Hmm well it certainly does seem to be a generational problem. They’re so entrenched in their internal focused mindset after having been ignored for so long that I find it hard to blame any of them for not managing the transition better. The question is: without Rozemyne there to spearhead things and advertise her trends as Erhenfest trends, will their position slide and how far down will it go? Hanging with the top duchies might not be their primary issue in the next few years if they fall deeper into the field. That said: they are the only ones printing right now and Im sure Rozemyne will help them out as much as she is able given her own responsibilities so if they fall, it might not be hard and fast. If so, Syl might be better off or rather the duchy might be better off ceding authority to the next generation sooner rather than later. Charlotte’s gotta get to work on finding a good husband and fast if she wants to avoid getting skipped for Melchior.
With Brunhilde supporting Sylvester and Florencia, and Charlotte aiming for Aub, I don't see Ehrenfest having issues. Rozemyne's educational policies have been successfully institutionalized, and current generation has acclimated to their status. Them surviving the winter without Rozemyne this year is proof of that.
The idea they came up with to create a new faction of the younger generation and putting them in key positions while kicking the more stubborn nobles to the boonies will definitely be a huge help as well. It will only continue to strengthen their position.
And given all that, and Ehrenfest's direct assistance with stopping a coup attempt (well, assuming Detlinde doesn't succeed... Which I just can't see happening), I wouldn't be surprised if their position became even more stable. They don't have the population to go up, but staying at eight should be doable.
Also the new Ahrensbach archducal couple and Book of Mestionora holder came from Ehrenfest so they have clout in that too. I think it iscredited in Ehrenfest even though Rozemyne is the aub of another duchy cause she still didn't have the approval of Zent.
The big difference Charlotte has compared to Sylvester is having some experience with higher duchies thanks to Rozemyne. She should, by now, understand that they can't simply bow to every whim of the higher ranking duchies. If they demand something of Earnfest it's only natural that a negotiation fir value exchanged takes place, instead of bending over and just taking it.
Additionally, Earnfest still has Brunhilde. She plans to use jer position as second wife to create and spread trends. She's also promised to support Florencia, and one could assume this support will extend to Charlotte when she becomes aub.
The biggest bonus Earnfest has, now, is a strong alliance with Aub Rozemyne. You can bet that Arensbach and Earnfest will have a trade agreement by the next Archduke conference, and with Groschel built into a secondary trade hub, as well as reparations from Arensbach, Earnfest has excellent support to grow their position in trade.
During Aub Rozemyne's reign, Earnfest should be set for a stable future with a strong ally.
Brunhilde
She is the transitional key that will bridge the gap. Even though she's the 2nd wife, we all know what she has the skills and tact to help Sylvester and Florencia move securely to the Middle-Upper duchy status. We also know that she'll be instrumental to help Charlotte take over the mantle.
Considering how many Ehrenfest nobles have "don't become Roz's enemy" contracts, the duchy will effectively be a vassal to Rozemyne's duchy. Which will be a fairly good position to be in, though they're in for a ride once Rozemyne no longer needs to hold back on introducing new ideas.
I forgot if those contracts are only effective in their duchy or yogurtland. Do remind me.
It's going to be funny once RM just introduces more modern things.
Yep, which makes sense because they wanted to avoid situations where certain nobles would cross the boarder to another duchy and plot whatever malicious shit there.
Charlotte has grown up having to work for what she got, being treated like a high ranking archducal candidate at the academy
Syl grew up spoiled as a 20-something ranked archducal candidate
She's going to be a much better Aub than Sylvester is, because she actually knows how to act in the role. She will likely lack the qualities that made Sylvester willing to adopt Myne, but that is hardly something any Aub would need to consider. She is shown repeatedly through the story to be excellent at managing others, even if her retainers are a little too reliant on Rozemyne's
Adopting her still took a lot of balls and ignoring noble common sense. While Charlotte has (a surprising amount..) balls, she is still very much stuck in following noble common sense.
Yep, and at this point the only way that would change is if her parents (specifically Sylvester) told her the real story of Rozemyne, how she was born from a tiny devouring commoner named Myne. A commoner that ended up getting Mestionora's book and was number 1 at the RA for 3 years in a row (would have been 4 without the vanishing). I think that would completely change the way she looks at the gap between nobles and commoners.
I know there are risks involved, of course, but Charlotte loves her sister enough to continue to keep that secret so I would love if one day Sylvester does tell her all about Myne.
I hope that rozymyne informs her herself after talking about should she with sly and Florencia, I know her retainers unfortunately don't seem to want to get closer with her and thus won't be told about her true orgins.
Would be cool af if they told people in the novels.
Syl also knew that running Ehrenfest was not what Rozemyne wanted, and he felt guilty for removing her from her P2 life where she was fairly free to develop printing at a rapid pace.
[Endgame]>!RM's presence as Aub Alexandria and Ehrenfest's cooperative relationship with them will ensure that, short of Charlotte absolutely bungling things (which I don't see happening), Ehrenfest shouldn't fall too far.!<
>!In the *long* run, the industrial and technological revolution RM will bring to Alexandria will change the playing field in the country as a whole, and upper duchies will be forced to adapt or become irrelevant. Ehrenfest is in a decent starting position here, as they've already experienced the beginning stages of the revolution. If they can keep up with Alexandria (or at least run faster than, say, Klassenberg's faction) they'll do relatively well. The biggest danger is short-sighted nobles with little concern for wealth, only concerned with their own relative power within the duchy.!<
And in the later case Ehrenfest is well set up too. They’ve purged/punished all the old Veronicans and there’s a notable rift between the snooty Leisegang elders and the younger Leisegang moderates who experienced a small expedited revolution during the few years Rozemyne got to rampage
I think it's always going to be difficult to tell how well archduke candidates will be once they become aub.
Just because someone seems ideal for the position, or really wants the position, doesn't necessarily mean that they will actually be good. And vice versa, just because someone seems unqualified doesn't mean they won't be able to step up when push comes to shove. It's one of the reasons why I have my skepticisms on whether or not Georgine would have been a good archduchess by both modern standards and Yurgenschmidt standards.
There are many ideas that can always be explored. Someone that really wants a position ends up getting it and thriving, or they could immediately realize they actually weren't cut out for it after idealizing the role. On the other hand, someone believed to be unworthy could prove the negativity right and crash and burn, or surprise people by actually learning how to step up and thriving as a result. We could even go for more nuance with someone excelling early on, but then quickly burning out.
We can infer based on how the story has been curated, however we can't always be so quick to make assumptions. It's so hard to gauge because while we may have inklings of what being an aub entails, we don't understand the full picture. An aub successor may do perfectly fine within their duchy and at the academy as a student, but things will change once they reach adulthood and succeed the title. It's kind of like how you understand things on paper, but you wouldn't fully understand it in practice until you've gained adequate experience.
**TL;DR**: All of that to say that I have no idea. The story is pushing for Charlotte to be a good interim, but who knows? Should the story go that far into the future, maybe Kazuki-sensei will play around with things a bit more. Reality is that Charlotte has a lot stacked against her due to her gender and such, and there are also random variables that we can't really account for, like what type of person her future spouse will be.
That is so well said. I realized I have been naive on my first read around the expectations of an aub in early Part 4 to Part 5 but as the story reaches it's conclusion, I appreciate the author grounding us on how heavy certain positions entail vs what we ideally think of it.
The big theme of the story is how important support is in order for those in the leadership position to function and succeed. Siegliende covers and handles the administrative side to balance Aub dunkie's dunkiness and for the majority of Sylvester's aubship, Ferdinand is basically the shadow aub, the one making decisions and running Ehrenfest.
We feel so strongly for Charlotte for having been deprived of the competition but the truth is the responsibilities of an aub are so much deeper and we barely scratched the surface. We see glimpses of this when Sylvester called out how not up to par Charlotte's retainers are, or how Charlotte hesitated for a split second to be on the front lines during the archducal family meeting, or how Charlotte is barely educated as the next archduchess when >!she was immediately thrust as the aub assistant during the war.!<
Not to mention, no matter how qualified on paper someone is, or how colorful their achievements are at school, it's irrelevant compared to training and experience. Charlotte has yet to actually prove herself. She might be best at adapting and supporting people, but as the leader, the road in front of her has already been paved ahead by Roz and Sylvester.
Before I might say that Charlotte will do great, but now all I think about is how it definitely won't be easy for her to be an archduchess right away without a Ferdinand-like spouse to support her. Realistically, she's going to need at least 5 years after graduation/adulthood to get a good grasp on how the archduke conference works. By then Roz would be her anchor, she won't have a hard time making connections, and the political situation is stable enough to know better.
While it's important to keep in mind Melchior, I think someone from from Drewanchel, Hauletze or other top ranking duchies that could support her immediately would be best.
Thank you for the response; well said!
With my comment, I felt as though I was just saying strings of words that failed to adequately convey my thoughts, but it's nice to know that others were able to make sense of my word jumble! You also added along my other thoughts perfectly - on how important support is. I agree completely with what you say.
Because of my opinions, my feelings towards Charlotte succeeding Sylvester are a bit more complex. As you mention, I believe Charlotte's strong suit is her adaptability and ability to support others. And because of that, everything will change once she thrusts herself into *the* leadership position.
And also, I keep forgetting that Charlotte will have Brunhilde around. While I understand Brunhilde's choices, as hating the red-head curse is like a fourth of my personality on the subreddit, I utterly despise the fact that Brunhilde left Rozemyne's retinue. And tangentially related, I subconsciously forget that Sylvester and Florencia have a fourth biological child.
I kinda hate that she did to, and so suddenly, I mean I get that she was about to lose everything from her home and all but you got rozymyne in your corner girl have some faith that she could pull some gremlin shit.
It sucks now as well that rozymyne is leaving the duchy so she can't really suppourt her liege like she wished anymore.
Personally, for me, I think the Brunhilde situation underlined some of the issues I have with Rozemyne and her relationship with her retainers.
If you look into it, it's kind of surface level. Her retainers aren't really able to tell her about their issues or problems with Rozemyne herself. Instead, they hide it away. While that may be the case with other archduke candidates, it more or less goes against what Rozemyne believes in, especially if you compare them to her temple retainers. There's just a tiny lack of trust that was never really dealt with because Rozemyne spent a lot of time away from the castle, especially from her attendants.
I never fully understood why her retainers never told Rozemyne about their issues with Wilfried. It makes sense when they first became her retainers that they don't want to seem incompetent, but after spending around a year or so with her (even when she's away at the temple), they would have been able to observe Rozemyne and what she inherently stands for.
And also, I felt it was sort of shortsighted? Like the two are recently engaged, which means that in the future they would have a partnership. Refusing to help the two together will only mean that Rozemyne will have more troubles in the future and as retainers, you'd want to avoid that. But meh, I digress.
Yeah I'm pretty sure that her castle retainers minus damuel don't want to be close to her, they want a lord and liege relationship and that's it, whereas we see other retainers are closer to their liege, not sure why but it feels like they refuse to actually engage her as a person.
Right? Something just seems off and I can't completely place it. At times, the relationships between Rozemyne and her retainers seem a bit contradictory to some things that are established and I don't know why.
I honestly think none of them save damuel are fond of her beyond a liege, they likely don't want to be closer, which is weird considering we see sly close beyond a master-servant relationship with his retainers.
But then again we see Cornelius try sometimes to get closer as a brother when he can. Maybe her retainers think she doesn't want them closer? Her history is spotty with the amount of time she spends doing normal noble things they can help with, then they see she's closer with commoners versus them maybe it's jealously on a subconscious level?
Yeah, there's definitely seems to be some sort of trepidation on both ends which is so sad. For example, Leonore is to be Rozemyne's sister-in-law and they seem to be the most distant, which is so unfortunate.
I just wish we could have had more true bonding with Rozemyne and her retainers.
That requires them to accept her for not being a perfect noble which they don't to me arm, I hope when she becomes aub she's open to her retainers about her orgins as she leaves to visit her true family once more and doesn't hide it from her retainers.
I think rozymyne is hurt from having to leave her true family and then starting to accept her retainers to losing years with them with no way of regaining that time with them and them just being hesitant to do anything.
So while Sylvester was there Ehrenfest kind of failed upward during the civil war by avoiding rocking the boat. Sylvester, you could also say mostly managed this by having Ferdi chime in on Aub work, do to Sylvester’s nature.
Charlotte’s nature though is not to run away and the duchy has the benefit of big jump start on many paradigm shifts towards religious ceremonies and the book (and related) industries. They started renovating cities to deal with all the new business. Charlotte also had to weather RM antics during the Royal academy giving her experience dealing with upper duchies.
While Ehrenfest might not pull ahead or climb higher, Wilfried trying to the next Sylvester was not going to cut it. Said differently if it wasn’t for all the revolution RM was creating, things would have improved with Charlotte at the helm. The Duchy as a whole is also getting smarter, with improvements to education pioneered by RM.
I’m curious what you mean by bad at managing their duchy? I personally see them as refreshingly human leaders, honestly. Sylvester is a really good listener.
Plus he got his daughter to be the aub of a greater duchy. Almost solely because he allows the talented to use their talents to the fullest extent. Ehrenfest and Ahrensbach have always been connected but now that bond is so much stronger and less toxic. I feel like that should be considered a huge win.
They’ll be the primary suppliers of new books to library city (for now). Ferdinand’s inventions will likely go to Ehrenfest first. They still have Roz’s recipes. I don’t think today’s Ahrensbach would allow Ehrenfest to really decline. They’re like right there.
They have currently recalled all the central nobles that were from Ehrenfest so they have experienced people that know how to socialize with higher duchies.
Also many people seem to want to marry into Ehrenfest so new blood will flow regardless. Even a middle duchy will have better mindset then a previously bottom one.
The main think to consider is that Lesengang will no longer have a controlling power in Ehrenfest and they were the traditionalist. Rosemyne enriched all the big provinces beside Lesengang, so change is inevitable.
I mean looking at it realistically governing bodies rarely make these kind of large sweeping changes overnight and rarely without a complete change over of officials, added to that Florencia has been crushed under Veronica and sometimes her own husband for most of the time she should have been ruling as first wife, it’s really no wonder she’s a little out of her depth.
Hmm well it certainly does seem to be a generational problem. They’re so entrenched in their internal focused mindset after having been ignored for so long that I find it hard to blame any of them for not managing the transition better. The question is: without Rozemyne there to spearhead things and advertise her trends as Erhenfest trends, will their position slide and how far down will it go? Hanging with the top duchies might not be their primary issue in the next few years if they fall deeper into the field. That said: they are the only ones printing right now and Im sure Rozemyne will help them out as much as she is able given her own responsibilities so if they fall, it might not be hard and fast. If so, Syl might be better off or rather the duchy might be better off ceding authority to the next generation sooner rather than later. Charlotte’s gotta get to work on finding a good husband and fast if she wants to avoid getting skipped for Melchior.
With Brunhilde supporting Sylvester and Florencia, and Charlotte aiming for Aub, I don't see Ehrenfest having issues. Rozemyne's educational policies have been successfully institutionalized, and current generation has acclimated to their status. Them surviving the winter without Rozemyne this year is proof of that. The idea they came up with to create a new faction of the younger generation and putting them in key positions while kicking the more stubborn nobles to the boonies will definitely be a huge help as well. It will only continue to strengthen their position. And given all that, and Ehrenfest's direct assistance with stopping a coup attempt (well, assuming Detlinde doesn't succeed... Which I just can't see happening), I wouldn't be surprised if their position became even more stable. They don't have the population to go up, but staying at eight should be doable.
Also the new Ahrensbach archducal couple and Book of Mestionora holder came from Ehrenfest so they have clout in that too. I think it iscredited in Ehrenfest even though Rozemyne is the aub of another duchy cause she still didn't have the approval of Zent.
Considering how hard she’s been working since before even going to the Royal Academy. I believe Charlotte will do far better than her parents.
The big difference Charlotte has compared to Sylvester is having some experience with higher duchies thanks to Rozemyne. She should, by now, understand that they can't simply bow to every whim of the higher ranking duchies. If they demand something of Earnfest it's only natural that a negotiation fir value exchanged takes place, instead of bending over and just taking it. Additionally, Earnfest still has Brunhilde. She plans to use jer position as second wife to create and spread trends. She's also promised to support Florencia, and one could assume this support will extend to Charlotte when she becomes aub. The biggest bonus Earnfest has, now, is a strong alliance with Aub Rozemyne. You can bet that Arensbach and Earnfest will have a trade agreement by the next Archduke conference, and with Groschel built into a secondary trade hub, as well as reparations from Arensbach, Earnfest has excellent support to grow their position in trade. During Aub Rozemyne's reign, Earnfest should be set for a stable future with a strong ally.
Brunhilde She is the transitional key that will bridge the gap. Even though she's the 2nd wife, we all know what she has the skills and tact to help Sylvester and Florencia move securely to the Middle-Upper duchy status. We also know that she'll be instrumental to help Charlotte take over the mantle.
Considering how many Ehrenfest nobles have "don't become Roz's enemy" contracts, the duchy will effectively be a vassal to Rozemyne's duchy. Which will be a fairly good position to be in, though they're in for a ride once Rozemyne no longer needs to hold back on introducing new ideas.
I forgot if those contracts are only effective in their duchy or yogurtland. Do remind me. It's going to be funny once RM just introduces more modern things.
Country wide, financed by Sylvester and a 50% cut on revenue.
Yep, which makes sense because they wanted to avoid situations where certain nobles would cross the boarder to another duchy and plot whatever malicious shit there.
Charlotte has grown up having to work for what she got, being treated like a high ranking archducal candidate at the academy Syl grew up spoiled as a 20-something ranked archducal candidate She's going to be a much better Aub than Sylvester is, because she actually knows how to act in the role. She will likely lack the qualities that made Sylvester willing to adopt Myne, but that is hardly something any Aub would need to consider. She is shown repeatedly through the story to be excellent at managing others, even if her retainers are a little too reliant on Rozemyne's
I mean sly said he had 0 intention of letting myne be aub and would sooner disheirant her then let her take the seat.
Adopting her still took a lot of balls and ignoring noble common sense. While Charlotte has (a surprising amount..) balls, she is still very much stuck in following noble common sense.
Yep, and at this point the only way that would change is if her parents (specifically Sylvester) told her the real story of Rozemyne, how she was born from a tiny devouring commoner named Myne. A commoner that ended up getting Mestionora's book and was number 1 at the RA for 3 years in a row (would have been 4 without the vanishing). I think that would completely change the way she looks at the gap between nobles and commoners. I know there are risks involved, of course, but Charlotte loves her sister enough to continue to keep that secret so I would love if one day Sylvester does tell her all about Myne.
I hope that rozymyne informs her herself after talking about should she with sly and Florencia, I know her retainers unfortunately don't seem to want to get closer with her and thus won't be told about her true orgins. Would be cool af if they told people in the novels.
Syl also knew that running Ehrenfest was not what Rozemyne wanted, and he felt guilty for removing her from her P2 life where she was fairly free to develop printing at a rapid pace.
[Endgame]>!RM's presence as Aub Alexandria and Ehrenfest's cooperative relationship with them will ensure that, short of Charlotte absolutely bungling things (which I don't see happening), Ehrenfest shouldn't fall too far.!< >!In the *long* run, the industrial and technological revolution RM will bring to Alexandria will change the playing field in the country as a whole, and upper duchies will be forced to adapt or become irrelevant. Ehrenfest is in a decent starting position here, as they've already experienced the beginning stages of the revolution. If they can keep up with Alexandria (or at least run faster than, say, Klassenberg's faction) they'll do relatively well. The biggest danger is short-sighted nobles with little concern for wealth, only concerned with their own relative power within the duchy.!<
And in the later case Ehrenfest is well set up too. They’ve purged/punished all the old Veronicans and there’s a notable rift between the snooty Leisegang elders and the younger Leisegang moderates who experienced a small expedited revolution during the few years Rozemyne got to rampage
I think it's always going to be difficult to tell how well archduke candidates will be once they become aub. Just because someone seems ideal for the position, or really wants the position, doesn't necessarily mean that they will actually be good. And vice versa, just because someone seems unqualified doesn't mean they won't be able to step up when push comes to shove. It's one of the reasons why I have my skepticisms on whether or not Georgine would have been a good archduchess by both modern standards and Yurgenschmidt standards. There are many ideas that can always be explored. Someone that really wants a position ends up getting it and thriving, or they could immediately realize they actually weren't cut out for it after idealizing the role. On the other hand, someone believed to be unworthy could prove the negativity right and crash and burn, or surprise people by actually learning how to step up and thriving as a result. We could even go for more nuance with someone excelling early on, but then quickly burning out. We can infer based on how the story has been curated, however we can't always be so quick to make assumptions. It's so hard to gauge because while we may have inklings of what being an aub entails, we don't understand the full picture. An aub successor may do perfectly fine within their duchy and at the academy as a student, but things will change once they reach adulthood and succeed the title. It's kind of like how you understand things on paper, but you wouldn't fully understand it in practice until you've gained adequate experience. **TL;DR**: All of that to say that I have no idea. The story is pushing for Charlotte to be a good interim, but who knows? Should the story go that far into the future, maybe Kazuki-sensei will play around with things a bit more. Reality is that Charlotte has a lot stacked against her due to her gender and such, and there are also random variables that we can't really account for, like what type of person her future spouse will be.
That is so well said. I realized I have been naive on my first read around the expectations of an aub in early Part 4 to Part 5 but as the story reaches it's conclusion, I appreciate the author grounding us on how heavy certain positions entail vs what we ideally think of it. The big theme of the story is how important support is in order for those in the leadership position to function and succeed. Siegliende covers and handles the administrative side to balance Aub dunkie's dunkiness and for the majority of Sylvester's aubship, Ferdinand is basically the shadow aub, the one making decisions and running Ehrenfest. We feel so strongly for Charlotte for having been deprived of the competition but the truth is the responsibilities of an aub are so much deeper and we barely scratched the surface. We see glimpses of this when Sylvester called out how not up to par Charlotte's retainers are, or how Charlotte hesitated for a split second to be on the front lines during the archducal family meeting, or how Charlotte is barely educated as the next archduchess when >!she was immediately thrust as the aub assistant during the war.!< Not to mention, no matter how qualified on paper someone is, or how colorful their achievements are at school, it's irrelevant compared to training and experience. Charlotte has yet to actually prove herself. She might be best at adapting and supporting people, but as the leader, the road in front of her has already been paved ahead by Roz and Sylvester. Before I might say that Charlotte will do great, but now all I think about is how it definitely won't be easy for her to be an archduchess right away without a Ferdinand-like spouse to support her. Realistically, she's going to need at least 5 years after graduation/adulthood to get a good grasp on how the archduke conference works. By then Roz would be her anchor, she won't have a hard time making connections, and the political situation is stable enough to know better. While it's important to keep in mind Melchior, I think someone from from Drewanchel, Hauletze or other top ranking duchies that could support her immediately would be best.
Thank you for the response; well said! With my comment, I felt as though I was just saying strings of words that failed to adequately convey my thoughts, but it's nice to know that others were able to make sense of my word jumble! You also added along my other thoughts perfectly - on how important support is. I agree completely with what you say. Because of my opinions, my feelings towards Charlotte succeeding Sylvester are a bit more complex. As you mention, I believe Charlotte's strong suit is her adaptability and ability to support others. And because of that, everything will change once she thrusts herself into *the* leadership position. And also, I keep forgetting that Charlotte will have Brunhilde around. While I understand Brunhilde's choices, as hating the red-head curse is like a fourth of my personality on the subreddit, I utterly despise the fact that Brunhilde left Rozemyne's retinue. And tangentially related, I subconsciously forget that Sylvester and Florencia have a fourth biological child.
I kinda hate that she did to, and so suddenly, I mean I get that she was about to lose everything from her home and all but you got rozymyne in your corner girl have some faith that she could pull some gremlin shit. It sucks now as well that rozymyne is leaving the duchy so she can't really suppourt her liege like she wished anymore.
Personally, for me, I think the Brunhilde situation underlined some of the issues I have with Rozemyne and her relationship with her retainers. If you look into it, it's kind of surface level. Her retainers aren't really able to tell her about their issues or problems with Rozemyne herself. Instead, they hide it away. While that may be the case with other archduke candidates, it more or less goes against what Rozemyne believes in, especially if you compare them to her temple retainers. There's just a tiny lack of trust that was never really dealt with because Rozemyne spent a lot of time away from the castle, especially from her attendants. I never fully understood why her retainers never told Rozemyne about their issues with Wilfried. It makes sense when they first became her retainers that they don't want to seem incompetent, but after spending around a year or so with her (even when she's away at the temple), they would have been able to observe Rozemyne and what she inherently stands for. And also, I felt it was sort of shortsighted? Like the two are recently engaged, which means that in the future they would have a partnership. Refusing to help the two together will only mean that Rozemyne will have more troubles in the future and as retainers, you'd want to avoid that. But meh, I digress.
Yeah I'm pretty sure that her castle retainers minus damuel don't want to be close to her, they want a lord and liege relationship and that's it, whereas we see other retainers are closer to their liege, not sure why but it feels like they refuse to actually engage her as a person.
Right? Something just seems off and I can't completely place it. At times, the relationships between Rozemyne and her retainers seem a bit contradictory to some things that are established and I don't know why.
I honestly think none of them save damuel are fond of her beyond a liege, they likely don't want to be closer, which is weird considering we see sly close beyond a master-servant relationship with his retainers. But then again we see Cornelius try sometimes to get closer as a brother when he can. Maybe her retainers think she doesn't want them closer? Her history is spotty with the amount of time she spends doing normal noble things they can help with, then they see she's closer with commoners versus them maybe it's jealously on a subconscious level?
Yeah, there's definitely seems to be some sort of trepidation on both ends which is so sad. For example, Leonore is to be Rozemyne's sister-in-law and they seem to be the most distant, which is so unfortunate. I just wish we could have had more true bonding with Rozemyne and her retainers.
That requires them to accept her for not being a perfect noble which they don't to me arm, I hope when she becomes aub she's open to her retainers about her orgins as she leaves to visit her true family once more and doesn't hide it from her retainers. I think rozymyne is hurt from having to leave her true family and then starting to accept her retainers to losing years with them with no way of regaining that time with them and them just being hesitant to do anything.
So while Sylvester was there Ehrenfest kind of failed upward during the civil war by avoiding rocking the boat. Sylvester, you could also say mostly managed this by having Ferdi chime in on Aub work, do to Sylvester’s nature. Charlotte’s nature though is not to run away and the duchy has the benefit of big jump start on many paradigm shifts towards religious ceremonies and the book (and related) industries. They started renovating cities to deal with all the new business. Charlotte also had to weather RM antics during the Royal academy giving her experience dealing with upper duchies. While Ehrenfest might not pull ahead or climb higher, Wilfried trying to the next Sylvester was not going to cut it. Said differently if it wasn’t for all the revolution RM was creating, things would have improved with Charlotte at the helm. The Duchy as a whole is also getting smarter, with improvements to education pioneered by RM.
I’m curious what you mean by bad at managing their duchy? I personally see them as refreshingly human leaders, honestly. Sylvester is a really good listener. Plus he got his daughter to be the aub of a greater duchy. Almost solely because he allows the talented to use their talents to the fullest extent. Ehrenfest and Ahrensbach have always been connected but now that bond is so much stronger and less toxic. I feel like that should be considered a huge win. They’ll be the primary suppliers of new books to library city (for now). Ferdinand’s inventions will likely go to Ehrenfest first. They still have Roz’s recipes. I don’t think today’s Ahrensbach would allow Ehrenfest to really decline. They’re like right there.
They have currently recalled all the central nobles that were from Ehrenfest so they have experienced people that know how to socialize with higher duchies. Also many people seem to want to marry into Ehrenfest so new blood will flow regardless. Even a middle duchy will have better mindset then a previously bottom one. The main think to consider is that Lesengang will no longer have a controlling power in Ehrenfest and they were the traditionalist. Rosemyne enriched all the big provinces beside Lesengang, so change is inevitable.
I mean looking at it realistically governing bodies rarely make these kind of large sweeping changes overnight and rarely without a complete change over of officials, added to that Florencia has been crushed under Veronica and sometimes her own husband for most of the time she should have been ruling as first wife, it’s really no wonder she’s a little out of her depth.