I Reincarnated as a Noble Girl Villainess But Why Did It Turn Out This Way?

Chapter 2 - Golden sea

Two years passed. In just two years, my domain has changed greatly. Outside my window, all that I could see beyond the fence, was rippling waves of wheat. He's done quite well in only two years, is what I was thinking, Earl Terejia can be proud of what he's accomplished.

Due to the despotism of the Cardia family, the people's resources here had been stretched to the limits. Since my shallow father had been scared of rebellion, he repressed the people so much, that was the biggest problem of this domain. If they don't work in the fields, then there will be less income. Even an idiot could see that this would only eventually lead to self-ruin.

But, saying that my father did not completely understand the famine issues within my domain, might have been an exaggeration. He knew that repressing the people as much as he did would reduce income. Then, how did he maintain such an opulent lifestyle in bad taste?

......When I learned about my family's incredibly evil "source of income," I was unable to stop myself from throwing up at the bottomless pits of human desire and evil, even if he was my own father.

Among the punishments for people in this domain, there's something called forced labor. Basically, putting someone to work. With my common sense from the previous world, there wasn't really anything like this in my country, so at first I was a bit confused.

When my father started the forced labor system nineteen years ago, he would take girls from twelve to eighteen years old, and boys from ten to fifteen years old, and force them into sex service. Without sugarcoating it, he was basically treating the domain's people as slaves.

In the Axia Kingdom, "slavery" is considered illegal.

It's clearly stated in national law that slavery is illegal, but, it's only there in the first place because the state church, the Ar Kusha church, protested slavery on a large scale. The actuality is that most commoners are under a system similar to slavery, called serfdom, in this country.

Father, with his despicable cleverness, came up with this trick to get around the title of "slavery." First, saying that this wasn't a demotion or a lifetime thing like slavery. Also, sending the gathered laborers to other domains to work as well. Calling this only as "labor" to the very end.

In this country, no, on this entire continent, people are merely considered to be the property of their domain's lord. This was considered to be common sense here, but I disagree with it. Meaning, a rental fee could be earned by loaning out the "property," it had to be concealed in this flashy manner, and nobody would blame my father.

Since anti-slavery laws are strong in the Axia Kingdom, openly practicing slavery would mean getting exiled. Although Earl Terejia seems to have a strong sense of ethics, there's probably corrupt nobles in other parts of Axia.

Because this country has enjoyed a long period of peace, I wonder if that's caused Axia to stagnate and begin to rot from inside. Unfortunately, I found out that "laborers" were dispatched to countless houses. And, even now there are still many laborers.

These laborers are an example of the numerous despotic laws that my father enacted like vomit. It's terrible. "Laborers" that returned from after pregnancy would be abused even more, increasing even further the amount of psychological damage dealt to them.

Since they were under an unbearably high tax, many commoners were in the harsh situation of facing starvation, and there were so many famished people that improving the quality of life within my domain was slow progress.

That's why I'm saying, things are better already. Earl Terejia had put the safety of my domain's people as his first priority.

He started with the hunger issue. He sold off all the senselessly expensive stuff in the house. That's good. I wouldn't even know where to sell all these things. That money was used to provide free meals to the people.