Everything had to change

She mourned for years, feeling lost and without purpose.

It was all so tiring.

She had started the war to end all wars. But that was more than two centuries ago. All she had now was a botched retreat to the south, a demoralized army and a determined enemy. Many of the captured territories eventually rebelled against her. And when she squashed a rebellion, another one cropped up.

Time made her cruel. Whenever she integrated a new territory into her empire, she jumped at the nobility. She confiscated all their property and either executed them or chained them to forced labor. It was more than a material victory: she also humbled them into obedient critters. She proclaimed herself, and forced everyone to call her, “the sword and shield of the masses”.

But if bad weather and failed crops had once hurt her, they were now on her side. Learning nothing from their own war, the northern tribes’ push south stretched too far too quick, leaving a vulnerable and scarce supply line. Caravans loaded with the few potatoes and meat produced up north was either stolen or lost in blizzards. Soon enough, the northern tribes were eager to sign a truce with her.

Fuck that!

She yelled at the emissary sent by the armies up north. She rallied the troops she needed and, instead of a frontal attack, organized razzias along the northern supply line. The union of northern tribes began to fell apart as the old squabbles, put aside during the time of war, resurfaced.

When she had amassed a decent army she headed north. No tribe was spared, no city saved. She burned it all down. Once murdered or scattered as slaves throughout the continent, the great noble families disappeared. There was no risk of them trying to take power back, because there was no them left. She made sure to erase any trace of nobility wherever her hand reached. And finally, the whole continent was hers. She stood on her home at her capital of her empire, thinking,

All misery and pain comes from society’s unfair structure. Instead of a pyramid of power, it should be a flat, brutalistic rectangle. Yes, I did promise peace after unification, but I can’t really guarantee it yet. After all, privilege isn’t the monopoly of aristocracy. There are rich merchants and landowners exploiting the working mass for profit. Yes, they did pay for much of my army’s supplies believing I would bring peace and stability. But so what? They are evil: they only care about profit.

First she imposed heavy taxes on the rich to even out the distribution of wealth. Her propaganda denounced the rich merchants who had once been her allies as greedy pigs and hung as many of them as she could catch. They pulled off a coup against her. Then, while they were celebrating, she came back to life and killed every single one of those involved in the coup and their families, adding their wealth to ~~her~~ the state’s coffers. The commoners, who understood only power and blood, supported her unconditionally. She did it all for them, or so she said. She wanted to save them any cost. She tried to convince others and herself that:

All eras must be the iron era!

She sent goons to loot the banks like a common criminal while she financed great public works, providing work for hundreds of thousands.

What do you mean I acted “like a common criminal”?

Are you talking to me?

Shut up narrator, you’re butchering the story. Yes, I acted like a common criminal. But isn’t crime an abstract thing defined by law, and am I not the one who defines law? So it is up to me if I am a criminal or not.

Ok, you go ahead and tell this part of the story.

I built roads to join the different towns, villages and temples. I took the greatest poets I could find under my patronage to write the tales of the gods…

… the gods you made up.

Shut up omniscient narrator, you can’t have any opinions!

The state sent those who refused to obey to work camps…

… hard-labor death sites where they worked themselves to the grave.

Beyond there, it sort of grew on its own. I only really created the state’s organs and gave them vague directives. Things got… weird. I admit it, I succumbed to flattery and adoration. Anyone who aspired to any sort of power only needed complete and absolute devotion to me, the incarnation of equality and justice. At first I tried to have every citizen perform equal labor and make sure that the other citizens performed their labor. But it was a disaster.

I tried to set up new industries, but the state organs sent to work camps everyone who failed to meet the unreasonable production quotas. I tried to set up collective farms, but farmers did the bare minimum to meet the quotas and it only led to huge famines whenever there was a bad harvest. People forced to work hated their work. Everything we manufactured and built was of the poorest quality and broke down. Foundations gave way, bridges collapsed…

But the kicker came when I visited one of the areas most affected by the famine. I didn’t see people out in the fields and by the roads, no. They were walking skeletons with huge heads, swollen bellies and bones almost poking through their brittle skin. Then I saw one of the district chiefs on his large villa, enjoying a slave boy who fed him grapes.

And you killed him.

Well of course I killed him. But it didn’t really matter, as there were thousands of them. You see, I was foolish enough to think that inequality is tied to class, and that if I removed classes, there would be equality. But all I did was turn “class” into “rank within the party”.

All those years, all those deaths… all wasted. Because nobody learned anything from it. Fed up, one day I vanished, leaving the state to fend for itself. It lasted another sixty-four years before it collapsed. But no matter where I traveled, everyone had heard about the kingdom of equality and wanted to try it. Fools! Fools, I tell you! It didn’t work, it doesn’t work, it will never work. All of it was in vain.

That’s not completely true.

Really narrator, how’s that?

Look at how they behave. Sure, they eventually realized that you had just made up the gods. But their laws are exactly what you wanted them to be. People don’t club their enemies to death in public not only because there are laws to prevent it, but because they think it is immoral. You made that happen.

I guess you’re right, narrator.

Of course, I am an omniscient narrator with unbiased perspective. I’m always right.

Don’t push it.

Even here, exiled in the middle of nowhere and forgotten, you can take solace in that. When the modern smartful people say “Religion bad. Religion make people do bad thing” they don’t realize their ideology is a bland forgery of your original religion.

Thanks, narrator, I needed to hear that. You can continue telling my story.