Chapter 420 — Questions and Answers

"The nobility..." Wright frowned. "They... are the owners and rulers of the land and the people, and at least in name, the protectors of all of it... Their power is immense; this kingdom basically runs upon their backs."

"Then do you think the 'nobility' are good or bad?"

This time it was Amber beside him who answered: "Bad, obviously—Wright's seen it with his own eyes."

"I am a noble too," Gaoyang said, looking at Amber with a half-smile. "As are Viscount Gran, who freed the slaves eleven years ago—now Viscountess Gran—and Viscount Andrew Leslie, who has accepted the Cecil Code and is preparing to swear allegiance. They are all nobles."

"Uh..." Amber blinked, scratching at her hair. "Well then... some are good and some are bad, I suppose."

"Yes. There are good nobles among them. But why does the group as a whole still rot and decay like this?"

Amber and Wright exchanged glances, seeming at a loss for a moment as to what Gaoyang was really driving at.

Fortunately, Gaoyang did not leave them puzzled for long. There were things he had long wanted to say to those close to him, and now the moment was right. He drew a slight breath and spoke his mind: "The nobility—or, to put it more strictly, the landed nobility under Ansell's current system—are the absolute owners of land and population, and the makers and executors of power. From the day of their birth, the nature of this group determined their way of survival: they hold nearly all resources, and possess absolute authority to use them. All commoners are nothing more than tenants of their resources—or even a part of those resources. The nobles do not engage in production, nor do they need to produce anything; they need only parasitize the land and the people, drawing sustenance from the latter...

"So of course they will never truly cherish or care about the lives and rights of commoners. And because their resources come from the land, the degree to which they care about the people is even less than the degree to which they care about their own land. Even when they occasionally put on a show of caring for the people, it amounts to no more than a man treasuring the coins in his pocket. They will protect their coins, but when the price is right, they can 'spend' those coins at any time.

"They style themselves the protectors of the people, and that too is a fact. In the savage years of pioneering, humanity had only limited resources with which to sustain a limited number of protectors. To survive, we had to concentrate vast resources in a few powerful individuals, letting those individuals safeguard the whole—and those powerful individuals were the first landed nobles. At least in that age, their existence ensured the survival and development of civilization. But after that age ended?

"No one can control the landed nobility, because they are at once the owners, the distributors, and the users of resources, and at once the makers, the executors, and the upholders of law. So they are bound to become a group beyond control, corrupt and degenerate—and, setting morality aside, even their 'corruption' cannot truly be called corruption. It is merely the natural change of a group swelling and growing in an environment rich in nourishment, just as a plant will keep growing in fertile soil."

"Under such circumstances, the landed nobility will never—remember, never—voluntarily give up their resources and privileges, any more than a plant will voluntarily pull its own roots out of the soil. Under such circumstances, even if one or two 'good' landed nobles should appear from time to time, they will not change the character of the landed nobility as a whole, because the essence of that class has not changed, nor will its way of life change. So long as they still hold land, still enjoy privileges, still command resources, this class of theirs is bound to take the path of parasitizing the land and the people, of living off the nourishment they drain from the latter; and their so-called role as 'protectors of the people' will vanish the moment all the landed nobles have finished dividing up the resources and a relatively stable structure of rule has taken shape. Think of those high-sounding 'noble wars'—in those 'noble wars,' did they take up sword and blade to protect the people?

"And if we extend this concept, the same reasoning applies to the Church of the Dark Luminary and the landed nobility at present. The only difference is that the resource the landed nobility holds is land, while what the Church holds is faith and divine arts; the privilege of the landed nobility is the law, while the privilege of the Church is nothing more than the right to interpret scripture."

Gaodai paused here. He looked at Wright and Amber, both sunk in thought, and went on: "So let us return to the beginning—why do the nobles rot and degenerate to such a degree? The answer is: they are bound to rot and degenerate to such a degree. This has nothing to do with whether a few enlightened lords happen to appear among the landed nobility, and nothing to do with how glorious and great they once were. It is determined purely by their inherent attributes. Therefore—Wright, I can tell you with certainty that in this war we may destroy hundreds, even thousands, of nobles and knights, but so long as the class of 'landed nobility' still exists, then even if we kill off this entire batch of landed nobles, new landed nobles will sooner or later appear—and they may even appear from among our own descendants.

"So from the very beginning, this war has not been merely about destroying the bodies of those nobles, but about destroying their foundations. We did not wage this war to wipe out the more than forty enfeoffed lords of the Southern Marches and plunder their lands and wealth; we waged it to wipe out the whole of the 'landed nobility' to which those lords belong, and to return the land and freedom to the people. We waged it so that there would never again be a village burned by its own lord, never again another Emily.

"Wright, if you are interested, you may go and read the Land Distribution Act I have most recently promulgated, along with the interpretations of land rights and the rights of the people that are being ceaselessly propagated in the schools, in the newspapers, and on every notice board. Perhaps then you will understand why, when Count Hossman called for troops and declared war on Cecil, he laid eighteen counts of indictment against me—and eleven of them had to do with the laws I had enacted and the things I had propagated in my domain. Because those are the things that truly threaten their lives—that may even threaten the lives of their children and grandchildren. On this point, they see things quite clearly.

"But so long as these things are propagated, established, and formed into a stable social order, then we may proudly say that we have destroyed the 'landed nobility' as a whole—not destroyed their flesh, but destroyed their foundations. From this day forward, even if the word 'noble' still remains, even if they retain some remnant of something, their roots will no longer exist."