55 Preparations for the party
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Friedrich Wilhelm POV
It has been 2 moons now, and our preparations for a great feast are nearly completed, several ravens had been sent to all the great lords of the seven kingdoms, except the lord reaper of pike I would rather say there was a mistake than by some chance he should come to my name day feast and spoil the mood of all
But I had already had answers from my letters, lord Hoster Tully will come and bring his son, lord Arryn will also come, but he will only stay for the first day, as he cannot spare much time here because he must continue to rule in Robert's name, lord Tywin the lion of the rock will come with his brothers, prince Doran said he would be delighted to come, lord Stark decided not to come because his wife is pregnant, and it is very risky for her to travel, and he does not want to leave her alone, apparently when I made my visit to the north she was already pregnant, and I did not realize it, a similar case is the wife of King Robert who is also pregnant and will not come, but Robert would never say no to a party, Renly Baratheon said he would come and those are the great lords who will come to my party the rest of the banner men are also invited, but I will not concentrate on minor houses.
The plan in simple to demonstrate the economic and military power that my government has achieved in these lands to make any lord who wants to have conflicts with me think twice and get that marriage to put aside the huge amount of marriage proposals that keep arriving.
We had built the foundations of an arena for the main fights which will be seen by all the lords present, as well as a jousting ground in the fields around the city, large enough to accommodate many families in places to watch the knights joust for glory.
In time this will continue to be built to perhaps become a coliseum and give bread and circuses to the small folks, as it was currently built in an area with no houses, but in time we plan to establish a residential area that would be inhabited very soon and the inhabitants could make use of these facilities to have fun watching fights or horse races.
We expect this tournament to be the biggest we have seen in years because we have not skimped on the amount of gold in the prize 100000 golden dragons to the winner 60000 to the second place of the joust, 60000 for the winner and 40000 for the second place in melee combat, 30000 for the winner and 20000 for the second place for the archery competition, in all the history of the seven kingdoms never had been given such generous prizes.
Mainly because of this, the city has been filled with wandering knights seeking to make a name for themselves in the tournaments and to earn a fiefdom by attracting the attention of a great lord to give them land to establish their home, the dream of all those knights who can barely afford a decent horse, but I doubt that anyone without skill can get further than the preliminary rounds.
Because all these prizes have their catch, I doubt very much that anyone can beat my knights in these trials, so the prizes should be won by my own Teutonic knights, which would leave the prize in Neu Danzig anyway, melee and jousting are assured while archery Aleksanteri is going to participate, so he might win I know he is good, but I don't know the archery skill of all the lords and their bannermans
Who knows, the archers of house Tarly might come back and beat Aleksanteri in archery.
Luckily with more funds we have been able to fix a little bit the slums of the city, since they had started the expansion of infrastructure to that filthy place that the slum dwellers called home, a real city starts to grow now without the problems that those slums had like crime and diseases, but I think nobody will thank me for having a great concern for their health, since they lost something very important for them.
Their homes, at the expense of those same homes we have already demolished and rebuilt 30% of the slums, while only the demolition has already reached up to 80%,now small apartments of 5 floors high with 4 apartments per floor have been built, which we are renting at good prices to earn them around 8 silver stags per family which in the future could be another source of stable income for my coffers, since the price is very profitable, that the average salary in the city is around 28 silver stags it should not be difficult for them to manage to pay the rent.
As for Aleksanteri's plan about owning the pleasure houses, he started both a legal and clandestine war against the owners of pleasure houses, since I set regulations on how these places should be run and if they did not comply, we would close them down, making use of that Aleksanteri has been harassing all the owners of this business and has taken possession of all the brothels in my territories and is starting to take over the pleasure houses in the territories of my bannermen, but this is going to be more difficult, as Aleksanteri cannot abuse the power I have given him to wipe out his competition and is resorting to more illegal ways, such as kidnapping of family members extortion or murder if all else fails
By the end of this year, Aleksanteri promised me that he will have most of the pleasure houses under his fake name and the profits will mysteriously end up in my pockets and that the secrets of the men with the loose mouths will be in a book that mysteriously would be in my possession
But what has all of my advisors gathered here was for good old lothar von ruppin with his campaign in essos, apparently his campaign was being a success, but not without some sort of repercussions, as he has proven to be a ruthless leader with his enemies, going to the point of completely massacring a city, before my orders came to him to find a way to self-sustain himself in essos.
''You have complete certainty that this information is correct'' I said seriously.
''Yes my king, I corroborated it with my man on site Antti, and the information given by lothar himself'' said Aleksanteri in a relaxed manner.
''Slaughtering an entire city, what benefits does it bring you?'', said Charles annoyed.
''The renown, now they fear him, they know what will happen if lothar besieges their city, besides completely defeating that army of tyrosh'' said Friedrich von Roon.
''Exactly they fear him no city has ever resisted again, if they see the skull flag of von Ruppin, they know what will happen if they resist, only death awaits the idiots who try to resist, that's why lothar has gone deep into the cities of tyrosh'' said Aleksanteri smiling.
''But the war is against Myr, they are the ones who insulted the king'' said Charles with a frown.
''They must maintain the image of mercenaries and I also think that what von Ruppin did was a good idea, he gave the message of what would happen if they resist and now that he must be nicer to the conquered, since he must now keep alone the logistics of the campaign, and he has started to demand as tribute the children of the locals'' I said very happy
''Is he practicing slavery?'', said Charles frighteningly
''No, ser Charles, he only captures them to remind the people of the towns and cities what will happen, if they try to change sides again he should just remind them what will happen to their children'' said Friedrich von Roon.
''He doesn't have them because of that, but it's not a bad option either, he has them because he's training them and at the same time filling their heads with protestant religion, to the point that Antti has already confirmed that there are children serving voluntarily to lothar in his armies as helpers, but lothar has started training them in the Prussian way, so what he's doing is creating his own army of religious fanatics among the locals'' said Aleksanteri
''Anything else I should know about lothar?'', I said, asking Aleksanteri.
''Well, he had another important battle with those horse lords in the area a khalasar, they were moving in the area demanding tribute from the free cities and lothar was given the order to defeat them, They were not many, only about 3000 warriors. Lothar surrounded them while they were sleeping in their camp and killed all those who resisted and took their loot and gave the survivors to the general of Lys, keeping the children to continue with his plan to train more soldiers'' said Aleksanteri playing with his fingers.
Aleksanteri coughed and continued talking.
''Tyrosh is in big trouble, as they have lost almost half of their army and lothar has a monstrous reputation on the battlefields, so far tyrosh is not being able to recover from the defeat due to the fact that very few are the mercenaries who want to fight the Prussian tercios, so most likely lys will negotiate the surrender of tyrosh for this conflict and then concentrate fully on Myr that's where I think lothar will be able to do what he was ordered to do, but meanwhile he has maintained a system based on extortion and fear with the locals because if they don't pay their tribute to him and the free city of lys he burns them to the ground''said Aleksanteri ending his report.
''My god what happened to the lothar I knew'' said charles holding his head with both hands.
''He changed, the war changed him as it changed almost all of us'' said Friedrich von Roon.
''Well, moving on to a more cheerful topic, how are the preparations for celebrating my name day going?'', I said asking my advisors
''We have the storerooms full of the food we will use in the next few days, we have furnished many mansions in the residential area so that the lords can rest in rooms worthy of their social standing, we have also prepared servants in case they do not bring their own servants'' said Friedrich
''Very good, Charles report'' I said looking at the grand master of the Teutonic order.
''My knights have trained tirelessly to be the winners of the tournaments, and the roads are safe, no one should have any problems arriving to your party, my king'' said Charles with a slight smile
I turned my head to look at Aleksanteri.
''The streets are safe, there are no more gangs organized for robbery or other illicit activities and the new brothels that are being built in the outskirts of the city are complying to the letter with the new regulations imposed by you to control that immoral profession'' Aleksanteri said smiling.
''Well, it seems we have everything ready, be alert for when an important guest arrives we can't insult anyone'' I said to my men.
At the end of this meeting, they left me alone to continue arranging funds for the future projects.
