It had been just over ten days since Mark took control of the elven kingdom, and against everything he had expected, things had stabilized with surprising speed.
Although the purge on the first day had been brutal and from the outside looked like the beginning of a bloody dictatorship that would end up plunging the kingdom into chaos, the reality turned out to be very different.
Because what Mark and his subordinates had done wasn't destroy the kingdom's structure, it was prune it.
The executed nobles were the only ones with enough influence to organize a real rebellion. Once they were gone, the rest of the nobility lost all capacity for resistance and ended up accepting the situation.
The officials kept their posts, taxes continued to be collected, trade routes kept functioning, and the markets stayed open.
For most elves, life had barely changed.
