The History of Eora, Volume I: The Collapse of Grand Vailia

"Armchair academics will tell you the fall was unavoidable, that it was Grand Vailia's rapacious appetite for expansion that finally ended them, or a regrettable inattentiveness to the necessity of maintaining critical infrastructure, or the ouroborus of betrayal, revenge, and re-revenge that characterized their idle wealthy’s leisure time, but they’re wrong.

No, it was Dulcazza the tabby that ended it all—Dulcazza, a dead mouse dropped into a stew, and one very ill duc who, when told of the first in what would become a spate of vendetta-fueled murders among the families that controlled the Grand Vailian economy, shouted at his valet to close the door and not disturb his rest again. He promptly died, and - as his valet studiously ignored the stench coming from his master’s study - Grand Vailia unraveled at the seams."