I forgot, until this reread of WHA volume 9, how much I fucking hate the rulers + the Ezrest family. They suck so bad I remain mad hours later. I have wondered how people like Coustas could exist because we know thanks to chapter 39 (where we follow Olruggio on a job) that witches do help a lot of people. It has always seemed strange, though not implausible, that witches for however long the pact has been going on for (I personally tend to default to 1000 years because this is a fantasy, but it really just needs to be more than a few hundred years) have ignored all those issues. Their isolated nature might leave them somewhat unawares, as we see in the next couple volumes with Coco's invention for the parade. Still, it would require such little magical help that I struggled with suspension of disbelief, right up until this reread when I realised it's all the ruler's fault. They talk about paying the witches for their services as being this terrible thing and, yes, witch society has it's problems, but paying the artists who keep your infrastructure together and complaining that they won't kill people is so fucking evil that I genuinely think that WHA introduced them now because the story has to deal with them. They are significantly more responsible for average people's lower quality of life than the witches.
