Abagail
 

The Fourth Month is named in honor of the "mother of Chaladon," Queen Abagail of Celadonia. She was the only child of King Abner and became queen at the age of 45 upon the death of her father in the year 3726. She reigned as queen twelve years and then was elected the first president of the new federal government of Chaladon. She served two five-year terms and then retired, which set the precedent for presidents down to the present time.

Upon her death six years later at age 73, the new capitol city in the federal district of Chaladon was named after the "mother" of he nation and Abagail, DC has remained the capitol until the present day. She was a remarkable and much revered woman.

She is especially remembered for her remarkable sense of humor. As historians have expressed it: "Before Abagail, we all knew how to laugh AT each other, but Abagail taught us how to laugh WITH others, and perhaps even more importantly, she taught us to laugh at ourselves." Over the centuries since Abagail, Chaladonians have come to believe that laughter is immunization against the virus of arrogance and the perfect antidote to the sin of taking oneself too seriously.

More importantly, the four warlike nations have lived in peace for more than six hundred years, still not agreeing on much of anything except the foolishness of fighting and killing over their differences.

Before Abagail, things were very different. Wars followed wars for thousands of years as the nations fought each other to exhaustion time and again over questions of religion.

The greens traced their religious beliefs back almost to the beginning of time, claiming their god handed down a list of commandments etched on stone tablets that set forth the rules for living ones life. Over a thousand years later, a Riptornikan holy man, claiming to be the actual "son of god," set forth a list of rules for living ones life. Then, a few hundred years later, a Bloogan wise man claimed to have been visited by god, who then gave him a list of rules for living ones life.

The Riptornikans insisted their "rules" were better than the "green rules" because who would know god's rules better than the son of god? They insisted the Celadonian greens forget about the stone tablets, that no one could prove ever really existed, and join them in believing in the Riptornikan rules. Later, the Bloogans insisted their list of rules were superior to the other two because god himself had explained them to their holy man.

Amazingly, all three sets of rules were almost exactly the same—in order to gain god's favor, men were ordered not to kill another person, steal his property, or even think about taking his wife. Additionally, every man was ordered to take care of the less fortunate, be forgiving towards others, and never under any circumstances say anything that was untrue. (All the rules used the word "man" because in those long-ago days, women were not considered very important.)

The real problem was that each group believed their set of rules was better than the others. Or as one man put it, "I don't care if their rules are the same as ours or not, those fools are believing the rules for the wrong reasons." Greens insisted blues and reds believe in the rules for green reasons, reds said "no way jay," you all must accept them for red reasons, and the blues of course said, "you're both wrong, blue reasons are the only true reasons." Astoundingly, all three were prepared to kill anyone who did not agree on the correct reason for believing "thou shalt not kill."

Meanwhile, the Garbonians tried to stay out of the argument. They didn't believe in any sort of specific god, but they lived their lives according to the same basic set of rules everyone was fighting over. They believed the rules made basic common sense and people should be able to accept them without any more reason than that. They looked at all the fighting between greens, blues, and reds, and simply asked themselves, "what ARE these people thinking?"

Unfortunately, several hundred years before Abagail arrived on the scene, the Celadonian king of that time got a "really good idea." He made an alliance with the Riptornikans and together they ganged up against the Bloogans. In return, they agreed that Riptornika could take over about half of Garbonia. Naturally, the Garbonians took a dim view of that idea so they too finally were forced to become warlike. They made an alliance with the Bloogans and everybody was right back where they started—two groups more or less equally matched. The wars continued.

From time to time, peace would break out, but this was only because most of the young men had been killed and there was nobody left to fight. Then, babies were born and grew up to become soldiers and the wars would start again until the new crop of young men were killed off. This went on for hundreds and hundreds of years.
 

Finally, the Celadonian King Abner suffrered a massive heart attack during one of the battles. His sons and brothers had all previously been killed and there was no male heir to the throne. The only surviving member of the royal family was his daughter Abagail, so she became the first female ruler in the history of Chaladon. Immediately, she set out to prove she was just as tough as any man, and ordered further attacks. Her husband and both of her sons were killed in the battles that followed as well as more hundreds of brave Celadonians and she became enraged. She unleashed a reign of terror against the Bloogans and they were defeated in battle after battle. Celadonia annexed much of Bloogastan, establishing Celadonian settlements and driving Bloogans from many of their ancestral lands.

But then, Abagail changed, as perhaps only a woman could. As she described it years later, to my daughter during the first trip to Chaladon as descried in the separate report entitled, Chaladon, First Contact:

“Losing my husband was hard enough, but losing the two boys was almost more than I could bear. I vowed that Bloogastan must pay for this pain and we unleashed absolute terror on them. We destroyed many villages, and killed thousands, but after a time, I toured the scenes of destruction as if seeing such a thing would heal my soul and erase my pain. Instead, I saw thousands of mothers like me, all grieving their lost sons. Lindal, revenge is very thin soup for your soul. You are crying out for something to fill the void of your loss, but killing doesn’t even begin to satisfy it. Pain just begets more pain.”

"My dear young girl, as you become older you will meet many people who are saddened and depressed because they lost a loved one or because they suffered some disappointment that seemed just as terrible. Usually, they blame someone else and become angry at them. Often, however, there is no one else to blame and so they blame themselves, or at least wonder if somehow they could have done something to prevent the tragedy. First, I blamed god, and then I blamed myself for making god angry. When you grow up, you will learn that sometimes life is very difficult."

“Fortunately, about this time I met a Grindle who helped me develop a sense of humor. You know about Grindles, Lindal?” Lindal vigorously nodded her head, so she continued. “Grindles understand that sometimes tragedies occur, sometimes for no good reason at all, but they also believe we need to get on with our lives without making ourselves even more unhappy by looking for reasons. They have a saying: 'Sometimes, bad things happen to good people and the only thing THAT means is that something bad happened.' In other words, sometimes there is no 'why'— so somehow, someway you must find a way to move on with the rest of your life."

"Lindal, getting on with your life is easier said than done—finding happiness again takes time just like a broken bone takes time to mend, but there is a way to speed things along. Have you ever noticed how impossible it is to laugh and feel sad at the same time? That's because laughter is more powerful than pain. It’s a sort of aspirin for the soul, not only for small pains like embarrassment, but also for serious grief like the tragedy of losing a loved one. Often, it doesn’t work right away, just like any medicine, but little by little it wipes away the tears and cures our grief. Learning to laugh works miracles and I have learned that a sense of humor is the key that unlocks the secret to living a full and satisfying life."

"Now you understand what I did on the battlefield last week. King Laderbin is such a pompous, sanctimonious old fool—well, it really is laughable, don't you think? All that nonsense about the superiority of blueness is just silly. But, if we are honest, our good and kind General Fragem was just as foolish about the superiority of greenness. Basically, Lindal, I was betting that I was not the only one on the battlefield that day who could see what all those arguments were really worth—nothing more than a blast of gas," and with that, Abagail began laughing until the tears came down her face."

What happened on the battlelfield on that fateful day? Quickly go to the next section.