Since the decision has already been made, proceeding with it becomes swift.
As the Lord of the North, Perfikot could easily draft several pioneer documents.
However, considering this time it’s for those major merchants, to extract money from them, Perfikot thoughtfully switched the document paper to alchemy-produced special paper, which doesn’t tear, burn, or soak, ensuring it’s immutable.
For those merchants, you have to gauge their mentality: someone willing to spend fifty thousand pounds for a pioneer document wouldn’t mind spending another thirty thousand for a deluxe version, or even five more for a supreme deluxe version.
People have a competitive nature: if both of us are Pioneer Knights, and your document is written on a casual piece of parchment while mine is on genuine alchemy paper, it implicitly puts me a notch above you.
This is why some people only buy the most expensive, not necessarily the right choice, only pursuing the priciest, not the best.
Most of those newly wealthy merchants lack accumulation, many of them only getting wealthy in their current generation, therefore lacking enough accumulation in their behavior and lavish indulgences.
In fact, not only them, even the nobility lacks what is called accumulation.
The reason is quite simple: everyone truly became wealthy only after the industrial revolution; before that, rich?
The King had to wait for local tributes to eat fish; in history, there’s a king who died from eating too many delicious lampreys.
If even the King was , one can imagine the ordinary nobility.
Precisely because of this, everyone is essentially a nouveau riche, except that the nobility had several generations of wealth plus the constraints of noble etiquette, making them less pretentious than mere landed gentry.
But this is only for now; without the doomsday winter, after a few more decades when the first industrial revolution is complete, and the first generation of capitalists has accumulated their wealth, country nobility like the Brandelis Clan of the past will truly become ostentatious, and conversely, these big merchants will gradually become representatives of wealth and fashion.
Only the truly top-tier nobility can have enough wealth accumulation to let their lifestyle rise with their fortunes.
But now, everyone is still desperately gilding their faces, trying to appear more affluent than others.
It’s just that the nobility already had some gold dust on their faces, so it’s easier to stick more on, while the merchants don’t have that convenience, and it’s not wrong to say they lack deep roots.
This is why in the original world, even into the third industrial revolution, the so-called fashion trends and top luxury experiences remained in the hands of the so-called nobility, and the so-called noble demeanor continued to be pursued.
Perfikot has no interest in criticizing or evaluating this phenomenon; she only cares about how much profit it can bring her and how much it can aid the Northern expansion.
To amplify the influence of this affair, she also intentionally had the old steward release the news, stating that to celebrate the opening of the commercial Flying Airship route between the Northern Territory and the Empire’s mainland, the Lord of the North specially prepared five Pioneer Knight commissioning documents to be auctioned during the maiden voyage celebration.
This news quickly made its way back to Langton and also to the New Continent.
While it might not be a whirlwind, it certainly stirred up a storm of interest.
For some, the nobility status isn’t important, after all, they are all nobles; some just have higher titles while others lower, but ultimately, they are all part of the same circle.
But for those who don’t have it, even the lowest-ranking knight title is a stepping stone to the nobility; obtaining it means entering that upper circle, from then on being a cut above the rest. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by noveⅼfire.net
This is not merely imitating noble lifestyles and imagining oneself a noble but actually entering the noble circle in earnest.
For the nobility, having a title or not is entirely different, even as an heir.
So faced with the Northern Count’s offering of five titles, countless people flock to seize them.
But evidently, this is not an opportunity for everyone.
The reason is simple: Perfikot said the five Pioneer Knight documents would be auctioned during the Flying Airship route’s maiden voyage celebration; hence, if you want to purchase one, you must at least appear at the celebration, right? At the very least, you need to send someone to bid for you, don’t you?
If you can’t even do that, how will you buy it? It’s not like you can wait for someone else to buy it on site, and then you buy it from them, right?
Everyone knows the benefits of a title; who would spend a hefty sum to get a title only to sell it later?
This silently rules out a large number of people who can’t make it to the North or send someone there on the day.
Those who can actually show up on such occasions are either catching the first Flying Airship maiden voyage or the major merchants and capitalists sending someone to the North.
They are all individuals with vast resources at their disposal, naturally pulling out all the stops at such times.
The Flying Airship is equipped with a radio station, originally prepared for convenient communication, though typically, passengers cannot use it at will, but often the rules yield to money.
Therefore, representatives originally sent to execute survey tasks aboard the Flying Airship naturally received new instructions, and each party received a rough budget and a permissible overspend amount.
After all, Perfikot stated it would be an auction, so it became necessary to prepare more funds or convertible resources in advance to win the bid.
However, those who can genuinely muster vast resources are not these capitalists and factory owners but the truly grand nobility.
They can also mobilize resources and send people to the North, yet they didn’t do so; instead, they directly sent telegrams to Perfikot.
Nobles from the Royal Capital implored Perfikot, attempting to secure a plausible title for their second or illegitimate sons.
After all, there’s only one title in the family, hereditary and can only be passed to the legitimate heir; the remaining sons or illegitimate ones can only get a sum of money and fend for themselves.
Now there’s an opportunity to acquire a title, how could they just watch?
Spending money directly is of course simple and convenient, but competing with merchants financially may be challenging, and there are only five titles. Who gets one and who doesn’t could hurt feelings and is not dignified.
Privately approaching Perfikot is different: since the Lord of the North can offer five knight titles for sale, it means they can find a way through Perfikot, as long as there’s a price, it’s merely a matter of exchanging benefits, a game the nobility is well-versed in.