[Dragaera] Vassals

[Jon Lincicum]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu>
> 
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Jon Lincicum wrote:
> 
> > Given what we know about Noish-pa, however, I'd say the odds are pretty 
> > good that he's pretty well-liked. But that's just a guess. Nice guys 
> > don't always make effective rulers. Just look at Jimmy Carter.
> 
> Noish-pa doesn't have to deal with a hostile press, the messes left
> by his opposite-party predecessors, and his own party falling apart 
> because of a politically-suicidal civil-liberty program for an outsider
> group, among a long list of other things.  But perhaps in coming years
> the peasants who disliked Noish-pa for telling them the truth will come to 
> appreciate how far-sighted he was and begin implementing his suggestions.

Well, I don't want to bag on Carter too much. He was in a tough position. Just saying that being nice isn't automatic to being effective as a ruler. A constituency will base its opinion of its ruler, in part, on the ruler's effectiveness.

But we really don't KNOW much about the administration that Noish-pa replaced. Sure, there was no count, but SOMEone was running things in the region. Is that person still around? Is he disaffected about being arbitrarily supplanted by an EASTERNER of all things? And a commoner? And when the count himself is a JHEREG? 

And while Noish-pa doesn't seem likely to approve of strong arm tax-collection tactics, or other assorted nasties, how much attention are the tax collectors themselves going to pay to Noish-pa's opinions as they go about their duties? Especially when they've possibly been getting away with keeping a rather larger portion of their collections than is typical due to the lack of an actual count in the region? 

There's all sorts of murky politicking possible here.

Majikjon