After we finished dinner, Becca wanted to go straight to bed so she could wake up early in the morning and do a couple hours of magic training with me.
Before she went to sleep, I asked her if I could borrow one of her Tanya Walker books to read before I too went to sleep.
Now, Becca was laying in bed lightly snoring and I was sitting on the sofa ready to start reading. I wanted to finish at least one of Tanya Walker's books before Saturday. Becca told me at dinner that Tanya Walker would be at the bookstore herself on Saturday since she lives in the Duchy and likes to do a book signing on the first day of a new books release.
If I were to talk to her in person, I wanted to be able to bring up at least one of her works. Luckily, Becca had all her books with her, so I borrow the one that was released the latest. The story was called 'Turning the Tables'.
I took a sip of the warm tea I had prepared earlier and started reading. I was so engrossed with the story that I ended up finishing half of it before I realized and a couple hours had already past.
The story was a lot different than I thought going into it. The main character was an investigative journalist who went around trying to get the inside scoop on scandals. They would write their articles on public figures that were beloved and reveal their true ruthless character to the populace. One article was enough to greatly change the public perception.
The story made me start daydreaming about my own circumstances. How good would it be to have an investigative journalist on our side? I started to go even farther and started to imagine how nice it would be to have a whole newspaper working for our movement.
Getting newspapers into the common peoples' hands would be a great way to change their perception of what is right and wrong. People can learn about our movement from our newspaper articles and many people would relate to wanting positive change and start to back us.
Then, we could have an investigative journalist who would go to find dirt on the public figure who are the most strongly against us to be the feature articles on each newspaper.
I was starting to get excited by how creating our own newspaper would be a really great way to win the hearts of the commoners while me and Becca worked on winning the hearts of the nobles at the parties ran by Madam Martha. I truly believed this two pronged approach could help us raise a lot of support.
But the question was, where are we going to be able to find a newspaper and talented investigative journalist to work for us? Maybe with the money of the Duchy, we could buy an existing newspaper to print what we are looking for.
Interestingly, the book 'Turning the Tables' felt so well researched and brought up a lot of issues in investigative journalism that the average person would never think of, that I was confident the author, Tanya Walker, must have talked to an actual journalist to find out the details of the job. With this in mind, my first plan of action was to ask Tanya Walker who her source of research was when we visited her at her book signing on Saturday. As long as her source is willing, we should be on the right track to set up our very own newspaper.
With a new goal in mind, I put down the book for the night and quietly got into bed. It was already getting late and I would have to get up and train whenever Becca woke up.
————————————————-
I woke up the next morning and Becca was still sleeping. I silently laughed at her attempt to get up early to train.
Her still being asleep was actually good for me because I wanted to talk to James before we started our training.
I quickly changed into my training uniform since I would be using it after anyways and walked over to my office.
As per usual, James was already sitting at the desk with a stack of papers. As I sat down in front of him, he greeted me.
"Good morning, my Lord. What can I do for you?"
"Hello James, I had a couple of things I needed to let you know. The first is that me and Becca are planning to take a trip to her family's territory. We want to leave Sunday, stay for a week, and then come back. Would that cause any problems?"
"Hmm…no, I don't think there will be any problems. I'll just keep managing the household like I normally do."
"Ok, the next thing is me and Becca were talking about it and we thought we should change the allowing women to have multiple husbands and concubine law slightly.
We think a clause should be added that, for current couples, a wife is only allowed to add a second husband or a concubine if their husband already has a second wife or a concubine themselves.
Then, for new couples made after this law is implemented, a husband or wife can only add a second spouse or concubine if the other party agrees to allow it. Do you think adding a clause like this is possible? Also, how long do you think it will take you to complete write up the two laws?"
James nodded like he already foresaw this problem popping up. "Yes, a clause like that is a pretty standard part of laws. I will definitely make those changes for you. It will probably take me about a week to finish thinking through and putting to paper all the possible scenarios for the two laws so that there are no ambiguity or loopholes.
I have already been racking my brain about how to deal with the obvious inheritance problems that can occur from a noble woman having multiple husbands. I haven't got it completely figure out yet, but I'll let you know once it is all written out. You being gone with my Lady next week is actually good for me so I can focus on getting it all done for you by the time you return."
I gave my gratitude, "thanks for working so hard James. I'm sorry I can't do more with the writing of the law."
James smiled back at me, "it's no problem at all. I too am excited about the assault law being added so I won't have to see my fellow colleges with bruises on their arms."