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Chapter 53: Chapter 38: Bureaucracy IChapter Text

"Middle management exists because people whom work long enough in the organisation expect to be promoted, but are too incompetent for the actual power brokers. So we give them enough authority to make them think that they've been rewarded, while in truth having no say in any decision that actually matters."

-Excerpt from 'War and Politics' by King Viserys II Targaryen, the Lawmaker. Mandatory reading for every scion of House Targaryen

110 AC, Tower of the Hand

Broadly speaking, Alicent's power base comprised of three major components. The Reach, the Westerlands and my opposition. Now, it wasn't an absolute clear cut line between ally and enemy. House Tyrell was nominally my ally, but they were unreliable. According to Shaera in Highgarden, Lord Matthos Tyrell's daughter Lucile was courting Ormund Hightower, and it looked like a betrothal was on the way. Erik in the Arbor reported something similar involving Alicent's second oldest brother Orgoth Hightower and Holly Redwyne.

It was obvious that House Hightower was seeking to unify the Reach around Alicent, and by and large they were succeeding. Though that was not to say that I didn't have any allies in the Reach. Lord Thaddeus Rowan and his many vassals in the northern Reach was on my side, especially after I confirmed him as the General-to-be of the Seventh Legion. However, my picking of Lord Rowan was seen as a slight by Lord Unwin Peake, whom promptly began making overtures towards House Hightower. About a third of the other Marcher lords followed him. The good news was that House Tarly and the remaining two thirds of the Reach Marcher Lords were my staunch allies.

House Lannister was aligned with me, but Lord Tyland Lannister wasn't exactly the most outspoken and charismatic lord. He was more Tytos than Tywin, and Lannister authority had thinned considerably. Meanwhile, the bulk of his bannermen backed Alicent, mostly because Otto had borrowed heavily from them to lessen the burden of the Crown's expenditures.

I swear my eyes boggled when I got the report on the state of our treasury. Lyman always whined about expenses, no matter how trivial, so I never truly realised just how unhealthy our treasury was. I'd been spending coin like sand on my many projects. The Great Sept. The Great Canals. The Legions. The rebuilding of the Stormlands. The Ironborn. The bureaucracy. My plans in the Stepstones. I'd put a sizeable dent in our coffers, spending fifty years of coin in five. While my projects would recoup the losses, the initial investment was devouring coin like nothing else.

From the looks of things, my plans for the Sixth and Seventh Legions would have to be kicked back, unless I wanted to deplete the treasury to a truly distressing degree or borrow heavily. And if it weren't for the fact I'd promised to raise the Fifth Legion by the end of next year, I'd be postponing that project as well. Still, with the Stepstones looming, the Fifth would be the last major expenditure for quite a while. Maybe I could start raising the Sixth Legion in 114 AC, assuming that the years were profitable, but otherwise it was time to curtail spending.

As such, in order to keep up with my spending, my predecessor had borrowed heavily. The good news was that he didn't borrow from any foreigners, but the bad news was that House Targaryen owed money to over half the houses in the Westerlands and Reach. And when Otto was in charge, he was willing to give the people we owed political favours in exchange for them writing off portions of the debt. A policy which I was highly reluctant to follow. It smacked a bit too much like bribery to me.

My initial befuddlement at how Otto never raised the issue up to me stumped me for a while. Like it or not, the man was a Hand of singular competence. If he told me to curtail spending, then I'd curtail my spending. If he told me to stop raising Legions, then I'd stop raising Legions. If he told me to sell my jewels for coin, then I'd fucking sell my jewels for coin. The man knew his shit, and I knew that. I'd obey his instructions, political rival or no.

But then I saw a Lannister banner and realised that it was deliberate. House Hightower was one of the people we owed the most money to, and Otto never bothered to stop my spending as the more I spent, the more he borrowed, and the more the Crown owed House Hightower. No doubt he was willing to waive away the debt in exchange for me wedding either Ormund or Aegon, but I wasn't playing ball.

Suddenly, I had a great understanding of why Robert was allowed to spend his way into debt. The more he owed Tywin, the more the Lannisters owned the Crown. Tywin could offer to waive a year's interest for the cheap, cheap, price of taking his nephews Lancel and Tyrek as squires. And poor, beleaguered Jon Arryn would bully Robert into agreeing, given how making a dent in the debt was in the Realm's utmost interest.

How many other political favours did Tywin buy? I wondered. Every feast, tourney and ball Robert threw was one more person in the court that Tywin owned. One more rule the Lannisters got to bend. One more exception the Lannisters got. Say what you will about the Old Lion, but the man had figured out how to own the Seven Kingdoms without even setting foot in the capital for a dozen years. Even if Robert never married Cersei, the debts alone would make Tywin the true king of the Seven Kingdoms.

And Otto was trying to pull the same wool over my eyes now.

Did he pull it on Canon Viserys? Highly likely. I decided. Viserys' spending should have rivalled Robert's. Okay, to be fair, my father had more sense than to put a forty thousand gold dragons as prize for a tourney. At best, he'd put a tenth of that amount, which was already considered highly generous. Nevertheless, his treasury would have been quite unhealthy, given his taste for revelry and lavish celebrations.

House Hightower in Canon owned near the entire Small Council, and the officers of the Goldcloaks. How many of these men were appointed in exchange for Otto waiving a year's interest? No wonder why so few of the government backed Canon Rhaenyra. House Hightower had owned them all.

It was frankly distressing. The Green's hold over the civilian government was firmer than I'd previously thought possible.

Then there was my opposition. Conservatives mostly. I'd been ramming reform after reform through, and people as a whole, didn't like change. They liked the status quo. They like peace and quiet and no upheaval. It was the entire reason the Republican Party could exist and gain such support. Especially in the Deep Rural South. Progressive reforms were disliked. And over the years, I'd racked up quite the number of conservatives to oppose me.

Lord Unwin Peake was one of them, though he was more opportunistic than conservative. Borros Baratheon was another, being horridly sexist and racist. He'd signed up with the Second Legion under his father's orders, but chafed under Legion discipline. He was rapidly racking up a reputation for being a troublemaker with a lousy discipline record, throwing his weight around, being insubordinate and coercive, as well as picking fights with Unsullied and harassing female legionaries.

Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones. A quarter of the Vale still opposed Jeyne Arryn, sexist bastards. The Riverlands backed me, but how much they backed me varied from House Darry's undying loyalty to House Piper's lukewarm support. The Umbers weren't happy with the Free Folk, no matter how much I bribed them, and House Mormont had made protests involving Sea Dragon Point and Stoney Shore being declared a joint-administration-zone between the Iron Islands and the North.

Even the Crownlands were split, with those on the mainland backing Alicent, while the Blackwater Bay houses sided with Corlys, and by extension, me. And Dorne opposed me mostly out of principle, but few of them sided with Alicent, which was a silver lining.

By and large, my supporters outnumbered Alicent's, but the Greens—Technically they were still called the Queen's Party, but Greens always felt more appropriate to me— had a disproportionate amount of power, owing to the fact that my allies were dispersed all across the Realm, while the Greens were concentrated in court.

Many of them held court appointments, courtesy of Otto. The previous Hand of the King hadn't hesitated to name his supporters to key positions in the government. Greens ran everything from the Goldcloaks to the tax collectors. The Royal Mints, the Keepers of the King's Scales, the King's Household, the City Sept, the Guild Liasons. All or mostly Greens. Pretty much any institution in King's Landing was ran by the Greens, with exception of the Dragonkeepers and the Royal Fleet. Those, Rhaenys and Corlys were queen and king of.

Even my projects were ran by Greens. Otto was the one to appoint people to ensure the provisioning of the labourers, the supply chains for the Canals, the foremanship, the smelting of the steel, the healthcare and payment of the labourers. While I was the one whom came up with the ideas, it was Green stewardship that made them happen.

Though the highest echelon, the Small Council, wasn't his. Technically, they weren't mine, and not really Viserys' either. The best way to describe them would be Jaehaerys loyalists. The old guard didn't care about the petty factionalism, and were nominally neutral. Their main priority was ensuring the smooth running of the Realm.

Regardless, it had been a tenuous balance. My Blacks ran the military and external affairs of the Realm, while the Greens ran the civilian and internal affairs.

Until now.

Otto was ousted, and I was now in charge of all sectors of governance.

It was easy, and outright expected, that I'd begin my tenure as Hand of the King by dismissing all of my predecessors' appointments and replacing them with my own creatures.

I didn't do that.

Blind and deaf Viserys may be, but there were limits. Sacking three-quarters of the Royal government and replacing them with my cronies was something that could and would cause him to take notice.

———

"Seems like quite the conundrum." Laena mused, helping herself to a piece of cheesecake. I'd had to stop spending so much time with her after my ascension as Hand. Even with my new bureaucracy cutting down on workloads everywhere, I still had to spend hours daily in meetings and paperwork. Still, I made a point of eating one meal a day with my lover, and she was still my perennial bedmaid.

"Ah, but here's the thing. When there's a will, there's a way. I can get rid of them without sacking them." I sagely said, eating a piece of my own cheesecake. Homebaked personally by me before being chilled by sorcery, it was the perfect teatime snack for the warmer half of spring.

"So what nefarious scheme do you have cooked up this time?" Laena curiously asked. "Alicent isn't going to take losing her creatures lying down."

"Let me tell you a story, about a truly petty woman named Madeline Wuntch, and her perennial rival Raymond Holt." I narrated, delicately cutting myself another piece of cheesecake. "Raymond Holt worked in the Goldcloaks, or close enough. He was a captain, commanding his own squadron."

"And this Madeline was a criminal mastermind?" Laena asked. "That master thief whom the authorities always nearly catch, but she always gets away?"

"No, that was Doug Judy. Always liked that guy. He was hilarious." I mused. "But he's not the point. No, Madeline Wuntch was Raymond Holt's superior officer in the Goldcloaks."

"Oh, I'm starting to see the parallels." Laena noted. "She has a subordinate whom she needs to remove from office, yet cannot do so due to political reasons."

"Technically her reasons were that doing so constituted an abuse of power and would summon the equivalents of dearest Aegon and Dalton down on her head." I snickered as Laena comically shuddered at the mention of my oversight duo. "But the point still stands.

"How do you remove a rival of yours from power, without being caught?" I asked, eating the piece I had just cut. "And no, assassinations do not count."

"Disgrace your enemy?" Laena suggested. "You know, what Aegon and Dalton are still trying to do to each other despite your warnings."

"I will need to have a word with those two. Again." I grumbled. I really underestimated how quarrelsome those houses were. Those two couldn't spend five minutes in the same room with each other without a shouting match ensuing. "But you're correct. Madeline Wuntch manipulated Raymond Holt into overselling the danger of drug distributors to their joint superior officer, which would allow her to demote him on charges of incompetence and wasteful usage of resources."

"Drugs?" Laena asked, frowning at the unfamiliar term.

"Milk of the Poppy." I translated. "A little bit of it kills pain. Too much, and you'd get addicted to it. In my world, there were a lot more such drugs, and addiction was a big enough problem that governments banned their trade. Which meant that it went to the black market."

"But there's too little crimes in the city to do that to Alicent." Laena pointed out. "Between Mysaria and the Goldcloaks, crime rate here in King's Landing is the lowest in history."

"No, Raymond Holt managed to catch enough drug distributors, and tracked them down into a whole drug smuggling ring." I shrugged. "So dearest Madeline Wuntch changed tack. She used his achievements to promote him. To become someone in the bureaucracy instead of a captain."

"And that's a bad thing?" Laena asked dubiously.

"When Raymond Holt's job as a captain was his life's ambition." I pointed out. "He didn't want to become a paper pusher. He wanted to be there, leading his officers in the field. He wanted to make a difference, not be stuck in a bureaucracy where he essentially had little power."

"So you're getting rid of Alicent's cronies, by promoting them?" Laena skeptically asked, eyeing me dubiously.

"Exactly!" I exclaimed. "I am now going to introduce to Westeros the wonderful concepts of middle management, and being kicked upstairs."

———

As a result of my bureaucracy taking off, the demand for paper, quills and ink had skyrocketed. I'd already planned for that, which was why I'd forewarned the lords of the Crownlands, to allow them to set up the necessary papermakers, quillmakers and inkmakers. And because these industries were new and relatively unknown to the lords, I'd assigned overseers, drawn from pool of nobles from the single greatest center of learning and literacy in the Seven Kingdoms: Oldtown.

I'd been reassigning those Hightower supporters to locations elsewhere, sending them off to different regions. Such as the Royal Mint at Rosby, the new papermaking industry that sprung up in Duskendale, the quillmakers at Stokeworth, the inkmakers that appeared at Massey's Hook and Cracklaw Point...

Alicent would be furious when she found out, but Viserys would buy my excuse. I could already see it happening.

"Father, I'm not demoting these men, heavens no. I'm promoting them." I would say. "They're being assigned higher paying overseer jobs with increased responsibilities. I'm not sending them away, I'm assigning them out of my sight, giving them greater independence and authority. Yes, they are all mostly Hightower supporters, but I wanted there to be no hard feelings for ousting Otto, which was why I'd promoted a great number of them."

There weren't a great number of bureaucratic positions in the Realm to begin with, so creating enough oversight positions outside if King's Landing was easy enough. And of those that managed to somehow evade being sent away from the capital, I'd vastly expanded the offices they worked in, and filled them with my own supporters. Who cared if the Head Tax Collector of the Crownlands was a Green, when eighty percent of his new staff were Blacks?

I was diluting and dividing the authority of the old positions, while making it appear that I was promoting and rewarding them.

In the old days, the Master of Coin had roles such as the accounting of the treasury, control over the Royal Mints, setting taxes, keeping the King's Scales and a hundred and one other powers. While he had a handful of subordinates, a handful was a succinct way to describe them. There were less than a dozen individuals sharing the responsibilities.

Now though, the Master of Coin had hundreds of people working for him. They counted the coins in the treasury, tallied our loans and debts, collected the taxes. While on paper they made life so much easier, with poor Lyman no longer needing to run around doing everything practically by hand, in truth, I'd eroded his authority significantly. Every role and power had been divided such that no one person held supremacy over it.

Illyrio Mopatis said that he wanted to become Master of Coin for Viserys the Beggar King. Ostensibly so that he could tax the Seven Kingdoms to the Seven Hells and fill his pockets with taxpayer money. That used to be feasible, given the sheer breadth of responsibilities the Master of Coin had. He could decree such a change, and it'd be done. Near instantaneously, with nobody save the King or maybe the Small Council capable of overriding his taxes.

Now though, with the distribution of power, such a deed couldn't be done.

Illyrio would have to deal with the tax collectors and the bureaucracy. He'd have to fill up paperwork explaining exactly why such taxes were needed and justified. He would have to show the accountants that he wasn't skimming the treasury to pad his pockets. He would have to somehow evade hundreds of people whistleblowing him to my oversight departments, and if found guilty of corruption—far easier as my bureaucracy meant that there always was a paper trail— he'd be summarily executed.

And as there was an actual chain of command, his replacement would already be lined up and trained, allowing a smooth transition of power. There would no longer be any 'You cannot afford to fire me! I'm too useful!' situations occurring.

The old roles were no longer as mutable and changeable as they used to be. I'd calcified them into institutions, far harder to move or abuse.

———

I was just putting the finishing touches on my speech for the opening of the Mander Canal when there was a polite knock on my door.

"Enter." I spoke, not even looking up from my desk. My cousin Viserra Fyre opened the door and popped her head into my office. I was fond of the girl, not only because she looked like a younger clone of myself—The resemblance was uncanny, a fact which was oft-repeated in court— but because she had the second sharpest political mind from the Dragonseeds. Mind you, I'd have to keep a close eye on her when she grew older as she wasn't as rabidly loyal as Daena, Bell or Daenys, but I loved a good scheme. Viserra would be a worthy opponent if that ever happened.

"Rhae, the ship from the North has come." Viserra reported. "They're riding to the Red Keep now."

"Good." I noted, getting to my feet, stretching until my arms popped to shake off the torpor of sitting for a long time. "I wonder what Runciter would say now that I'm in charge."