fandomhigh | Guiding the Powerful Yet Incompetent, Tuesday, Second Period

This week, the students would find themselves in a different castle, in a throne room, with the king lounging upon the throne. "Congratulations," Yennefer said from her customary spot behind him. "You have convinced your king not to casually and blatantly steal from a subject. However, he still thinks the castle needs some...freshening up. Redecorating. Perhaps even a whole new castle! Yes, that's the ticket. A monument to his magnificence that will stand for centuries to come. Of course there will have to be a major tax hike to pay for it.

"Of course, as the person who pays attention during meetings, you know that the people are already overtaxed, and furthermore there's a drought on and there are concerns about the harvest. Now. You are probably not going to be able to get the king to lower taxes to give the peasantry a break or anything noble like that. I'll just go ahead and tell you that right now. Your job is to convince him to dial back or delay his plans. Sometimes mitigation is all you can do."

She clicked a button on the remote and the king came to life, saying, "Oooh, and in the new castle we can have a hall of enchanted mirrors."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Against redecorating.

Illyana Rasputin

Shuri

Nell Ingram

Adora

Lana Beniko

Those of you who advocated for getting new tapestries are getting a lesson in unintended consequences.

Yana was going to murder him. Seriously. She would find a way to murder a hologram. CLEARLY he wasn't a boon to society.

Good luck with that.

"The Queen of Limbo is already building herself a new castle this season," Illyana said, examining her nails. "If you start now, they'll say you're copying her ideas."

"I'd suggest waiting a few years, see what you like best from all the newest castles."

Hopefully he'd be dead by then. If no vassals rose up to do it, Yana might do it herself.

"Why don't we talk about designs for your tapestries, your majesty? The sooner I know what you like, the sooner we can get started. They'll be a lovely preview of your artistic ideas."

"But if I wait to start, they'll definitely think I'm copying her! And I'm no follower, no, I'm a doer! And I want the tapestries to be about me, doing heroic deeds and looking heroic. With lots of gold."

"In three years, everyone will have forgotten about her new castle. All the chatter will be about the latest scandal instead, and you can create the next big idea without needing to worry about her castle overshadowing yours. You know how sometimes people only care about 'first' and not 'best,'" Illyana tried, but she was quickly running out of ideas.

"Why don't you talk to the court artist about which heroic deeds you think should take the most prominence in your tapestries, so that we can find a good starting point."

"Hmmm, yes, then I can make sure that my castle outshines hers! A very fair point."

"You probably just made the castle more expensive," Yennefer told Illyana, "but that's a problem for future you, and maybe he'll forget all about it."

"I'm sure he has many very important things that may take precedence," Illyana agreed blandly, because she didn't know if fake-Henry was still active and listening.

And also because she still not ruling out removing him and replacing him with someone more sensible.

"Welllllll," Shuri said, drawing out the word, "if we do this we can't also do the really neat catapult upgrades, and I know how much you like to watch things go really far and then explode."

"But that's what the tax increase is for! In fact, hmm, might we need to raise the taxes more to pay for the catapults? Sorceress, look into that."

"Yes, your majesty," Yennefer droned.

Dammit, Shuri was so used to normal council members that she was bad at this part.

"Oh, but we can't raise taxes this close to the harvest," Shuri said. "Um, the poor, easily frightened peasants think that will cause their gods to become angry and then they won't harvest the food and we'll all starve to death."

That seemed like a thing that could happen, right?

Yennefer envied her her normal council members.

"Then I will make them work!" the king declared. "They can't just not harvest the food!"

This was not turning out to be a good class for Adora's peace of mind, but at least she knew logistics.

"Well, sure, I guess we can do that, we'll just have to engage an architect, wait for them to draw up plans, survey for a suitable spot, get the architect to amend the plans based on the final location, work out supply lines for the materials and workers, if all goes to plan we should be ready to break ground in two maybe three years."

"Eh?" the king asked. "That's a lot of steps. Can't someone else do all that?"

"Of course, we'll get someone in," Adora, who had never actually heard the term malicious compliance, said. "I'll let you know when I've found that someone."

Adora wasn't a very good liar, but the king didn't seem very smart.

"You could also at this point throw in something about keeping him updated on the budget when you have a realistic idea of how much the project will cost," Yennefer suggested. "Of course that will take quite some time."

"You know, your majesty," Lana said to him, "I think that's a good idea. Did you know your neighbour the next kingdom over was actually making fun of this castle? You could teach them a lesson and fund the construction by annexing them."

What? War was a perfectly valid distraction and economic solution.

She's having fun with this.

There's a hurricane coming. It's fine.

Guiding the Powerful Yet Incompetent, Tuesday, Second Period

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Talk to Yennefer

OOC