"The problem in the highlands, is the residents...
...their ignorance and backward habits. Their backward beliefs. We're doing the poor bastards a favour driving them out of their isolation and into the thirty-first century!" Whether Duke Michael Diego really meant it or not, he said it often enough it might as well be imprinted on his forehead.
In part, this is furthered by funding from the Federated Commonwealth, social spending aimed at improving the lot of the poor, and on Arluna, the poorest live in the rural highlands. This situation might have persisted for more centuries, nobody really wanted to deal with the Abschaum in the hills, not with the highly profitable coastal cities.
But...
unfortunately, some of the events of the last twenty years has gotten the attention of the military, in the form of medals awarded most often posthumously, and this in turn got the attention of the Lyran State's social reformers.
So, funding has begun to appear, with strings...and 'suggestions' from Tharkad.
Diego likes the added attention, because it raises Arluna's proflle, but not the tone of it. He made promises and requests, and Her Majesty Melissa was apparently satisfied with his proposal.
Poverty programs, housing, education...but it would be fruitless to put it out there in the Hollers and Hill Country. 'Der Hinterwäldler' had to be brought down to the lowlands. The delightful trade off, being that territory ideal for private estates for hunting and skiing could be made available to proper Lyrans, and he could satisfy the local Ecological movements in the big cities by eliminating pollution-generator industries and closing low-profit mines and ore processors.
But, he had to get the damned hillbillies out of the hills and into the cities, and they weren't responding to gentler means and enticements.
Still, an actual purge, with Tharkad's eye on Arluna, was out of the question without a provocation.
Thus, indirect methods and lots of rhetoric about how he cares for the deplorable poors in the hill country.
Julio Ortega, the planetary Magistrate, wasn't sure if the Duke believed his own rhetoric, but he was certain to scrupulously enforce the letter of the law, reminding the Duke and Barons that, without a dispensation from the Archon, their methods for obtaining compliance were...limited.
Taxation and fines could be used, and harsh (but legal) punishments for refusal, but without the Archon's blessing, direct methods at minimum would have to be witheld.
Or, at least, be deniable. A suggestion here, an oblique reference there. a few more regulations.
After all, who really wants those hillbillies armed?? They might hurt themselves, or someone else.
