Welcome to Community & Code,
a show where we talk to the
humans behind the commits.
I'm here today with a very special guest,
a first for this show,
a first for me personally.
Welcome to the show, Her Majesty,
the Queen of Ledonia.
Welcome to the show, Your Majesty.
Thank you.
I'm happy to be here.
So I'm going to tell the
story of how this
conversation came to be.
And then for myself and
anyone watching or listening,
I will ask you to give sort
of the elevator pitch of
your journey to Ladonia and
what your sort of elevator pitch is.
So I...
was looking at the attendees
list for WordCamp US,
like you do when you work
at a company who
particularly is interested in, like,
making technical
partnerships and relationship, like,
build relationships with
agencies and things,
and I happened to notice
somebody in the attendees list,
Queen Carolyn of Ladonia, and I was like,
that's weird.
Is there a queen coming to WordCamp US?
And it has you in your crown.
And I was like, okay, what is this link?
And I went to ladonia.org
and that sent me down a
very long rabbit hole of...
there was a period of
reading through things
where I thought that, like,
I was in an alternate reality, like,
I wasn't sure what was happening,
and I had to go to ChatGBT
and sort of contextualize it for me, like,
what am I looking at?
And then ChatGBT told me that you, in fact,
work at Yoast.
And I was like, well, actually,
it didn't actually say that
you worked at Yoast.
I found that out later when
I did a search.
because it said that you
were an SEO expert, and I'm like, oh,
that kind of makes sense,
but also now I have even more questions.
So, first of all,
for those of us who may not
know that Ladonia exists,
what is a Ladonia,
and how did you come to be its queen?
So many, so many questions there.
Yeah.
Right.
So Ledonia is a micronation.
A micronation is the
official definition is a self-declared,
self-declared sovereign entity that, well,
an entity that claims sovereignty.
So basically it's like a country,
but it's very tiny and none
of the big real countries exist.
Acknowledge that we exist kind of thing.
So if you've heard of Sealand,
which is on a abandoned Air
Force sea platform off the
coast of England, they are a micronation.
I've met Prince Michael.
Nice guy.
Melosia is in Nevada in the U.S.,
another micronation that
you may or may not have heard of.
Where is that located?
Outside of Reno.
I must have driven by it.
I mean, I've made that trek.
I don't know.
I don't know if you've driven by it.
I feel like it's a four-hour
drive away from Reno.
So very far outside of Reno.
Yeah, it's not close.
There's a new micronation in the U.S.
that a lot of people have
heard of called Slojamistan,
which is named exactly for
the reasons that you think it was.
Then there's hundreds all over the place,
but there's a few that are
larger than others.
Ladonia is one of the larger ones.
It declared independence
from Sweden in nineteen
ninety-six after fifteen,
sixteen years of court
battles over these
sculptures that an artist
was making on the beach.
After a decade and a half of
fighting back and forth and
going all the way up to the
Swedish Supreme Court,
What eventually happened was
Sweden was unable to force
him to tear down or to
effectuate the tearing down
of the sculptures.
They're still there, by the way.
And he had started building
those in nineteen eighty.
So he and his lawyers and a
group of interested parties
got together and said, you know what?
If if Sweden can't implement
and enforce their laws on this land,
I don't think it's actually their land.
So they declared the land on
which these artworks sat an
independent country and
thus began Ladonia.
Because it was like
logistically difficult to
send a team or expensive to
send a team out there to tear stuff down?
No, no.
So they could.
They just didn't.
They just they just didn't
because he kept fighting.
He kept fighting the orders in court.
So one of the first I think I think the
one of the foundational
concepts we need to
understand as Americans is
that they don't have the
same kind of private
property laws in Sweden
that they have in the U S so on open land,
like nature reserve type stuff, you can't,
you can't tell people they
can't walk on it.
You can't,
you can't shoot people off of it.
You certainly can't shoot
them if they're on your land.
Um, like that stuff's not a thing.
So he was, um,
he was building these sculptures,
the first thing that the
landowners tried to do was
say that it was an
illegally or improperly permitted house.
Clearly, it's not a house,
so that argument fell flat.
Then they tried to fine him
for obstructing the public way.
Also,
It's really hard to get to.
It's not impossible to get to.
We get like forty thousand
hikers every year,
probably more than actually.
So it's not an impossible hike,
but it is you have to go
there on purpose.
There's no such thing as
obstructing the public way.
You're going there.
You're going there on purpose.
And that's.
So that also fell flat.
I forget what they actually
successfully fined him for,
but it was a civil complaint.
It wasn't a criminal complaint.
He was acquitted of all the
criminal charges.
The fine he ended up getting
was basically like a thousand US dollars.
which is kind of a slap on the wrist,
right?
At one point they did send a
wrecker via water to steal
one of the sculptures.
There was a smaller
sculpture that was capable
of being extracted.
It was like a cement.
It was supposed to be the
navel of the world, Amphalos.
they were going to take it
and put it in a museum but
they they broke it in the
process but they sent a
wrecker out and they tried
to steal it and it's been
set on fire before like and
they've and they've sent
out firefighters to put out
the fire which is baffling
um so it's not impossible
to get their people go out
there all the time they
could have they could have
torn it down if they wanted
to but they didn't so
Um, anyway, that's how,
that's how that was the, the, the,
the foundation effectively of Latonia.
It started out.
So in, there wasn't a lot of internet, um,
within the first year they
had a little over a thousand.
people in the area that
wanted to be citizens.
So at that point,
they proposed and ratified
a constitution.
They elected a queen.
The form of government they
decided on was a constitutional monarchy.
So we had a queen and we had
a president at the time.
I was not the first queen.
I'm actually the second queen.
And shortly thereafter,
They had a minister who was
very good with internet stuff.
That was how the internet
presence started.
Once the internet presence was established,
though,
interest and awareness of it
really kind of took off.
We started getting tons and
tons of applications from all over.
There was a big scandal
where there were like six
thousand Pakistanis that
wanted to want to sign up
for citizenship.
They had to shut down all
the forms because they
didn't understand that it
wasn't a place that they could come live.
That made the BBC,
that made a whole bunch of like CNN.
It was all over the news.
That was also very helpful
in terms of spreading awareness.
But that's that's essentially.
How I became aware of Ledonia,
I became aware of it in.
So I in nineteen ninety four,
I was involved in
co-founding an Internet service provider.
So and, you know,
it wasn't really there
wasn't really a lot of Web
browsing back then because
the Web wasn't public until
April of ninety five.
But I was I was there at the beginning.
So I was.
I was on the computer a lot.
I did a lot of tech support.
I was sitting around.
I had two T-ones.
I was all over the internet all the time.
Yeah.
So our company was mentioned,
or we had a little blurb about us in...
an issue of Wired,
and it was the same issue
that Sealand was in.
And that sort of sent me
down the rabbit hole of
micronations because I
started researching Sealand.
That's how I found Ledonia.
Ledonia said that they were
looking for people to help
build their government and
design their government.
And I was in political
science at Purdue at the time.
And I said, why?
This sounds like something I might enjoy.
I apply for citizenship.
So the the citizenship
application was actually really long.
And part of it was you had
to contribute your creativity.
So being the overachiever that I am,
I wrote this like twenty
page business case on why
Ledonia should annex Gary, Indiana,
all the wonderful benefits of Gary,
Indiana.
And then I researched the
the political pathway of
to getting Indiana to
release Gary to a foreign
country and then have the
federal government approve
that divestiture.
Anyway, so I turned that in.
They wrote back to me and said,
we would love to have you as a citizen,
by the way.
We loved your contribution.
Would you like to be a cabinet minister?
And naturally, I said, absolutely,
I'd love to be a cabinet minister.
Let's do this.
So that was how I joined.
And I joined,
I think it was official in
ninety eight ninety nine.
That explains something because, well,
what is your I think that I
know because I remember
looking at it on the list.
But but for everyone else,
what is your cabinet title
or what was your cabinet title?
My cabinet title,
I was the minister of
customizations and Gary.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
I was, uh,
I have a friend named Gary and I
was very confused by this as well.
And I said,
but she's the minister of
customizations and Gary.
So I guess she's your minister.
And he's like,
and he decided that that
meant that he should start
a Gary newsletter.
Um, he could absolutely have a great,
he should become a citizen
and he could be, he, I could,
I could give him.
He could be my successor in
the ministry of Gary.
That's an interesting and enticing idea.
I'll have to let him know.
So, so yeah.
That's how I,
that's how I came to Latonia.
I was there for eleven years
before there was the
constitutional crisis that
put me on the throne.
The queen that we had,
we say that she disappeared.
of didn't want to play
anymore um she did just she
fell off the face of the
mat wouldn't return phone
calls um the constitution
says though that the
cabinet with a super
majority vote can um
abdicate in absentia uh the
queen and that was in place
before this happened oh
yeah that was um that was
in the part of the original
constitution that was ratified in
So obviously folks were
thinking about the possibility of like,
yeah,
if somebody just kind of falls off
the map, then.
Falls off the map or like
goes crazy with power.
There has to be there.
You always have to kind of
anticipate that something
is going to go pear shaped
and you're going to have to
get rid of somebody against their will.
Not everybody is going to be
a nice person all the time.
We'd already had situations
where there were presidents
that have been bullied out
of office before their time.
Nothing requiring a forcing
of them out of office though.
It was more of a,
you can go by the stairs or
you can go by the window, your choice,
and they took the stairs.
The queen though,
She just sort of vanished.
So the cabinet voted her off
the throne and that made
her heirs ineligible as well,
which created a vacancy.
The constitution says when
there's a vacancy on the
throne and no eligible heirs,
they take nominations from
the cabinet and the only
The only people that can be
nominated are citizens who are also women,
because we only have queens in Ledonia.
Men are not allowed to take the throne.
So I was nominated.
There were five other
candidates nominated.
One of which, though, was Angelina Jolie,
and that doesn't really count.
So I successfully petitioned
to have her removed from
the ballot on the grounds
if she's not already a citizen.
So I didn't think that would be fair.
Then there was an election.
The voting lasted for two weeks,
longest two weeks of my life.
And then I won.
Were you looking forward to being queen?
Were you kind of apprehensive?
What does that two weeks look like?
was it was weird um and I
was I was nervous and I
remember asking my husband
I'm like this is weird I
should not do this he goes
it's weird but why not like
how how often does this how
often does someone approach
you and say here would you
like to wear a tiara yes um
I'm like, well, I mean,
but it's I might have to do
stuff like go places and do
stuff because it'll be fun.
It'll be fine.
We'll do this.
But I was I was nervous and I was,
you know, because I don't like to lose.
Even if I didn't want to do
something in the first place,
I don't want to lose.
That's not fun.
And because they were all in Europe,
a lot of the voting was.
changed and happened in the
middle of the night for me
so I would spend a lot of
nights awake refreshing
things like you do yep as one does yeah
And, and I mean, like you mentioned, like,
uh, it's, it's not just you,
it's like your,
your husband's on the website,
your daughter's on the website,
your daughter is actively doing stuff.
Uh, as far as I know, like, this is,
this is, this is it.
This is like your queen for life.
Do you anticipate like
voluntarily abdicating at
some point in the future?
Or do you, are you full on in it?
Like, is this, how, how does that, like,
what does the math of that look like?
Um,
I don't anticipate at this
juncture abdicating for any reason.
But my daughter, she's got a job.
She's busy with her stuff.
And this is a lot of work.
I think part of the reason
it's so much work is
because I do most of the
internet-y parts of it.
And there's a lot that I
probably could pass off to other people,
but I just don't because I
need to protect it.
Um, but it,
it is a lot of work and it's not cheap.
I, uh,
it would be irresponsible to use
country money to, you know,
to handle travel or to
handle any of the other expenses.
So, um,
I have to be able to fund it myself.
I just don't know.
I wouldn't want to dump that
on her before she's ready
or interested in it.
And I, um, I'm still capable of doing it,
so I'm going to continue.
continue running the show
until I can't run the show anymore.
But you also, uh, you also have,
have a normal job, uh, inside, uh,
ostensibly the WordPress or
greater web industry.
Uh, how does,
so it sounds like kind of
you're working two jobs.
Like you have, you have your,
you have your day job and
then you ha you put on your
crown and then you have your,
your queenly duties.
Yeah, I mean,
I actually think I probably
have more than two jobs at this point.
But it is a lot of work on
the upside because everything I do,
real job and queen job,
are internet based.
I can do them wherever, whenever.
So, you know,
I'm doing things off my phone.
I'm doing things off my laptop.
I do a lot of international flights,
which gives me a lot of, you know,
seven hour chunks of time to
do what I need to do um and
it's uh you know you use
the technology to make it
work like I've got I've got
my phone system set up so that it can
It changes the icon based on
which phone number is being
called so I know how to answer the phone,
those kinds of things.
And then the emails and
ChatGPT has been great, actually,
because the translations
are so much better than they were before.
So I'm able to clear the
inbox much quicker than before.
But yeah, I work all the time.
I'm at my computer at six in the morning.
I'm lucky if I go to bed at nine.
And by go to bed,
I mean get off the computer
because it's pretty much up
and then straight to the
bed kind of thing.
It's busy.
Yeah.
Obviously...
You could have entered in
your information in the
attendee registration form
as your normal Yoast
position occupying self.
Are you attending as like,
will you be wearing a crown?
Like,
are you attending as royalty or you
just wanted to sort of do more to,
you mentioned earlier about
trying to get the algorithm
to sort of recognize you as
the Queen of Ledonia.
Was it an... Well,
the algorithm already
recognizes me as the Queen of Ledonia.
That's not an issue.
You type in who is the Queen of Ledonia,
there's a picture of me.
So I'm not,
that part I'm not worried about.
I was looking at, I...
I knew that I was going to
be going on behalf of Yoast anyway.
I assumed that they would be
buying me a ticket.
But when I was poking around,
I noticed that there was a
list of all the attendees.
And I wasn't sure if that
was everyone or just a select few.
And there was a link.
And I said, well,
I could use some more
backlinks to Ledonia.
I think I have an account here.
Let me just, you know, how much is it?
A hundred bucks.
I can do a hundred bucks.
Um,
so it was more a test to see if the
link would show up.
And then I figured let's roll with it.
It'll be fun.
So do you have a ticket as, as, uh,
as your Yoast self?
I don't know if they went
ahead and got me one or not, actually.
Um,
they probably thought they didn't need to,
cause I already have, I already have one.
Um, I don't know.
I'll have to check.
Honestly, I just got back.
What's today?
Tuesday?
I got back two days ago from a conference.
I don't know what happened.
Conference season used to be in the autumn,
and it seems like
everything shifted to
summer because I've had
like six conferences in the
last two months.
So that conference is still
far enough ahead that I
haven't started thinking
that hard about it yet.
Yeah.
Wow.
It's we're, we're just,
we're ramping up to, to, to getting,
so I'm thinking about it a lot.
Um, but, uh,
but I've been thinking about
it a lot since, uh, since,
since I discovered Ledonia.
So as a citizen, uh, so obviously there's,
there's a website and the website, uh,
talks about like the
history and the story that you told about,
uh, this,
the sculptures and the legal
battles and all of that
sort of stuff and has a
list of all the ministries
and ministers of which
there are many and that's
another thing that ChatGBT
clued me in on because I
hadn't visited that page
organically and it's like, yeah,
there's lots of ministries
with silly names.
I'm like, there are?
And that came from the
Wikipedia training data.
Yeah.
Well,
it's funny because it was wrong about
the specifics that it gave
me because it said that
there are things like
Minister of Silly Walks and
Duke of something or other.
And I was like, no,
there's not either of those things.
There was.
There was a Minister of Silly Walks.
What happened to that person?
So maybe it's old data.
It is old data.
So I do know that ChatGPT
right now is operating on a
training set that is only up through
I think June of twenty four.
That being said,
I know that our Wikipedia
article is incredibly
difficult to keep correct
because there's an editor
who has a burr under his
saddle about Ledonia in
general and reverts all of
the changes that I try to submit.
OK.
I imagined a conversation like,
don't you know who I am?
But we don't know.
The, yeah, that's usually, you don't know,
you can't prove this.
And then, well,
we don't like first party sources.
Right, exactly.
That would be the counter
argument to that.
Yeah,
so as anybody can apply for citizenship,
and if you give a donation,
you can have a title.
Are there benefits of,
besides sort of being part of this
kind of global experiment in
governance to being a citizen?
What is your pitch to your subjects?
Well, so the goal of
pursuing and keeping LaDonia
going even after our founder passed away,
unfortunately,
in October of twenty one is
to raise funds and go out
and actually do the
maintenance on the artworks.
So one of the
I don't spend a great deal
of time entertaining the subjects.
I actually focus most of my
time on the legal
wranglings around making
sure that we have the
the continued access and
right to maintain the artworks,
because they are made of driftwood,
they will, Nemes especially,
will collapse into the sea
if we're not out there repairing it.
There's so many visitors that come,
there's nails sticking out everywhere.
You know, it's really,
it's a struggle to keep the
artwork from falling apart.
We want to keep it going to
preserve Lars's legacy.
um because that was his
life's work um and there
are people that are trying
to stop us from doing that
um so it's a that there's a
lot of there's a lot of
really fun like internet
stuff that I had to do to
to protect things too um
right after he died uh he had a
a group that claimed his estate,
and they wanted me to just
turn over everything belonging to Ledonia,
including the websites and
the domain names and the bank accounts.
And I'm like, no.
Like, oh, well, we're running it now.
I'm like, yeah, but you're not,
because it wasn't a
singular thing that could
any one person own copyright over.
So...
you didn't inherit it and it's not yours.
I'm like, oh,
but we're going to set up
this foundation so that we
can raise money.
And when people Google NIMAS,
we want them to come to our page.
I'm like, aha.
I see where this is going.
No, you can't have it.
So I immediately lawyered up
and I secured trademarks
for Ledonia in Sweden and the EU.
And then I registered all
the domains that I needed
to so that they would not
have a successful UDRP.
And they tried to set up
their competing website and
it did not do well because
I have all of the SEO authority for it.
So now is a good time.
Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like a lot of... I mean,
it harkens back to an early
day of the internet when
things were kind of more...
Less serious and more fun.
I remember in college,
I had stumbled across a
website for the Universal
Life Church where you could
just click a few buttons
and fill out a form and
become an ordained minister
of the Universal Life Church.
And I was like, this is cool.
I've got a printer.
Let's become priests.
I have a friend who is a
baron of Ladonia and also
an ordained minister in the
Universal Life Church.
I don't know where my, like,
minister paperwork has gone.
It's disappeared since for, I don't know,
twenty-plus years ago.
You should find it,
and then for your title, you should use,
like,
Reverend Father or something like that.
Um, but yeah, I mean, this is,
this is very, very much in that vein.
And I remember like one of
the things as I was, um, as I was, uh,
sharing this experience, uh,
of discovering Ledonia with
a couple of friends of mine, um,
my friend Alison was saying that like,
it felt like it felt really not,
not her words, but it's it, the,
the vibe that I got was
that it sort of felt cozy.
Like, this is kind of the thing that like,
this was her words like this
is what my brain needed for
like right now for like
things that are happening
is like like this this I
can like handle like
everything else maybe not
but this this is nice I
like this so I think I
think the attraction for a
lot of people is they're
when you're born in a
country you don't really
get the opportunity to not
want to be from that country like
you're stuck there.
There's an accident of birth.
You're stuck with it.
This is something that everyone that,
that people actively choose,
they seek it out and it's,
you know,
we're not trying to tell you how
to live your life.
We're not,
we're not extracting taxes from you.
It's very, it's very much,
I'm doing this because I want to,
not because I'm obligated to.
And I think people, people like that.
There are,
there are title collectors who
are out there just to, you know,
they want to be a Lord or a lady,
or they want to be a Duchess,
those kinds of things.
But there's also people who
just want a piece of paper
that says they're part of
something that they want to
be part of rather than,
they're part of,
every time there's an election in the US,
we will get the losing side
flooding to Latonia,
which is interesting
because we end up with a
lot of citizens with very
conflicting views,
but they all kind of want the same thing,
which is to be able to say
that they're not from here.
And they want a piece of
paper that shows that.
And we do really stress and fight for,
freedom of expression and
freedom of speech.
And that was really kind of
what we were founded on.
So we do things like we've
done fundraisers to support some of our,
we have a minister who is
part of that protest group
that protests topless all over the place.
She goes to those things.
And we've run GoFundMes and
fundraisers for her to send
her to some of these protests,
maybe to bail her out once in a while,
that kind of stuff.
So I think people are attracted to that.
I think we do have a pretty
large LGBT community
uh contingent and I know
that particularly for our
trans friends they like
having this this
certificate that shows them
as they want to be um
without having to go
through all sorts of hoops
and illegal and expensive
illegal things to get it
done so I I think that
that's something that's
attractive to to people
that are looking for um an
alternate nationality a
chosen nationality you know
And we do have, we try to do things.
We've not been as successful
in the small local get
togethers as I would have hoped,
but we have done some.
We've done some ennoblement
ceremonies in Las Vegas.
That was a lot of fun.
Everybody was up.
We, you know, went into the,
one time we did it at the,
in the lobby at the, was it the Bellagio?
knows that the wind, um,
with all the trees and the
lights and it was very
pretty and people took
pictures and it was just,
it was a good time.
So we try to, we try to do fun things.
Um, what, uh, what is, um, what is, uh, uh,
you talked a little bit about,
about like the legal stuff.
Um, what other sort of, um,
guess queenly duties uh like
like what is what is what
is the day in the life of a
queen kind of look at like
I don't probably will it is
unlikely that I will speak
to a queen again unless I I
guess I I guess that's
maybe I shouldn't I
shouldn't set myself up for
failure well I mean I I
would imagine that what I
do is radically different
from what a normal
A normal queen,
much less a normal queen regnant,
would do.
Most queens in the universe
these days are consorts.
So they're the wife of the king.
Because we don't have kings,
I'm the head honcho.
So I'm like Queen Elizabeth was.
I'm at the top of the pile.
But I do a lot of, I would say,
the administrative tasks that...
Normal monarchs don't do.
It's almost more like the
leader of a nonprofit or a
company or an organization.
We are a nonprofit.
So we have,
I established a nonprofit
organization in the US to
keep the funds and the
activities separate from my
personal business.
So we have the Ladonia
Foundation and actually we just got our,
I just got my IRS letter.
never been so happy to get
an IRS letter in my entire life.
Yesterday,
I'm always afraid when I open
them that I'm like, oh, this one's good.
We have been granted
official recognition from
the federal government as a
public charity.
So we're a
so we're we're for reals in
terms of being a legitimate
charity donations uh
donations to be a noble are
tax deductible now if
you're a u.s citizen so all
of that is is very good but
I um so I do a lot of I
look over the applications
for citizenship I help them
run background checks on
people just to make sure
that they're not you know
you don't you don't want
people infiltrating the
group that have bad
intentions or people that
might be looking just to
get a copy of something
official so that they can
counterfeit it and sell it.
At one point we saw people
and it was some Chinese
diploma mill selling
selling for lots of money,
diplomas from Ladonia University.
And that was a joke that
someone like mocked up a
certificate and put it on
the internet years ago.
And they saw it like, oh,
this must be real.
And they started counterfeiting them.
So you really kind of have
to keep an eye out for people.
There's,
especially in certain developing areas,
there are people that
will present access or
membership in Ledonia as a
means of entering Europe or
being allowed to work in Europe.
And it's not those things.
And I don't want anyone to
be taken advantage of.
So we do try to make sure
that we're properly vetting
the applicants.
So I do that.
I manage the websites.
I make sure that the hosting is secure.
I make sure that we're not
getting broken into or hacked.
I've fixed some hacks before.
When I first became queen,
I had to rebuild everything
and I rebuilt it in
WordPress because it was so hacked.
Oh, my God.
It was.
It was really bad.
And we were feeling the
repercussions of how bad
that hack was because they
were uploading the JPEGs
with the executables.
into the upload directory
and then triggering them.
So they, we were getting,
we had tons of backlinks, which was great,
but we had tons of
backlinks for all the wrong reasons.
So it was, that was a mess.
And then I had to develop,
I developed the online
application system so that
we could keep track of all
the citizenship records online.
Thanks.
Gravity forms.
Ledonia is powered by gravity forms.
Yeah.
Then I set up the shop and
we've got the souvenirs.
So I helped come up with,
things that we can sell on our shop.
Like, um, we've got,
we've got fridge magnets, um,
fridge magnets, flags, lapel pins,
metals.
We, uh,
this is my fifteenth year on the throne.
So we've got a new metal
that's we're offering.
And I don't know if you can tell,
but there's, there's like me on it.
Um, so we sell that in the shop too.
Just, it's, um,
It's like multiple
businesses because then I also have to,
I'll fly over to Sweden to
give tours to TV crews a
few times a year.
They'll call and they'll say, hey,
we're going to come with a crew.
We're going to do a
documentary for a Japanese TV show.
I'm like, cool.
When should we be there?
And I fly over and I do those things.
And I wear the tiara and I
hike through the woods,
all the fun stuff.
I hope you have just a ton
of frequent flyer miles.
I have so many frequent flyer miles.
It's not funny.
I'm from your one K.
Um, uh, yeah.
And so people make the track, like I, the,
the website says it's like
a. Two point two kilometer hike, uh,
to get there.
Uh,
I saw on the Herald that there are like
maybe signs, uh,
that are kept or that's
probably one of the things
that needs to be maintained
to sort of like allow or
make it easier for people to make that,
that hike.
We have to keep putting them
up because the, um,
there's rangers at the
in that area that will take
them down or they'll put up
signs that point the wrong direction.
That's malicious.
It is super malicious.
Then they had the audacity
to put up QR codes to donate,
but they get the donations.
It's, it's a constant struggle.
It's like, you know, you want,
you want the tourists and
you want their money,
but you don't want to let
us do the maintenance and,
but you're not doing the maintenance.
And it's yeah, it's been,
it's been an ongoing,
it's been a huge fight.
I I'm very friendly with my
lawyer in Sweden and we have a very
an unreasonably large
attorney's bill on a
monthly basis just dealing
with all of that stuff and
that's part of the reason
that we do we sell the
things and we accept the
donations is because in
addition to needing to fund
the maintenance we also
have to pay the lawyers to
be able to continue doing
that and really I mean I
suppose we could walk away
but I feel like I was
I was entrusted with the
care of this when they
elected me and I accepted
that responsibility so I
can't just walk away from
that responsibility.
I took on this job, I can't quit.
yeah in this conversation I
we've you've I've tried not
to myself uh use phrases
like real or normal or but
I've I've heard you say
this yeah no I mean because
I want to like give it the
the respect that it is but
it is but I've heard you
say those things and so
there is like this um it's it's
a level of tongue-in-cheekness,
but also it feels like, no,
we're still actually trying
to do the thing too.
It's like we're doing the
thing and we're self-aware
that we're like, it's not,
we're not a recognized nation,
but we're still going to do
this because it is a collective,
like it is still a group or
an organization that is
greater than it's some,
like it's a single thing.
It's a some collection of individuals.
So, I mean,
we really lean into the tongue
in cheek for a reason.
One of the reasons is if you
take yourself too seriously
and you present yourself as
a separatist group,
you will be treated like a
separatist group.
And what happens to separatist groups?
Bad, bad,
bad things happen to separatist groups.
So by maintaining a high level of humor,
we can
make ourselves,
we don't want to
inadvertently make
ourselves look like a
bigger threat than we are.
So that's, that's one thing.
Does that mean that one of
the things that I've, I learned,
you know,
in business,
I started in business at a
very young age and, you know,
political science going
through all everything,
everything is very arbitrary.
Yes, there are rules,
but why are there rules?
There's rules because
somebody made the rules and
they usually make the rules
to preserve the status quo
and protect what they, what they want.
So what is the function of
a nation state these days.
It used to be to provide protection.
It used to be to provide
services and whatnot for its residents.
But what kind of protection
are you really giving when
borders are porous now?
We're certainly not doing a
good job keeping invaders out.
Anybody can get missiles.
Like there's just,
there's so much going on.
I don't,
I don't entirely understand how
the nation state as we've
known it for the past, you know, however,
hundreds of years is going
to continue in its current
form other than just
through force and inertia.
It's, it's not,
I don't think it's
necessary to preserve all
of the borders exactly as
they are right now.
And that's another thing that I think,
makes it easier for people
in certain parts of the
world to be okay with the
idea of a new state because
their borders were only
established within their living memory.
Pakistan didn't exist, was it,
seventy five years ago?
Something like that.
There are people alive that
remember when Pakistan wasn't a thing.
There are people alive that
were born in the USSR.
They're, you know,
so they know that states
can come and go and borders
can be redrawn.
In the U.S., though,
nobody remembers the Revolutionary War.
You know, in England,
nobody remembers them not
being a country.
Nobody remembers Scotland being separate.
They say they do,
but there's no actual awareness of that.
So I think we could reasonably...
if we're successful,
demonstrate that we could
have new political
divisions and sections created,
hopefully without bloodshed.
Because really,
if you look at all of the
majority of prior
nation-making and state-making,
it's all involved a lot of
bloody revolution.
And I would like to think
that humanity has grown to
a point where we can have
conversations and reach
agreements about borders
and groupings and political
entities that doesn't involve bloodshed.
And that's really kind of
what I'm interested in
doing is how do we serve a
group of constituents that... Well,
group of constituents, that's redundant.
You know what I meant.
How do we serve our constituents
in a way that is useful to their lives,
but also have this be
recognized and acknowledged
by these greater
organizations that have
decided that they own everything.
And you can't get into the UN
because you have to be,
you have to be sponsored by
another state and none of
the other states, part of the,
part of the charter is
you're not going to violate
the territorial integrity
of any of the member states
and everybody's claimed all
of the land everywhere.
So you can't make a new
state because anyone who's
trying to make a new state
is violating the
territorial integrity of somebody,
you know, it's just, it's,
it's just all very arbitrary.
And I'm, I, I,
would personally like to see
if we can do anything to,
to move that a little bit,
because it's not, I don't know.
I don't,
I don't know that it's going to be
continue to be useful to
run the way it is right now.
I don't know that that got really deep.
Sorry.
Well, no, I think that that's, that's, I,
I love that there is equal parts
like satire and that level
of seriousness and levity.
It's very much like,
It's very much like, you know,
the Monty Python telling
the story of history or something,
you know?
Where, like, we're making fun,
but also we're making fun
of very real things.
And, like, you know,
the conversation... Like,
it's the scene where the
Anachro Commune with King, you know...
uh king arthur uh and and
the inaccurate communist
conversation which it's a
very real conversation but
it's a very hugely
ridiculous like like
surreal like this wouldn't
happen but it's but it like
it's bringing up very real
things and I think that
that's the perfect delivery
mechanism for like actual
sort of social or political
commentary is through humor um and i
Well, I was I was working on a book.
I wanted to explain like one
of the things I get a lot
personally is you're not
you're not a real queen.
Can't elect a queen.
You can have an elective monarchy.
Elective monarchies exist.
These things are not unheard
of in history and people
don't talk about it.
It's Belgium.
Right.
Who are the Belgians?
Are the Belgians a nationality?
Are they an ethnicity?
One of the things is you
can't have a country
because you don't have a
historical claim to a
cohesive group of people
that share a common culture, right?
There's no such thing as Belgians.
Belgians is a new thing.
And it was a new thing.
It's younger than the United States by,
I think, a hundred years.
There was no
There is no ethnic group of
people called Belgians.
There's like a bunch of
different states and they
were all part of either
France or Denmark or
Flanders and Germans.
And they're all like kind of
mishmashed in this little area.
And because they were trying
to get away from
you know, being tossed back and forth.
I think it was between
France and the Danes.
Now I'm spacing on some of the details.
They eventually decided to
try to make their own
country and they tried to do it twice.
The second time stuck.
They elected a king.
Was he always the king?
No, they elected him.
That was an election.
The Vatican is an absolute
monarchy and that monarch
is the Pope and he's
elected every time because
they're priests and they
don't have children,
but that's another story.
Mexico had an emperor and
the emperor was just
installed by Napoleon, I think.
Yeah,
it was one of the younger brothers of
the Habsburg Empire.
And then the U.S.
decided that we didn't want
a monarchy on North America,
on our continent,
so we gave a bunch of guns to them,
and I think to Benito Juarez, and he...
put emperor maximilian up
against a wall and killed
him um but anyway that's
another story there's a lot
there's a lot of things so
when when I get this
pushback like you can't you
can't do x because of y I
can think of historical
precedents where absolutely
I can and this is this
doesn't make it not real
this just makes it not
something you're used to
seeing so just because it's
something's not familiar to
you doesn't make it fake
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, thank you so much, Your Majesty,
for coming on my humble little show.
Do you have any sort of
parting thoughts or links
that you want to share or
anything that you would
like to say for anyone that
finds this podcast episode
or this video on the internets?
Oh, geez.
Well,
if you're interested in supporting us
and our maintenance of the
artworks in Sweden or
supporting our efforts to, you know,
just try to redefine what a
nation state is,
you can go to ledonia.org.
And that is our primary website.
You can make donations.
You can become a citizen if
you're interested in a noble title.
I think I can make that happen for you,
too.
It's pretty self-explanatory,
but if you have any questions,
we've got a phone number
that's on the website.
We've got email that's also
on the website.
Who answers the phone for LaDonia?
My secretary.
So, yeah, that's a long story.
That's a long story.
Anyway, um, so we do have,
we do have a phone number
if anyone wants to call.
Um, I'll be, I'll be at WordCamp.
So, uh,
you can probably find me at the
Yoast booth if you,
if you look hard enough.
I will not be wearing the
crown because you don't wear,
you don't wear diamonds in
the daytime for one thing.
And you also don't wear the, the,
the heavy duty jewelry when
you're not in white tie or
at a state event.
And this does not qualify as those things.
So I will not be wearing the, uh,
the big heavy hardware.
I am learning so much about
a Royal protocol.
Oh my gosh.
I have a protocol.
I have a protocol officer
who helps me pick wardrobes,
tells me what I need to wear when there's,
there's like, so I, I get a lot of, um,
awards.
I have a lot of orders and,
and metals that I've received from,
from other places.
And there's a protocol in
terms of what you wear in what position
in what combination based on
where you're going,
who's hosting and who
you're representing.
So he's got like, he's got like this,
this line,
Ikea line drawing basically of
a lady in a gown and be like, okay,
you wear this sash,
you wear it left to right
or right to left.
And then you wear
these pins and this location,
he colors it in for me.
So I have a color coded map
of what I'm supposed to
pack and where I'm supposed
to attach it to the dress.
So I have learned a great
deal through the course of
this adventure.
Well,
thanks again for your royal
benevolence and also for
coming on to my show.
And I'll see you in a month at WordCamp,
although that will have
already happened by the
time this episode comes out.
But yeah,
anybody who's watching or seeing
this can go to ladonia.org
and learn all the things
and go down the rabbit hole
that I went down.
And again,
thanks for coming on and we'll
see you on the internet.
Thanks for having me.