"Go snatch a very large habitable space station, give it cameras and internet access so that she and everyone else who really hates birdpeople can complain about the new regime as much as they please?"

"- yeah. Search turns up this station," bounce, "as pretty easy to commandeer, everybody on it works for money and we can bribe them for a drop in the bucket."

"Oh goody. I will go buy us a space station."

"Thanks, lovely."

Space station purchasing! Plenty of money to go around and a teleport to wherever you want, how does that sound to everyone -

Sounds great, though some of them would like to keep operating the station, they like it here. Also you will, like, need somebody to operate it, right.

Yep! They were prepared to hire externally if anyone objected to a raise and change of managers, but they would be delighted to keep everyone on who wants to stay!

Now they have this space station!

And now the Empress and the recalcitrant governors and stratocrats and timocrats can be relocated! 

The birdpeople who were going to rescue her are mostly reassured by the video feeds once those are set up.

Good. She didn't get the impression the Empress was likely to use it to somehow cleverly coordinate a rebellion but they can have a couple people keeping an eye out for that just in case. Anything else on fire -

Couple of the stratocrats are about to be noticed absent by their subordinates, and one of the timocrats has a panicky child who starts doing random unhelpful things when they notice their father missing, and also there is a literal fire that appears to be nobody's fault just a fire out in the woodland...

She has people in mind for replacements for three of the stratocrats who needed removing but the other ones are trickier, including one of the ones whose absence is about to be noticed - here are some candidates and some reservations she has about them - what happens if she talks to the timocrat's kid - she will teleport over to the ocean and grab some water and put out the fire, why not -

"- uh, not the ocean, lovely, it'll probably have too much salt for the plants, go for a lake -" - this candidate in the first hour after appointment starts trying to foment rebellion with his regiment, this other one doesn't do that at least and Maitimë would be surer of her after half an hour's chat - timocrat's kid demands the immediate release of his dad -

Lake water extinguishes the random fire, the candidate who Maitimë'd be surer of after a chance to chat can get a surprise promotion, does the kid want to see his dad, she can give him a teleport up to the space station to check it out (does the kid do anything stupid if offered this...)

Kid does not trust her to take him anywhere, demands to know on what authority she's interfering with their sovereign empire, insists on the safe return of his father to his estate instantly.

She can advise the kid on petitioning the new Empress for his father's release.

The kid finds that unsatisfactory and attempts to have Maitimë apprehended by his servants.

Maitimë heads back to the palace. "I'd probably be fairly intolerable if someone pulled this on my family.  Maybe he'll get more pragmatically minded with some time."

How long would it take you to feel pragmatic about it if it were your family? wonders Isabella, attempting to eat a meatball sub in as few bites as possible. Wow, world takeovers lean really hard on precognition, I'd wonder how Golden did it but of course she also had a precog.

Feel pragmatic about it? Years. Act pragmatic and useful and charming? An hour. But I think it'd take my sisters longer.

You're pretty exceptional, so I think I won't expect it of that guy in an hour.

Probably not. His father's terrible, you don't want to send him home -

Is it obvious why that kid and not any of the sixteen other kids? Why do these people have so many kids -

He isn't his father's heir - maybe he just wants to impress him? Though that'd incline him towards pragmatism and his approach was. Not that.