The Dancing Vanguard of Black Swans is a colossal, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by Queen of the Swans with a fair hand, and notable for its pith helmet sales, irreverence towards religion, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 8.097 billion Black Swans are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The medium-sized, liberal, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Cygnus Lake. The average income tax rate is 77.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Black Swan economy, worth a remarkable 1,187 trillion chords a year, is quite specialized and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Tourism, and Beef-Based Agriculture. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an impressive 146,663 chords, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Government negotiators never forget to say "pretty please" when begging for custody of its criminals, voter turnout for the election of the Junior Assistant for Non-Digital Media Strategies has been unsurprisingly low, the Smalltopian embassy doubles as an electoral campaign headquarters, and large sections of Black Swans have been named national reserves to protect the native tribes living there. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Black Swans's national animal is the Demoiselle Crane, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Gesamtkunstwerk.

Black Swans is ranked 15,127^th in the world and 3^rd in The Goose Pond for Lowest Crime Rates, with 94.05 law-abiding acts per hour.