And a hell of a ride storywise with Havenstone’s quality.
Well, at least with the Hegemony the current system has as many or maybe even more glaring flaws in it then even a radical alternative and what my mc is aiming for is fundamentally incompatible with the current, theocratic, system in any case and even the first game already lets me establish that my mc is bad at even feigning belief in the Xthonic faith.
A problem many revolutions and indeed many ossified and sclerotic systems unwilling or unable to change and thus triggering many of said revolutions have faced throughout the ages. If I had a universally good solution to any of it then it would have been criminal for me to ever leave politics.
My mc is far more intelligent but also probably far less knowledgeable then real-life me is and he’s basically trying to “wing it”, which is also not uncommon for rebel leaders in our actual history, particularly those who found themselves thrust into the role by circumstance rather then any coordinated plans for a coup.
Which is probably why @Havenstone has not allowed our mc’s to be in the position to basically instigate a coup instead (bloodless or otherwise) as that is a far easier way to obtain regime change but would also have made for a far less compelling story as even the “noble” mc here is a political greenhorn who knows next to nothing of governance.
Ah, the “Civil” service the enemy of good governance everywhere. 
Course in the case of the Hegemony it is more openly the “noble” service by and for nobles and even then most of it goes to Karagond.
Yeah, we’re only a band of brigands in the forest, so yes, no mc is ready to set up a government infrastructure at this moment in time, although it seems we can lay the earliest seed of one with the moot/apella decision.
Which is why my mc would abolish the Alastors they’re too tied up in the theocracy and they’re also basically nothing more then a bunch of abusive thugs and rapists who should be behind bars, not policing anything. With regards to the Alastors even if you just replace them with your own thugs it’d hardly be any worse and might be slightly better still because Alastors have currently got a lot of official and unofficial privileges that even the new thugs wouldn’t have. As an institution the Alastors at least are beyond salvaging.
Horion favours either that or the even looser Confederate model, for understandable reasons (being that individual federal republics could far too easily institute something akin to slavery) my mc doesn’t really believe in it and sees a Koinon as nothing more then a tool for some nobles and once he understands more of the resource situation it becomes even worse as then he’ll see it as a tool to keep Shayard in particular, pastoral, backwards and conservative instead.
Which is why my mc isn’t planning on using any alastors and certainly no priests. As for the bureaucracy that may be easier as it seems the Hegemony might have a lot of dissatisfied and under-utilized officials like Bleys (who lack the background and connections for anything better under the current regime) we might be able to make use of and who particularly despise the alastors as an institution almost as much as my mc does. If there are enough people like Bleys we might actually be able to run a system that differs significantly from the Hegemony precisely because a lot of its bureaucrats on the lower rungs are also fed-up with it.
The higher rungs would need to be purged in any case.
True, it does sometimes sort of succeed though, so we’ll just have to see.
Sure, though the Hegemony uses radically different fundamentals and is more like Iran then any western nation. In the case of the Hegemony our rebellion only stands a chance in the first place because the system is increasingly proving itself to not be able to work.
True, but retaining the caste system and the church would make one an apostate for even trying to do that, so if you keep the current system you don’t actually need to worry about the implementation phase because you’ll be slow-harrowed just for speaking it openly, never mind writing it down.
And we may or may not be right on time for it, guess we’ll just have to wait and see, but in many cases revolutions are built on the youth, particularly if they’re bottom-up grassroots ones, as opposed to regime changing coups.
This is true, but it is essentially the same thing Hera seems to have done in the backstory. I get your point about it being rather more difficult for the mc, but particularly if you’re from a caste not even seen as “human” a non-radical reform package is the surest way to either a Pyrrhic victory or to simply lose outright.
Yep, see the Machiavelli quote. On the other hand for my mc this is an existential issue so he has no choice but to take the riskier road here as the other one seems to lead to a virtually guaranteed slow harrowing for him anyway. You shouldn’t underestimate the sheer motivation that comes with that kind of desperation as my mc was always a dead-man or more accurately dead bit of livestock walking to the upper-castes of the Hegemony. Losing one’s life in a failed or even successful rebellion is almost guaranteed to be a more humane way to die then the process of Harrowing.
This has certainly been proven accurate more then once though even this,
would be preferable to the nightmare of the Hegemony.
But also ultimately more successful as it trialed and pioneered many of those basic structures of government almost every nation-state now uses or tries to in some way or another. Just count the small number of remaining monarchies versus how many (de-jure) Republics there are today, as well as separation of powers, separation of church and state (a fundamental issue for my mc in-game too, unless state skepticism proves possible) and many of the other things we take for granted when it comes to the basic structure of a modern, representative government nowadays. The ripple effects of the French revolution transformed Europe and even the world.
The French First Republic didn’t get everything right of course and was itself overthrown but the subsequent monarchical “restorations” never really stuck again afterwards and France is in its Fifth Republic now.
A question my mc, the Laconniers and even Cabel are likely to fundamentally and spectacularly disagree on. For my mc Shayard’s provincial nobility have proven themselves to always be willing collaborators to the Karagonds and are not to trusted. The Laconniers have lost whatever legitimacy they might once have had by losing their realm to said Karagonds in the first place.
Yes, probably, though in the case of Shayard’s provincial nobility I think they want to preserve aspects my mc is intent on doing away with and doing away with some of the very few things such as gay equality and non-bloodline inheritance/adoption for families my mc actually is intent on preserving.