Shattered Elegance: The War of Laputa

WARNING: This fanfiction of Laputa: Castle In The Sky is based on the original Studio Ghibli performance in Japanese. The English dub produced by Disney (i.e. starring Anna Paquin and James Van Der Beek) is not a translation and is materially different from the original. Further notes follow the chapter.

Chapter 1

Recommend opening theme: The Afterwinter Remix by Sweafy

.com/watch?v=VhOin-to4Bc

708 years before the events in the Hayao Miyazaki movie produced by Studio Ghibli: Laputa: The Castle In The Sky.

"Lucy," he says from close behind her, "What's the matter, my love?"

The queen's elaborate pink gown hides all of her legs but her tiny feet as she looks out of the tower's window into the castle's courtyard. Beyond it is the vast industrial centre of Jenwa, and even further away, up north behind her, the farming community of Gondoa.

The king gently puts his hands on her shoulders, and his proud, if small, crown gently tinks against her braided tiara, "Please, tell me."

She turns to look him in the eye and says frankly, in her gentle soprano voice, "I don't think it's right to go to war against Vendoa." Her eyes shift nervously to his elbow, "My diplomats tell me that their people are not being oppressed, that their sinful life is really their choice. Who are we to judge them for that?"

It's not like the royal castle is in much danger from Vendoa to the south. Even if an attacker could get past the fiercely loyal population of Jenwa (which of course, the queen would order evacuated if it ever came to that), they face several thousand armed robotic wardens. The seven metre tall gardeners might look harmless, but inside their steel exteriors hides a distributed network of kuuseki-stabilized cold fusion reactors, and their faces belie the presence of several powerful lasers. Four versatile segmented limbs with interchangeable links and appendages make them very easy to maintain, and almost impossible to immobilize.

Lucy, the gentle queen, turns back to the window, not fully aware of how much the king loves to touch the dark braided ponytails that just brushed through his fingers. She sees one of the great wardens feeding a hungry, and rather large flock of doves and pigeons. Gently etched grooves in the robot's shoulders hint at how many decades it has been doing this every morning, without a care to the corrosive properties of the birds' guano. She smiles at the scene, as she does almost every morning.

"Lucy," the king says softly, "You know their terrible habits and how they spread disease through their people. What sort of perverse heart does it come from, that they would do such things to their children? How must the mothers feel that their sons marry other men and their daughters are left without children?"

"It's worse than that, I know," Lucy weeps, "There are grandmothers in Vendoa, because their daughters find men who give them children ... most of them regret having them, or don't even want them in the first place. These children live as orphans in blocks with long corridors, bunked three high, twelve to a room, even though both parents live ... such loose and distant lives that their sons and daughters forget their names." She turns to look at him again; her tears are real, "It is there that we must go, with our teachers and textbooks, to show these parentless kids that there is still love in this world. Better ways to live." She reaches up around the king's shoulders and rests her head on one of her elbows, kissing his ear before whispering into it, "The Laputan way to live is better than the Vendoan way they are taught by example. We need to be a new example, Romu, not destroy them."

Romu, the king of Laputa, gently holds his wife and queen, "We are already close to war, my love. Vendoa has closed their borders to our merchants and diplomats."

"But they still come to Jenwa to trade," she says softly, "They still see how we live, and my diplomats find ways in. There are even two consulate offices in Kutsui that local officials haven't forced the closures of. Even as they sin, the administrators of these housing blocks for the children would like to see the cycle end."

Romu withdraws from the gentle embrace and looks into her eyes, "But their prime minister, the one who forced the king to abdicate most everything but his throne, doesn't want to give up his power, my love. He would rather burn Vendoa to the ground than lose his ersatz throne."

"It's hard to tell," she admits, "I haven't seen him in person in four years. But even in that case, let him burn down Vendoa," she shakes her head gently, "We should not do it for him."

"What if they become the example for our people?" Romu asks, "What if Jenwa starts living like that?"

"Anyone who does would no longer be a part of Laputa," Lucy says softly, "That's how it has always been. Some have moved away, it's so sad." She bows her heads, "But we could let their children..."

"No!" he barks, tightening his grip on her shoulders. As she looks up, he says, "We can't let those horrible diseases spread to our people, my love."

"How do we know those diseases spread through anything other than the flawed Vendoan way of life?" she asks gently, "They live as we do not allow; we would send them back if they did."

"Better to keep them away, so they don't try in the first place!" he growls, then departs, slamming the door.

The queen cries for a minute before taking the signet stone that hangs around her neck and looking at it. The emblem of Laputa glows softly back. She turns it upright, and then asks, "Has he even noticed that the tree is grieved?"

She starts her day about a quarter of an hour late, handling an ever lengthening docket of complaints from the Jenwans about the lack of work and stifled business with the Vendoans. She feels the gauge of her people. Many itch for war against their disgusting neighbours to the south. Some wish that Laputa would simply allow them freely in without any restrictions on their behaviour. Her court sees the wild arguments that often erupt between Laputans who hate Vendoans, and Laputans who hate merely what the Vendoans do at night. For the first time in a week, she settled an easy dispute between Gondoan shepherds arguing over the ownership of seven sheep found in the woods. She decided to remand the sheep in the royal garden, where she'll care for them personally for one week so that the litigants can prepare their cases. Their only complaint about her was that Gondoa doesn't see enough of her any more because of the dispute with Vendoa.

The sheep like her very much, but they are terrified of the robotic wardens, who are unfamiliar in Gondoan pastures (or any pastures outside the castle, for that matter.) The wardens are confused, but accepting. The restless sheep are comforted by the Gondoan song Lucy sings for them:

Put down your roots in the soil.

Let us live together with the wind.

Pass the winter with the seeds.

Sing in the spring with the birds.

She takes their leave and wanders into the courtyard, now fussed about by a servant who's noticed that her royal gown isn't up to standard after the visit with the sheep. She assures the servant that she will change in a few minutes, and sends her away from the inner court.

Momentarily, she gazes up at the sky. She reflects for a moment how amazing it might seem to someone who hasn't grown up in the castle, that the walls of the garden let the light inside as though they were windows, but from the outside, appear as ordinary stone. Then she collapses in grief at the base of the great tree, on her hands and knees, braided pony tails dragging the tips of her long hair through the moss. She cries, "Why did we ever eat your fruit? Knowing good from evil instead of the guiding voice of God has ruined us utterly. Can we ever be free?"

The tree has nothing to say, apparently comfortable in the orange light of the setting sun far to the west, and oblivious to the queen crying on one of its huge roots.

[From the movie: Muska: "Their dreaded empire once ruled the earth! ... Lucita Toelle Uru Laputa. Uru means ruler in Laputan, Toelle means true: Queen Lucita: rightful heir to the Laputan throne." - 42-43min. "I, too have an ancient, secret name, Lucita: Romuska Palo Uru Laputa. We are descended from the same royal family that split in two down on earth." - 1:43. "Watch your words. You're in the presence of Laputa's king." - 1:45. The lyrics of the song were lifted from Sheeta's words at 1:53 (the tune is unknown), and are apparently unrelated to the closing theme, which I have not yet translated. The full names of these characters are the same as their movie-era decendants, but I have used different parts for their short names: "Lucy" instead of "Sheeta" and "Romu" instead of "Muska". Perhaps Cory (my best guess for his name) is wearing Romu's crown at 2:00 right at the end of the movie.]

Notes for the whole story:

If you are familiar with the English edition, but not the original Japanese, or an accurate translation thereof, this fanfiction will be full of holes and conflicts. One you can safely ignore occurs at 1:53, where Sheeta says "You cannot live apart from the earth", in the English dub, she says, "You cannot live without love." Also, the "From the movie" sections at the end of most chapters will often clarify things, so you should be able to get by on the English dub (please remember that the English dub is a different version, and I was not following it.) Finally, it is not essential for you to have seen Castle In The Sky to be able to understand Shattered Elegance. After looking into the English dub, I decided to call the special material after its original Japanese name, kuuseki, insead of either English name volucite or etherium.

How to know if your Castle In The Sky subtitles are accurate: The first words from the airship crewman are "Pirates!" or "It's pirates!", "They're pirates", and the one speaking into the voice tube is saying "It's a raid" ("Mayday", which was originally French "Merde", is the same in all languages as an international distress signal, listen for it on the Japanese audio, lol!) Muska tells Sheeta to "get down on the floor"; after Sheeta bonks Muska, one of his bodyguards outside says, "It's tear gas!" When Louis almost falls out the window of Muska's cabin, he says "Mama, I'm falling." Dola's exact instructions were "Quick, go next door." If your subtitles are really good, the next one will be "I want that kuuseki/volucite/etherium" instead of "I want that stone/crystal". She also mentions the material name once again before the title sequence begins.

Notes for parents: I have made some highly oblique references to some very adult themes, however children educated today may get them on their own as young as twelve. In this story, it will be apparent that Vendoan children have difficulties they should never face, especially at the ages they do. Real-life children facing such circumstances may respond adversely to certain parts, and this is also a trigger warning for adults with similar histories. This story presents these problems with an emphasis on love over morality. They are also presented in such a way that younger readers will not understand or be able to look them up online using text from the story (I tried just now. I made up an STI for this story that is based on, but both harder to transmit and deadlier than HIV.) Some themes echo UnChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons (2007 Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks; also affilliated with Project Fermi and the Barna Group), a book I did not encounter until six months after finishing Shattered Elegance in 2010 November.

Rating note: Rating based on education on applicable "mature themes" at age levels as recommended by SIECUS starting in 1991. If I went by more traditional standards, I would rate it one level higher, but I did try to make it safe for traditionally educated teens where these themes are introduced later in one's curriculum. Having said that, I foresee the possibility that some parents of publicly educated US and Canadian children may wish to expose their children to the more traditional "Laputan" (hetero-monogamous) perspective on these themes before they hit the much more liberal (and dangerous) views presented by public education starting in the fourth grade. I'll follow advice given in reviews as to ratings.