Yeah, I wondered about that, because what we see of modern Dalemark was a little unclear to me. The trappings of monarchy were the tourist attractions, yeah, but I can't remember now what we actually learned about current politics (I read this a few months ago, so it may well have been there). The future/modern portions felt . . . hm. I won't say irrelevant, but something like it. It was like the past and the future converged all their energies on Mitt's time; it did not seem like it was all for the purpose of creating the future we get glimpses of, it was just . . . the point at which things converged, because that's how magic works in this series, in going forward and coming back. And for that matter, I'm not convinced that either the future or the past were fixed around the moving middle point -- I think they all moved, and not in the usual linear way. Which makes the idea of progress a little more complicated, I think.

Which, if nothing else, convinces me there's more to this series than I first thought, so hey.