• DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 days ago

    He embarked on an ambitious programme of modernisation and sensible liberal reforms such as banning torture and the slave trade, fighting corruption, enacting meritocratic hiring policies, land reforms giving land to peasants and abolishing censorship. People hated him for it and the newly freed press vilified him.

    Least reactionary e*ro country

    • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      3 days ago

      They hated him because Denmark basically had a regal cult and Struense was more or less openly cuckolding the king. While the reason for the aristocratic resistance to his rule was his liberal reform spree, he was convicted of lese majeste and that was what the press was mostly mad about. One of the big accusations was that he had beaten the king, which was somewhere between unthinkable and heretical.

      Somewhat ironically the king’s son would later take power by actually beating the person behind the arrest of struense who had installed himself as regent.