Freshman Thomas Rydell had the time of his life in Evermore.
By lying about his age, he found that girls flocked to him. In this tropical paradise, where clothing was often optional, Thomas thought he was living the dream.
...but...
Despite all the girls he dated, no matter how wonderful those experiences might have been, Thomas eventually realized that the one girl he truly wanted was back home.
Chloe. Chloe Summers.
The girl who had been his best friend since they were six years old. The girl who had become his first real girlfriend.
...and the girl he had thrown away because he had terribly misunderstood her attempt to explain her boundaries, interpreting them instead as an attempt to control him.
For all the romantic adventures he enjoyed in Evermore, Thomas wasn't fulfilled. He knew he had to return home and patch things up with Chloe.
Except...Chloe had moved on.
Tommy wasn't prepared for that.
Chloe had found someone better. Someone who didn't regard her boundaries as limitations. Someone who loved her in ways Tommy simply hadn't been prepared to.
As the years passed, Tommy and Chloe gradually repaired their friendship. Tommy eventually dated again, but he would always rue the love he had lost.
He came to believe that he had lost Chloe because he had been undisciplined and had abandoned his moral judgment. That conviction would shape his thinking and guide his future choices, eventually carrying him all the way to the presidency of the Republic of Cascadia.
Tommy billed himself as Cascadia's moral guardian, a leader who would restore the Republic's legitimacy by restoring its conscience.
For a while, it worked.
For a while, Tommy Rydell was the most popular leader in the world.
Yet beneath Cascadia's apparent prosperity and stability, its political institutions had become increasingly dependent on Tommy's personal authority. The Republic was far more fragile than either its citizens or its president cared to admit.
However, Tommy eventually learned that being the "Father Who Knows Best" doesn't necessarily mean knowing what is best in every situation. Nor does it mean knowing what is best for everyone- or that everyone will always agree with your judgment.
His breaking point came with the creation of the Electoral Accountability System (EAS), under which prospective candidates for public office throughout Cascadia would have to undergo an evaluation and receive approval before they could run.
Marketed as a means of ensuring that Cascadia would "never again fall to tyranny and demagogues," the EAS was accused by Tommy's opponents of being a mechanism for gaming elections and excluding political opposition.
Initially, however, the system appeared to work as advertised. Only fringe candidates were denied access to the ballot, and few voters seemed particularly concerned.
But Tommy's opponents understood the danger. They knew that, sooner or later, the dam would break.
That day came when the EAS denied approval to the man who would have been Tommy's principal opponent in the 2010 presidential election.
Suddenly, some 40% of the electorate discovered that their preferred candidate would not be permitted to run.
The opposition initially turned to the courts. But by then, the judiciary had become so thoroughly stacked with Tommy's loyalists that few judges dared rule against him.
So the opposition took to the streets.
Demonstrations became riots, and no matter how Tommy responded, the unrest only grew worse. His attempts to restore order increasingly reinforced the very accusations that had brought his opponents into the streets.
By the end of 2011, Tommy Rydell had resigned in disgrace.
By 2012, the Republic of Cascadia had collapsed, fragmenting into several hundred petty republics in a desperate scramble to restore stability.
Yet none of those successor states would ever collectively recover the power, influence or capabilities that Cascadia had once commanded.
And so Cascadia became a lesson.
It is one thing to lead by example and encourage others to do what is right.
It is quite another to expect them to do so.
...and quite another still to force them.