Ursula K. LeGuin - The Royals of Hegn

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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 ones lap or

straight into one 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 related to

a monarch or 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

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Ursula K. LeGuin - The Royals of Hegn

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