Herald of Steel

Chapter 911

When Philips's uncles were finally made aware of their fate, it went without saying it came as a great shock to them.

And perhaps more than Alexander's decision, what really stung them was the realization of their nephew's betrayal.

Philips was usually seen as a pretty upright guy so the fact that he would blatantly lie and then backstab them like this so unscrupulously caused great dissatisfaction in many.

Some of them lamented, some cried, some sighed in resignation, while lastly a few seethed with unrelenting fury.

But ultimately, other than airing out their anger in vain, they were able to do much else but accept it.

For Alexander was a behemoth they had no hope of contending against.

But whilst they were swimming in the darkness, suddenly a ray of light had come to them in the form of this proposal, as some nobles posed,

"Your Highness, perhaps you marry some of your sons and daughters to us. That way they can still remain in Tibias!"

This idea was actually the brainchild of Philips, who had felt awful about the whole affair and wished to make up with his kin in some, whatever small way possible although he would never admit it.

But this also meant that the branch royal family did not know if the offer was genuine, or if these nobles were simply trying to take advantage of their perilous state to form some convenient relations.

Thus the acceptance rates of these offers were mixed, much contrary to Philips's wishes.

These little behind the door plays were of little concern to Alexander.

Instead, he had his hands full with other matters.

Which was placating the sulking Lord Theony, who it had to be said was very much against the whole deal from the very beginning.

"You heard the nobles. It would have been impossible for me to harm the royal family." To which Alexander had repeatedly argued.

But after his favorite son Gnaeus's death, Lord Theony seemed to have suddenly gained an irrational hatred of Philips and refused to see reason.

"The royal family should have been killed! Lord Pasha, you have already defeated them. So what are you afraid of?" The man almost shouted at Alexander, completely forgetting the maxim that it was easy to take land, much harder to hold it.

It was a sign that quickly made Alexander seriously reconsider giving this man any position of power.

However, even if Alexander wanted to, at the current moment, he lacked a candidate even one tenth comparable to the man.

Hence it seemed for the foreseeable time being, he was simply stuck dealing with him.

So Alexander tried to make the most of a bad situation and attempts to soothe the man with the promise of greater wealth and power.

"That's why I'm giving you the southern part of Tibias. The most fertile part of the country, snatched away from the royal family! It's your reward. You can now use this to weaken the royal family even further!" Alexander claimed.

And this was indeed true.

With his other reason being that the southern nobles were in general a lot more loyal to the royal family than their northern counterpart, with many of them even having familiar ties with various city states of Thesos.

Alexander had not been too enthusiastic about letting Philips go back to rubbing shoulders with such loyal people.

Instead, by replacing him with Lord Theony, Alexander hoped to create a low intensity animosity between these local powers and this 'traitor' in many's eyes, thus creating a balance where they would keep one another in check.

And with Lord Theony taking Philips's favored lands, the Crown Prince would be left with having to navigate the much more pragmatic northern half, where Alexander's influence was undoubtedly much stronger.

Lord Theony must have surely suspected such an ulterior motive behind Alexander's rich rewards, but still, the fertile, lush fields he was being gifted to govern did work wonders to soothe at least some of his pain.

Thus Alexander appeared to have averted the disaster, at least for now.

With this accomplished, Alexander then set about preparing for the official swearing ceremony for Philips and the other nobles, deciding to place it right at the start of fall, in order to give all the nobles adequate time to arrive at the capital.

Following which Alexander then quickly started to send out messengers to all the noble houses with these exact words,

"By the name of the former Crown Prince Philips, you are asked to appear before your new lord- The Pasha of Zanzan, and swear your undying loyalty as soon as autumn."

That's it, just thirty one words in total for the entire message.

Which might not seem like a big deal, but in reality, it was a very domineering letter.

Because of how short it was.

Typically, any letter to a noble would be very flowery, with even just the first paragraph being at least 300 words, which would be solely spent on giving greetings and other embellished compliments, such as their contributions to the royal family.

And then the actual invitation would be another 200 to 3000 words, which would be something like this, "....the chandeliers shall shimmer in harmony with the sparkle of your presence. It is our fervent hope that you, with your innate charm and grace, shall cast an enchanting spell upon this assembly as we await with bated breath the privilege of welcoming you to the banquet that promises to etch itself into the annals of history."

Missing all such social flair, Alexander's letter could even be considered quite rude.

A consideration that could very well be deserved if one also took into account the fact that Alexander also used the word 'you' to address the noble- a generic, all purpose way of labeling a people.

Whereas it was considered the very basic common courtesy to address nobles individually with the words lords and lady.

But Alexander skipped both the long address and the particular address because it was simply tedious.

Writing so many letters already took a lot of time, and he did not want to add even more words.

As for using the word 'you', by simply using this instead of the name of a particular noble, Alexander found he did not have to worry about assigning individual delivery riders to any particular address.

The generic letter could be delivered by messengers to any noble, thus saving them a lot of logistical hassle and thus a lot of time.

But perhaps the biggest reason why Alexander did not bother with these protocols was because he did not care.

Most of the nobles in the county who were anybody worth anything had already met Alexander, be it as either allies or foes.

Whereas the rest should have already gotten news of Alexander's win and the subsequent signing of the treaty and were already their own way.

So the only ones who needed to be told that they needed to swear fealty to Alexander were either too weak to have this basic intelligence network, or too stupid to know what was good for them.

Alexander did not have much love for either of these types.

After the letters were sent, Alexander found himself with about two months in his hands till the noble reconvened.

But hardly any of it was spent in merriment.

For by now all of his retainers were getting close to the breaking point of their patience and quickly urged Alexander to distribute their rewards.

They had worked hard to gain their spoils of victory in this momentous campaign and now wanted to feast on their newly acquired wealth.

Hence the following days Alexander had his hands full regarding only this, where he attended a gauntlet of meetings to decide who got what piece of land and how much.

The division of a country comparable to Japan was certainly not an easy task and the whole endeavor took a long while.

During these days, Alexander would spend nearly 5 to 6 hours daily attending to this matter, where he would read the various deeds of lands belonging to all the various noble houses as well as state owned land, and try to figure all kinds of things out.

This would not only include the more obvious things such as determining the size and value of the lands in question but also the population there, what they did, their professions, how skilled they were, and lastly, even just the exact location of the land in question, as current cartography, being the nascent skill it was, made even the best drawn maps in Alexander's hand dubious at best.

Thus Alexander had to take everything being presented to him with a great deal of salt and seek the confirmation of other nearby lords to confirm the veracity of the information on the maps, wasting a lot of time in this process of double and triple checking.

And even then, despite Alexander's best efforts, in the future, many of the men from these newly awarded territories would come to Alexander with territorial disputes, after finding that their jurisdiction overlapped.

For example, Alexander might state- All the land 5 kilometers west of 'this' river will be 'This' lord's domain until the start of 'This' forest.

But when the lord would actually go to see his private property, he might find the actual river 10 kilometers north of the one drawn on the map, and the forest in question was nowhere in sight, making his whole place actually overlapped with another lord's.

These types of problems were inevitable and Alexander simply had to deal with them as they came about.