It can be destructively controversial to include religion or politics in a novel. I mostly avoided it in my debut novel Falling Up; however, because I am a Christian, I wanted to write it 'Christian friendly'. So, I have the MC's mother mention that she's been praying for her son in a potentially dangerous situation; I have another person, an orphan, respond to the MC's charity by saying he will pray for him; and the MC offering to his soon-to-be parents-in-law to bring their pastor along to co-officiate at the wedding.

There is another rather delicate situation. The premise of the story is the MC has a supernormal ability. Note, I didn't say paranormal nor supernatural, as both of those terms have extremely negative connotations for Christians. I think that makes my point and need say no more about it.

Now the politics part. My MC becomes King in two places by the people he has saved from tyrants. The smaller one has no hierarchy of government, so is pretty simple to establish justice and order. The larger one, however, has a distributed government in place but with minimal authority, so it became ineffective and chaotic when the tyrant was removed. It will make for some interesting discussions in the sequel about how best to govern, I hope.

I'm hoping I will be able to avoid stepping on any landmines in this, but to keep the reader's interest, the MC must encounter some individuals who are seeking their own best interests, not the country's.

There is another issue here, as well: economics. It's not typically thought of as tied to politics, but it is actually integral. I read an economics primer called Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan to research this topic for the sequel, and he did a good job of showing how they are inextricably linked. The role of a good king or government is to enable prosperity, health and safety for all the people. Not necessarily to provide it, but at least make it so it can happen. And there is the controversy. How do you provide a safe environment without resources? You can't. Thus, the government must take away some portion of the wealth of their people to operate. On the surface, it seems contradictory to take money away from people, to make it so people can have more money. When it comes to questions about taxes, most people take it very personally.