[@BurningCold] It's easy to make money when you have money! It's not given away as charity -- it's an investment, for a return in the future. Buying out someone's business, for example. Offering loans. Buying a few houses, hiring landlords and take a cut of the rent. Buy a shipping company and hire someone else to manage it. Even just putting a portion of the population and government into his debt -- for paving roads or repairing public buildings for example -- is a huge advantage.

That brings up something else that hadn't occurred to me before: corrupting the current council. It would be easy for Rowan to manipulate the council members into working in his favor. He wouldn't even need to be in the council, himself. So, that's a third option, [@Diggerton]!