This chapter describes a prominent bureaucrat as a "man so busily engaged in pilfering the public treasury he had no interest in plotting political conspiracies or leading insurrections."

And yet, at least in the short term, Shouryuu would rather appoint him a province lord. Making the best of a bad situation, a greedy rich man worries him less than a Machiavellian politician interested primarily in power.

You can "follow the money"; money can be audited, tracked, taxed. Fortunes poorly managed dissipate quickly. If Elizabeth and Darcy's children didn't pinch their pennies, Pemberley would go bankrupt by the end of the century.

We applaud politicians who make "deals." But the fairness of a deal made in the proverbial smoke-filled room, sealed with a handshake during a round of golf, is much harder to ascertain, if we're aware of it at all.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, politics, poseidon