It all depends on how much tech the Karagonds actually have, we do know they are very restrictive and criminally inefficient with what they already have. If the tech is advanced enough to allow for a telegraph system, we’d be in business and even if not the current huge and unwieldy Karagond provinces can certainly be cut down in size, along nationalist lines, if nothing else.
We already know that there are real differences between the French and Anglo-Saxon parts of Shayard that can be exploited to divide it into at least two pieces. Similarly Wiedrj seems to have a conflict between its high and lowland clans that might well be exploited to divide it into individual clanholds, instead of the current yuge province. The other provinces likely have similar, exploitable divides that can be used to split them up.
At the moment, yes. That doesn’t mean that handicap can’t be overcome and in fairly short order at that, many of our followers have in fact made amazing amounts of progress in as little as ten weeks during the winter.
In any case to my mc he himself and many of his current followers would disprove that assertion and since he isn’t planning on “discovering” his “lost nobility” that still means the first and most fundamental order of business will be to de-legitimize and tear down the Hegemony’s current power structures, particularly its caste system.
Again my mc isn’t doing this to get a slightly better deal on his own enslavement and then return to being breeding cattle or a breeding sharecropper or even to become Simon’s “concubine”.
And my mc is certainly pulling out as many stops as he dares in his efforts to co-opt the yeomen and merchants as he knows he needs people like Bleys. In any case thus far he seems to be having some success in both cases. The classes he absolutely needs to marginalize would be the nobles and the priests, particularly any priest who holds the rank of Ecclesiast or higher.
These last two classes are simply too dangerous and too opposed to everything he stands for to even try and co-opt, at least in the numbers necessary to have any significant effects.
Debatable, Karagond proper is. The provinces, particularly Shayard and Wiendrj seem to be predominantly rural.
The Appella’s should provide more efficient and accountable decentralised authority then the current system does. But it is certainly possible that technological and bureaucratic restrictions would force my mc to add more intermediate layers of government then he would, ideally, like.
Which means it cannot be the current officers, as they are conditioned to disdain and look down on helots with every fiber of their being and would for the most part (yes, there may be a handful eccentrics who could possibly be persuaded, but that’s nowhere near enough to make it worthwhile). That by definition means they won’t be reliable officers for my mc and any government he leads.
Ideally, yes, but not all idealism survives the brush with reality entirely intact. There’d likely be an increasing thumb on the scale at higher levels.
In particular the degree of electoral freedom would depend on how likely my mc judges the chances that he, along with a majority of former helots will be re-enslaved/enserfed in case of truly free elections. My mc is not someone who would particularly likes holding down the head of state position in particular (he’s personally likely to be disgusted by the inevitable decadence and ceremony), less so for head of government, but that doesn’t mean it’s his ideal job either.
If he has a reasonable degree of confidence and trust in the new system as is he’d be prepared to step down, provided that leaves him free to pursue his true callings of magic and technology.
Right, and my mc’s powerbase, such as it is anyway is highly likely to consist overwhelmingly of the rural helotry and yeomanry, perhaps mixed with some merchants with significant rural interests.
Grand Shayard for example, being the home of Shayardene high culture, the province seat of the current Hegemonic regime and collaborating nobility as well as the most likely power-base and capital of the Laconnier conspiracy is likely to be one of the most hostile places there is in the entire Hegemony for my mc, probably right up there with Aekos itself.
This is true, which is why my mc will need to figure out a way to center it around Avezia and the likely canal zone.
It is true that this will likely be an uphill struggle, but the current “ties” of the Hegemonic society seek to destroy my mc, preferably as “blood-cattle”. Needless to say that isn’t acceptable.
If what I was speculating on with @P_Tigras is right then the wards are a self-defeating proposition anyway and sooner or later there isn’t going to be enough blood in the world to feed them. In any case the Xaos lands while undoubtedly hostile seem to be survivable. If the fan-theory is right then the sooner we face down that particular crisis the less damage it is in fact going to do.
Oh, that is all likely to be true, but what is also true is that if my mc allows the old elite to continue to be anywhere near the levers of power it is all over for him too. So between the rock and the hard place, it will be an incredible gamble in any case but there is also no viable alternative, since my mc naturally refuses to meekly return to being blood-cattle and would not inflict that dismal fate on his fellow helots either.
I guess we’ll see, but my mc was always going to give the Hegemonic society a large shock, since any remotely viable alternative is well and truly lacking.