Since my fic is being bandied about as an example here, I thought
I'd point out that when writing Made of Stone, I didn't consider
the monarchy thing at all.  I mentioned it once, but that was only
to stick in a Blackadder joke.  Made of Stone was about utopias,
how good they truly are, and how we perceive them to be.  So many
people have called Crystal Tokyo a utopia.  Certainly if I *did*
get thrown there from the twentieth century, it'd look pretty
damn perfect to me.

Utopias make me uncomfortable.  I like flaws.  They remind me of
humanity.  However, it was pointed out to me by one of my more
vociferous prereaders that Sean is trying to change something 
that no one else wants changed.

I didn't expand on CT as much in this fic because it was about
Hotaru, and Sean's relationship to her.  However, it's not an evil
place.  The Sean of MoS has a *major* chip on his shoulder, and
I think if he lived in a democratic utopia, he'd feel the same way.

Anyway, just one author's opinion.

--Sean Gaffney
--semi-fictional, and more different from Sean in MoS than you'd think...