thetasteoffire:
apricops:
I’m gonna pitch a show as “like Game of Thrones but even more gritty and realistic” and then it’s nothing but a baron handling land estimates and organizing road repairs and stuff. There’ll be an entire episode about how a peasant gets brought to court for letting milk cattle graze on communal pastureland even though it’s supposed to be reserved for draft animals.
my ten-episode plan from the writer’s room of this blessed show:
-ep. 1: meet the accounting staff of this magical kingdom in a far-off land
-ep. 2: land estimates, plenary powers of wizards employed by the office of the royal treasury, and how tax code intersects with succession laws of absolute primogeniture when the lineage in question may have extra-planar ancestry
-ep. 3: a full-hour hearing with flashbacks on how mrs. Jones’ cow grazing actually violates three local statutes, is in line with a conflicting royal decree (potentially issued under ensorcelled compulsion), and is entitled to binding arbitration via fey courts. mrs. jones is not entitled to said arbitration, the cow is.
-ep. 4: how land rights and taxation applies to druid circles and sentient treefolk, especially when said land is technically owed fealty to both a human and inhuman entity. we never see any treefolk.
-ep. 5: the differing rights and responsibilities of yeomen who freehold land near a lord’s manse vs. yeomen who freehold land held by the lord’s vassals vs. burghers in cities surrounded by forty-foot high gilded walls inscribed with runes so terrible they will burn a man’s flesh just from touching. extensive tax comparisons are made based on type of property held and crop status (cereal crop taxed x, but fiber crops taxed y).
-ep. 6 - 9: ep. 3 but for a host of other problems: conflicting tax status for nobles who hold different positions (especially if they technically owe themselves fealty), bridges (just like…in general), a revolt started by a miller, and tax-deductible status for magical family heirlooms and whether or not being part of a dragon’s hoard can be considered “held in escrow.”
-ep. 10: the queen kills the king. this is never explained but on a rewatch, isn’t surprising. it does rattle the staff as they look to cook the books and make sure they get paid as revolution sweeps the land. a brief aside is delved into concerning mercenaries. this takes less than five minutes; the rest of the episode concerns a detailed archive of back-taxes owed by the rebel dukes.
Season 2
Ep 1: Reeves organise teams of villagers to rebuild houses lost during a dragon attack.
Ep 2: The charcoal burner claims to have seen a unicorn in the woods, but Gerard the sexy huntsman decides to investigate and finds out it’s actually just a lost horse. He returns it to the baron’s son and is paid handsomely.
Ep 3: Scandal erupts as local nun writes a letter to the pope demanding he send her some valuable relics currently stored in a church in Rome. The bishop tries to dissuade her, but as usual, nobody ever takes him seriously.
Ep 4: Some Cistercians move in, trying distance themselves from the luxurious life in southern France. Chaos ensues as they unwittingly build their monastery on faerie land.
Ep 5: A travelling judge visits the village. Robert the swineherd accuses elves of stealing his pig, and the elves agree to repay him in enchanted berries.
Ep 6: The priest writes to his friend the next town over, lamenting about how his parishioners never show up to church, even after the Lateran Council of 1215. His friend suggests he learn magic to make his sermons more entertaining.
Ep 7: The charcoal burner tries to drum up support for a crusade. He gets eight people and they only make it to the next village, when it starts raining and they decide to go to the pub instead of Jerusalem.
