Chapter One

A Very Unusual Kingdom

 

Being spoiled rotten is kind of central to the job description of princesses, at least according to our protagonist at the outset of our tale. That would be the lovely blonde Princess Natalie. She had always been the apple of her doting mother and father's eyes, having been born late in their lives after they had given up all hope of offspring to inherit their small kingdom. That blessed land was safely tucked into impregnable mountains surrounding a large lush valley that provided ample sustenance for its stable healthy population. These unusually attractive and vibrant folks enjoyed healthy happy lives completely sheltered for many generations from the wars that decimated their less geographically protected neighbors. For well over a thousand years, no invader had succeeded in conquering Absynthia, whose high passes were guarded by massive fortresses. The only other avenue for invaders was the cliff-bound mighty river Mindolluin, which was secured by a massive chain that could block all water-borne interlopers.

As a result of these accidents of history and geography, the fortunes that Absynthia's neighbors spent on their constant wars could be diverted towards more productive uses in the secure and isolated mountain kingdom. The mountains were riddled with highly productive mines that yielded a bounty of gold, silver, platinum, and gems, along with high quality iron ore that produced the best steel in the world. As well, their shoulders supported large herds of sheep, goats, and cattle, such that the kingdom exported both meat and fiber on great barges down the river. The farms in the central valley yielded bumper crops of all manner of fruits and vegetables and grains. Anything that the kingdom didn't produce it could readily trade for with its surpluses of precious metals or its highest quality manufactured goods. It had the best roads, the grandest and most amply endowed schools and universities, the most thriving marketplaces, and the most beautiful, cheerful people. Crime was vanishingly rare, perhaps due at least in part to the very well-established culture of on-the-spot no nonsense corporal punishment for any and all misbehavior.

Throughout the picturesque kingdom, no one would be in the slightest surprised to see a misbehaving citizen (almost always female) taken over a husband's or other legitimate authority's knee even in the most public of settings if discipline was warranted. And it was routine for approving crowds to pause in the street as skirts were raised and smallclothes lowered. The entire culture believed it was salutary to bare the part of any miscreant's anatomy that all agreed was created by the Holy God for just the purpose to which it was perfectly designed to be put: the reception of a good sound spanking.

The approving crowd would cheerfully comment and applaud, or offer advice if a miscreant was less than cooperative with his or her discipline, as a firm authoritarian hand was applied vigorously to squirming buttocks. The recipients of such attentions responded differently to their plight depending on gender, according to the cultural requirements enforced in the minds of all men and women since time immemorial. Males were trained to endure their punishments stoically, and whining or complaining, let alone unseemly struggling, were uniformly rewarded with additional hind end pain (and its accompanying public embarrassment). It was commonly accepted wisdom that the development of proper manly virtues largely inhered in the cultivation of the ability to bear hardship bravely.

So a man who took his medicine without squirming or yelling (discreet manly tears were permitted, though by maturity even that level of expression of distress was greeted with derision) was openly approved of by both the administrators of his punishment and any onlookers. Such male courage and self-restraint were prized qualities in Absynthian men, all of whom were required to serve in the military and to demonstrate the toughness and resilience required of their Kingdom's famously undefeated armed forces.

Females, on the other hand, were afforded much more leeway in their spontaneous responses to their spankings, whether in public or private. The thinking was that any discouragement of expression of passion of any sort was contrary to the evolution of desirable feminine personalities. So the more a chastised female wept and wiggled, the better. Spankers and observers alike would respond to a yelling, struggling punished woman of any age by applauding her spirit, and even joking about how much pleasure such responsiveness promised for her partners.

For this was another peculiarity about the small but powerful kingdom of Absynthia. Unlike its surrounding warlike neighbors (whose religious establishments were dominated by ascetic principles at least mildly disapproving of sexuality), the universal faith within the mountain country openly celebrated essentially all expressions of eroticism. The first commandment of the local Prophet of their Holy God, who was legendarily believed to have founded the kingdom almost two millennia earlier, was to 'Love as Thou Wouldst'. This meant that all expressions of human sexuality, heterosexual or homosexual alike, were actively encouraged once citizens came of age at eighteen.

Naturally, the widespread cultural attention to the educational application of painful stimuli to naked backsides from every person's earliest memory combined in a complex way with the open cultural celebration of adult sexuality. The result was to anneal spanking with eroticism in complex ways for almost all grown Absynthian men and women. For example, consider the cultural prescription of manly restraint even under the extreme challenge of having one's most private parts embarrassingly bared and subjected to extensive agonizing attention. The self-control developed in this manner was seamlessly translated into a cultural ideal of male sexual prowess once each man was full-grown.

Absynthian males were to demonstrate ironclad self-mastery in their sexual expression, never forcing themselves on a partner and withholding their own climaxes until their partners had achieved at least one satisfactory orgasm. The more pleasure taken by his partner, the more highly regarded the male. Gossip about the strengths and weaknesses of each husband or bachelor in this regard was considered to be fair game, as was the sexual responsiveness of each woman. A man who was erotically selfish or a lady who was cold or unreactive would be subject to open ribald disapproval by their neighbors. Conversely, approving remarks were common and welcome when neighbors overheard the unrestrained verbal expressions of erotic pain and pleasure from a wife who had received an inspiring dose of both. Very often, she herself would have left the household windows intentionally wide open in anticipation of her punishment and pleasuring to invite just such eavesdropping.

Females, on the other hand, were from earliest memory encouraged to be passionate. No woman was ever shamed or punished for masturbation; all people expressed tacit approval of nighttime sounds that indicated the achievement of ecstatic release via self-stimulation. This overt permission to be passionate extended to how females of all ages were expected, or even encouraged, to respond to the ubiquitous experience of corporal punishment. A spanked woman was never punished further for reacting strongly to her painful plight, unlike men. In fact, the more she yelled and squirmed while her buttocks were being belabored, the more her punisher might verbally support that reaction. So from earliest memory, a misbehaving female would be told, "That's right, dear, cry it out, don't hold back..." as she was responding to her painful medicine.

This encouragement to respond passionately to punishment meant that unlike the males (whose stoicism was encouraged to be manifest in holding still for their spankings), women were most often restrained to take their painful medicine. Thus, men would routinely have a cord secreted in a pocket in order to bind the hands of their penitent partners before beginning a spanking. And once feminine smallclothes were lowered or removed, men trapped the legs of their partners between their thighs so that no amount of wriggling could disturb the aim of the punisher on its clenching targets. But most often, women could expect to take their chastisements bent and bound over the standard culturally approved apparatus for female spanking, as discussed in great detail below.

Early in life, Absynthians tended to receive similar levels of corporal punishments. It seemed that normal hormonally-induced male mischief that might have warranted more spankings was offset by the intense cultural encouragement of female passion and expressiveness. This meant that females were more likely to sass back to authority or cop an attitude and earn a trip over a knee, a pattern which persisted throughout female adulthood. As a result, by the time the denizens of our odd little kingdom reached maturity, it was universally accepted that normal grown women were in need of routine and frequent marital discipline. And those few who remained unpartnered could be expected to publicly misbehave in ways that ensured that their own bottoms need not go unattended to in this particular way that all Absynthian females had grown accustomed to since earliest memory.

This deep conditioning and constant reinforcement meant that the local society had a deep consensus that men once grown were the bearers of the emotional steadiness and self-restraint that made for leadership on all levels. Women were cherished for their richness of emotion and lively expressions of passion, both generally but most especially erotically. Wise husbands knew to consult with their wives and be guided by them in matters emotional. But wise wives relied upon the exercise of authority by their husbands, especially including every woman's universally recognized need to be bent and bound and bared for frequent spankings. Local lore had it that 'a spanking a day keeps the bailiff away', since that worthy way was the official designate to resolve domestic problems.

All of these factors conspired to create an additional common peculiarity in Absynthian society that was much rarer in all of its surrounding neighbors. The females of the mountain kingdom were more likely than not to eroticize painful attention to their backsides, certainly by the time they were full-grown and pairing off. In fact, one of the ways for interested young women to solicit the attention of a man upon whom they had a crush was to intentionally misbehave in front of an authority. This behavior was so common that instructors came to call it 'the Absynthian Mating Dance'.

This is how it would go. Because of the cultural conviction that prompt and immediate corporal punishment to the part of each culprit's body perfectly designed to receive such instruction was the celestially ordained proper response to all misbehavior, all University and trade school classrooms were organized to facilitate spankings of students. The standard manner in which this was accomplished was the installation of a leather pad glued to the front upper edge of each teacher's desk centered in front of the rows of student desks. This half cylinder was two inches thick and three feet wide, more than ample to support even the largest hips of the generally healthy and fit student population. The leather bumper was generally rather polished in its central part, due no doubt to many hours of hundreds of discomfited miscreants squirming atop it as they endured the painful consequences of classroom misbehaviors.

When a student earned the disapproval of an instructor warranting a spanking, the culprit would be summoned forward by name, being summarily ordered to 'assume the position'. This was to be bent over the leather pad on the classroom side of the teacher's desk with hands grasping the far edge. Males would be expected to hold this stance by strength of will, while females would have their wrists tied to the edges of the teacher's chair to ensure the miscreant would maintain their posture throughout their punishment. Then skirts would be raised and pinned up for females, whereas male pantaloons would be lowered to bunch around knees.

Finally, smallclothes would be briskly (or lasciviously, depending on the whims of the teacher and attractiveness to him or her of the student) lowered until they were banded around the lower ends of the youthful thighs now revealed. Spankings were never delivered through clothing because it was believed that proper monitoring was necessary to ensure that only educational pain and not actual injury would be administered. And how could that outcome be assessed if the target was not clearly visible to the chastiser? Especially for female penitents, this arrangement of lowered pantalets bunched around their knees would negate any need for further bondage by effectively securing potentially kicking legs in place.

Then the teacher administering the punishment would select an implement and prescribe a dose of painful medicine. Standard teachers' desks had a hook on each side from which hung paddles, a leather one on the left and a wooden one on the right. These devices were widely distributed throughout the kingdom, and consisted of oval business ends the size of a large man's hand tapering down to round wooden handles eight inches long. The strictest teachers chose to have a hundred holes drilled in each of their paddles, which enabled trapped air to flow through the device so that atmospheric molecules would not in any way cushion the impact between punishing leather or wood and tender buttock flesh.

Classroom spankings were doled out in doses of a hundred swats per buttock. Aliquots were prescribed based on the severity of the infraction, such that talking in class would be a single century, failing to do homework a double, and talking back to the teacher a triple. Students generally started out their spanking with legs pressed tight together in a vain attempt to restrict the private regions between them from classroom display. But inevitably, within a dozen or two brisk encounters between punishing wood or leather and rapidly reddening skin, such concerns would be hijacked away. Miscreant minds would then be intensely focused on the painful intersection of implement and target of chastisement, where all concentration would remain throughout the course of the spanking. Thus, youthful reproductive equipment, including its state of arousal, would be prominently displayed between clenching and trembling bottom cheeks for all to see.

And this was where the mating dance was enacted. When young women openly misbehaved, usually by talking back in order to earn the longest spanking possible, all involved knew that the real purpose of the trip over the desk was a sexual display. For in Absynthia, women who became aroused in the course of their regular punishments were deemed to be particularly desirable as partners. And so in the final years of education as young people were pairing off, teachers cheerfully participated in the competitive display of mature female backsides for the elucidation and inspection of desirable local swains.

And the young men, on the other hand, would at times 'volunteer' for their version of erotic display by misbehaving. In their case, it was by showing off a cute manly rear end that barely wriggled while enduring treatment that every female avidly observing knew would have her shouting and flagrantly displaying her charms. Of course, a peep at a substantial ball sac between those clenching moons could not hurt the case of the young man, though his cock was usually not on display. The exception to this rule would be gay youth. They behaved much as the females did, including requiring restraint and flagrantly demonstrating (though by erection rather than engorgement and lubrication) arousal from their plight just as Absynthian women. And their intended gay male audience could be counted on to find a way to get closer to sissies who put on the best shows.

All of this flirtation culminated in the final year of compulsory education for Absynthian youth, so it was the last time when all of the local young people would have regular contact with each other. All of the boys, of course, would be undergoing basic military training the summer after graduating upper school. There they would be inducted into the militia units, they would do drills one week end a month for the next twenty years. This afforded the kingdom a well-trained army of over a million men instantaneously available in the rare cases when need arose.

The cultural celebration of sexuality of all forms had a few iron-clad limitations drilled into all Absynthians in their required catechism from earliest memory. "Love as Thou Wouldst" was very firmly taught to imply overt willingness on the part of all involved in any erotic act. That meant that rape was considered a capital crime, and those convicted of it were summarily executed. The Priests and Priestesses of the Holy God were adamant about this, that there was no place in civil society for those who would force sex upon an unwilling other. Before Absynthians came of age, there was tacit encouragement to release sexual energy through masturbation. And after coming of age, as we will see there were ample opportunities provided in the venues of public punishment for any sexually starved citizen to get his or her needs met.