Piyse Politics

Overview

• All the nobles hate you, including the Chun family.
• The local nobility are by tradition also the administrators of their lands. Each feudal land in Piyse traditionally had 3 top offices, an administrator, the landed noble, and the subjustice. Because the landed noble controlled the military, he is also pretty much automatically the administrator. Sometimes the administrator office is given to the second son or something like that.
• The reformer party in Piyse wants the administrators to now take a test to qualify. Think Chinese Imperial Examination. This reform would mean most nobles would have to study hard or simply give up the adminship. It's a step towards centralization of the country and lessening of aristocratic privileges and everyone recognizes that. So the conservative parties of the nobles give fierce resistance to the idea.
  • Though even if it passes it's not exactly game over for the nobles, since the king depends on the support of the nobles and their loyalty, they would still appoint administrators who the nobles would approve of. Still, it's annoying and every appointment would be a fight with the Premier of the country.
• In early conversations at court, you express some support for the idea of a meritocracy. You quote Cinean Sung, who was a thinker in that direction. They also hear that at home you're inviting philosophers and thinkers and have employed Cinean, etc, these are all good signs to the reformers for them to like you.
• Knowing the other nobles hate you and you have no love for them, the premier of Piyse, Yuze Yuan try to get you on their side. They tell you you would easily pass the exam and be the admin, you should just support their reforms. You would be groomed for a great career in politics as a man of the people.
• Of course that's just nonsense, just because you have these sympathies and ideological leanings, does not mean you're okay with just throwing away aristocratic privilege. Rather your angle is more towards playing both sides to see what advantage you would get. Your main interest is in... conquering the world. You want to conquer the medium sized country of Piyse entirely as a first step before the world, the only question is who you would want running it afterward you become king, the nobles or the reformers.
• You know that the reformers and civilian media in Piyse was also responsible for the intense humiliation and criticism your grandfather got, so you actually really hate them too.
• Anyway you choose between your aristocratic pride and lineage, btw your parents also support this, or you choose the side of the reformers.
• If you choose the side of the reformers, all the nobles hate you. The examination law itself doesn't pass, it's just not talked about, it's not really that interesting of a subject. It's just that you side the reformers and that's really all there is to it.
• Yaling's brother talks to you about political philosophy. Presented to you a moral Weltanschauung that praised Fengjian society as ideal in the manner of confucian scholars.

He feared the inhumane legalistic, bureaucratic model that rewarded examination results without humanity. He's seen it happen in other empires, where rule by love and mutual support turn into rule by punishment and fear. It is a stripping away of everything that makes us human.

[Even though he doesn't say this explicitly, it's an argument for decentralized power, which is a check on imperial power, a constitutionalized concept. The idea is to emulate confucian scholars and their idealization of the morality of fengjian society, that people had a right to rule because they were moral and observed the rituals, not because they were the most ruthless or best exam takers].

The King is old and confused, just being fooled by the ministers. If he thinks he can control the bureaucracy... even if he can for now, the system created will last beyond him, and it'll grow until it consumes everything, crushes us all under an inhumane edifice, grinds everything to dust, even him. The aristocracy has to stand united for all that is righteous in the world.

We have evolved beyond the empire, back in the days of the empire, the world was cruel and dark.

In that world, mercy is inefficiency, and compassion is corruption. The official who pardons a starving thief endangers the logic of deterrence. The merchant who forgives a debt distorts the market. There are penalties for kindness. There are rewards for compliance.

“No one is above the law,” they say — but they never mention that the law sits far, far below the soul.

There is no rebellion. Only audits. There are no executions. Only removals.

To be removed is not to die. It is to be erased.

Your name vanishes from records. Your family becomes suspect. No one speaks of you — not out of fear, but out of protocol.

In school, children are taught not virtue, but compliance strategy.

Whereas in the fengjian society, ruling comes out of love, out of kinship in the aristocracy, that is far superior.

[Of course he's right, the idea is to really sell it.]

• If you choose the side of the nobles you promise to Yaling's siblings that you have noble pride, and you will take actionable steps to show them that you're just "faking" being on the side of the reformers, they went to you, but you are not on their side.
  • To show your loyalty to the Chuns you decide to cause a scandal to get the premier fired. It was trivially easy for you. The premier had a secretary who was a commoner, and all you had to do was capture her and use your powers on her. She ends up telling everyone and the king that the Premier was a Mireotan spy, and that he was pushing the examination law in order to cause civil war in the country.
    • They also discovered some incredibly valuable Mireotan jewelry in his home, evidence of his treachery, obviously, they're the ones that queen Peizhi gifted you.
    • You had asked Peizhi if this was okay to plot, and Peizhi said to go for it and was laughing. The poor Mireotan king though had to deny the spying.
    • Yaling tells her siblings and parents with your permission that you were the one behind the plot against the Premier, she recognizes those jewels in the news as the ones that you had personally received from the queen of Mireota herself. She laughingly tells them that no commoner woman could possibly resist giving up everything to obey you the MC.
    • With Yaling helping you, your relationship with the Chuns improve.