The Compassionate Kingdom of La Mercier is a gargantuan, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by HRIM Xavier Albert Louis IV with a fair hand, and notable for its multi-spousal wedding ceremonies, smutty television, and restrictive gun laws. The compassionate, democratic population of 26.387 billion Merciers are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked morass — juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Aix de Caroline. The average income tax rate is 95.2%.

The enormous but inefficient a Mercier economy, worth a remarkable 1,518 trillion Francs a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector is solely comprised of the Book Publishing industry. Average income is 57,556 Francs, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Animal control is going door-to-door releasing all pets back into the wild, psychiatrists bizarrely accompany HRIM Xavier Albert Louis IV to meetings with foreign heads of state, there are six more weeks of winter if a northerner sees her shadow, and tourists visit La Mercier to mass-moon a Mercier politicians. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. La Mercier's national animal is the Rooster, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

La Mercier is ranked 87,797^th in the world and 1^st in La France for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 92.84 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.