The Decline of the Aristocrats. (extract taken from Understanding the past, a school textbook by Prof. Mufudazi Flowers) "Chapter 9 Eventually the majority of the Exians decided to leave Gum Gooloo Gum Jublet and return home through central Umbagollah. Their triumph over Gum Gooloo had given them little satisfaction and they were spoiling for competition. This was at a time when the aristocrats had the misfortune to be at peace. Eight years before the Exians swept through their territories, the Duke O' Charmi'en had brought the families together and convinced them to stop their bickering. Their citizens, who had been accustomed to fighting, adapted to other pursuits. They were in no state to repel an invading mob. As for the Exians, they were discovering flesh and blood leaders to replace the ghost in their guts. A small group of men and women had gathered together during the occupation of Gum Gooloo Gum Jublet and drawn themselves a map of the country as they knew it. They knew pitifully little. At the top of the page they wrote 'Ex', surrounding that word with a scribble of forest, and below that there was nothing but an indeterminate countryside, filled with question marks and intriguing hints of the terrain they believed they might have crossed on the way to Gum Gooloo, which was marked at the bottom with a circle. Below that they drew a undulating line and labelled it 'The sea.' To the right of Gum Gooloo they wrote, 'Two Show Ranges.' That was all they knew. The party's reactions to the map were mixed. Some of them felt that the Exians had done a wonderful thing by discovering more land in a few weeks than they had known in all of their time in Ex. Others felt that they had seen virtually nothing: a tantalising glimpse of scattered domains and nothing more. It was this second group who siezed the imaginations of their people as they migrated back to their home city, and launched the Exians on the most extensive campaign of destruction the country had ever seen. Jack Thought, a member of the group who had been dissatisfied by the map, wrote: "Ther was now wey forrwurd for us anles that wey ledd throo iksplorrisun end tew iksplorr wee neyds must fyte. Faw they wyll note lett us throo pesfully thees mutch wee kno efte speeking wyth them." (There was no way forward for us unless that way led through exploration and to explore we needs must fight. For they will not let us through peacefully, this much we know after speaking with them.) The Duchy of Quake was the first state to fall. Quake Hall was reduced to a collection of scattered stones and the family fled to the home of their next-door neighbour, Her Lady Expiration, whose state went down in turn. The Expirations were a hot-tempered family who delighted in arguments and their own ferocious wit, but none of their famous fighting skill prevailed against the invaders. With each new conquest, the Exians took control of the state and integrated it into what was quickly becoming an empire, even though no-one, not even the citizens of Ex themselves, really registered that fact until the dust was settling around the fifth of the conquered families. Jack wrote: "... wee lokt behynd and sayed that the peepul did nott have deviseeons. Wee are the yewniteng wones." (We looked behind and said (see'd/saw?) that the people did not have divisions. We are the uniting ones.) The defeat of each family has been described in detail elsewhere, most notably in Douglas Bottle's excellent book, When Exploration was our aim, darkness came after. Those familes that had offered the Exians safe passage across their land on the way to Gum Gooloo were given areas of Ex in which they could rebuild their family honour; the rest were cast adrift. From the aristocrats' point of view, the war was a disaster. Bottle's book ends poignantly: "(During a recent trip to Jail I) was introduced to a descendant of the Expiration family. You will remember that this woman's ancestors had been credited with a charm and wit that illuminated every conversation they touched upon with a burning light. My eagerness to meet her was understandable. So excited was I that the beastie she demanded in exchange for the interview was handed over without demurral, although in retrospect my suspicions ought to have been immediately aroused ... I was shocked to find that ... (s)he was the propriator of the lowest, meanest musical house you ever saw! "Here you are," she said, and held out her filthy hands in greeting. My dream of an aristocratic flower maintaining its bloom through any degredation was shattered ... and in fidelity to the mores of her surroundings, this woman, whose ancestors had made the Goolooians weep at the beauty of their poetry, why, she could neither read nor write." Some historians have gone searching for a hidden motive behind the invasions, arguing that a simple desire to explore is not a reasonable excuse for a city of people to go on a rampage. They forget the enormous pride the Exians took in their role as the descendants of rebellious travellers who would not turn back from exploration no matter how hard it seemed. They were following a line of thought that had been impressed upon them in legend and song for two hundred years. The aristocrats never knew what hit them." In our next chapter we will take a look at the years following the war. Go ahead to The Renaissance or back to the timeline.