The Book of Schemes

The Book of Schemes is the official anthology of the national mythology of Flandre as approved by the Flandrean Council of Exarchs. The myths included within are, of course, only a subset of all of the myths of the Flandrean people, and many various other anthologies may be found that include the so-called deuterocanonical myths. The Book of Schemes, however, is the product of centuries of scholarly work to create an anthology that would most fully and faithfully reflect the national consciousness of Flandre.

To this end, its contents have been carefully selected to maximize applicability over important topics of national interest using a lean subset of all Flandrean mythology. Furthering this goal, scholars have spent centuries fitting linguistic ambiguities into the official translations. As the inimitable Dr. Stafford observed, this creates not only a common mytho-cultural language by enculturing all Flandreans with the same set of common narratives, but also, by shaping the problems that will be encountered in interpreting the text, a common set of conceptual categories through which the great questions of human culture are approached.

None of this, though, so faithfully captures the Flandrean spirit as the fact that every officially-sanctioned copy of the Book of Schemes is booby-trapped. Despite this (or, more likely, because of this), it is a standard part of the primary school curriculum. Since the middle of the century, criticism of the use of official copies of the Book of Schemes has drawn comparisons to X-treme lecturing. The Council of Exarchs denies the comparison as libelous and inaccurate and invites any skeptics to read the "Myth of the Two Swans", specifically in the official translation. For example, the attentive reader may recognize parallels between "Flan and the Titan of the Woods" and Flandre's actions during the Roerbach Incident.

Despite its weaponization as a national resource for contingency plans, the renditions of myths in the Book of Schemes are still impressive literary works in their own right. Their creation myth is a grand epic relating the rise and fall of Flan, their patron deity. According to this myth, the existence of the world is the result of Flan's contingency plan in case of nonexistence, which he prepares so expertly that it executes before he is born. Extended quotations from this section of the myth were used in "Origination", the second track of Sneezing on the King Eternal's 961 album Iurezza to critical acclaim. Its reception was especially favorable in Flandre, where it was covered by The Lunchtime Fallacy at the coronation of the High Exarch Minor in 990. That The Lunchtime Fallacy was allowed to leave in one piece after crashing the Flandrean coronation is a testament to the enduring power of this song.