Well then. When we were encamped just outside a little town, shoring up supplies and the like, I started hearing stories about a "funny knight" going about lifting this unreasonably heavy thing around, carting something else for someone else...you get the picture.

[ An idle wave of the hand as he sweeps the little narrative along. Some of it would be a feat even for a wall of muscle like Balthus. ]

Come to find it's King Dimitri himself going about town, unguarded, doing everyone's work for them. [ It's something of an exaggeration, but not as much of one as it ought to be. ] I tell him what a damn fool thing that is in the middle of a war, and he just decides to assign me as bodyguard for a day.

[ He huffs, but his exasperation lacks anything sharp in it. Rather, his tone is almost fond, perhaps. ]

He wanted that badly to see what life was like for common folk... Said he wished for people to be able to engage with the policies he set forth, that sort of thing. It all sounded very naive, you understand.

[ But then as Dimitri — a Dimitri — perhaps not. ]

Commoners aren't literate. Ashe and I were blessed exceptions. I told him that, and he was interested in my ideas, in changing it. Genuinely interested, fancy that. [ Again, to his audience of Dimitri... ] But now we get to the meat of it.

[ The thing that won his respect. He wonders, if only for a moment, whether it'll seem small, but that doesn't matter. ]

I offered him ways and means. I've got connections, after all. It'd make his ambitions far easier to realize. He didn't even consider it— he refused, despite all the work that'd create for him.

[ He shakes his head, but this too lacks any air of true criticsm. ]

I'd never expected him to insist on coming by those changes honestly. Never expected it from anyone, really.