"Well, if I can file documents in Minato City, why can't a file documents here? Office work is office work."
Bureaucracy! It's an intrinsic quality of any organized civil society, Séirye Nicoðima's wealthy province is no exception. And much of bureaucracy is defined by the attempt of accurate recordkeeping and documentation of past information. For a state with little access to computers, recordkeeping looks the same almost everywhere: bookcases of thousands of meticulously organized paper volumes, printed on mechanical presses hundreds of even thousands of years earlier before being filed away. Royal House Nicoðima can accurate boast that their governmental recordkeeping is as good as anywhere else in the empire; the province is comparatively small and highly urbanized, and the house even maintains records of the ruling noble families that proceeded it. But sometimes past information must be accessed for one reason or another, and when combined with the steady flow of new information (on industrial and agricultural output, energy production, or any matters of capital), that means a lot of work. Most ruling families, particularly those with larger provinces, have permanent staffs of trained civil officials; Nenuialfarnë does too, but when she became the formal head of her royal house, Dame Séirye voluntarily took on the royal responsibility of all paperwork destined for the palace library (or at least, all that she had time to sort through, with overflow going to professional staff). Hardly what one would expect for a young woman who grew up on school athletics, foreign bloodsport, and then became an anointed knight, but Dame Séirye's stubbornness can be legendary. That meant sequestering herself in the palace's attic library every late summer (during the paperwork season, after the harvest), sitting among (or sometimes on) thick volumes and sweating among the arid stack storage. She would consider having central air conditioning installed, like she experienced in Japan, but ironically that would take even more paperwork.
"Thank you, ma'am. Please just put those books anywhere there's space, I'll get to them next."
[Author's Note: I really like Séirye's two poses here; they weren't the product of a photograph, but of an image generation from a different, more realistic model that I repurposed into my mainstay model (an AOM2 derivative; my realistic sets tend to do badly). The last few martial or knight-themed sets were fun, and subconsciously I wanted to suggest the idea that Séirye isn't actually a trollop and is actually the kind of woman who would wear body armor whenever she needed to (and if she could find armor that fit), but of course the audience probably likes to see her in lingerie or less (and I can't blame them). Of course, you can ask, "Well, if she's sweating, why is she wearing a bra?" and the answer is, "If she doesn't wear a bra, her chest gets in the way of the desk."]
Séirye (早織), Royal Recordkeeping
"Well, if I can file documents in Minato City, why can't a file documents here? Office work is office work."
Bureaucracy! It's an intrinsic quality of any organized civil society, Séirye Nicoðima's wealthy province is no exception. And much of bureaucracy is defined by the attempt of accurate recordkeeping and documentation of past information. For a state with little access to computers, recordkeeping looks the same almost everywhere: bookcases of thousands of meticulously organized paper volumes, printed on mechanical presses hundreds of even thousands of years earlier before being filed away. Royal House Nicoðima can accurate boast that their governmental recordkeeping is as good as anywhere else in the empire; the province is comparatively small and highly urbanized, and the house even maintains records of the ruling noble families that proceeded it. But sometimes past information must be accessed for one reason or another, and when combined with the steady flow of new information (on industrial and agricultural output, energy production, or any matters of capital), that means a lot of work. Most ruling families, particularly those with larger provinces, have permanent staffs of trained civil officials; Nenuialfarnë does too, but when she became the formal head of her royal house, Dame Séirye voluntarily took on the royal responsibility of all paperwork destined for the palace library (or at least, all that she had time to sort through, with overflow going to professional staff). Hardly what one would expect for a young woman who grew up on school athletics, foreign bloodsport, and then became an anointed knight, but Dame Séirye's stubbornness can be legendary. That meant sequestering herself in the palace's attic library every late summer (during the paperwork season, after the harvest), sitting among (or sometimes on) thick volumes and sweating among the arid stack storage. She would consider having central air conditioning installed, like she experienced in Japan, but ironically that would take even more paperwork.
"Thank you, ma'am. Please just put those books anywhere there's space, I'll get to them next."
[Author's Note: I really like Séirye's two poses here; they weren't the product of a photograph, but of an image generation from a different, more realistic model that I repurposed into my mainstay model (an AOM2 derivative; my realistic sets tend to do badly). The last few martial or knight-themed sets were fun, and subconsciously I wanted to suggest the idea that Séirye isn't actually a trollop and is actually the kind of woman who would wear body armor whenever she needed to (and if she could find armor that fit), but of course the audience probably likes to see her in lingerie or less (and I can't blame them). Of course, you can ask, "Well, if she's sweating, why is she wearing a bra?" and the answer is, "If she doesn't wear a bra, her chest gets in the way of the desk."]