Silvermoon City had previously been divided between two major factions: the Council faction and the Royalists. The Council faction itself had been divided into various groups. The Dawnblade Family controlled the Arcanists' Mages' Association, the Dawnwind family monopolized the judiciary, the Dawnstar family and the Morningwalkers jointly monopolized finances, and the Sunwing Family controlled government affairs.
Although the families appeared harmonious on the surface, privately, they were not of one mind, as each sought to maximize its own interests. The same held true for the Royalists, who had plenty of internal disputes of their own. The Royalists and the Council, however, were like two parallel lines that never intersected, unable to interfere with one another.
Nearly all of Quel'Thalas's social problems had arisen from infighting among its leadership. None of this was what Patrick wanted.
Internal struggles were tolerable, but the Council's mentality of putting infighting first and national development second was not. Anything that hindered Quel'Thalas's development should be cleared away as a priority, no matter how many families' interests it affected.
Over thousands of years, aside from advances among mages, almost everything else in Quel'Thalas had remained stagnant. Even the kingdom's roads were barely better than country paths, apart from the serviceable Thalassian Pass, which began at the Thalassian Path and ran all the way to Silvermoon City's main gate.
Thus, under the administration Patrick later led, the conventional council system had been completely overhauled. That so-called voting system had been changed entirely. Such a backward system was utterly unsuited to a nation's development.
Patrick's reforms had first succeeded in Sunlight City, which served as a pilot site. After he took charge of Silvermoon City, he began extending them throughout Quel'Thalas.
Drawing on his previous life, Patrick had a whole set of experiences with reform: use such-and-such a