Once there was a well respected woman who had her own house with fertile fields and fishing waters and top positions on many of the most important town committees, but had spent much of her health and wealth on standing up to bullies.
In a moment of weakness, she married a charming man from across the river who promised to look after her, but he soon made her stay at home while he took her top seats on all the town committees and promoted high and mighty decisions that suited him and his friends' wishes and not hers; many of which were automatically passed without her checking them.
He used her own money to buy expensive things in her house that she didn't need, and forced her to put large notices on them saying how great he was for buying them.
Next, he allowed his friends to voraciously fish in her lakes (including the baby fish) and paid her family to throw half the fish they caught back in the water and smash up their boats so that there was no competition.
He set up farming rules to suit his friends and imposed huge import taxes on processed food sold by the suntanned poor people in the next big region, so that his friends could import the raw food dirt-cheap and make colossal amounts of money from the processing.
Then he used her own money to bribe the teachers at her children's schools to teach them how wonderful he is and how horrible she was before he took over, because her idealistic children aren't old and experienced enough to know any different.
In the same way, he bribed the tradesmen who had worked on her land for decades to move away, to work for his friends and others who he wants to be his friends, and made sure of it by savage increases in her energy costs so that he could parade how virtuous he was.
He tricked her into signing an treaty "Amsterdam J7" such that control of all her defences (including the ones that make a really big bang and scare off her enemies) will be given to his friends next year, for them to annoy the big bear-shaped man down the road who fought on her side in the last really big fight. Also, because his friends have conscription for their sons, it's likely that her sons will end up being conscripted too if the bear-man starts fighting back.
Finally she decides she's had enough and one of her family pretends to ask him for better conditions, but he laughs and gives her nothing because he knows that family member only cares about himself, and he threatens to beat her up if she keeps fussing.
She decides the time has come to kick him and his friends out regardless. His response is to get all his friends and many others who have a long record of getting things wrong to bang on her door and shout "You're useless! You get everything wrong! You couldn't survive without him!".
So she's faced with a huge decision.
Does she channel her anger and bear whatever cost is necessary to get her life back, to be able to work with increasingly wealthy people from all the other towns nearby, knowing that the man and his friends will fall in line because their tradesmen depend on her far more than hers do on them?
Or will she give up because she's too scared of standing on her own feet again and will soon be forgotten once he has rewritten the history books?