Dating : Stable

She sighs. Once again, it is almost midnight, and it looks like she will stay up half the night working again. It has been like this ever since her parents vanished and she had to take over her territory, despite only being a half-trained child. She is her parent’s only heir, and she has to take care of the territory.

At first, the other nobles were willing to curry favor with her, and to make her owe them a favor. But when her parents didn’t come back, they soon became vultures, hoping to peck bits and pieces of her family’s fortunes. They wouldn’t dare to completely ruin her family, but they could probably cripple it for a generation and cause her unbeaten, supreme family to stumble.

It was then that she stepped up and acted in her most overbearing way She had to play hard and dirty, so she dressed like the previous Empress Blacks did. She might have been a lot shorter than her paternal female ancestors, but she looked just like them. The urge to obey her great-grandmother is still present, decades after she died.

She also isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, to save her empire and other land holdings. After all, with her parents gone, many start to poke at her to see if she has the ability to lead in her parents’ stead. If she is a worthy Empress Black, they will settle down and obey her. If not, rebellion.

She is still a child, and so she is rebuked for any new thing she does. In true contrary fashion, she then becomes a Traditionalist. She punishes all criminals according to tradition. Crime may have spiked rapidly once her parents vanish and everyone realizes that they won’t come back, but it falls nicely after she holds her first Court session.

In the Court, as Empress Black, she is judge, jury, and executor. The first criminal to come in pleads to her youth and begs her to take pity on him. She giggles at him and then pronounces his sentence instead.

“I’m Empress Black, even though I am a bit young, so I need to do this according to tradition. So the traditional punishment for treason is seven days of torture before being allowed death, and your body thrown to the rats and dogs in the dungeon. For your specific case, using precedent, I’ll add…”

Everyone who came to observe the newest Black is shocked. A small child sentencing people to torture before death? Who else but a Black could be capable of such insanity and ruthlessness? When she sentences all the criminals with the max harshness of the law, and immediately carries out the punishment, is it any surprise that crime immediately takes a sharp plunge?

With the worst criminals taken care of, her empire’s footing is much more secure. Many of her traditional allies and most of her enemies have decided to go back to business-as-usual with her. From there, she has some breathing room to shore up her defenses as the rest of her enemies wise up and become more subtle. Still, even with this much, it’s enough to make her empire stable.