Reincarnated as a Son of the Sword Saint and the Sage

Chapter 441: Forging A New Idea

The Queendom of Raevender had been increasing its population since its declaration as an independent and autonomous nation. Most of its people were concentrated in its two major cities: the City of Lavender and the royal capital, the City of Louisiana.

Since the queendom was a new nation, the population was still relatively small despite its drastic growth rate. The disadvantage of a small population was that it reflected the tax revenue of the nation.

But there were some advantages as well, such as the nation having plenty of space to move and adapt new developments. As a new nation, our family could implement new things and complete them in a relatively short time.

While our queendom was still developing, my family thought that we had enough time to put this idea into practice. This idea is a constitution that mandates our population to have their own last names.

I was actually the one who came up with this idea. The reason for that was that, in my opinion, I thought that having only a first name could not complete a person's identity. I used to live in a world where every person had a last name or family name, so I wanted this world to practice that as well.

Aside from tradition, my other reason was that a person could become a target of misidentification and be harmed for no valid grounds as a single name could be owned by multiple persons.

In this world, last names could be acquired through inheritance like nobles did, and some superriches even bought it like the Raeven Family. A person could get their own through if they were granted peerage through their feats and efforts, but it took years to achieve.

But there were limits for having a last name. It was not written in the rules of law, so it was more like an unspoken rule. In this world traditionally, the full name of a person must be in two names: the given name and the family name. It was applicable to all nobles, including the royals.

When I brought this up to my family a few months ago when our country was only weeks old, they understood my opinion and thought that it was a good idea as a whole. They said that it would be convenient in various ways concerning systemic order and identity.

Of course, there were these negative outcomes as well. As my Mom pointed out, giving everyone last names would be an insult toward the nobility. Implementing the idea would make them think that commoners were no different from them on paper.

To solve that problem, we concurred to formally discuss it with other nations. We had to hear their insights about it and what advice they could add to improve it if the idea was going to be put into practice.

The meeting was held around a month ago in the Imperial Capital; it was before the issue of Edward and Christine surfaced, and it was attended by the representatives of the nations of the continent. The only nations that were not present were the nations of Forester, Lionor, and Prussilvania, as they were not interested in the concept.

In the meeting, when we disclosed that we wanted to give our residents rights to have last names, many of the representatives voiced their opinions of disapproval. As expected, they regarded it as disrespectful.

Even though we had expected this much condemnation, the emperor still granted us a council to talk it over. He said that he was interested in the idea, but he needed the opinions of others as well. In addition, he believed that somebody would bring this up in the future, so he just thought that it would be better to tackle it sooner.

To address the issue about the insult issues, we made some suggestions to the committee. While the common people could have two names, the nobles would have an additional name and a nobiliary particle, while royals could have up to five names, including the nobiliary name.

We suggested that each nation could have their own nobiliary particle to easily distinguish to what nation a nobleman belonged. They could have also made them up on their own, but it would be up to their nation's decision.

The committee got it thinking, and some reconsidered the idea. The nobles probably had this logic that they did not care if common people had last names as long as their identities had more words than theirs.

The meeting went on, tackling the matter and its outcomes and consequences. We brainstormed and exchanged ideas on how to improve the idea as flawlessly as possible.

In the end, the committee eventually concurred to give it a shot. However, they said that they implemented it on their own, and they were just representatives and not the rulers themselves. Moreover, even if they had the power to give it a go signal, they could not just adapt it into their nation without results.

Since they were the ones who proposed this idea, they put the burden on us and had us implement it on our nation first to acquire the results they wanted. Of course we accepted their challenge, and the emperor seemed to approve as well.

Well, actually, even if they did not permit us to do so, we were still eager to give our residents last names anyway. We were an independent country in the first place, so they actually did not have the right to question what we would do to our domain.

"Looks like the media is already here." I mumbled in my seat.

So today, more than a month since that meeting, my family and our vassals gathered in the hall of mirrors in the palace together with our government officials to announce this new constitution to the public. We also invited some journalists to cover this up into news around the continent.

Once everything was prepared, Mother, the reigning queen, then formally declared the official implementation of this new law stating that a resident of the Queendom of Raevender had the right to own a last name.

Once Mother signed the official documents, our statistics offices were flocked with people who wanted to have their last names added to their official identity.