lightreads

I actually liked this the most of the series, which I did find problematic in a lot of ways. I always assumed from the framing story that modern Dalemark was supposed to be a European-style constitutional monarchy, with a figurehead king and a palace which was more important as a site of historical tours that as a centre of power. So the good king's rule was not a steady state happy-ever-after as it is in so many fantasies, it was just a necessary stage on the way to a parliamentary democracy. In the two hundred years or so between the back-in-time main section and the framing story, Dalemark seems to have made roughly the equivalent industrial modernization as Britain from 1800 to the present day, but it has made a proportionately much greater political modernization, since it ends up the political equivalent but is starting from a much more autocratic set-up than 1800s Britain.

After all, Mitt doesn't see being the king as a job for life - he sorts out the worst problems around him, then trains up other people and bows out.