#but he should have dealt with that resentment instead of letting it fester and explode

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@zeroabyss replied to your post “RE thinking about King Gerard in Unicorn Overlord...”:

He also could have left those behind because he didn’t feel worthy of them, further cementing his doom. I can see the logic in making Knights loyal to the King(as they’re already minor nobility when Knighted) since that prevents the Nobles from leveraging their military might against the Crown. He probably even thought something like that could happen leading to him doing so, but he probably didn’t think about how he SHOULD have some allies of high enough positions to help assert such an action. Like in ASOIAF the most progressive King of Westeros turned to trying to resurrect Dragons precisely because all his progressive reforms for the smallfolk was a boon to the people who truly mattered, it alienated and made enemies of the rest of the nobility, leading him into such a desperate action at Harrenhal that killed him.

​The point I wanted to make wasn't about the creation of the Ashen Blue in general, but more about Gerard doing something, and then bailing out.

As you said, he might have thought that removing power from nobles by "hijacking" their vassals would have pissed those nobles, even if it would, theoretically prevent them from using their armies against the crown (the prologue is here to tell us that, uh, no it didn't work at all, Giethe was still knocking at Gran Corrine asking for Ilenia's death) -

But the main thing is, he bailed out instead of facing, himself, the ire of those nobles.

Like, he smashed a hornet's nest, and left his toddler daughter(s?) to deal with it :/

Doubling down on your comparison with ASOIAF, Gerard would be similar to Big Bobby B (Robert) as in Bobby loved to use his weapons and in general "win" the throne, but when it came to ruling and "counting coppers", he was less than thrilled and wanted to fig away.

we can even make a comparison with Bobby loving to, uh, sire and play with babies but as soon as he had to take responsability and raise the kids, he fucked off and left someone else to do it

If there is something I liked, even if it was surface explored because the game is not about this aspect at all, it's how, for Cornia at least, while we are told that Alain doesn't know jack about his country but vows to make a "better" Cornia after retaking it from his mom Galerius and pals, we are shown that Cornia, before the Zenoiran invasion, wasn't all roses and daisies and while Ilenia didn't have the same circumstances that Alain has (tfw you can't smash the people who oppose you because they ally with an invader) she tried her best to keep the situation from degenerating (like Hodor/Hodel? invading Drakengard for because during times of peace his skills are useless, or Reimann pulling an Izuka).

Re-Robert wise : the game seems the make a difference between a ruler who has to rule in times of peace aka no war (Ilenia), and a ruler who has to rule during a war (Alain).

Gerard was in the first situation, I guess he would have thrived in the second but, hey, Alain understands that he needs to rebuild his kingdom after all (thus rule "in times of peace") - something Gerard, despite having some ideas about what to do to make a "better" Cornia, ultimately didn't.