Long before there was a flag, a fountain, or a national policy regarding cold beverages, there were two neighboring realms.
To the west lay Boblandia, governed by King Bob: a thoughtful, stubborn, occasionally unruly monarch with the heart of a romantic and the habits of a scientist. He dealt in facts, systems, and grand plans, though his first response to most matters of consequence was generally emotion.
To the east lay Ashlandia, ruled by Queen Ashley: beautiful, quick-witted, independent, and possessed of the rare ability to be both elegant and gloriously silly. Her court was known for music, laughter, excellent timing in conversation, and somewhat less reliable timing when arriving for dinner.
In the spring of 1999, the two sovereigns met.
King Bob was, by every surviving account, immediately and hopelessly smitten. The chroniclers record that he fell not merely head over heels, but head over crown, throne, and several items of ceremonial furniture.
Queen Ashley, however, had recently emerged from a troubled alliance and was in no hurry to sign another treaty. So the two rulers began not as king and queen, but as friends. They shared meals, stories, laughter, long conversations, and the quiet certainty—visible to nearly everyone but themselves—that their two kingdoms were already drifting toward union.
There were detours. There were other alliances. There were years in which the borders remained formally separate even as the citizens of both nations began to suspect that the arrangement was temporary.
Then came the evening remembered in the royal archives as The Feast of Asparagus.
King Bob invited Queen Ashley to dinner and a movie, though both parties insisted it was not a date. She was expected to arrive fashionably late, as tradition required. Instead, on this one historic occasion, she arrived early, catching the king unprepared and the asparagus not yet underway.
It was, scholars now agree, the beginning of the end for Boblandian independence.
In time, friendship gave way to love, and love gave way to the question that would change both kingdoms forever.
The proposal itself was not conducted with diamonds, trumpets, or a state banquet. King Bob presented Queen Ashley with a plastic rose and a ring fashioned from a cigar band. The hour was before ten in the morning, a fact Queen Ashley has invoked ever since in arguments concerning the treaty’s legal enforceability.
Nevertheless, she said yes.
Before 10am
A musical account of the proposal, the disputed hour, and Queen Ashley’s continuing challenge to the treaty’s legal validity.
Recorded under the authority of the Bashlandian Office of Historical Affairs.
And thus, by affection, laughter, perseverance, and one highly questionable piece of jewelry, the realms of Boblandia and Ashlandia were joined.
From their union arose the glorious kingdom of Bashlandia.
The new nation inherited Boblandia’s stubborn ingenuity and Ashlandia’s wit, beauty, and sense of fun. Its national character was shaped by friendship before romance, loyalty tested by time, and a shared conviction that life is too brief to spend without laughter, music, good food, and someplace pleasant to sit.
The seat of the realm became The Casablanca Resort, a lush and improbable capital of gardens, fountains, hospitality, and home-resort grandeur. There, beneath the Bashlandian sun, the royal household established a government founded upon several enduring principles:
That love is strongest when friendship comes first.
That a dinner may be a date even when both parties deny it.
That proposals made before ten in the morning remain legally binding.
That money may serve equally well as both import and export.
And that the highest purpose of sovereignty is to create a place where the people you love feel at home.
Today, Bashlandia stands as a testament to the union of two neighboring kingdoms—and two people who found, after all the wandering, that they had been building the same country all along.
