The Kingdom

ZWÄANĀ was founded in c. 20,000 BC. The Kingdom counts its years from that founding, and it is currently Year 22,026. Nobody abroad noticed at the time, which the Kingdom has always considered the correct arrangement.

What the founders decided has outlived every account of how they decided it. The land was too good to be shown to anyone who had not earned it. Twenty-two millennia later, ZWÄANĀ still welcomes guests, declines tourists and keeps its location to itself.

The Crown has been continuous since the founding. Its kings and queens, like the people they serve, live long and in good health, and the Royal Archives keep the record of every reign. King Yao and Queen Abidé reign today.

The Archives keep more than one account of the beginning, on the principle that the truth is probably standing somewhere in the middle, looking awkward.

ZWÄANĀ lies north of Madagascar. The Office of the Crown is prepared to say that much, and has been asked by the Border Guard to stop there.

The Kingdom has two capitals and no intention of choosing between them. M’gbāDàraaā, the royal capital, is monumental and patient, built for the ceremonies of the Crown and the work of its institutions. Mūluzwaaa, the economic capital, is vertical, connected and in a hurry. BeD SoMe belongs to the night. Zwagiia, the great park, belongs to itself, and the Kingdom treats it accordingly.

Water runs through all of it. The Kingdom has organised its cities around it for longer than it has organised anything else, and it shows in every street.

The maps of this website are accurate in every respect except their relationship to the rest of the planet.

The Kingdom’s population is spread across royal, urban, rural and protected territories, and connected by institutions that have had twenty-two millennia to learn their trade. Most Zwaanan citizens are Black Africans, of every complexion, age and build, whose families are as varied as their recipes.

Being Zwaanan has never depended on where a family came from. It depends on whether it stayed. The word has never needed a qualification.

The Crown reigns, the institutions administer, and the citizens hold both to account in the manner the Kingdom prefers: politely, persistently and in writing. The Office of the Crown keeps a form for nearly everything, and is working on the rest.

Zwaanan culture is ceremonial where it matters and relaxed everywhere else. The Royal Guard parade, the crowds come, and the Guard pretend not to notice them.

The Kingdom dresses in its own clothes: well cut, built for the climate, admired abroad without ever being credited. The bearing of a number of Zwaanan women who model in the world’s capitals has been noticed in fashion circles for decades. What else those women may do is, and will remain, a rumour.

Music runs from the court of the capital to the nights of BeD SoMe, where the evening starts late and finishes later. The national motto is BaDasS Mood!, and the Kingdom takes it more seriously than its spelling suggests.

Wealth in ZWÄANĀ is not decoration. It is buildings designed to last centuries, public spaces generous even in ordinary districts, libraries and laboratories, care for the sick, protected nature, transport that works, and time left over at the end of the day.

Water is the Kingdom’s oldest inheritance, and it is managed as one. The Royal Resource Authority keeps what lies under the ground and the Royal Treasury keeps what stands behind the TBT, which it describes as full.

The Kingdom’s policy towards the outside world is controlled openness: to take from it what is useful, to give it what is good, and to absorb its influences without losing its own identity. It has worked for twenty-two millennia, and the Crown sees no reason to try anything else.

A civilisation that has kept its own counsel for twenty-two millennia has had time to work things out for itself, and has rarely seen the need to mention it abroad.

Learning is organised by the Ministry of Learning, healing by the Royal Health Authority, research by the Royal Institute of Science, and memory by the Royal Archives, which keep everything else.

Some of the Kingdom’s knowledge belongs to legend rather than to science, and the Kingdom is careful to say which is which. Nafasi, the healer, knows remedies that were old when the Kingdom was young. The doctors of the Kingdom respect her greatly, and ask everyone who is unwell to see a doctor.

ZWÄANĀ has never been frozen in its past, and it has never borrowed its future. Old walls stand beside new ones, and the technology of the Kingdom is its own: present where it serves, quiet where it does not, and designed for the people who use it rather than for the people who sell it.

Mūluzwaaa has a generation of creators who film the Kingdom for the Kingdom, and now, carefully, for everyone else.

In Year 22,026 the Crown decided to speak to the world directly: through this website, through live broadcasts and through the Royal Emporium. Being unfindable and being unreachable are different things.

The Kingdom’s location remains withheld. Everything else, within reason, is now available.