All is Fair in Love and Chocolate.

For those of you who don’t know, there is but one candy maker chosen during the Queen’s annual tasting, and to the honored goes the crest, the royal crest of High Chocolatier.

Jellie-Wellies by Dulcifer — The jellybean of both chew and chocolate, creme and shell —  and this year’s winner and desiderium regalis.  Dulcifer.  As in Dulcifer International.  As in Dulcifer Foods.  As in the makers of Mangia Sauces and Condiments, Babyway Cereals, and LookatMe Toothpaste.  There are in fact over 100 products on the market today bearing the Dulcifer name, manufactured and/or sponsored by one of the company’s many divisions, and each as varied and as popular as the many reasons that people buy them, to include those lucky enough to be favored by a royal hand.

But only one Dulcifer division can boast about it’s labels, for only one can have them printed alongside the Praecuro Seal, that is the seal of the reigning monarch, and since King Wraymon no longer lives, that seal now bears the E of his Queen, as in Queen Erellia of House Thierry.

I give you last year’s selection, bestowed in honor of King Wraymon himself!

ChocoWackoLickits — also by Dulcifer.

Now ordinarily a Praecuro would refrain from bestowing his or her selection on the same candy maker after a previous win, such has been the tradition since the time of King Justus the Magnificent of the first age.  But tradition does not equal law.  And so with no legal precedent to bar her way, Erellia chose the path of memoriam, as in memory of her husband. It was no secret that her beloved Wraymon loved chocolate and it was no secret that he loved Dulcifer’s ChocoWackoLickits most of all.  Though to his credit, Wraymon never selected the big conglomerate’s famous chocolate-on-a-stick during an annual tasting while he was King, for Wraymon also sought a world where the lesser candy makers  of his kingdom had as much a chance to thrive.

But alas Erellia was not her husband, and loss of one’s beloved is a powerful provoker for holding on to the promise of what was.  Many are those who would take advantage of such grief, even a Queen’s grief.  High Chocolatier?— Ha! — only a few have Erellia’s ear and fewer still the knowledge of her heart.  Well access to such trust is something a shrewd and growing business just might be willing to pay for.  Winning the annual tasting twice is unprecedented indeed, of that no argument exists, especially in the face of nine hundred years of tradition.  But securing the Praecuro Seal indefinitely…well a company could secure its position for years to come on the honor of such a small thing.  And why stop with High Chocolatier if so much more abounds?  Loyalty, after all, may be a virtue but greed is a constant.  And all courtiers bleed greed, and if not all them, enough of them to sway the heart of a grieving Queen.

Inkling #26:
What is the Seven Thunders?  It is the weakness that is sometimes succession.  A King is dead, and his Queen unfit to rule.  But the Praecuro Seat waits for no man and the burden of the throne falls even before the shovelers have finished filling the grave.  Erellia of House Thierry — Queen of the Thunderlands!  Long live the Queen!  And may the realms survive her reign.