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I never promised everything here was going to be a joke. Or short.

Long ago there was a King, who lived in a castle and ruled a kingdom. The King was not an evil man, but he did like money, and as a result, he tended to be greedy. Sometimes, he’d ask his wife, the Queen, to make pancakes, and when she didn’t he’d whine and moan until she rolled her eyes and made pancakes. In that fashion, the King usually got his way.

In the kingdom, it came to pass that there was an onion farmer. This onion farmer loved onions (as onion farmers should), and, by virtue of his own design, loved to make all kinds of foods from them. Sometimes he would make onion cake, other times he would make onion souffle, other times again it would be onion casserole. But by far his best dish, his piece de resistance, was his onion soup. People for miles around would speak for long hours on the subject of how good the onion farmer’s soup was. It was astoundingly good, and consequently, the onion farmer was soon coaxed into inviting all kinds of people around for dinner, if for no other reason than they could have some of his famous soup.

Soon enough, then, the King heard about this onion farmer and how good his soup was. The King sent for him immediately, tasted the soup, and declared it was the best stuff he’d ever had. It was fit for a King, the King declared, and so he told the onion farmer right then and there that he’d hire him on the spot: the onion farmer would be the King’s official onion farmer– he’d grow and cook onions only for the King, he’d live on the castle grounds, and he’d live a life beyond his wildest dreams. The onion farmer was overjoyed at this prounouncement, with one reservation. The people in his province, he explained, had gotten quite used to his onion soup, and enjoyed it very much. He, being a humble and good man, wouldn’t deign to keep them from eating the soup they so enjoyed. He’d love to live with the King and benefit from his riches, but couldn’t leave the people of his former province without their soup.

Fine, said the King, who loved money. We’ll sell it to them. And so it came to be that the King started selling onion soup, and soon enough everyone in the Kingdom could enjoy the soup, not merely the King, or even just the people in the onion farmer’s former province. Soon, everyone was buying the soup everywhere. It was a bestseller at all the local grocery stores, it shot to number one on all the charts: the onion soup was a monster hit. And the King, loving money as he did, couldn’t stand to let a little thing not be a big one, and so slowly raised the price on the soup, little by little. Eventually, people were paying eighteen dollars and even more for just a single serving of the soup. Sometimes, they’d even got a bowl of soup that didn’t turn out so well, so that they paid eighteen bucks or more for just a few sips of soup.

Needless to say, the kingdom grew unhappy. They did like the soup, and did pay for it, but there was grumbling around that the price of soup was getting too high. The onion farmer, still a hardworking man, now paid beyond his wildest dreams, went to the King and asked why they had to charge so much for the soup, a soup that he’d originally shared with people for free. The King, loving money, explained that, well, of course the onion farmer got his share, but they also had to pay the cooks that helped him and the farmhands who dug up the onions. And they had to pay for the soup’s other ingredients, and there were material costs… The onion farmer agreed that certain things had to be paid for, but the actual cost of the soup didn’t add up to but four or five dollars. Well, said the King who loved money, of course I’m paid for my services as well. If it wasn’t for me, said the King, people would have never tasted your soup in the first place! People should appreciate the service I give them! The onion farmer nodded and went away, all the while wondering about this.

Of course something had to happen, and something did. One of the onion farmer’s cooks happened to glance at the onion farmer’s recipe one day, and it just so happened that this cook had a terrific memory. A memory so great that later that night, he went home and wrote down, perfectly, the soup’s recipe, and then went to show his wife what he’d seen. The next day, his wife took her usual trip to her aunt’s, and when there, shared the recipe with her cousin. The day after that, the cousin shared the recipe with her best friend, who happened to be a pretty good cook herself. And the day after that, the pretty good cook rounded up some ingredients, and made an attempt at making onion soup all on her own, and, lo and behold, she tasted it after making, and it tasted pretty good. She shared some with her neighbors, and they liked it so much that they got the recipe from her and made their own. And so on, and so forth, until pretty soon, everybody had the recipe, and pretty much everybody could make pretty good onion soup, pretty much for free.

Understandably, sales on onion soup fell off the charts. Why buy soup when you can make it for free? The King, who loved money very much, was livid. At first, he tried to trick the people. He took a picture of the onion farmer and put posters of it up everywhere, with a caption that asked why people were trying to steal the onion farmer’s soup (the onion farmer didn’t much care either way– he was just happy that his soup was reaching the people he made it for). He even paid one of the onion farmer’s more dim-witted cooks to go on movie theater commercials and talk about how people making soup was hurting his family. Well, not exactly how it was hurting his family, but how it was going to hurt his family if it continued. Well, at least it would hurt him. Well, maybe a little bit. Someday.

None of it worked, of course. The people weren’t idiots– they knew the only person who was really hurting from the soupmaking was the King, and that’s only because he wasn’t making nearly as much money as he used to. But the King cared very much about how much money he made, and soon, he started throwing people in jail. Those that made the most soup were convicted and arrested of theivery: the King claimed they had stolen soup from him by making their own. The people started to think he was crazy (how could making soup, something they’d been doing for years, be illegal?). And maybe the King was crazy, because he kept jailing people. He jailed an old lady, simply because her grandson had made soup in her basement. He jailed two people for letting their friend make soup in their house. He even threatened to jail one person for talking about how much he liked soup on his website.

All in all, the kingdom grew to be a pretty miserable place. Making soup was branded illegal, and people that did it were looked down upon and hounded by the King’s cronies. The King sat in his castle and whined and moaned, stopping only to find new people to jail and threaten. And the onion farmer, who only cared about getting his soup out to the people that loved it, wept, because great numbers of people were never able to taste his soup again.

Moral: What a terrible kingdom. Good thing we don’t live there.