A tradition
In peacetime, the ruler grows their hair long. In war, they cut it short.
A ruler with long hair is held in great esteem, for defending the peace.
The traditional declaration of war is for the ruler to send their cut-off hair to the enemy ruler. The statement carries greater weight the longer the hair: to receive long hair says that you have angered one who is slow to anger, that you have incurred a wrath not easily woken.
Violent war-mongering leader frantically and aggressively tries to shave just a LITTLE hair off the top of their head into an envelope.
A faraway king receives a heavy wooden crate filled with a coil of the longest hair he has ever seen.
A despised ruler finds hundreds of pounds of cut-off ponytails at her castle entrance, each one belonging to her own people.
A young emperor refuses to cut their hair and insists on trying to make peace with invaders. The enemy leader steps forward, draws their blade, and cuts the emperor’s hair themselves.
Hellen cuts her hair off and throws it in Cathy’s face at her son’s soccer scrimmage.
The princess was exactly six and a half years old on the day her father cut his hair.
All of her life, her father had had the most beautiful, long, long braid of red-gold hair that shone like a sunset under his golden crown. She had often fondly tugged it when she came up behind him, drawing his attention and a wide smile when he reached down to pull his daughter up into his arms.
The day he cut his hair, everyone cried. A set of shears, made of dark metal and shining viciously sharp in the throne room, cut through that beautiful braid like it was nothing but water.
When the braid fell to the floor in a red-gold coil, the princess couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face. No one in the room seemed to be able to maintain their composure, and her mother in particular was sobbing into handkerchief when the braid was loaded reverently into a finely crafted wooden box.
It wasn’t until she was much older that the princess realized everyone wasn’t crying because her father no longer had his beautiful hair.
They were crying because their country, that had for so long lived in peace, was now at war.