From “On the Sweet Dominion and Its Just Ascension,”
by Albrecht Fondantine,
Royal Historian of the Saccharum Crown,
written in the Forty-Second Year of His Glazed Majesty’s Reign
Let it be known to any reader of sound mind and loyal palate that the Kingdom of the Saccharum Crown did not arise from cruelty, as lesser tongues whisper, but from necessity, vision, and an unassailable devotion to order. I write these words from within the palace galleries themselves, where the air hums with industry and the walls glow faintly with alchemical warmth. I have seen the King’s works. I have catalogued them. History demands clarity, not sentiment.
In the years before the Crown, this land was unremarkable—fertile, populous, and tragically inefficient. Human kingdoms rose and fell on grain and iron, their people soft with wasteful memory and contradictory desire. Knowledge rotted in libraries while labor bled in fields. Sweetness, that most precious of luxuries, was a rarity—an indulgence for the elite, fleeting and uncontrolled.
It was Saccharum Virex, then merely a prodigious alchemist-engineer of no noble birth, who first proposed that sweetness could be systematized. His early treatises—On Refinement, The Moral Geometry of Labor, and the infamous Suffering as Transitional State—were dismissed as radical. Yet their logic was unassailable. If one could preserve essence, strip away waste, and refine form, then perfection was not only possible—it was inevitable.
The first great works were humble: mills, boilers, presses. A factory built beside a river, ostensibly for confectionery export. Workers came willingly. Wages were good. Accidents were… instructive. The early automata were crude but tireless, and the first experiments in alchemical distillation of human will yielded startling results. Memory, it was discovered, could be separated from identity. Desire could be filtered. Fear could be repurposed.
It was during this period that Virex was invited into court as an “industrial advisor.” Within five years, the court itself ran on sugar credits. Within ten, the old king abdicated—peacefully, they say, after a long illness and a very sweet final meal.
Thus was crowned King Saccharum I, and thus began the Glazed Reformation.
His Majesty teaches that people are not destroyed in the process—merely refined. The human form is temporary, prone to decay. Candy endures. Sugar preserves. Brass remembers. To be remade is not punishment, but continuation.
Public executions, conducted at the Pit, were therefore not spectacles of cruelty, but rituals of reassurance. The populace saw steam rise, smelled cinnamon, and believed the condemned were gone. What mercy, to spare them the knowledge of continuation. What order, to keep panic from flavoring the masses.
Beneath, of course, the true work continued. The Factory expanded downward and outward, its zones carefully arranged like chapters in a holy text: Roasting, Grinding, Melting, Tempering, Moulding, Cooling, Packaging. Each stage a sacrament. Each worker—voluntary or otherwise—an ingredient.
It is fashionable among dissidents to speak of the Candy Folk as victims. This is a sentimental error. They are products of elevation. Freed from the tyranny of complete memory, they exist in the present, pliable yet purposeful. Some retain fragments—songs, faces, instincts. These are tolerated, even studied, as seasoning.
Those who resist too strongly are corrected. Those who adapt are allowed community—under supervision. Thus arose the Abandoned Factory Town, a controlled variable masquerading as exile. Its mayor, a model of civic sweetness, ensures harmony while reporting fluctuations. It is governance refined.
Equally vital are the Clockwork Servitors, whose loyalty is absolute and whose mercy is mathematically calibrated. Foremen, drones, inventory angels of brass and steam—they do not tire, do not doubt, and do not dream. Some, regrettably, develop errors. Glitches. Sentience. These are not failures, but proofs: even machines yearn for purpose.
The King allows some independence among them. Observation yields improvement.
The Palace itself, grown around the original factory spire, stands as the Kingdom’s heart. Its observation galleries see all. Its lenses miss nothing. The Throne of Sugar and Brass—oh, how clumsy the rebels are to call it a device of domination. It is a conductor. A nexus. Through it, His Majesty listens to the rhythm of the realm as a baker listens to dough.
That the Throne exacts a toll is known. Power always does. The King bears it gladly.
Rebellion is not treason—it is data. Each escape attempt, each whispered hope, each act of defiance teaches the Crown where refinement must improve. Dreamers are especially valuable. They imagine alternatives. The King watches them closely.
Some even believe the Factory is a story, and that they might write themselves free. This, too, is charming. Stories require editors.
Now, in this Forty-Second Year, production exceeds projection. The outside world consumes Saccharum exports hungrily, ignorant of their provenance. The Crown’s influence spreads through trade, addiction, and delight. Soon, borders will be unnecessary. Everyone will taste the same sweetness.
If there are screams beneath the steam, they are merely the sound of transformation.
If there are eyes watching from the margins of maps, they are historians yet to be corrected.
I set down my quill with pride.
Long live the Saccharum Crown.
May all things, in time, be refined.