Herald of Steel

Alexander gave out a forced, hearty laughter at the Queen Mother’s heated outburst, playing it off as simply the irritation of a lady under a lot of duress.

Indeed, it was a wildly accepted fact in Adhania that pregnant ladies tended to throw hysterics… the hormones in their body getting out of place due to the conception.

Hence many regular households even forbade their wives from cooking and doing the house’s chores during their last stages.

This was also the main reason the Queen Mother was removed from court- the bad luck for her child was simply a nice excuse.

Hence Alexander’s claim was received without any controversy, getting a small nod from LY and a silent acknowledgement from the Queen Mother.

Seeing this the man then decided to wrap this topic up with this last note,

“Your Highness…my reasons for tempting His Majesty with this land were simple- you should already know…. I knew he was very angry and this was the best way to placate him.”

“As for handing it over…. I am willing to do it symbolically. But if he wants to administer it directly… that will be difficult. “

“I am not sure he has the experience to understand the logistical and supply challenges of such an endeavor. Your Highness should know that the Margraves family had actually offered me a lot more land. But I declined because I doubted I would be able to defend them. I have even left the day to day running of the place to them. So…to govern it from Adhan.

Let us not even mention the people of the island accepting this. I am sure my lady understands I also embellished their love for His Majesty a bit.”

At this point, Alexander slanted his eyes to give the Queen Mother a pursed smile, before finally finishing with this urging,

“Just talk to His Majesty about this. Show him the challenges of taking over such a land so small and so far away.”

In his second round, Alexander was much more polite and soft in his address, very much unlike the prodding stance he took before. For instance, the dialect he used in Azhak was much more subservient now, like he was talking to his superior, unlike before where he used a structure meant more for near peers.

This change of language quite pleased the traditionalist Queen Mother who always saw the Royal family as superior to all the nobles in the land.

In addition to this, Alexander was also keen enough to change the frame of the problem of administration as a problem of distance rather than a concern of ability- i.e.- the lack of Adhan’s navy.

Thus by lowering himself from his high pedestal and not outright rejecting the option of giving over the land, he managed to at last get a small nod from the regal queen,

“Sigh, okay, I will see what I can do. You want to basically leave the island as it is, just change the ownership of it, right? So you will rule the island but the people will pay taxes to ‘us’. This…. might be doable.” There was still some hesitation in Seelima’s words, but her promise sounded a lot firmer.

And this evaluation brought great joy to Alexander.

He really did not care if Ptolomy officially owned that part of the Galiosos… as long as the Queen Mother could get him to agree to let Lady Miranda keep her seat at Midshire.

Because the place was so far away, and the people’s acceptance of the family so firmly ingrained in their subconsciousness, that really she was the judge, jury and executioner in all practical terms.

Hence as long as Ptolomy did not send his own men to replace the bureaucrats there, messing up the whole place, it would all be too easy to hoodwink him and let Alexander keep effective control.

Even the occasional magistrate sent to review the reports could be dealt with bribes and if that did not work, intimidation and in the most extreme cases even assassination.

Such moves, although rare, were not unheard of. And given the extreme distance of the island, the incident would likely not even cause much ripple here in the capital, being seen more as an accident than any malfeasance.

As for the concern of Ptolomy allocating that land to his people, well Alexander was not also that worried about that. It was once again because the island was so far away that it was not of much interest to him anyway.

The place to him was something like Britannia was to the Romans, a place so far away that it was really, really hard to keep a constant grip on. For a regular Roman, the place was a mysterious realm filled with witchcraft, magic and witch doctors, a piece of land they did not want to touch with a ten feet pole.

While those who went there and saw the mud huts and tiny fishing hamlet felt even the boonies of Rome would feel this place was an utter dump.

Julius Caesar had first conquered the island thinking it was filled with silver and wanted to use these riches to further his political career in Rome. And then once they obtained the land, simple pride made the Romans keep fighting for it, even though there really was nothing of much value there.

There were indeed some silver mines and other ores that the Roman mined extensively, but despite the huge quantities excavated in absolute terms, relative to the expenses of administering the place it was hardly worth it.

That was you will find the eastern half of the empire was always far more prosperous than the western part.

The Romans also constantly raided the Sassanid Empire to their east (most of modern day Middle East) for their loot for centuries, drawn by the promise of silk, porcelain, perfumes and spices.

While in the case of the western parts (modern day Germany, Austria, Poland, etc.), it was the barbarian tribes who attacked the Roman for their loot, as in the eyes of the Romans, these tribes were so poor it was simply worth the cost of raising an army and conquering them. They barely had a civilization to speak of.

This is quite funny for us to see now as in the modern times, the script has been flipped on its head. Now it is the people from the Middle East and the south of Europe who always want to ‘move’ north, while the ‘northern tribes’ rarely contemplate doing the same thing- they are too rich to want to move.

Now it would not be fair to compare Galiosos to Britannia pound for pound. The place was far from being that barren.

A far more apt example would be like the thriving Venice, filled with merchants and traders. However, the conception of the place among the majority of Adhanian nobles was the same.

They saw it was a place full of backward, barbarian heathens that worship other gods and spirits and hence should have been smitten to dust.

Thus Alexander was not worried about too many nobles being eager to hop on a ship and live his life out in such a foreign land where none spoke his language, none followed his way of life and none even believed in the same god as him.

As for those that were… he also did not mind. Because there were indeed many empty plots of land and any plot left empty was a plot which was not generating taxes.

Along the same vein, he also did not mind an Adhanian community growing there as that would actually be a boon for him… it would do well to counter the Sybarians as well as the native tribes.

Lastly if Alexander wanted to gift some of the land from here in the future… well, instead of having to plead to Ptolomy, the man planned to create quite a few fake deeds before officially handing over the area.

These deeds would claim lands officially belonging to other real men, but in reality they will be blank plots.

So wherever Alexander wanted, he could gift these deeds to whomever he liked… such as military officers and officers who have made great contributions, his children or even wedding presents for his sons and daughters in laws when his children get married.

The only slight caveat with the plan was that if someone, like say a magistrate, were to take a very hard look at this arrangement, they would be able to find these lands were generating no taxes.

This was always an extremely huge red flag because this meant either that man was a taxdoger and thus a ‘swindler of the imperial treasury’ or there was some problem with the land’s description, such as it not being what it was stated in the deed- farmland, grassfield, barren marsh, wooded forest, etc.

In Adhania, tax rates tended to differ slightly depending on the type of land you have.. such as low quality farmland or those that used ‘underground water irrigation’ such as wells were asked to give 7% of their produce, while river or spring fed fields paid 10% to 12%.

Similar arrangements existed for other biomes and it was a common fraud in Adhania to show the land was of lower quality than reality. So the magistrates would always be on the lookout for them.

And if these public workers looked under Alexander’s hood, they would surely notice that the land did not even belong to anyone.

Which was exactly why Alexander had made the precondition of not letting Ptolomy wade too deep into the administration

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