The Legend of Kingwood

Once upon a time back in the previous millennium, Princess Olive Oil ruled Kingwood without the help of a king.  Fortunately for her, the natty King Cole came to Kingwood to take the throne and rule the domain with an iron fist.  King Cole was a fierce warrior lord who had previously reigned as king in Jerkey City and the Land of Irving’s Stones.  His brief reign in Jerkey City ended with a peasant revolt and his tenure in the Land of Irving’s Stones ended with his favorite court jester, Kentworth Giblet, being banished to a penal colony on the sovereign Isles of Wails.

King Cole decided he would develop an effective manner of rule for Kingwood which would keep him empowered longer than in any domain ever before.  He kept all of the worker peasants at a distance and he controlled communication throughout the land so the peasants could not revolt.  King Cole had a cabinet of ministers that was called the Board of Regimentation.  The Board of Regimentation was responsible for the common good and did so via a sophisticated method of taxation and compensation to the peasant workers.  King Cole’s tight control over communications often left his ministers in a state of confusion and disarray thus fighting amongst themselves instead of looking out for the common good.  The king often complained about reckless spending throughout the kingdom while handing out many sweet rewards and incentives to himself and Princess Olive Oil.  The treasury was soon devoid of gold and silver and gems and jewels.

King Cole was actually at the mercy of the ministers, but it often looked the other way around.  Almost on a monthly basis, King Cole would come to the ministers with suggestions which the ministers would make into law.  Then whenever the worker peasants were confronted by King Cole’s gruff, antagonistic and controlling manner, he would claim he was following the mandates of the ministers.

Around this time morale amongst the peasants in Kingwood was reaching an all time low.  The peasants were working everyday in the fields without the least bit of incentive or gratitude while the king and the princess reaped their rewards.  The ministers were baffled by the low morale, however, they allowed King Cole and the princess to raid the treasury once each year thinking that this was a small price to pay for such great leadership.  The peasants observed the king and the princess in resolute silence hoping that their day would come.

Sometime early in the following millennium, the peasants all gathered by the Castle on Castledale Road and were looking forward to an increase in pay for their hard, tedious work in the fields.  Arriving at the castle, they were told by King Cole and the ministers that the treasury was empty!  This left the peasants very dejected.  In addition, the peasants learned their traditional, good doctor was leaving Kingwood for a faraway, very exclusive kingdom where it was quite expensive to live and rumor had it that he could possibly be replaced by the nasty, incompetent Chinese Doctor HMO or a doctor even less capable.  All the peasants cried out in unison, “King Cole, why have you forsaken us?!”  “Where are the ministers at this time of great need?” they cried.

King Cole decided a new type of tactic for dealing with the peasant workers was necessary.  He decided to tell all of Kingwood about the peasants’ demands.  “All of this nonsense while the treasury is empty!” the king thought.  The ministers agreed that, although this had never been done in this or any other kingdom before, King Cole should do so now.  This would beat down the peasants and preserve the kingdom.  The peasants would go back to work every day in the fields where they belonged and stop complaining.  The very next day, all of the workers most personal requests were revealed to all of the moms and the dads and the taxpayers in Kingwood.

Unexpectedly, instead of the peasants going back to the fields, they started a small revolt.  They left their houses undecorated for all the kingdom to see!  This created conflict between the worker peasants and some of the mom peasants in Kingwood.  The rancor between the workers and the moms took on a life and fire of it’s own.  King Cole was confident this additional new conflict would only aide his efforts to quash the revolt.

The case of King Cole’s ministers and the unruly peasant workers is now heading for mediation and may make its way to Kingwood’s high court.  King Cole sorely misses his court jesters now.  He still believes that his big kingdom tactics will prevail.  When the skirmishes end, all of Kingwood will be in shambles.  It may require 5 or 10 years for Kingwood to recover.  The ministers resolutely and steadfastly support their king.

Years later the descendents of the Kingwood Konflict, as it came to be known, described this story to their children so they, in turn, might tell the story to their children and thus make sure they never allow the same mistakes again.  King Cole developed his leadership skills in kingdoms much larger than Kingwood and containing much rougher elements than Kingwood.  Jerkey City was kind of crass and the Land of Irving’s Stones would have been a better site for building penal institutions than for building a normal everyday empire.  In Kingwood, the workers in the fields were mostly moms and peasant neighbors.  The intimidation and manipulation King Cole used in Kingwood was much too course and much too harsh and not at all necessary for dealing with the moms and the neighbors working in the kingdom’s fields.  All the peasant workers wanted was to be treated with dignity and respect and to be paid a decent wage for a decent days work.  The King’s tight rule was not understood by the peasants and was resented throughout the land.  The peasant workers never expected to get everything they asked for.  They simply wanted to be heard and treated with dignity and respect.  By now the divide was much too wide to turn back and both sides dug in for the long battle reminiscent of medieval times.

The king had most of his ministers convinced that his way was the best way to rule.  Astoundingly, many ministers showed a remarkable lack of concern about the treatment of the peasant workers at the hands of the natty King Cole and many ministers lacked concern about the day their time as minister would end and they would return to the kingdom of the peasants as one of the moms or dads or neighbors.  By the time that day would come, King Cole would be far, far away in a distant land collecting his pension, but his diabolical mark would be left on Kingwood and it’s ministers for many years to come.

 

### The End ###