Rank

Alex III decided to organize his kingdom before moving further with the third phase of his plan.

After the recent expansion, things in the Alex kingdom have become very messy. 

He has all the power, but the ranks below him are in chaos; for example, nobody knows who holds the ultimate authority of the military below Alex III himself. 

In practice, Jack has the highest rank below him because everyone sees how much Alex III trusts him. 

But Jack doesn't have any official title; everyone just assumes Jack is the person with the highest rank. 

Alex doesn't like this situation.

To organize things, he devised a system. 

Everyone, from slaves to himself, will receive a rank. 

He, as the king of all, will receive the super-rank. 

Super rank will outrank all and is the person with the highest seniority. 

Below the super rank is rank 1.

The crown prince, the queen, and the king's mother and father will receive rank 1. 

Of course, that is not an exhaustive list; Alex III himself could promote anyone he wants to any rank he wants, but it is generally not advised to promote anyone to the same rank as the royal family.

In practice, only the crown prince will have rank 1, as Alex III's father and mother are both dead, and he has no queen. 

All of Alex III's children have been from his concubines. 

Most noble families flinch with such an arrangement. For them, pure, noble blood is very important. 

However, Alex III doesn't like to have a queen. 

The reason is simple. 

Allowing any daughter of a noble family to have a relationship with him would make them powerful, potentially strong enough to interfere with him. 

So, all of his concubines were women whose families were dead or orphans.

Princes, Princesses, and concubines will receive rank 2. 

The prime minister, leader of the army and navy, will have rank 3. 

Ranks 4 and 5 are for other ministers. 

Rank 6 is for deputy ministers and other senior government officials. 

Ranks 7 to 9 are for lower government workers. 

The workers would automatically advance to rank 7 with increasing years of service. 

For rank 6 and below, only an order from Alex III could make them advance. Of course, he doesn't have time to sit and think about who to promote; the prime minister will prepare a list, and he stamps it. 

Noble families would receive rank 10. 

Even the highest nobles would have to bow down to an ordinary government worker; this is by design. 

Alex III aims to eliminate all nobility eventually. That's why, in his arrangement, a duke has to bow down to a newbie government official. 

Initially, he eliminated all nobility in Alex kingdom, but with the addition of many new territories, the nobles in those countries have been recognized by him. 

With this, he is sending a clear message: if you want power, the only way is by joining my government. 

Ordinary people have ranks 11 to 13, depending on their education. 

Slaves are rank 14. Criminals and prisoners are rank 15 while in prison; they could recover their previous rank by completing their punishment. 

Traitors have rank 16, the lowest possible; only an order from Alex III personally could promote a traitor. 

What Alex III hates the most is the people he trusted who turned their back on him.

He appointed Jack as the army and navy commander and Lisa as prime minister. 

Even though he got angry at Lisa, he still thought her abilities were enough for the prime minister. 

He has other reasons for appointing her; she is a woman. 

Alex III has a peculiar thought process when appointing people.

The first barrier is whether the person is loyal. If yes, move to the next stage; if no, the person is rejected. 

Second, he thinks about whether the person can perform the task; if yes, he moves to the next stage; if no, the person is rejected. 

The third phase is whether the person looks good on the job. This stage is relative and can't be generalized. For example, if a person is a former criminal, he would probably not look good as a prosecutor. But it's relative, so if the qualification and loyalty are high enough, Alex III might overlook this. 

The fourth step is whether the candidate furthers Alex III's overall aims. 

Lisa is a woman; Alex III wants to increase gender equality, so appointing a woman as prime minister would normalize women working jobs. 

In Alex kingdom, it's strange for women to be working. 

Alex III wants to change it. Women working would double the workforce and would increase tax revenues by a lot. 

Alex III only cares about his benefits; the reason he wants to change culture is because it helps him. If women working would have harmed him, he would have done the opposite. 

He is no champion of equality; he is simply thinking of his pocket.

With ranking done, he ordered Lisa to start incorporating the new territories into Alex's kingdom. 

Before, Alex's kingdom took lots of land from many surrendered kingdoms. Until now, those were run independently. 

But now, with no outside enemy left, Alex wants to move to centralize power. Having autonomous territories in general is disturbing to Alex III. 

He feels uncomfortable when everything is not firmly in his hands. 

He is the president of the Mountains and Rivers Alliance, but he lacks time for that kind of job. Therefore, he ordered his son, Alex IV, to take care of that in his place. 

It is just the beginning. As soon as Alex's kingdom thoroughly absorbed the new territories, Alex III would start replacing kings of the Mountains and Rivers Alliance members. 

Those countries have shown remarkable disloyalty to him. 

When he was fighting the Candles Dynasty, they delayed sending reinforcement as much as possible. Alex III, of course, remembered it. 

But for now, he ignored it. He has lots more to do with people with abilities. 

...

Rob, on his part, has been working hard. 

He was also busy centralizing power by relying on the world alliance. 

World alliance, and not UISEC, is how he controls the world.

UISEC was different from Alex's kingdom. 

Rob didn't have as much power as Alex III. After all, in UISEC, many billionaires had a lot of influence. 

Rob was allied with the billionaires and Rose, the prime minister. 

However, the alliance had a cost. 

Even though UISEC was extremely rich, the inequalities were astonishing. Many had so much money they couldn't spend it, but a lot couldn't afford their rent. 

After the world alliance, the movement between the countries eased. Wealthy people from all over the world moved to UISEC, and it increased housing prices by leaps and bounds. 

With no government regulations, many developers continued to cut down the forest and build new houses. 

They cut down forests and cleared land for farming and buildings. 

But not having any environmental regulation has its costs. 

There are far fewer green spaces, and most of the land in UISEC has been developed. Many animal species have been going extinct. 

It could cause severe problems with the food chain.

Rob, though, couldn't do anything about it, even though technically, he is the president with lots of power. 

The alliance with billionaires and Rose is delicate. 

The moment he tries to impose more regulations or raise taxes, they could turn on him. He doesn't want to risk it. 

But ordinary people don't care about billionaires' thinking. 

Just a few days ago, the opposition parties won a majority in the parliament for the first time in many years! It shocked the entire world! 

Who UISEC votes for affects all countries. 

Before, Rose maintained power by relying on a few independent MPs, but now, the opposition has an outright majority, so she can't remain in power anymore.

After a month, she left the prime minister's office peacefully. 

Rob liked her, so he appointed her as his adviser. 

The new prime minister was from a party advocating for higher taxes on billionaires, more regulations, and less development. 

It was entirely against Rob's way of doing things. 

But he decided to let them do their thing. 

It was different from before. 

If it were before, he would have vetoed all their legislation, but he changed after creating this country for many years. 

He doesn't want to destroy democracy only to prevent a prime minister. 

If he vetoes legislation, it would be destroying democracy. 

In UISEC's constitution, presidents' vetoes could not be overturned. If he vetoes anything, there is no recourse for the voters. 

And, because the candidate qualification commission won't let anyone run against him, the voters couldn't vote against him either. 

The opposition party would, in turn, blame him for all the problems. In that case, Rob would have to arrest the opposition leaders, causing protests, which Rob must forcefully suppress. 

It would get out of hand very fast if he decided to veto the legislature. 

Instead, it's much better to win over the voters and win the next election. 

With all the money billionaires have, winning the next election is possible. 

The key is winning on social policy. 

The voters never vote for less tax on billionaires. 

Billionaires, in general, are unpopular, so campaigning about 'helping the poor billionaires' will not win votes. So, it's best to talk less about taxes. 

The new prime minister quickly passed new taxes on billionaires and sent it to Rob for signature. 

Rob signed all the legislation quickly without complaining. 

Fortunately, the opposition didn't try to pass legislation weakening his power. 

It was a tactic of understanding. They didn't attack him as long as Rob didn't obstruct them. 

Nowadays, The public doesn't know him much; Rob has been in the shadows. 

His role has become increasingly non-political, as he didn't intervene in the politics of UISEC, at least not openly. 

Behind the scenes, though, he has been helping Rose win elections. 

The taxes on billionaires raised money, and the new PM passed a law to help ordinary people. 

In Rob's view, it was outrageous. It was bribery. 

They campaigned, ' If you vote for us, we will give you money.'

Sure, it was not personal money, but it was still bribery in his opinion. 

Rob appoints most prosecutors. 

He has considered charging them with bribing voters but decided against it. 

Things are going well with him in the highest office of the world alliance. He steadily increases his influence worldwide by leveraging his position in the world alliance. 

It's not worth it to do something so big just for this. 

With lots of money raised by billionaires and laws limiting rent increases, it became much easier for ordinary people to survive. But, it had consequences.

Fewer developers developed new houses, as they couldn't charge outrageously high rents as before. And many billionaires did all they could to hide their money, some of which were illegal. 

Fortunately for them, with most prosecutors appointed by Rob, nobody charged them with any crimes. Then, the new prime minister passed the red line. 

He passed a law creating special prosecutors for prosecuting billionaire tax avoiders. 

It was not directly taking Rob's power, but it was a break with the tradition of him appointing prosecutors. 

The billionaires, of course, sued.

The lower courts dismissed the lawsuit for a lack of standing. 

The law had just been passed, and nobody was prosecuted.

The court of appeals wrote, 'The plaintiff argues that the possibility that they might be charged for violating tax laws is enough to establish standing, but this court and the Supreme Court's precedents cut against them. To have standing, speculation of possible harm is not enough.' 

A commission appoints lower courts, so they aren't all aligned with Rob. 

But, the Supreme Court overruled the lower court and enjoined the government from appointing special prosecutors. 

The Supreme Court wrote, 'The power to appoint prosecutors, with limited exceptions, rests with the president. We find that special prosecutors in question do not fit in those exceptions.' 

As to standing, they wrote, 'The plaintiffs have pointed to many statements by senior officials, including the prime minister, specifically naming them as "tax cheats." They have successfully argued a case in which the highest levels of government specifically target them. Therefore, they have standing to challenge this law, even though no prosecution occurred.' 

No special prosecutors, which means parliament can pass all laws it wants, but without Rob's prosecutors charging anyone with any crime, the laws remained toothless. 

With this, the prime minister crossed another red line and started directly attacking the Supreme Court as a partisan actor and 'bought by billionaires'. 

It completely crossed the red line.