Report to Your Majesty on de Crancé's Political Alliance
Leaders
Leader
Name: Councilman de Crancé
Age: 67
Power: Extremely high
Occupation: Ex-
soldier and general who retired following injuries. Now a member of the
Royal Council.
Popularity: Extremely popular with the public thanks to his
military victories, his part in inventing
clippable devices, and his sense of the theatre and love for causing dramas.
Second in command
Name: Councilman de Fresnoy
Age: 42
Power: Extremely high
Occupation: Ex-
dueller. Now a member of the Royal Council.
Popularity: Extremely popular with the public thanks to his past as a top sportive. He left the
Duelling Arena after a series of spectacular victories and used this to propulse what is turning out to be a lukewarm political career.
Goals
Avowed goal: Making the kingdom a better place via a political alliance to develop and promote laws that will benefit all citizens.
Secret goal: A coup to seize power or to outright murder
Your Majesty.
Tactics
Recruitment
Recruiting people by convincing them that the kingdom is currently heading in the wrong direction and criticizing Your Majesty's ruling and morals.
Advice: While any criticism of the government cannot be forbidden, outright criticism of Your Majesty's morals should be taken as ground for expulsion from any administrative positions, as those individuals have clearly proven that they cannot work with Your Majesty in good faith for the betterment of the country.
Debates
Holding public debates about current events and laws, the political direction of the government, and the future of the country. They encourage average citizens to participate and pretend to only arbitrate. However, they feed arguments and counterarguments to the side they agree with to give it the illusion of superiority and ensure its victory against unprepared adversaries. They then use this to argue at the
Royal Council for the existence of a political consensus in their favour.
Advice: We should follow the same tactic of feeding arguments in our favour to the right ears whenever such a debate takes place. Exposure of their act will be impossibly to prove in a convincing and definitive manner, and so talking about it will only make us lose public opinion.
Sabotage
Sabotaging Your Majesty's public undertakings, be it public celebrations, food distributions, or
building projects. They cause endless delays through administrative channels by blocking all work until additional paperwork is filled, eventually losing said paperwork or even outright falsifying it to pretend it has not been filled properly and needs to be redone. More direct sabotage on the ground cannot be proven at this point but is highly likely. The purpose of all this is to create a reputation for incompetence for Your Majesty's government that will be reflected on Your Majesty yourself.
Advice: Mathematicians should be told repeatedly to never leave their notes out of their sight during the building of
titanic architecture, as a wrong number is a very quick modification to do with potentially devasting consequences.
Interference in the duelling ring
Interference in the
duelling ring, and by extension into the
official challenges against Your Majesty's rule. None of this an be proven, but we share your suspicion regarding Councilman de Crancé's dealing with your past challengers. Challengers are, of course, highly likely to have assisted to past challenge duels, to have intensely studied Your Majesty's technique, and to have come up with a strategy they think can overcome your skills.
However, the way they proceed is too systematic, the way new challengers' choice build up on their predecessor only makes sense when looking at the bigger picture rather than for each individual. If someone is not holding their hand all along, then they are certainly being offered information and incitations to follow that person's advice.
Advice: There is unfortunately very little we can do against his. We are already keeping track of all the top duellers in the country and keeping up-to-date profiles with their strength and weaknesses.
However, we would like to bring to Your Majesty's attention the fact that Councilman de Crancé's attention on duellers might go further than it seems. The
recent scandal of the Champion Dueller de Verteuil has dirtied the court's reputation because of his link to Your Majesty and to members of your government. This happened at a very convenient time for de Crancé and might not have been caused by chance.
With Your Majesty's permission, we will investigate this further.
Political upheaval and intrigue, to help those in need? An interesting approach, and one that certainly held my focus to read about and learn of. Well written Amelie :) Oh side note your @ command under Sabotage section seems to have not worked? Just so you know.
Thanks <3 (and thanks for pointing out that misbehaving @!) I love those "good guys" who're not perfect little angels. Especially when placing my MC in the opposite side! Although I do still want them to have that good motivation at their base and to sincerely believe in it, even if their motives are questionable.