Ah, but you see a lot of that stuff could only be known to the highest echelons of the realm. From my point of view the debacle was solely about him making his misclick and half heartedly proposing a power grab.
I didn't really care that he did it - bad things are going to happen when you're the boss. It's how you handle them that matters.
He screwed up royally in deciding that he was going to employ the opportunity to try and bring down all of the dukes at once. Bringing down one duke is hard enough. He decided he was going to get rid of all of them ... by referendum.
It was a pretty classic case of power-mad tantrum: ineffective lever-pulling (protesting Kale?), conspiracy theories, shouting. But then it was a wonder that the guy was ever put in charge to begin with.
