Laws set the playing field. However, they are only laws if all powerful entities agree on them.
If, in a country, one cannot even agree on what the law is, that country is halfway to destruction.
Nobles send letters to their fiefs about starting to recruit cannon fodders. Generally, cannon fodders are just to attract firepower; they are cheap commoner lives that nobody cares about.
However, even meat shields can be more effective if they are trained.
Elizabeth didn’t order any mobilization; the royal army recently was hit with a massive defeat and now has only about 1 million troops. But she doesn’t need an army; she can do everything alone.
...
After a month, nothing really changed. The country continued operating as if nothing happened, and the House of Blue Bloods acted as if the decree had been repealed.
Elizabeth warned the nobles in the House of Blue Bloods a few times, telling them they should prepare for the election.
Even if the East was practically independent, Elizabeth’s order applied to them, too; after all, officially, the entire world was part of the Blue Blood kingdom.
Elizabeth knew enforcing these policies would be difficult. Seeing so many nobles start drafting men to their army, she shook her head. These nobles feel safe with an army around them, but they are mistaken; they have no idea how scary a vampire can be.
They only heard stories from afar and never saw what they knew as a ‘supernatural being.’ They, of course, thought they could resist it with meat shields.
Elizabeth would not kill the commoners drafted into the nobles' armies, usually young commoner men who did nothing wrong. Their only fault was being born a commoner.
She would go straight to the titleholders and arrest them.
She started her operation after the nobles ignored her warnings over ten times. From the West to the East, she moved city by city and took every single one of the noble titleholders in the country, even the South.
She gathered them into groups of 100, then brought them to the royal capital and imprisoned them. As a result of the massive distances and her relatively slow speed compared to Alex, it took a month of hard work.
...
A vast room with dim light. It was not luxurious, not worthy of so many nobles. Yet, over 5,000 nobles were sitting around. Barely anyone was talking. They all witnessed Elizabeth’s personal power, so any thought of running was completely quashed. Against that monster, no army can resist; now they know this to their core.
"Everyone!" Elizabeth shouted.
Everyone looked at a faraway platform; they could barely see her, but they knew the voice.
"It's her!" Marquis Swordland sighed. He greatly underestimated the power of supernatural beings. If he knew, he wouldn’t have resisted; he could have only bowed his head.
"I believe now you know what you should do?" said Elizabeth in a way everyone could hear.
"Yes!" nearly everyone said loudly.
"Good," she smiled.
Even the rebellious eastern kings said yes.
After this, she released them without harming them.
They now know she can catch them and kill them at any time, and there is nothing they can do to stop her. Would one dare to resist against such a being? It doesn't matter whether they are in prison here or in their fiefs; Elizabeth can always catch them quickly if she wants."
Walking out, Elizabeth gave each of them 20 guards to protect them on the road and sent them to their fiefs.
...
Everyone began getting prepared for the elections.
How does one ensure that everyone votes only once in an election? In medieval times, it was a challenge.
Elizabeth came up with an idea. Every time someone voted, they made a tiny brand with a hot iron on the back of the hand.
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Any ink can be removed, but such an injury cannot be removed. This way, they can make sure nobody votes twice.
However, this had the implication of scaring many from voting at all. Elizabeth was fine with that; the opportunity to vote was extremely precious and hard-won; now, commoners could choose their lords.
If the elected master is good, their lives will improve by leaps and bounds. Someone who cannot even tolerate such a tiny burn for the right to vote doesn't deserve to vote at all. Elizabeth thought it would be even better if they didn’t vote, as the votes of those weak people could make things worse.
She gave everyone the right to vote except for children under 10.
The vote was secret, with no one able to see who each person voted for.
Any election in which the vote is not secret is no election; it's selection. One must not feel social pressure to vote a certain way, and votes being public would exactly make that social pressure. For example, a wife might want to vote for another candidate and not for whom her husband votes; if the husband knows who she voted for, the wife would not dare to vote against anyone but for whom her husband voted.
Polling stations were government buildings, and there were seven days of voting. There were many locations, so anyone who cares can do so without waiting in lines.
Elizabeth feels they better not vote if one doesn’t bother turning up to vote. However, the news must be spread well; everyone must know there would be a vote to choose their master. If they don’t know, the whole point is lost. Therefore, she ordered all nobles to spread the news and shout off rooftops daily.
The election day soon came.
Despite all the hype, only 51% of the people came and voted. That iron branding scared too many away from voting.
In any case, the result was great for Elizabeth and sad for nobles. Most candidates endorsed by her won, and the former nobles lost.
After a short transition, the titles were transferred from former nobles to the new nobles. It was not a loss of power from noble families, as the candidates must be from the same noble family that owned the fief. But, it overturned the entire kingdom’s leadership in a day.
An astonishing 75% of the elected nobles turned out to be women because Elizabeth endorsed more women, and her win rate was higher than expected.
“Maybe I went too far!” she thought, deciding to endorse 50% men the next round.
She doesn't want women to rule men; she only wants equality. Now, with women having an advantage, she has to support men to allow them to occupy 50% of the seats.
She is not one of those who say, 'Men ruled for thousands of years, so it's now women’s turn to rule for thousands of years.' If one goes by that logic, the pendulum will turn around again eventually, and one day, it will be women again who will be discriminated against. Discrimination must end, and by the end, it means to end; it should be transformed into another form of discrimination. There is no positive discrimination; all such discriminations are, by nature, negative.
...
The House of Blue Bloods was also elected, and the new members arrived at the capital after a few months.
She prepared policy proposals for the new house to work on. Because most were elected by her endorsement, she had the ability to pass all she wanted.
First, she let all previous nobles off criminal charges; trying to take revenge would destabilize things. Those nobles, while unable to threaten her, can inflict a lot of damage if push comes to shove. It's best to let them die out naturally. Revenge may be useful sometimes, but this is not one of the situations where revenge helps.
However, she directed the house to consider a proposal to increase the taxes on former nobles.
Second, she ordered a reorganization of the fiefs to equal sizes. Currently, some territories are extremely vast, while others are tiny; it can be more convenient if all fiefs are equal. Now, with absolute power and nobody to protest, she can even divide up nobles' territory.
Third was the matter of improving commoners' lives.
She directed the house to study introducing mandatory education for all children. For boys, the age of schooling she proposed was from 8 to 18, and for girls, from 7 to 17.
She believed in equality, but it was a biological fact that boys mature later and, therefore, must start school later to be on equal footing with girls. She proposed national exams to recruit talented commoners for government jobs. But, she avoided proposing any more expansion of the government.
Already, 40% of all jobs are government-related. 40% is a terrifyingly high number! It is so heavy that the country barely has money for anything else.
It worked so far because salaries were low, as most of those positions were occupied by nobles or poor commoners who could not demand more. But now that she wanted to pay people livable wages, 40% was too much.
It would be good if all government-dependent jobs remained at around 10%. Too much government is like poison; it stifles innovation and growth. The best countries are those with a gridlock in the government.
Elizabeth wants to help people but only to provide opportunities. For example, the government must do education, as poor people cannot progress if they are illiterate. Another example is healthcare for the poor, which is within the government’s job.
After considering her decisions, the House of Blue Bloods was renamed the House of Commissioners' Representatives, filled her aspirational ideas with detail, and approved them.
Elizabeth looked at the proposals the House of Blue Bloods passed. They were watered-down versions of her proposals.
There were a few new ideas, too. For example, the House of Commissioners' Representatives also passed a law about three years of 'free service' that all people must provide to the government.
This was to reduce the massive burden of increasing pay. This way, they could delay increasing pay by saying you are doing a duty to your country, not a service. It was gender-neutral, with both men and women required to perform it, but it was transferable from men to women if the man in question wanted it.
This way, a son can do his mother's service, and a husband can do his wife’s service.
Elizabeth didn’t accept that version; that was discriminatory.
Therefore, her new proposal now allowed both men and women to transfer their service to certain family members. In theory, a husband can transfer his service to his wife; that is very unlikely to happen, however.
Reading through them, Elizabeth nodded and signed all the new laws.