Not sure I’m going to go in this direction. And I’m pretty sure there’ll be no factions wanting to resettle on Shayardene land.
I think the Thaumatarchs have been more insulated than real-world dictators from this problem by the fact that (up to a point) rebellions literally fuel the Hegemonic system. But the Thaumatarchy also has something of the resilience that comes from premodern empire and its rule through local elites: when you delegate a huge amount of day-to-day decision-making to people closer to the ground in exchange for them passing tribute back up the chain, your own bad decisions are less likely to bring the whole system into crisis.
Being able to keep some sort of tax administration in place will be one of the huge challenges of later games.
Let’s try to move conversations about future game stuff onto the Stormwright thread. Debates over whether Breden is a traitor are, as ever, welcome on either.