The Diary of a Scholar – 1
Dear Diary…
Today I had the most astonishing experience of my research life. During my stay in Minas Fril I had the honor of reading one of the rare, written relics that survived the Magiwar. It was magnificent! The archives of Minas Fril have several original parchments, family trees and ancient tomes with written law in them that somehow were not destroyed during the great war. They even had a few books, not in the best shape a book can be, but still legible. Words can not describe how excited I was when I finally had the opportunity to take a look.
The scroll I examined was a written law of the ancient Unnr. Its exact age is unknown, but a good estimation would be somewhere around 650 BM, which is one of the oldest scrolls I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The law described in it was the first tax-related to trade. While the content of this law is nothing new to me, examining the original helped me confirm my theory about ancient Unnrian lawmaking!
The scroll did not have the seal of the Council of Unnr, which is extraordinary, as many have theorized that in ancient Unnr lawmaking was done by the Council alone. That is a false assumption! This law was signed by seventeen people, and not all of them were council members. Tho I couldn’t identify all of them, the ones I could were all members of the most influential trade families of the time. This confirms my suspicion that in ancient Unnr law was made not only by the Council elected by the nobles, but by the merchant’s guild as well, or at least by the leading members of the guild.
While many don’t accept my theory about ancient Unnrian lawmaking, it actually makes a lot of sense. The fact that Unnr was founded by wealthy merchants is well known. Obviously, these merchants would not want to give up such legislative power, and since the country was formed due to their merits it is not difficult to imagine that in the earlier years of Unnr merchants had the greatest power in the country. That being said, it makes sense that this power reaches beyond finance. I am now certain merchants had influence in legislation. I have yet to find evidence that they also had executive rights, but If my intuition is correct they had those rights as well… They had to have it…
Alas… I am getting carried away. This is all for tonight Dear Diary, I’ll record the details of my findings tomorrow in my research documents about the matter and present it to the Straumrheim Academy.
I’m sure they’ll be thrilled by my findings.