me, I am from another country, whose funeral is this?"
            She looked at me unseeing, dimly surprised but too absorbed in 
            sorrow to wonder at my ignorance or my effrontery. "Sissie's," she 
            said, and speaking the name made her break into open sobs for a 
            moment. She turned away, hiding her face in her large lace 
            handkerchief, and I dared ask no more.
            The crowd was growing rapidly, constantly. By the time the coffin 
            was borne forth from the church, there must have been over a 
            thousand people, most of the population of Legners, all of them 
            members of the Royal Family, crowded into the square. The King and 
            his two sons and his brother followed the coffin at a respectful 
            distance.
            The coffin was carried and closely surrounded by people I had never 
            seen before, a very odd lot–pale, fat men in cheap suits, pimply 
            boys, middle-aged women with brassy hair and stiletto heels, and a 
            highly visible young woman with thick thighs in a miniskirt, a 
            halter top, and a black cotton lace mantilla. She staggered along 
            after the coffin weeping aloud, half-hysterical, supported on one 
            side by a scared-looking man with a pencil mustache and two-tone 
            shoes, on the other by a small, dry, tired, dogged woman in her 
            seventies dressed entirely in rusty black.
            At the far edge of the crowd I saw a native guide with whom I had 
            struck up a lightweight friendship, a young viscount, son of the 
            Duke of Ist, and I worked my way toward him. It took quite a while, 
            as everyone was streaming along with the slow procession of the 
            coffin-bearers and their entourage toward the King's limousines and 
            horse-drawn coaches that waited near the Palace gates. When I 
            finally got to the guide I said, "Who is it? Who are they?"
            "Sissie," he said almost in a wail, caught up in the general 
            grief–"Sissie died last night!" Then, coming back to his duties as 
            guide and interpreter and trying to regain his pleasant aristocratic 
            manner, he looked at me, blinked back his tears, and said, "They're 
            our commoners."
            "And Sissie–?"
            "She's, she was, their daughter. The only daughter." Do what he 
            could, the tears would well into his eyes. "She was such a dear 
            girl. Such a help to her mother, always. Such a sweet smile. And 
            there's nobody like her, nobody. She was the only one. Oh, she was 
            so full of love. Our poor little Sissie!" And he broke right down 
            and cried aloud.