A particularly harsh king, but powerful decides to purge the kingdom of corruption

Nah. Better to kill the murderers and skeeving nobles while their kill count from stealing from the poor and diverting public funds into vacation homes is still climbing.

>pre-empting any vendettas causing trouble in the future
lol, that only works if you actually manage to get everyone, which he clearly didn't. What a moron.

I'd say the king is grossly incompetent and deserves to be deposed. The noblemen are probably all assholes as well though, so lets hope a idealistic young murderhobo can overthrow all of them and instigate a peasant revolution. VIVA DEMOCRACY!

And the king isn't murdering people and stealing from the poor by virtue of being fucking nobility himself?

Anyway, better solution would be to just confiscate everything and arrest everyone involved. That way, you can kill them all later on when they inevitably rise up in revolt, and still have the moral highground.

>Who are the good guys?

>Who are the good guys
Get a load of this piss boy.

Both are bad. The nobles for being corrupt and the king for being dangerously irrisponsable. Killing is short term solution for short term problems. If the corruption is so rampantin a class that points to a problem steming from the struture of the class itself. The individual criminals are merely a symtom of a larger problem. The king can kill them all but in time others like them will grow.
To enact any long term change the system must be observed, the holes identified and repaired. Killing being reserved for those who get in the way of repairs.

When the dam leaks you blame the engineer not the water.

The King could have uses his power to stimulate the lower classes. Have them build a stable sociaty thay fosters personal investment in its functions. Work towards long term change and a people who can prosper without lords.

But he went for the quickest, easiest, most dramatic way. Something egotistical with the aestetic of rightousness.

The road to hell is paved with impatientce and pride.

>The king can kill them all but in time others like them will grow.
Then chop them down too.

Pretty sure after this whole fiasco, it'll be a long time before a noble takes a bribe again, though.

Instituting a no trial death penalty and a secret police by the king for rooting out corruption seems like a structural reform to me.

That sounds like Vlad Tepes vs the Wallachian Boyars

Open rebellion against mass murder is pretty much the easiest way to explain why the nobility are on the right side.

Oh, and now that he's royally fucked up the administration of his kingdom, all his neighbors are going to invade.

> not pruning the noble houses one at a time under the pretext of old rivalries

The rebels are the good guys. Easy answer here.

>Theft of royal funds (money taken from the people)
"...For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent"
>bribery of officials (corrupt officials are accepting bribes but the bribers are punished)
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."
>murder; conspiracy; and all other major criminal charges (as determined by an unaccountable network of spies)
"...has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."
>After years of monitoring all the noble houses with a secret network of informers
"...For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury"
>he springs his trap, and massacres ALL members of families determined to be involved
"...He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us."

Heh, "conspiracy" as defined by unaccountable spies against this tyrant is a criminal offense punishable by death. Best not say anything bad about him!

Yeah, Right of Revolution clearly acceptable here.

Recall that Vlad got his ass deposed after being betrayed by everyone.

>bribery of officials
This is a standard practice in most medieval feudal societies. Only it wasn't called a "bribe".
Furthermore, most judges tended to be nobles themselves.

>Murder
Unless it was against other noblemen, there are numerous laws to justify killing commoners

>conspiracy
You mean treason? Have them be permanent guests at a reasonably comfortable yet secure location of your choosing. Maybe take their first born as hostages, to keep them in line.

>killing ALL members
Not the common practice. You're supposed to leave some alive to continue the line, usually rival cousins or the like. Young children you can keep as wards or something.

The King obviously is some kind of autist who doesn't understand how courtly politics work, how the offices of the land work and how conflicts are resolved.
His tutors should be the first to die.

Yeah but that takes a shitload of money to constantly police a group that themselves have the reasources and connections to evade detection. A sudden sting might work once but after astanding force has been established it can be played.

On top of that you have group with little to no oversight which leads itself to even more corruption. Whats to keep the police force from being bought themselves?

Why not throw all that money into infrastructure? Build colleges, schools for trades to help middle class grow. Fund merchant expiditions to expand the economy and save for when hard time come. Actually mprove the lives of the people in the kingdom.

A civil war will only cause chaos. It will cost lives, treasure and weaken the kingdom. And when it ends there is no certanty just men will come to power.

Not that guy but you do realize that a middle class is a terrible thing from a monarch's point of view?
You want the wealth distributed only to nobles. Nobody thinks education is important anyway. Knowing a craft is what matters, being religiously orthodox and paying your taxes, that's what matters.

Besides, a civil war might not be the worst thing. If the heads of various "corrupt" houses are dead for the most part, then it's pretty easy to simply talk with the most loyal ones and promise them a lot more wealth to solidify your power base. People die, but they always die.
A civil war is also an excellent opportunity to ensure the deaths of those people inconvenient to you, loyal or otherwise. Really, so long as the neighbors don't interfere too much, this is a pretty great chance.

kill both. dismantle the bourgeoisie and destroy the opposition.

benevolent dictator with an ironfist mode engage.

So many leddit socialists. Obviously King Xanatos who is in the right here.

Especially when you consider that the next guys in charge of the secret police for might not be so heroic.
I mean, that's the PRIMARY problem with autocracy; there is literally zero gurantee that your children and successors will be as decent, as helpful, or even as competent and the "inherent superiority" of kingly blood is a obviously disprovable myth because the number of barely competent or merely average kings vastly outstrips the ones who were truly good at their job.

Obvioisly the king in question isn't a fan of the nobilty. If he hates corruption that much he might as gun for a new system.

And while the majority may not think much of education enough thereare likely interestet better their place in the world to make use of it. They might not be scholars or philosiphers but it's enough to have a solid core of skilled tradesmen.

And the chance of outside forces not getting involved is highly unlikely. One of the primary features of noblitly is their connections. Marriges to other forgin nobles are like important to the kingdoms alliences. Killing amy significant number of them will likly lead to unnecissary tensions.

Is that not why grooming exists? Education? Training? In the mediterranean kings would send their children to learn under renowned philosophers. This is the problem of upbringing I think. The strong raise their children to be strong, that is, to properly maintain and keep their rulership

>Anyway, better solution would be to just confiscate everything and arrest everyone involved. That way, you can kill them all later on when they inevitably rise up in revolt, and still have the moral highground.
This.

You have excellent taste.

Seconded. Laws exist for a reason, and even in the HRE peasants could sue nobles, so you can be damned sure that the King could punish corrupt nobility.

In this scenario, the King is probably just looking for an excuse to solidify his personal control over the country, which makes him an asshole, though not necessarily the "bad guy" since the other nobles were also dicks.

If, however, the kingdom was so fraught with corruption that this was really the only way he could see to bring even a semblance of order back to the country, then he could be viewed as a necessarily harsh and brutal but well-meaning ruler, particularly if he were to reform the laws afterwards to prevent this from happening again, and disband his secret police--or at least install guidelines so that they cannot be easily abused.

So basically, he's either Joseph Stalin or (Book) Stannis Baratheon.

why would the king seek to alter the structure of society. he wants the peasants to "prosper" with lords, who in turn prosper with a king.

It doesn't work. Not always, not often.
What, you think most rulers didn't bother to try and change things by ensuring they were properly trained and educated? They did, usually.

Turns out, just like an extremely expensive education has very little to do with how talented a human being is in modern day (see; every person in an expensive college or school who STILL wastes their fucking life and accomplishes nothing of significance) there's just too many factors in the real world (nature, nurture, education, personality, temperament of parents, temperament of friends, evens in their lives, etc) to ACTUALLY "pre-determine" talent and skill at ruling or even a desire to.

You aren't even the millionth person to think that "well I just just TRAIN the perfect replacement", because largely every culture in history has done it's damnedest to try and do that, and literally every single one has completely failed. It's just fucking luck.
That's the issue with autocracy, at it's heart. Not the lack of freedom in determining government, not the supposed "inherently" tyrannical nature of it; far too much relies on a single person, and when it comes down to it exceptional people are exceptional because the rest of the human race, literally by definition, is NOT exceptional.
Weather this be by blood, birth, training, coincidence, or more likely some unfathomable combination of all of the above, it's irrefutably true.

Using your own example; there were still some shitty or at best average Mediterranean kings despite this training method being undertaken. Phillip V's son Perseus turned out to not be his father's equal and this led to the ruin of his kingdom.

>says the rebels are good guys
>posts bullshit-filled copypasta from bad rebels

The one written "Good" on their character sheet? Otherwise, it's the women, the muslims and the black community.

>And the chance of outside forces not getting involved is highly unlikely. One of the primary features of noblitly is their connections. Marriges to other forgin nobles are like important to the kingdoms alliences. Killing amy significant number of them will likly lead to unnecissary tensions.

Especially when a lot of murders would have occurred in those foreign lands.

the one whos "good" is the one who won that conflict.
history is written by the victors and petty concepts like "good" and "evil" is arbitrary shit decided by the poor unwashed masses.

The people in charge aren't likely to be good guys on either side. But what about the people serving them ?

In this situation, everyone who serves the King knows about his murder spree. Since he doesn't deny it, they have every reason to believe it. Yet they still serve him.

Those who serve the nobles know about the accusations of corruption. But they haven't seen proof.

If there are good guys in this conflict, they will be serving the nobles and/or serving the nations that the King just started a war with.

>One of the primary features of noblitly is their connections. Marriges to other forgin nobles are like important to the kingdoms alliences. Killing amy significant number of them will likly lead to unnecissary tensions.

If the King really wanted to kill all members of a family, that would include members who married into other noble houses. Foreign noble houses. Killing the nobility of a foreign nation sounds like an act of war to me.

Who just caused their military to be thrown into disarray by killing off a lot of its officers and caused many of the remaining officers to defect ?

Lots of officers will belong to noble families.

It's called communism, user.

The good guys are the non-corrupt nobles who realise that the king has gone off his rocker with power and move to have him deposed.

>but his informers would tell him its coming
Yeah but nobles control the army and if they don't then why did the king give a shit about the nobles in he first place.

With 10% of the adult population of America having spent some amount of time in prison during their lives, I'd say that juries find people guilty often enough.

There is literally zero guarantee that your successors will be as decent, as helpful or even as competent in ANY political system.

The secret police will instantly fill that corruption void. The king just created a class of untouchable, unaccountable mobsters overnight.

Or it could just mean Americans are even bigger criminals than Australians.

Concrete proofs? Royalists.

it could also mean that America has more niggers than Australia has abbos

Wouldn't be surprised if only by sheer weight of numbers. America is pretty big.

A perspective on training replacements.
Todays dentists, eye doctors, or similarly high esteemed professions.
They don't merely "pick their replacements".
To become such a high esteemed trade, you need to pass basic education, which is often mandatory in most of the worlds nations. You then need to pass 2-3 more layers of education, and then have a 2-3 year long period of training. Then a few years of being a co worker to said high esteemed professional.

Thinking of each situation as a filter, a high esteemed professional is basically filtered at the least 7-8 times before they even get the chance to become the replacement.
Something like a CEO is on the other hand, is merely filtered 2-4 times.

The ones with the best understanding of medieval politics are saying things like "the other nobles might revolt due to violation of the liege-vassal contract" or "these nobles will have ties to foreign nobility and may invite a foreign invasion". To those trying to apply modern morals to medieval politics, luxuries like an education are useless to peasants. They don't have the time or need to learn about philosophy or history when they have crops to grow. If they needed to know about these things, they can ask the local priest, which is what they are there for. A middle class made up of scholars, artists and craftsmen can't feed society. Only later on when new agricultural innovations become commonplace (or when most people are killed off by plague and the ratio of farmland-to-farmer increases) will there be enough of an abundance of food for this to happen.

Neither of them - killing someone just because their family member is involved in something evil is an Evil act with a capital E, plain and simple. Of course, if the said secret police is any competent, the royalists are much worse.

And the filters of the CEO are less explicitly tuned to find good people.

How would you think a profession would work if you just had to win the lottery to get it?

> Or it could just mean Americans are even bigger criminals than Australians.
I doubt crime is worse. When speaking numbers, deadbeat dads / pot users make a large portion of that number.

I can't help it mane.

Weed just makes me wanna steal.

I smoke a bowl and I'm stealin' babies, shoes, candy bars, gas, civil liberties, anal virginities and pokémon cards.

It's a disease man, you gotta help me.

Gimme ten dolla.

You're obviously black, and thus disadvantaged by your genes. How would you like to work a Director of Human Resources?

> ...AS a director...
Made it sound lewder than I meant.