Unknown Knight

Chapter 390 The Queen’s New Deal (2)

With the completion of the title registration, in order to prevent the emergence of powerful local forces in the future, Prince Aix immediately promulgated a new decree: the "Law of Second Son Succession".

Prior to this, the lords of the entire continent had no clear laws regarding the inheritance of territories. In order to ensure the prosperity of the entire family, the old lord would usually leave a will before his death. In the will, he would leave most of the territory and the title to his heirs, and give a small part of the territory to other sons, usually a small manor.

Of course, there are exceptions, which are generally due to the personal preferences of the old lord. There was a case where an old lord left an entire castle to his favorite youngest son. However, it is rare for an old lord to give most of the territory to other sons. Otherwise, it would be difficult to ensure the continued prosperity of the entire family.

This decree, the "Law of Second Son Inheritance", stipulates that every son of the lord has the right to inherit a share of the lord's fiefdom, including illegitimate sons. Of course, in order to take into account the feelings of the heirs of the original territory, these territories are not divided equally, but are divided into two parts.

Part of the territory is called the heir territory, which accounts for one third of the entire territory and belongs only to the heir designated by the old lord. The remaining two-thirds is called the fiefdom, which must be divided equally among each of the old lord's sons, including illegitimate children.

Aix's move was aimed at gaining the general support of local armed forces. It should be noted that the great lords with territories generally would not go into battle to kill the enemy themselves. The main force on the battlefield was composed of the lower-level nobles and the knights raised by the lords.

These lower-level nobles and knights were generally composed of the lord's second sons or relatives. They did not own much territory, and their lives were not much affluent. They also had to spend a lot of money to maintain their weapons and equipment.

These are the people who bravely kill enemies on the battlefield. They all hope to gain merit and thus receive rewards from the king and lords, or even obtain a larger fiefdom to make life better for their families.

One of the purposes of this decree in Aix is ​​to win over these grassroots nobles, who are the backbone of the kingdom. As long as their support can be obtained, the rule of Aix will be more stable.

This is a long-term plan. Now that all the old lords of the kingdom have died in the Loma Castle incident and the Seven Days Dynasty Rebellion, it is a good opportunity to weaken the local separatist forces. The main purpose of promulgating this "Second Son Inheritance Law" is to take advantage of this opportunity to divide and weaken the power of the local lords.

However, Aix underestimated the cruelty of the great nobles. When the "Law of Second Son Inheritance" was promulgated, it was unsurprisingly opposed by all the lords. That would have been fine, but there were even cases where some lords killed their own brothers.

How could Aix miss such a good opportunity to deal with such ruthless and ungrateful lords? He first asked these lords to come to the royal city for investigation in the name of the queen. After being rejected, he directly sent troops to encircle and suppress them, taking the opportunity to kill people and seize treasures, and then get their territories for free.

After finishing the matter, Aix issued another summons in the name of the queen, reiterating the content of the "Law of Second Son Inheritance" and requiring all lords to divide the territories in accordance with the content of the decree. If there is any unfair division, or no division at all, once discovered, the lord's heir's territory will be confiscated. If other second sons or illegitimate sons take the initiative to report this situation, once verified, one-third of the heir's territory will be divided equally among other second sons.

This move directly provoked family conflicts among lords from all over the country. The whole country was in turmoil because of the division of the family. No one had the leisure to question Aix, the rising son-in-law and the 17-year-old queen who was young and beautiful but lacked power and prestige. Instead, these lords had to go to Aix and the queen to complain about their grievances, and even curry favor with them, hoping that the couple would seek justice for them.

With the implementation of the "Second Son Inheritance Law" and with the help of the working group, the territories of local lords had basically been divided up in less than two months.

Seeing that his conspiracy had succeeded and had greatly weakened the strength of local lords, our Prince Aix did not stop there. In order to prevent these local forces from having the opportunity to grow in the future, he immediately launched the "Transfer of Grace Order".

In the first half of this decree, Aix used the excuse that the lords had split up some time ago, which led to many local conflicts and even injuries and deaths. Her Majesty Queen Isabella took pity on him and specially introduced this decree in order to ease the local conflicts and maintain unity throughout the kingdom.

The decree stipulates that any second-son lord who is unwilling to stay in his original fiefdom due to family conflicts can apply to the royal family to transfer his fiefdom to another part of the kingdom and obtain an equal amount of fiefdom in other parts of the kingdom.

In order to make up for the losses suffered by the second sons due to the transfer of fiefdoms, the royal family will also make certain compensations. The specific compensation is to increase the number of fiefdoms of the second sons.

The decree stipulates that any second-in-law lord who is transferred to a fertile area of ​​the kingdom can obtain an additional territory of one-tenth of his original territory. On the basis of this one-tenth, the second-in-law lord who is transferred to a remote and barren area of ​​the kingdom can also be allowed to reclaim a piece of wasteland. The specific amount is between one-half and one times the existing territory, depending on the remoteness and barrenness of the transferred area.

As soon as this "Order of Transfer of Enfeoffment" was issued, it immediately caused a great stir in the kingdom. One must know that some time ago, because of the "Law of Second-Son Inheritance", the lords' families who had redivided the fiefdoms had basically been in conflict. Because of the issue of division of the family, the lords, big and small, had more or less friction. Many people had fought to the point of having their brains choked out, and there were even worse cases of casualties due to knife-fighting.

These rude feudal lords had no concept of brotherhood or respect for each other. After the division of the family, some family members even became enemies with each other.

Even in the past, without the decrees introduced by Aix, the lords who inherited the family fiefdoms and titles would take advantage of their power to oppress other brothers and relatives, and would often find reasons to invade or even seize the land of other brothers and relatives. After the division of the family this time, these conflicts are bound to occur in the future.

The "Order of Transfer of Enfeoffment" issued by Prince Aix gave new hope to the second sons who had obtained territories, especially the illegitimate sons who did not have much status to begin with. As long as they were transferred to other places, they would not be oppressed or even harmed by the patriarch of the family in the future, and they could take the opportunity to build a new family of their own, which might even lead to their rise.

You should know that the Kingdom of Vijia is located in a bitter and cold place. Except for the coastal area of ​​Rivacherze and some areas of the royal city of Rivadin where the climate is relatively suitable and the population is relatively large, other places in the kingdom are vast, bitter and cold places with a relatively sparse population.

One of the purposes of Aix issuing this decree is to let the domestic nobles take the initiative to migrate to these places. In the past, they might have been hesitant, but now there are these irreconcilable contradictions, plus the ready-made example of the success of Aix, some of the more ambitious ones, especially the illegitimate lords, have a strong desire to migrate to these places.