Li Wei felt that the Queen had screwed him over.
Of course, the rewards at this New Year's banquet had indeed been generous. Li Wei had received four medals, been named a Thistle Knight, and been granted the title of count.
According to imperial tradition, every Thistle Knight had to be a count. The reason seemed to be that when King Arthur first appointed his Twelve Knights, he had made them all counts.
On the surface, it looked like a good thing.
Well, it actually did seem to be a good thing.
But the problem was that its political significance was a completely different matter!
The day after the New Year's banquet, every major newspaper ran the news in its headlines, practically dedicating entire columns to Li Wei. The articles mainly described his contributions to the Empire over the past year, including the initial Courtesan Killer case, the vampire case, the sea monster hunt, the unrest in Mericia, and the terrorist attack on Steel City... Well, looking at it that way, his receiving this medal did not seem all that surprising.
Most of the media raised no objections to whether Li Wei deserved the Thistle Medal. Even setting everything else aside, hunting down the sea monster and entering the Continental Parliament alone to announce the arrest of the rebellion's leaders to their faces had already made him the Empire's man of the year.
Moreover, Li Wei had grown closer to General Hao during the civil war in Mericia. It was largely thanks to his Investigation that the imperial army had wiped out the rebels with barely any casualties, so the military had no objections to the appointment either.
But that was not the problem.
Many newspapers interpreted this as a statement of intent from Her Majesty the Queen. Everyone knew