Speak of a hard decision and do not speak of war and sieges, the prices paid with other lives. Speak of love, of your choice of co-author in the story of your life. The graft of one into another, and the heavy scars if ever to be removed. 

Sir Liana had not been an easy decision. She was a commitment to doing more than was asked of him, of an aversion to failure. She was a commitment to seeking trials and duties greater than his shoulders could bear, for the simple fact that they were the trials worth pursuing. She was a commitment in her own right. 

There remained a blight upon the land. Knights in need of a greater monarch - knights who would accept a seat at a round table of equals. A table Castle Sauvage could host. A table that would seat knights such as Sir Hector.

Maybe Sir Coilleghille had not found the company of such knights in her travels. But how many times have you found sundries in the places you already looked? A coin pouch in the very place you left it, the first place you checked. Seeing without seeing. 

Good character is much harder find than bad. Arrogance announces itself. How does one [i]see[/i] humility? What does a virtuous person look like, when you pass them in the street? The task is oblique; You can only find it by seeing it reflected in others. And Robena counted directness among her virtues.

For this, Tristan finds himself uniquely suited. Not from anything he had learned, but in how he had approached learning them. An endless and sincere interest in others, in learning what they valued so that he might also value it, and an infinite patience. A good heart, though at times far too trusting and easily misled. Crucially, not misled when it had mattered most.

In this he finds a perfect partner in Sir Liana, and she in him. A mutual flaw of idealism becomes something greater when shared - when the world or its people disappoint, one alone looks inward to correct the failure in their judgement. Two draw reassurance from each other. They look outward, and correct the failure in the world. 

A samurai's story starts with failure. It is only through a failure in the service of a greater whole that leads to a quest for redemption through individual valor. It is the reverse of a knight's - their worthiness to serve the whole is proved by a quest showing their individual valor. Tristan had begun at the confluence of his parents two traditions; A quest to prevent the failure that would define him. 

Alloyed from two stories that are each the other's reverse, how could it be any other way that Tristan's ends in beginning? In pursuit of the piece that Pendragon's poison snuffed: The greater whole worthy of true heroes. 

The England that should have been.