I have things under control again. All it cost me was another day of endless private audiences with the Houses, cajoling... bribing... reassuring... promising...

On the surface, the Landsraad is as supportive of the Padishah Emperor's wars as it has ever been. But the trained eye can decipher the furrowing of calculating brows, and the trained ear the dissenting murmurs amongst the nobility. The Imperium is bloated. It is inefficient. It is vulnerable. They can sense that there is something more to those attacks than my father's excuses. There is, somewhere, a fault line to exploit. For now they still listen. For now. They are wondering. And so am I.

Look at the sky. What do you see? The same thing as the fisherman toiling in the coldest glaciers of Lankiveil, and the same thing as the noblewoman in her gilded palace on Poritrin; all three of you millions of light years apart. All that you see up there—every single star—is the Imperium.

It is eternal, and ordered, and just. A governing system perfected over tens of thousands of years. It is the very fabric of our society; we speak the same tongue, trade with the same coin. Our Great Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV rules us all; all of our Houses as such follow the guidance of the venerable House Corrino, the House of Emperors.

Remember your place, always; as per the rule of the faufreluches: "A place for every man, and every man in his place". Yours, as my heir, will be to guide our people. Were you to fail at your duty, the Padishah Emperor, the great judge of us all, will waste no time punishing you swiftly. Remember Zanovar. Remember Ix.