Starting From Today I'll Work as a City Lord - Ch. 34 - Public Execution!

cpz

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I never though he would actually kill them without any guilt.
 
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took you long enough to kill them but how exactly is this any better than assassinating them? at least the assassination is plausible deniability but here it's public execution so if the former city lord really wants to avenge them he's even more justified to do it now.
 
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@Doomer

Because the merchants had built up a good reputation despite swindeling the majority of the population.
If he assasinated them while they still had a good rep he might be acused of killing them, or requested to find out who did it.

If its found out he did it and he killed "good men" for his own benefit the people is going to be unhappy with him.
And if he is requested to find out who did it, he would need to kill a innocent man in his place or say he was unable to find the culprit.
If he is unable to find the culprit, then he himself loses his own reputation for being incompetent.

So he had to ruin the merchant's reputation by playing this charade.
We know the merchants were guilty of much and were by no means good people, but in the eyes of the common folk they were.
So he framed the merchants to make them look bad and thus getting the people to want to kill them.

There is a few benefits to all of this, one being that he himself looks more competent for finding out that the merchants were bad people.
Also he himself was not the one who sentenced them to death.
it was the people he can point to them when/if the other nobles who profited from all of this gets mad at him.
That way he can just blame the people and said he did what they wanted and its going to be much harder for them to find faults with his choices.
And finally if people are happy about the merchants being dead its much less likely that somebody is going to snoop around and potentially find out that he framed them.
 
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WOOOO HE EXECUTED THEM NICE

@Doomer

How would he be justified?! Does your brain work? They were executed for a legitimate crime, as witnessed by many people, the enemy lord is unable to complain about this.
 
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@CalamityCallout do you think he would care if the execution was justified or not? the former lord was the one behind the merchants evil actions, he already knows they're guilty. he can just claim "the evil city lord framed and murdered these innocent merchants and i as a right and honorable man will not let him get away with this". at least if he assassinated them he could claim innocence but here it was ni public with hundreds of witnesses.
 
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@Doomer do you think if the merchants were assassinated the former lord would bother actually finding evidence? He'd just accuse the main character and put forward some false witnesses saying "yeah I saw the MC personally execute the grain merchants".

The Former Lord can always make up a reason to attack, peace was never an option. At least this way it's much more easy to sway public opinion towards the MC - if he assassinated the merchants, the people can say "it's your fault the former lord is attacking , you shouldn't have assassinated him", this way, it's a lot harder for the public to say "the merchant was framed" considering he was caught red handed with so many witnesses, and they are all going to be against the idea that the fat grain merchant was innocent.
 
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I'm with @Doomer: If you kill someone, do it without witnesses or with witnesses that claim your innocence. He could have claimed, that the horse-bandits did it.He could have forged a will, that let the merchant give away all of his savings to the people, in effort to buy his way into heaven. Now his enemies will just try to put blame on the lord. (I mean this trick is very easy to see through.)
 
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@Qelix The problem here is that he'd probably be blamed EITHER way, so between one that has the entire city backing you up vs. one that leave you completely defenseless, the former is much better.
 
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Didn't read the chapter until now, so sorry for the late response.

@Qelix He just did kill them "with witnesses that claim [his] innocence". He has multiple witnesses that saw the grain merchants with the stolen grain. He gave them a trial (albeit a very short one), had normal citizens provide eyewitness testimony, and then found them guilty. As the city lord, he has the right to do that to criminals, so as long as the evidence was there, he is "justified" and thus "innocent" of murder. The trick might be easy for somebody shrewd to see through when it happens (like the fat merchant did), but after the fact, it would be extremely hard to try to prove any claims of wrongdoing against him, especially when there are multiple eyewitnesses that think they know what they saw.

With how easily the people have been swayed by any silver tongued individual, if he assassinated the merchants, his opponents would start rumors among the townspeople, and it would make them suspect him, even without evidence. This strategy is based on convincing them, not with smooth speech, but based on what their eyes have told them to be true, which also makes them unlikely to be swayed by people trying to stir up trouble against him, later. (This is even more so, since the people themselves called for the deaths of these merchants, so they would be even less likely to consider they might have been tricked in what they saw, since that would mean not only did they see things incorrectly, but they also demanded "innocent" people to be put to death.)

Outside of catching them red-handed with civilian witnesses, this was actually the best solution he could have accomplished. Now I just hope he has the right to seize their "assets" as recompense and thus get enough grain to feed his people for quite a while.
 
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I was expecting a beheading but i forgot that that’s too gory for the chinese censors.
 

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