King Aldric IV rules Enymu, the lowland farming state whose harvest feeds the imperial capital at Tarkhetan. He is the latest of the Aldric kings, the line that has held the Enymu throne since his ancestor Aldric I put his name to the Grain Compact some five centuries ago. He keeps that compact as his fathers kept it.
He keeps it, in part, because he believes in it. Aldric IV counts King Selron II of Tarkhon a friend, and he is not a stupid man, only a trusting one on the single subject where trust costs him most. The compact subordinates his kingdom and underwrites his crown in the same stroke: the Aldric line rules Enymu because an Aldric once agreed to feed the empire cheaply, and to unmake that bargain would be to unmake the dynasty's own founding act. His court reads the empire more coldly than he does. The people who actually sit across the table from Tarkhetan's envoys trust them exactly as far as the terms require, and their reckoning belongs to Enymu's entry rather than his.
What Aldric IV does not know is what Selron II actually thinks of him. The question is being asked anyway, by Enymese a generation younger than their king, who signed nothing and feel no debt to a treaty older than their grandparents.