[cabman11]

Originally Posted by sasuke706

Alrighty.

Spoiler for :

The first country was luck basically. It's a religious country where the ruler is basically always a young girl to young woman (short reign and is kind of elected). Lyle and friends happen across one of the candidates who had barely managed to get away from basically getting assassinated by one who made it into power.
Now, Lyle and the ancestors seemed to have a different plan before meeting her, but since a better plan popped up right before them they took it. So they used her as a just cause and basically overthrew the previous ruler and gained the support of the country. For the record, the ruler they helped get into power isn't part of the harem, and the old one fled to Celes and literally became her footstool.

After the coup, he used his new political authority to bring to light another country's dickery toward the religious one and a neighboring country, where they cooperated to defeat the asshole country in a war. The cooperating country's ruler does want to join Lyle's harem, but Novem basically said she's unworthy to her face and turned her down. Yep. Either way, he now has the support of two countries.

The next two are countries that have been fighting forever. His new political influence doesn't really mean much to these two countries, but when hanging around their territories when trying to figure out how to gain their cooperation, they come across a secret courier that's been delivering messages from one ruler to another, showing their battle plans are carefully laid out to each other because they're both friends and puppet rulers. So Lyle uses this information to blackmail them into getting into a high post, where he then does some things to restore them both into power. And My. Lyle adds both of these women to his harem (and they're both a little yandere). For the record, one ruler plans on making her little bother the full ruler. So now these countries have formed a four-way alliance, although all of them are considerably small countries.

The next is actually a major power. This one was because Lyle accepted a request to investigate the rumors of the queen being captive and free her (although the request was literally just to get Lyle ambushed and killed in a foreign country that failed spectacularly). Turns out the queen being captive was true...because she let herself get captured and was tired of the stiff muscleheads around her, and wanted to marry a strong, smart, and resourceful person, aka a person capable of "rescuing" her from her own nation. So Lyle Metal Gears his way in and "saves" her. She's also more than willing to go to war with Celes because it sounds fun. Yay for war-hungry women. Two of the ancestors thought the result was good, but really didn't like the feel of getting caught in the queen's (marriage) trap. Not that they're against him marrying her, it's just they don't like getting tricked. For the record, this country apparently has 2.5 times the military power of the four-way alliance or something. Which is still like 1/4 of Celes' country.

The next one is simple. Lyle never actually met the king of this one, but it's a country that's been at odds with Celes' country forever and specializes in defense. The king is a known womanizer so Lyle sent his harem to negotiate with them. An amusing part is the king actually has good instinct for women and wants nothing to do with Lyle's girls because they're too fucking scary. He agrees to an alliance because they predict that Celes' is going to go way too far, Lyle got the backing of the 4-way alliance and another major power, and they were actually planning to do an alliance thing with other countries before Lyle took the initiative and did it first. They were basically expecting Lyle to stop by at that point. Also, apparently the king plans to either send his sister or daughter to Lyle to support his empire plan, but apparently the sister isn't the type to listen to her brother the king and his daughter is like 10, so that hasn't gone anywhere yet, nor have we as the reader actually met either of them. The king does make a condition to support Lyle, which is to have a drink with the guy who can manage so many fucking terrifying women. Which he's going to be disappointed since even a drop of alcohol makes Lyle pass out.

And the latest country with the yandere princess ruling from the shadows I was talking about. Now about this princess. She was initially engaged with the prince of Banseim (Celes' country) but Celes mesmerized the prince and he broke off their engagement. This left a HUGE grudge with the princess to the point where she's willing to send her own country to its ruin as long as she can get her hands on him to torture the everloving shit out of him. Lyle's able to initially meet with the royalty for this one because first off, his family and this country have a lot of dark history together (specifically his great-grandfather and grandfather absolutely kicked their ass in wars and took territory from them), secondly because of his strong influence with the 4-way alliance and major power, and thirdly because he kidnapped a wife and child from the territory his grandfather stole in the past. Her revenge is actually a problem for Lyle because he wants the country to be stable after the empire is formed to avoid problems. She's currently not part of the harem, but a few of his harem members seem to think adding her to the harem will fix a lot of problems...and give Lyle personally a lot more.

So to sum it up, lucky break into snowball effect. Turns out once to get the first little bit of political power, it's easier to get more.

Spoiler:

I can just see it now..... Emperor Lyle