Isabella Marie Swan ✝ "Juliet"

"Being the benevolent dictator of the world is kind of the pinnacle of useful luxury, altruistic self-interest, power and service. Empress Bellas are comfortable, they are surrounded by people they like who acknowledge that they are in charge, they get to accomplish all kinds of valuable results for their worlds while also getting to wear elaborate crowns to boot. But we've all done this from a starting point of mediocrity. Most of us have divorced parents; Shell Bell's and mine are together, but Shell Bell grew up in oppressive poverty and my parents have this disastrous on-again off-again marriage. We attend public schools that are only adequate judged against other public schools. I've been half in witch culture, which is better - I get to learn magic and fly and stuff, which I'm good at - but there aren't any real affordances for doing things. Experiencing stuff, sure, I can always hop on my cloud pine and see the Taj Mahal or whatever, but doing stuff out in the world? Useful stuff? Fewer obvious routes, so of course I'm going to just claim the entire planet as my own, piecemeal, and declare the entire thing my responsibility. But Angela..." Amariah shakes her head. "Angela's parents are happily married. She never had to move or split herself between cultures or summer at one parents' house and spend the rest of the year at the others. She has friends, close friends, who she's known since she was born. She's high-status and she can fly and sing and all anyone wants from her is for her to fly and sing. Her god has more to say on the subject of how to live a good life than any of my goddesses do, so she's got an absorbing self-improvement project. She was born with everything she needed to ascend to the highest political office of her land and all she has to do is something she's good at, something she enjoys, something that visibly helps people who need it, under the direction of people she respects. I'm not surprised she wants to be Archangel, but I'm also not surprised she doesn't aspire beyond the standard-issue twenty-year term after the current Archangel is good and done with his."