She may be surprised by how much her salmiakki supply is at risk when faced with Dutch colleagues. We eat a lot of licorice here, and 'salmiak drop' is just one more flavour to us.

>In those days, it wouldn't have been "the government" as we understand
>it today so much as the local gentry—for instance, if Victor and
>his team went and dealt with, say, a boggart infestation of the
>vineyards in Champagne, Remilia would have expected them to be paid by
>the King of Navarre (whose title, oddly, was coterminous with the
>county of Champagne in the 13th century, despite the fact that
>Champagne province was nowhere near Navarre, which is in Basque
>country), not directly by the vintners themselves. The fact that it
>generally was the latter and not the former gives the arrangement an
>unpleasant whiff of extortion to Remilia's (relatively) more modern
>sensibilities.

An understandable but mistaken understanding of medieval era politics. The king may've had a lot to say about things, but only as long as he's there. Something like a crew of monster hunters would, in fact, be hired by the local lord or by the baron.

If the king is directly hiring a monster hunting crew and he's not the liege lord of the village something has gone drastically wrong and he's not hiring a crew of monster hunters, he's acquiring monster hunting expertise for his army because his liege men can't handle the situation themselves and need to call upon their lord for support.

Also keep in mind that for a considerable length of time the English crown held Normandy and Aquitaine in fief, and the Netherlands as a region have been part of the Habsburg dynasty for centuries, first the Spanish branch and then the Austrian branch.

Nations as a conceptual thing more or less post date the medieval era here in Europe, during the medieval era there was certainly a king of the Franks, or the English, or the Spaniards, but loyalty was in the end not given to the crown, but towards the one bearing that crown.

>(I have always loved that little detail about both The Addams
>Family and The Munsters—the fact that the "monsters"
>on both shows are the best people in their settings.

Very good parents too. Sure, they were weird, but in general good people.