I headed straight back to the village without even removing my disguise.
Parsi greeted me.
"Welcome back, Your Grace."
"You still look old for your age."
"Quiet! If you're not going to take responsibility for my premature aging, then keep your mouth shut."
Parsi pouted his lips. A man with a face like a wild boar pulling that expression was quite a sight.
He had aged considerably in the few months since I'd last seen him. Parsi was effectively the acting lord, and it was his job to look after the residents of Daisy's farming settlement in my stead. From what I'd heard, he'd had a rough time mediating disputes among the villagers.
Once inside the village chief's house, we got straight to business.
"Hmm. It seems Lady Laura de Farnese is being somewhat... difficult."
Parsi raised his eyebrows in an awkward expression.
"But here's the thing, Your Grace. She doesn't understand human nature at all."
"Doesn't understand human nature?"
"All she does is spout idealistic nonsense, like some ivory-tower philosopher."
Parsi blew his nose with a honk. He had caught a cold.
"Such as?"
"Well, this: Lady Farnese says, what was it again? That the village chief and the landlord should manage the village, that the laws should be written directly by Your Grace and your council of retainers, and that the people who enforce those laws should be chosen separately."
Parsi wiped the snot from his palm onto the floor. Filthy creature!
Parsi continued as if nothing had happened.
"Easier said than done, if you ask me. Think about it. From the villagers' perspective, they'd be getting judged not by the village chief or Your Grace, but by some complete outsider with no connection to them. How are they supposed to trust someone like that?"
"Hmm."
What Laura was advocating for was nothing other than the separation of powers.
Legislation that abstractly establishes the rules for how a fief should be governed. Judiciary that takes those established laws and applies them concretely. And administration that actively governs the fief's people while adhering to those laws and rules.
The idea was to pre-define boundaries so that a ruler could never amass overwhelming power — to tear a single authority into multiple branches. But for ordinary farmers like Parsi, it was only natural to grumble, "Why go through such a complicated process!"
The judiciary in particular. That was the real problem.
Legal disputes in this era were an everyday occurrence. When clearing farmland, most projects involved multiple families working together. Who lends the farming tools? Who actually tills the soil? Once the land is cleared and ready, how much does each party own?
The communal grain storehouse managed by the village — what is each person's share? If a household suddenly loses its breadwinner, who is obligated to provide aid?… The list could go on indefinitely.
When faced with such situations, the solution villages came up with was simple.
The village chief, the landlords, and other influential farmers would gather and serve as judges themselves!
I spoke up.
"Wouldn't it work to simply appoint influential landlords among the farmers as judges?"
"Hmph. So you'd have one landlord in charge of village management and a separate landlord presiding over trials? They're all intermarried and socializing with each other — practically one big family. How fair do you think their rulings would really be?"
"Mm."
A groan escaped.
"A natural web of connections. Is that the crux of the matter?"
"Actually, if you handed all the judicial authority to the landlords, well — if they were colluding, it would be obvious. The village people's eyes would keep them in check. But if they only disguised things to appear fair on the surface… tsk."
Parsi trailed off.
On the surface, it looks fair. But in reality, the landlords are tightly bound together through marriages and other ties. Everyone knows how things would actually play out, yet since it wouldn't be visible on the surface, the villagers would find it even harder to voice their complaints and grievances…
"How about creating an inspector to prevent the landlords from colluding with each other?"
"Where would you recruit this inspector from? Within the village? Or outside of it?"
Parsi let out a soft chuckle.
"If you pick someone from inside, they'll be swayed by personal connections either way. If you pick someone from outside, they won't understand the village's situation and will just listen to what the insiders tell them, making biased judgments. They'll end up bought off by the landlords. No, the landlords wouldn't even need to go that far—just letting it slip that 'anyone who sells information to an outsider will be considered an enemy of the village' would be enough to shut the whole thing down."
"Ahh…"
We were right back where we started.
Two policies lay before me.
The first was to hand all authority over to the village entirely. The second was to thoroughly implement the separation of powers as Laura had argued.
Let's examine the first.
For the village to run fairly, authority had to be bundled together and entrusted to all the landlords collectively. If a trial went wrong or took a ridiculous turn, responsibility would fall on "all the landlords." It was joint liability. The villagers could simply condemn the landlords as a group. The line of accountability would be crystal clear.
But the landlords weren't idiots. Why would they willingly take on the blame for everything? If a trial took a risky gamble and things went south, they themselves would bear the consequences.
So they would follow "customary law" to the letter.
Why was this verdict handed down? Because that was the custom. Why did that person get more farmland? Because that was the custom. Why did the well go to one person and not to another? Because that was the custom. Precisely because it was nothing but custom…
"So in the end, custom becomes both faith and law."
"And is that really so terrible?"
Parsi furrowed his brow.
When customary law was followed, accountability vanished into thin air. If things went wrong, it wasn't the landlords' fault. The situation had simply "had the misfortune" of not working out. In short, determinism—a very mundane folk religion took root.
If things went well, it was good luck. If things went badly, it was bad luck.
There was no need to change customary law. There was no need to appoint any judges beyond the landlords. All one could do was pray to the local deity enshrined at the edge of the village, hoping that fortune would smile this time…
Village community = collective trial and people's trial = evaporation of accountability = determinism = folk religion.
At first glance, these things appeared to be completely independent of one another, but in reality they were bound together in a tight chain. Changing any single one of them meant overhauling the entire system from start to finish. Just imagining how difficult and thorny that task would be was enough.
Thus, the village as a single society became extremely conservative.
I let out a wry smile.
*If it were simply because they were primitive, because they weren't smart enough, and that's why they were conservative — maybe I could understand.*
They were far from primitive.
If anything, rural conservatism was supremely rational. "Rational conservatism" — that would be the perfect way to put it. It was the result of farmers' own blood and sweat, striving to build a fair society in their own way.
But.
"Then what about my position as the lord?"
"……Well, honestly, that's true."
Parsi answered with a grimace.
That was indeed the case. If the village communities governed themselves and held their own trials, there was nothing left for me, the lord, to do. What good was a king's word when they insisted on following their own customs?
"Hmm, you do collect taxes, so shouldn't that satisfy you?"
"Have you ever seen such a brat? Whether you pay taxes or not, it's less than a booger's worth of money to me. What's there to be satisfied about, squeezing pocket change out of kids?"
"Heh heh heh."
Parsi laughed like an old man.
"So Your Demon Lordship is the ideal lord from our villages' perspective. You keep the monsters from raiding us, you barely collect taxes, and you don't really interfere with our rights. Long live Lord Dantalion!"
Parsi threw both arms in the air and gave three cheers. In a fit of annoyance, I punched the guy in the stomach. He screamed, "Ow ow ow, Parsi's dying!" and flopped flat on his back. His theatrics were absolutely magnificent — it couldn't have even hurt, since I'd only hit him in jest.
"Then how about this. We set up a court using elders from different villages."
"Hmm?"
The rough-looking but young and sharp village chief tilted his head.
"Elders from different villages? What do you mean?"
"Parsi. How many villages are there in my domain right now?"
"Um... let me see. Three that were originally villages."
Parsi folded down a finger.
"Two more that the second and third sons set up after leaving. And the slash-and-burn farmers Your Excellency irresponsibly dumped on us last time... that makes six in total."
"That's plenty. Now, let's say an incident occurs in one village. We could send the parties involved to another village and have them stand trial there, don't you think?"
"......"
Parsi's expression turned serious. I continued.
"They're from a different village, so they'll view the situation more impartially. They're fellow subjects of the same domain who interact regularly, so they're not outsiders. But they're not exactly insiders either, nor are they complete strangers. What do you think? Isn't that a good method?"
"...Indeed. Ahem."
Parsi blew his nose.
"It certainly sounds plausible enough. But if it goes wrong, resentment could build between the villages. Your Excellency's domain descending into internal strife?"
"Tsk, tsk. That's exactly why they'd approach the trial even more carefully."
I raised my index finger and wagged it side to side.
"If they screw up, it leads to civil war — so they have to conduct the trial as fairly as possible... Wouldn't the village elders think the same way?"
"Hmm. Hmm. Hm."
Parsi rubbed his palms together, lost in thought. The snot between his palms was forming a green sandwich.
"But if the trial still doesn't go well, the verdict can be challenged once more. This time, I — the lord — will have my personally assembled council of retainers deliver the ruling."
"...So there's a trial on top of a trial?"
"Well, I suppose we could just give it a fitting name — something like 'Supreme Court.'"
The furrow in Parsi's brow grew deeper and deeper.
In this era, the principle that "matters arising within the same class must be settled within that class" was treated as an unwritten law. If a commoner dashed off to the lord to beg for help resolving some problem, they'd be completely ostracized by everyone of their own standing.
Appealing a first trial's verdict in defiance of the unwritten law… In other words, unless it was a matter of considerable importance, such a thing was unlikely to happen. Not just anyone could lodge an appeal simply because they didn't like the outcome.
It meant the first trial would never become a hollow formality.
"I'm illiterate, so perhaps I'm missing something, but that does sound like a rather good system."
"Of course it is. You think it just fell out of the sky?"
"…Did you know, Your Majesty? You have a habit of being — to put it bluntly — extremely annoying."
I threw a punch. This time, I meant it. The fist landed square in the middle of Parsi's gut, and he didn't even flinch. Damn it — this was exactly why you didn't mess with a musclebound farmer.
"Just to be safe, I'll also pass a law banning a landlord's family in one village from marrying into a landlord's family in another. That should go a long way toward eliminating any cozy ties."
"Well, now. Thorough as ever."
Parsi clicked his tongue in admiration.
With that, the separation-of-powers policy my confidante Laura was championing and the village-community policy Parsi represented as the lord's deputy had found their compromise. Judicial authority would be separated from individual villages — but not from the villages collectively. It was a solution anyone could accept.
"But Your Majesty. There's still a problem. The villagers have been living perfectly well by the way things have always been done. Even if you declared, 'Starting now, let's live by a new system!' would people actually fall in line? That's what worries me."
"Oh."
I nodded.
"If it benefits them, they'll agree without hesitation."
"Benefits? I don't see anything particularly beneficial about this new system."
Parsi tilted his head.
Telling them that decentralizing power would ultimately make the community healthier would only confuse them. Far too abstract. You could never persuade the commonfolk with "invisible" benefits like that. If you wanted to push through a new policy, you needed an immediate carrot.
I smiled.
"Simple. If there aren't any benefits, create some."
The very next day, I sent Jeremy to the largest nearby city with instructions to post a job at the adventurer's guild — with an enormous bounty attached.
The request was straightforward.
"4,000 gold will be paid to anyone who captures the Demon Lord Dantalion."
"The deadline is tight. By the last day of this month."
"Dead or alive."
It was the kind of news that would set the mercenaries and adventurers of the city ablaze with excitement.