Uprooting the Minister of the Right and his entrenched faction wasn't a simple matter of kicking down doors and swinging a sword.
While Heena's grandfather had secured the Vanguard legacy through sheer, terrifying military might, his power was relatively new. The civil factions, on the other hand, were aristocratic nobility. Their families were ancient, operating on hereditary titles with roots deeply embedded in the very foundation of the empire. They were a sophisticated, bureaucratic rot. You couldn't just execute the entire nobility and throw them out of the imperial court—if you did, the nation's infrastructure would collapse overnight, leaving the empire defenseless and starved.
To destroy a forest of ancient, poisonous trees, you couldn't chop them down one by one. Heena needed a catalyst. She needed one massive, catastrophic event to lure every single one of those aristocratic parasites out into the light at the exact same time, forcing them to overplay their hands.
