The pursuit of my life - poor though it may be counted - included fulfillment of my father's wishes. That this fulfillment overwhelmed what I had been and what I became, I cannot deny. Nor do I claim that I mastered my pursuit with especial skill.

On returning to Elsinore, I found that death is not so momentous a matter to most of the world. It is rote, it is familiar, and so to die is to be quickly forgotten, your life the whispering of a memory that cannot linger long. What, then, is the value of engagement? Why maintain such struggles when they come so soon to naught? Aside from my father's mandate, there was no solidity to be found, and there was nothing left to craft life for.