Thoras's official duties today were not very busy. After dealing with the few documents, he was thinking about the armed conflict between the cavalry regiment and the Alterac army that had occurred not long ago.
The Kingdom of Alterac was small in population and weak in national strength. Excluding the private armies of the nobles, the kingdom's regular army was less than ten thousand people.
The ancestor of the Trollbane family, Ignaeus, came from the ancient Alterac mountain tribe - the Alterachi tribe. He also knew the terrain of the Alterac Mountains like the back of his hand. In military terms, Stromgarde was not afraid of Alterac at all.
The current King of Alterac, Aiden Perenolde, came from a wealthy family and had the face of a businessman, timid and fond of petty advantages. The only right thing he did was to promote General Hath, an excellent soldier, tactician, and the only person in the Kingdom of Alterac that Thoras was wary of.
Since the division of the Arathor Empire, the human nations had the same origin and ancestry, and with Lordaeron, the strongest human nation, suppressing them, there were only small-scale frictions between the nations, and no large-scale wars.
King Terenas of Lordaeron mediated between them, and both Thoras and General Hath were rational soldiers, and both were very restrained, always carefully controlling the scale of the conflict between the two armies.
The conflict between the two sides would not become too bad, which was why Thoras hated it the most.
He would rather fight a real battle with the Alterac army than haggle with Aiden Perenolde, that villain, at the negotiating table. This kind of thing was useless except for wasting saliva, and it made him disgusted.
When the guard informed him that Prince Galen had returned, Thoras's previously furrowed brow finally relaxed.
But the next moment:
"Father, I want a piece of land."
King Thoras, who had been smiling as he watched Galen walk in, had a bit of a failure in expression management when he heard this sentence, a bit of a maladjustment between the smile and the astonishment.
Years of being king allowed him to quickly adjust his expression. Knowing his son, he didn't ask why he wanted a piece of land.
"My son, which piece of land do you want?"
Faced with Thoras's question, Galen's expression faltered. He had thought of countless high-sounding reasons to persuade his father to grant him a fief, but in the current situation, was he just agreeing directly? Had his five days of painstaking thought been for nothing?
"Father, you agreed?"
There were many question marks on Galen's face. Happiness came too quickly, like a tornado. He was a little suspicious that he was hallucinating, and it was better to confirm it again.
Before coming, Galen was confident that he could persuade Thoras to agree to his request for a fief.
The Kingdom of Stromgarde, including most of the human nations, would grant a fief to the royal children after they came of age, whether large or small, mainly depending on the king's mood.
When Galen's cousin, Danath, came of age, his father drew a fertile mining area on the northern foot of the Hillsbrad Foothills as his fief, which made Galen very envious at the time.
Although he was a prince, Thoras had given him several small manors around Stromgarde, but that was different from a fief after all.
Galen was confident in making the request because of his decade-long relationship with his father, their deep affection, and their deep understanding of each other.
The only thing that might make his father disagree was that he was too young and afraid that he would not be able to manage the fief.
This was not a big problem either. The place Galen wanted was not the kingdom's internal surplus land, but Stonefist Hall south of the Deadwood Forest, a former royal mining area that was the royal family's property, but was later abandoned for various reasons.
No one lived there, which meant that there was no need to worry about governing the people, and even if there were people, he could recruit administrators to manage them.
Then the problem came again, that area was not safe, too close to the territory of the Witherbark tribe.
Then his ultimate goal could be put forward, asking Thoras to approve his establishment of an army to protect the fief.
For this reason, Galen had specially preserved the troll's head from the troll camp and brought it back to prove that he had the ability to defeat the trolls.
The reason for such careful consideration and interlocking steps was because Galen came from the other world.
Kings abolished feudalism and entered the era of centralized power. Military power has always been a very sensitive matter. Which emperor is not afraid of it?
Galen was also afraid. If he hadn't transmigrated, the original Prince Galen would have usurped the throne by killing his father in twenty years.
Oh, if he mentioned the matter of forming an army and angered his father, and staged a scene of deep father-son affection, killing himself in advance, wouldn't he be losing out?
The above is a royal tragic play that Galen imagined, father and son killing each other, palace tragedy, usurpation, mutiny. If Galen had children, it would simply be an Azeroth version of Shakespearean opera, and could be considered for inclusion in the Karazhan Opera House.
It was just that Galen still underestimated his father's love and expectations for him. Revitalizing Stromgarde was Thoras's lifelong ambition. Now the kingdom's national strength was recovering, the army was at its peak, and the people lived and worked in peace. Only the troll tribe in the southeast of the highlands was a minor problem.
At this time, Galen was born, and since childhood, he had shown extraordinary talent, precocious and self-disciplined. Thoras had high expectations for him.
No ambitious king would say no to an excellent heir.
When Galen was ten years old, while trying to teach him martial arts, he also let him learn government affairs. However, Galen didn't care about worldly affairs and only focused on practicing killing skills.
This almost made Thoras's hair turn white, and he once regretted teaching his son martial arts, making his brain go haywire.
What did he hear today?
His son, who had only liked martial arts since he was a child, actually said that he wanted a fief. Thoras also felt that happiness came too quickly, so he blurted out: "My son, which piece of land do you want?"
One wanted to inquire carefully for fear of not getting it, and the other had long wanted to give it but was afraid that he wouldn't want it, so communication is very important.
"Father, I want the abandoned mining area in the southeast. Is that okay?"
"Three years ago, the people there moved to Go'shek Farm because they couldn't stand the constant harassment from the trolls. A territory without people, without production, what are you going to do with it?"
Here it comes, this is completely following his script. Galen immediately replied: "Father, I want to establish a knight order to protect the mining area, and then recruit laborers to restore the production of the mine."
"Galen, you will be facing trolls there, a tribe of forest trolls who have been against us for a long time. You understand the meaning of Trollbane, are you prepared to face the trolls?"
Thoras was already asking Galen with a serious face. His son wanted a fief, and he didn't plan to refuse. But he didn't expect that the fief Galen wanted was outside the border, far from the army's defense line.
What followed was even more unexpected. Galen wanted to form an army to fight the trolls. He didn't mind his son having military power. He was his only heir, and he would hand over the entire kingdom to him in the future.
But, he wanted to know if his son was ready to face the trolls.