In the corner of the courtyard of the Tower of London, the three famous ravens rest, and according to ancient legend, the White Mound, where the head of King Bran of the Britons was buried, has been the place where the ravens have been buried, and it is believed that King Bran is still guarding the British Isles.

King Edgar had also seen the ravens in the tower in his previous life, and after eight centuries, these black-feathered ones seemed to never pass away, witnessing the birth, old age, sickness and death of mortals. As twilight fell, the ravens began to scream, then flapped their wings and spun past the tips of the guards' spears.

"What should I do now?" Edgar withdrew his gaze from the raven, his rough crooked fingers groping for the edge of the tower, and began to calculate the day's events.

War seemed averted, both abroad and at home, but Gerspatrick Jr. asked that his brother Uhtred be allowed to go to Scotland and tour the frontier fiefdoms for him before he left.

After many years of peace in the North, long since it was restored, the scenes of swords clashing, flames, and women and children were a thing of the past, and the Covenant with the Scots ensured that these northern lords had enough energy to deal with the threat posed by the raiders, and like the lands in the south, the magnificent gray fortresses rose from the ground, showing the great power of the counts in all directions.

It's not that the king doesn't believe in his own power, but now that England has an overseas empire, he can't stay at home forever, and in his absence, will Westminster still have a stable grip on the north?

Does Edmund have what it takes to keep the unruly lords loyal to the royal family?

Walsioff is too old to help him control the north all the time, Hugh Barn is even more old and sick, and Guspartik is not so reliable at the moment, but he is a royal blood relative after all, and he owes his family too much. Do you want to let the Normans go north? The Northumbrians wouldn't like it, East Reading might be a desolate frontier, and handing over some Norman mercenaries was nothing, and York and Bebanburg were another matter.

Moreover, William, Earl of Evreux, and Roger, Earl of Hereford, were not well suited to the north, either because they needed to watch over the newly expanded lands for the royal family, or they were not good enough to hold such a sensitive position.

The king suddenly remembered his sister's previous letter, and from the description of the letter, it was clear that the Earl of Oxford had made a deep impression on the Queen of Scotland, and although this young man was not as tall as his brother the Duke of Normandy, he was unusually calm and steady, and King Malcolm even offered to invite him to stay in the Perth court and wait for the princess to come of age.

Henry might have been able to keep an eye on the north for himself, and Bebanburg was far enough away from Normandy that it was not too risky to hand over the army to Henry, and Edgar had never had the slightest doubt about Henry's military and ruling talents.

Over the years, with the completion of the nineteen-arched London Bridge, the increase in trade has made the market days of the Roman era too congested, and the increase in population in the capital has made water supply the biggest problem at present, with long queues of women and even children in front of wells becoming the most common sight. The lack of municipal planning has also led to the proliferation of shops and houses living next to blacksmith shops with red-hot furnaces, where a mad mule and horse can cause a huge fire.

Unlike in the North, the town workshops in the South have gradually replaced the former manor industries, which are not only exported to the overseas trading cities of Ghent, Troyes, Lübeck, Venice, and Amalfi, but also supply the kingdom's countryside with a large number of new heavy ploughs and iron-edged scythes, and the efficiency and quality control of the urban workshops are much better than those of the country craftsmen of the old estates, which is of great significance to the English who began to use Flemish horses, which are pulled by faster ploughing horses. Able to wedge deep into the deep fertile soil of this Nordic island nation. Under the leadership of the Cluny friars, a vigorous campaign of reclamation was gaining momentum across Europe, and the English, who had replaced the Roman two-garden system with a more efficient three-garden rotation, were particularly diligent, working and praying in this regard, which is the Order's favourite slogan at the moment.

Managing an expansion of this magnitude was beyond the burden of the traditional bureaucracy, and the clerical witnesses of the Council of the Magi grew longer, and the meetings of the Council of the Magi, both in the capital and in the counties, were held to discuss only the most important issues, while the king's rule required a civil service to deal with the most trivial daily matters.

Edgar did not have the idea of re-establishing the "Westminster system" in this era, and what he needed was a privy council serving the throne, the former could be selected from among the nobles and bishops, and the latter needed to exist independently of the Council of the Magi and only as employees of the throne.

The Renaissance monarchs had already used the proliferation of university students since the 12th century to serve their governments, and with the expansion of the bureaucracy, a large number of students who could only work as satirists after graduation joined the civil service more broadly, and in Edgar's previous life, the Oriental civil service examination system that the East India Company had actively advocated finally became an official bill, and after the administrative chaos of the Crimean War, Her Majesty's government finally realized the need for reform. Edgar's arrival came at a time when the Tories' Disraeli government had just come to power, and he was no stranger to the civil service reforms promoted by Gladstone, an Oxford-born prime minister.

Edgar also needed the support of the Holy See to carry out internal reforms, especially on the issue of restricting the local aristocracy from buying and selling clergy and annexing estates. The Church was also very keen on the development of new cities, even in new free cities like St. Omer, which were not controlled by any lord or bishop—the tithes received from a town merchant were far greater than the entire wealth of a peasant waiting to be fed. Lübeck could not have developed without the personal support of Urban II, the new Hanseatic Baltic with the help of the Church had already mastered most of the trade privileges of the Wende coast, the bishop of Hamburg watched the rise of the eastern fortress jealously from his pedestal, and wrote letters accusing these communities of lawlessness and heresy, while most of the bishops did not care about the freedom enjoyed by the bourgeois, preferring to share in the town taxes they deserved - only for a fine, The court will also open its doors to the Bourgeois of the Baltic and Hanseatic regions, and the Palais des Justice, which is being built in Hamburg, has an economic contribution from the Hanseatic city.

With the arrival of the envoys from Constantinople, Edgar realized that England needed to join the international diplomatic system that Urban II was constructing, and if he could not master this influence, he would be isolated from the trading system of the Mediterranean, content with the limited wealth of the northern world, which was essential for the future of the kingdom. After all, the times are different, and now is not the time of King Alfred's reign, the kingdom is highly hierarchical, and Sein and Kerr are each dependent on their patrons, strictly abiding by the obligations of the ancient Anglo-Saxons. The opening up of England had already begun with the construction of Greenwich, and the free communities of the Hanseatic cities were now more prosperous in England, and in the southern counties, where the old feudal system was disintegrating, not only was the administrative structure changing, but the military system was also unsustainable, and more and more people were drawn into the new urban economy, and in the territory of the Five Ports League, feudal obligations were almost non-existent, and the southern counties were obviously unable to provide the scale of military service in places such as Mercia or Northumbria.

The crisis of the past samurai who swore allegiance to their lords in exchange for the right to share in the spoils of war and the lord's bounty, first rings and other jewels, and later land, was now unsustainable, and this crisis made Edgar realize that if he could not maintain an overwhelming military force in the south, he could only continue to appease the lords of the north, this time the Earls of Northumbria and Cambria, and later even Holder or even Thine in the frontiers of Chester or Durham.

At the beginning of the establishment of the Plantagenet Dynasty, it encountered such a vassal rebellion crisis, Henry II, who relied on a strong central treasury and temporary mercenaries to solve the vassal rebellion, did not find a cure, King John was almost overturned by the vassals, the minions of the kingdom are both talismans and amulets for royal power, Edgar is of course unable to cleanse his military foundation at present, and it is impossible to rely on foreign soldiers like Emperor Alexios and the later Ottoman Sultans, all he needs is internal balance.

At the moment, perhaps the more practical system is the military contract system, where the nobles do not worry about losing their fiefs and privileges because they are paid for military service, and at the same time, the royal family, which holds the financial power, can control the quantity and quality of military service, and the failure of troops and equipment to pass the inspection means that the contract cannot be completed, and the throne will not pay a penny. Both the old feudal army and the bourgeois militia would join the royal army because of economic incentives, and they were rigorously trained and reviewed. In this way, the demographic and economic advantages of places like Wessex will provide the royal family with a military base to suppress the northern warlords, and although the bourgeois class will inevitably become new power contenders as the times progress, the old aristocracy may instead become the main supporters of the royal family, but for now, these people are still not as strong as the traditional nobility.

If he is to carry out military reform, Edgar will have to have a stronger financial base, and in addition to the revenues of the royal domain, the value of overseas trade will become increasingly apparent - the Mediterranean, which has been gradually closed to the West since the rise of the prophet in the desert, is about to reopen, and whoever can master this sea of gold will dominate the next 600 years.