Okay, great may be exaggerating, I didn’t find a better word in English for some reason. But, in terms of domestic affairs, you can’t deny that he’s largely been successful.
I’d honestly argue that he’s not a particularly good king *or* a good father. Charlie Brown’s reign can best be summed up as a series of brutal appeals to force which work in the short term but create problems down the line due to people not appreciating appeals to force.
To wit:
- Why is Lena so pissed at Rhivenia and its ruler? Because Charlie Brown killed her dad and held her brother prisoner of course.
- Why did Charlie Brown kill their dad? Because he was arming their enemies and betraying his alliance with Rhivenia, very possibly due to Charlie Brown’s brutal practices
- He only keeps crime down by threat of mutilation. I don’t think I need to spell out how that’s problematic both for the population due to a chunk of workers losing a hand, how that could breed discontent, or how it could imply problems with the economy.
- Why do we have to scramble to make alliances to prepare for an oncoming war? Because Charlie Brown killed his brother but DIDN’T kill his brother’s wife for some reason
Then there’s the fact that, as we’ve seen with Atheris, any dissent can be (legally) answered with force; I’m willing to bet that everyone calls him a good king because he’s been in power so long and anyone else who had a claim to the throne (Sans the sword) was dead, so everyone just had to accept it.
But the real thing that I find bothersome about his reign is his contradictory and downright baffling decisions which CREATED THE CURRENT CONFLICT IN THE STORY. I’ll say this again for the people in the back, if you’re going to kill your brother because his wife convinced him to assassinate you, then you also kill the pregnant wife while you have the chance. But since he chose the worst possible time to show mercy, I have to deal with a crazy cousin who wants my head
To sum up, Charles’ political choices have been somewhat effective, but only really serve the purpose of pissing everybody off and creating discontent which can come back to bite him or his successors (which they do). The only thing I find a 100% good policy was making slavery illegal (except Xavier).
Then there’s the personal choices he’s made; sure, I’ll admit that being a king doesn’t help him be a good dad, but the issue goes back way further than that with the fact that he even bothered having two wives to begin with. WHY?! That’s literally the other half of the problems in the story, and it’s only compounded by the fact that his wives were friends before they met him, and how he did nothing when one POISONED the other. If he’d just picked one woman, or had one executed, or just had an affair like any other normal person, the family wouldn’t be as messed up as it is.
Despite all of this, I have to say I’m apathetic to Charlie Brown’s bad parenting. Maybe this makes me weird, but MC is rich, has more power than anyone in the kingdom, and literally has their pick of the litter for who they want as a partner, who cares if Daddy wasn’t there? No, I’m more annoyed about how all of his bad choices led to a political nightmare that has to be fixed by someone barely into adulthood.
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To add to what was just posted and I can be rembering things poorly since its been white some time since played orgional game and havent gotten to far into the current yet.
I believe there is a famine in the country as well? Enough that people are starving when by all rights the country should be strong and stable if. Which further breeds discontent that it and every other problem seems to have been allowed to linger instead of adressing it where the people can see it has been.
Not sure if that makes any sense or how much I might be forgetting I am tired lol
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Nah I feel you, I’m also in that pack. I can’t be bothered to hate the guy when, in Rhivenia, our family is the strongest and wealthiest one.
That’s also why I said “domestically.” In foreign relations (or even our vassals,) Charlie Brown shit the bed and that’s why we’ve got this mess on our hands.
Idk, I just can’t relate to people who demonize Charles. Like sure, he’s a prick who has caused a lot of problems, but I feel like Alvena, Atheris, Richard, Freya and Isabelle have caused us a LOT more problems and actively tear the family apart while Charles is…just there. He isn’t really mending thibgs, but he ain’t actively making things worse in my opinion.
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It’s him like in the original but he hasn’t been found out yet. Even if she was treated better he still probably would have done it anyway. Love makes people do crazy stuff. A lot of the treatment is our mothers fault for what she did but he didn’t need to punish any offspring from her.
You can try. He didn’t. So he can rot as far as I’m concerned.
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Me trying to find where the fuck Charles was a good king.
About that… he isn’t even a good ruler, he just sucks on all fronts!
Look at this list I made where I detailed Charles biggest screw ups.
He is a TERRIBLE ruler where his decisions actively caused AN CIVIL WAR (Post-Francis revolt), ANOTHER CLAIMANT WAR (ERWAN) WHICH MIGHT BECOME CIVIL IF LENA JUMPS TO THE OTHER SIDE.
And then! caused the schism between the Sylvanes, causing a “them against us” between the families of Alvena & Isabelle because he didn’t deal with it, AND THEN treated Richard as the favourite, completely putting all of the Kingdom at risk because the alleged “equal” heirs weren’t being treated as equals at all, with an INHERRITANCE SYSTEM THAT HE CAN’T CONTROL AND SEEMINGLY CHOOSES AT RANDOM (even if the chosen is supposedly the best choice in the “heir batch”)
Granted, usually the firstborn becomes King, but usually is not always and this is literally what happens in this case.
And if we take the whole “Theatre Play” as something common, then his own population might not even respect him, mainly because of the Alvena x Isabelle debacle.
He is a hypocrite, who only started to acknowledge us because he was being poisoned and had an “Oh shit i’m sabotaging Rhivenia when we are going to enter a war we might not even win!” after he realized Richard was unworthy.
There is a big difference between ruling the Kingdom, and being intentionally a deadbeat father, he is VERY much on the 2nd field and pretty much openly says so after we start leaving the Everan lands no?
Not even Atheris saw him until Richard’s 10th birthday (and from what I understood, he didn’t even meet Richard either until then! which is even worse)
You telling me, that in over 10 years, 3,650 days… he didn’t find a single minute to spend time with any of them? and this is after the Brothers war, after the revolt, after everything was largely stable.
And then he does the rugpull with Richard, practically calling him an unworthy dissapointment who only received Charles attention because he wasn’t related to Alvena.
Lastly, we can’t forget he very much caused & threw the wrench between Alvena & Isabelle branches, which may or may have set the grounds for another civil war while we are being invaded.
Something worth noting is that we still had other people to step up, mainly Sir Arnold & Matteo, Atheris had Sir Locke, and Freya had Atheris, and all of us had our mother Alvena while Charles died a very lonely and painful death.
And besides, we become the ruler with our first decision being basically “Send a massive bird to Charles in Hell by revealing the treachery he didn’t want to admit.”
And potentially getting rid of Richard, so in the end was all for nothing.
My brother in Namherys, it was precisely BECAUSE of Charles that they are causing problems, he is the foundation of everything currently bad that happened, Family-wise and Rhivenia crisis wise.
He allowed the fire to happen in the kitchen (Alvena x Isabelle) and didn’t bother to put it out, kitchen was burned, then he kept setting more things on fire, now intentionally (being a deadbeat and only “caring” about Richard)
And now the foundation is burnt to the ground, and everyone in the family is forced to live under it.
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And another thing! Are we gonna talk about how Charlie Brown’s lack of parenting has created the seeds of yet another succession crisis and civil war, EXACTLY like the one he was caught in when he became king? The signs are all there:
The signs
- Lastborn child being crowned by the sword? Charles and MC
- Debate among the populace in regards to who deserves the crown? Happened with Charles and his brothers, and depending on your choices, there’s a very clear schism between the people who want MC on the throne and those who want Richard on the throne
- Sibling betraying the crowned sibling over a woman? Francis nearly killed Charlie Brown just because his wife said so, and Richard is obviously jealous of MC for more reasons than just the crown, and if Charlie Brown had spent even 40 seconds around Richard or asked about his love life, he’d have figured this out.
- Eroding trust between siblings? F***ing obviously.
He is very actively perpetuating the cycle which led to his family crumbling to begin with. At best, he’s simply stupid and doesn’t see the way that his children will soon be at each other’s throats, and at worst, he’s a monster who was counting on it. There’s truly no justifiable explanation for why he allowed any of this, especially when, let me repeat once more, he could have just picked a single wife! Most people don’t have more than one and are able to express their affections for their family without having to worry about someone else feeling left out. At some point, he was asking for it.
I truly can’t think of a reason to like this man, but I can’t bring myself to hate him for him being a bad parent or a bad husband simply because the fallout of that is far worse for everyone else than it is for me, and more importantly, I’m too busy hating him for being a bad ruler who’s set Rhivenia up to be wiped out within the next decade (if we live that long). At this point, I’m starting to wonder if this was intentional, if the sword is brainwashing him or something, or maybe he just hates Rhivenia, because there’s so many times where he’s somehow made the worst possible decision when there’s various obvious solutions YOU SHOULD’VE KILLED FRANCIS’ WIFE WHEN SHE WAS ALONE AND VULNERABLE YOU STUPID BASTARD! LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE! Seriously, if you’re gonna be a cruel and iron-fisted leader, at least be consistent about it, don’t just arbitrarily decide you need a conscience this one time and then abandon it immediately after.
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I think the fact a lot of the hate for big Charlie was because he ignored his famliy is a little funny. He was ignoring his kids because a big emotional response, not saying anyone is wrong just it’s funny people are having a big emotional hatred because of his emotional hatred.
EXACTLY.
Charlie is so neck deep with his own fucks up that he is actively shooting Rhivenia in the foot, it is almost comical how he seems to have picked every single choice he coule have made to agravate potential problems in the future.
I doubt it is brainwashing, maybe the Force-ghosts Witches caused him to act up or something, but the sword doesn’t seem to change the person.
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From an emotional standpoint, he abandoned his children. And parental abandonment is rather difficult to forgive…
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I won’t be surprised if our enemies don’t use this as a line of attack. “How sure are you that the decisions of your queen is truly her own, but not some ghost from the past that’s possessed them.”
Or else say something like all the memories could drive a person crazy.
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I agree , but what was done for him to do that to his children is also pretty unforgivable like it’s definitely not his children’s fault so it makes it a bit more unreasonable but it is at least kind of understandable. Also in the context of this being a medieval world hardcore ignoring your children while still giving them a good education and training isn’t too bad. I honestly feel like people give the big king c a really hard time because we are his child so therefore it feels a bit more personal.
Lemme ask you this: if he hates us because of what MC’s mother did and that’s the reason for everything…
… what about Richard? You know. His sole kid from the woman he does love. Who he was also largely absent for (minus one training session) and otherwise gives an almost equally cold shoulder to. And that’s before pretty much all but outright calling him a weak failure, which is the root cause of 80% of the tensions between Richard and MC… which in turn also causes the possibility of another schism of who should be ruler again.
Charles is a failure of a father and a king, may his soul never know peace.
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I’m glad that the majority sees it as I do, that Charles was not only a bad father, but also a bad ruler. If we could say that he neglected his family for the sake of the kingdom, then we could start to argue about whether it was worth it. On the other hand, let’s look at the facts: not only is our family in pieces, that we are on the verge of sibling killing sibling, but he has also left the kingdom in such a state that half the continent has joined forces to destroy it, and he has treated his few allies so lavishly that now we, young and inexperienced, have to suffer to at least keep Lena on our side.
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You’re right he’s not a fantastic father to him either but he is still very much the favorite child. Honestly, I don’t think Richard deserves as much of the hate as he’s getting either but I at least find that a bit more reasonable, because he is actively committing treason kinda. But it seems like a lot of the reason why he didn’t mind our main character was because he thought he was better anyway. So daddy shattering that illusion is Charlie’s fault.I still think it’s a bit overblown.To be like he is a terrible father a terrible king and a terrible person. He was seemingly a decent ruler who was just overly Ruthless and didn’t even like that part of himself just thought it was necessary.
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There have been other thints if you look where even allies might have gone elsewhere. There is that part when Xavier talks to Daemir, and Xavier says “My dad was wrong to think you could change sides.” and Daemir basically replies “he isn’t sure of that.” If the Everans could reconsider alliance, then Charles must have done something really bad to them.
I also won’t be surprised to see if Isabella’s father is less than forthcoming in his aid. After all, he is furious that Richard won’t get on the throne, not to mention Matteo. Considering Alvena basically got a slap on the wrist for her crime, he could be furious at Charles for what happened to his daughter. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he wished his daughter had been more ruthless. This doesn’t mean he will necessarily take them back into his kingdom, but I can see him withdrawing from an alliance.
And of course siblings…weirdly, while Atheris will be a good warrior, I can also see some benefit with Freya’s…paramour. Not that him being a pirate won’t hurt, but perhaps he has enough know-how to help improve our navy; I could see down the road him being the Pirate Admiral or some such moniker.
Even if that isn’t the case, he might have a good idea where the pirates’ havens are, and assuming we have the ships, we could try to destroy them.
This is a case where I wish it was actually one our mom’s children who was jealous of us rather than Richard, and yes, I’m thinking of Atheris. You would still have the dynamic of having a sibling hate us for being ‘favored’. And if Atheris was defeated by the MC in Marania, she would take that as a major blow to her martial prowess, and train even harder.
And if Atheris was the jealous one, then Richard wouldn’t be damned twice over; the first being jealous of daddy’s respect, and of course, losing Clara to the MC. Just the latter alone would be reason enough for him to have it in for the player.
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That would be pretty interesting and honestly kind of funny, because ,you know , everyone would probably expect you have to worry about your devious half sibling who thought swordthat was his when he’s just more mad about love. One of the few complaints I have about the story lovingly so because it’s amazing is that richard seems to spiral hard fast. I get some of it like dueling to try to impress daddy after what happened But he seems to be ready to plot on our downfall real fast even if we do try that be a loving sibling him. That’s what makes me believe it was on purpose that he goes so extreme so fast. That he liked our siblings so much because we were supposed to be the small one that would never challenge him which is why he freaks out so much when we’re apparently the chosen one.
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I’m planning on making Isabella my advisor, I’m curious if this will improve or worsen the situation. I think it’s a pretty nice peace gesture towards their family.
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We have famine?