The opportunistic nobles weren't destroyed, but 'permanently precarious' was a good way to describe their situation.
The fines and penalties that Julius, Arturo, and Selphira had imposed with the authority of the agreements that the losing side was required to accept had been calculated with the precision of someone who wanted the maximum possible payment without drowning the payer to the point where drowning became a reason to resist.
That calculation was intentional.
A destroyed faction had nothing to extract and a martyr's grievance to organize around.
But faction that was intact but permanently precarious had obligations to meet and no surplus to fund resistance with.
Better to have them working their entire lives in that almost slave like condition, not entirely unlike the position the Iron-rank tamers of the generations before Ren had occupied in the old system, than to give them nothing left to lose.
