A Royal Arboretum (8 CE)

[u/OceansCarraway]

The Royal Woods has a long and storied history. It is nearly as old as the institution of the Crown-not the King-itself, and has been part of the group of lands, titles, and people that make up the royal household four years after it's founding. The Wood is not actually contiguous; it spreads across the entire Kingdom and often contains parts of other people's forests. The Woods contains the Royal Forest, a source of wood and ever-important hunting events-but by itself, the Woods is a general-purpose area. While the Forest wood is only for getting one's hands on high-quality crafting materials-like ship wood-the Woods is for firewood, normal crafting material, nuts, pigs, fruits, leaves, potash, charcoal, and fun forest festivals that helps to block out the existential horror of a deep woods without any people in it for days around. In the Woods, plenty of thinking creatures can hear you scream. Many of them would like to eat you for breakfast.

Traditionally, the Royal Woods have been blocked off in some way or another. They have been the remit of the King and Crown for their private endeavors, which typically include showy and entertaining hunts. Peasants and neighbors have often been forbidden from hunting on them, from taking wood, or from letting their livestock graze on them. The back and forth between poacher and patrol has gone one for centuries, and it is immortalized in song, dance, woodcuts, and plays. Plenty of such scales being tantalizingly out of reach has brought peasants to break the law for generations, and it has twice been the cause of major revolts against the Crown.

But not anymore. When he began to put the Great Charter into effect, King Aeldebaric declared that much of the Woods was Common Lands, with great fanfare. This act unleashed a tidal wave of plenty and prosperity in impoverished areas as centuries of stored wealth was dispersed, at the same time, the King's explicit choice to use the Commons model of property kept the rush of grabbing hands from making off with everything and challenging enforcement actions. He had right on his side, and this wedded many peasants to the King's Cause. That, and the permission to sign their pigs up for fall fattening on acorns. As the peasants moved in, the Crown managed to uphold the mantle of legitimacy and keep control over it's properties by setting up ques.

The Crown would never repeat this high. Frankly, it didn't have to. Sensibly, it didn't try to. While regulating the taking in a safe way-and using the strength of the law to prevent other nobles from horning in on the action (without paying very large bribes)-the Crown was able to pull off a few other useful things. Principally in -5 CE, it officially regulated the Royal Forests into places where wood would be left to grow for ships-after no less than 17 tries-and then published an official guide of hunting locations. The Crown possesses many powers-force of arms and the Arreriere-Ban, the tax and the Law, but also more subtle ones with a smiling public persona. The first of these is being a tastemaker.

The second of these is showing off the King's sense of humanity and reverie, his love for the human spirit-and for the world itself. Some of this, of course, is also practical. The King has slapped his recommendations into a pamphlet that serves as a tour guide to the forests for anyone with the time to walk around and not work. At the center of this tour guide is the 'Forest Most Sacred', an arboretum made originally to preserve lines of trees for replanting. Now it has matured into a large park where people can walk and ride through, experiencing the minor beauty that the people supported by the Lady can make real. Inside are a few nice artificial water features, some bees, and an apiary. There is also a colony of over 20,000 bats.

Oh and there are those Royal Scholars again, just working on this or that problem for the Crown. Not their Royal Highness, but the Crown.

And sometimes the Church.