The Cretan Kingdom's Reforms.

How Crete functioned as a nation, in the wake of the Andalusian defeat and the Monarchs' Conquest:

The King and Queen, for all of their vaunted ability as fighters and tacticians, could only be considered, in the kindest possible interpretation, as passable administrators or economists when they took over Crete (though the Queen did eventually find a knack for it and became an above-average state manager, while the King was forced to as well by the Queen's eventual inability to rule directly).

While it is true that Crete's coffers were plentiful during the takeover, thanks mostly to the constant raids, the plentiful trade, and the support of other Arab communities to the Andalusian rulers, this didn't present the newly minted monarchs with many ideas on how to enrich the nation. The Queen was evidently against expeditionary raids, and the proposition of slave workers turned the advocate for it into two cleanly divided advocates, their choices were few, and most of them bad, either for the continued existence of the nation, or for the state's coffers.

Eventually, and with the propositions and suggestions of the few surviving nobles that weren't felled in battle or escaped the island, the Monarchs came to a solution, one which was... not perfect, you could say, but managed to satisfy the Queen's humanitarian side, and thus the King as well.

Being a rather similar model to the Obshchina system eventually used in Imperial Russia, the Monarchs formed 'communities' in the different parts of Crete.

These communities would consist of a set number of peasants, who would have the arable land divided between them more or less according to their need and/or ability.

These 'communities' would have an overseer, or 'handler', who would make sure to requisition the appropriate amount of taxes from the peasants, while serving as their direct link to the Queen and King, who likewise were part of a 'community', though their share of the land was obviously larger, and, despite the often voiced complaints from the newly ascended Cretan nobility, could often count with the King and Queen as laborers themselves, whenever they weren't busy conducting official business in the Royal Palace.

Of course, this system did present an issue: the possibility of corruption. Normally nothing could stop the appointed overseer from pocketing part of the earnings, dividing the land unfairly in favor of their preferred (read: most capable of bribing) families, or simply of committing the abuses that the people in positions of power often do.

This problem was solved in two ways, one of them due to Crete itself, and the other due to the Monarchs' already proven... 'disregard' to the commonly accepted practices or laws of the nations surrounding them.

The first thing that allowed this problem to not realistically fester was the size of Crete itself. Being a nation of middling size, at most, and ruled by two people who, if you wanted to be charitable, could be favorably compared to the Chicxulub Impactor, meant that touring the island and making sure the people were content was a matter of maybe two or three days at most, instead of the weeks upon weeks that it would take for any normal ruler.

Of course, once the Queen grew old, the frequency of these visits diminished. In fact, records state that, by the decade of 990, these travels happened perhaps once or twice a year, with the number diminishing as the Queen's condition worsened, and the King stayed by her side to care for her, while organizing expeditions in search of something that would keep the Queen from her eventual death.

With the Queen unable to visit her lands herself, the King unwilling to leave her side, and the Byzantine Emperor Basil II's gaze having turned east after suppressing the civil war ravaging his lands, this would have left the Cretan peasantry in quite the hard place. The King could not be bothered, the Queen was unable, and every night, they would have been left to wonder if, by the time they woke up, war had once more come to their shores. 

If the once vigilant gaze of the Monarchs, one that had turned spotty at best, was the only thing they could count on, things would be very dire indeed.

But it was not the only thing they could count on, which leads us to the second thing that kept corruption from strangling the Monarchs' rule:

The Free Right to Petition.

Now, on its face, this was not a new concept.

Even to the rulers of nearby nations, this wasn't extravagant. There obviously was a need for a right for the citizenry of a nation to express, while not exactly concerns, questions regarding the current plans or actions of the ruler. Any decent state leader must be able to understand or hear the opinions of their people.

Yet, this basic idea was where all the similarities and praises stopped.

Yes, the right to petition must exist. But only to some. Established administrators would be the ones to present these worries. They'd be the ones that the King, Queen, or Emir would bother to hear. Only these people could present themselves to the ruler. There had to be a limit.

Not in Crete.

Perhaps owed to its small size, or the fact that it's population hardly reached over a hundred thousand during the rule of the Monarchs, there existed no rules on who could request an audience with the Queen, who first presented the idea, or the King, who continued it when the matter of statecraft became his to deal with.

A peasant who was worried about his crops not doing well enough to meet the required tax, or who worried about the possibility of an attack from the Byzantines, or whatever other issue, had as much right and ability to meet with the Monarchs as the richest of the nobles in the country.

This presented the overseers with a serious problem. They could shut down a man's grievances. The grievances of one or two dozen as well. But the grievances of a hundred? Of several hundreds? Of a thousand? That was not possible. If they ever went too far, it'd get back to the Monarchs. That was something they could not afford. 

Of course, that's not to say some didn't try. There was absolutely an attempt early on from the overseers to enrich themselves. 

At first, the Queen attempted a regular punishment. They'd be stripped of their title, and forced to work alongside their former 'subjects', who they had rightfully earned the ill-will of.

This worked, of course. Losing their position was one thing, but being put without protection, besides the people that they had so clearly antagonized, presented a real danger to their lives, one almost none dared to meet. 

Then, for the very few that did dare, the King took over. And, depending on your point of view, this might have been the better deal. For while the pains and injuries of a beating by your newly made equals can carry consequences for months, or even years... being turned into ash is, unsurprisingly, both quick and painless.

When the King eventually took over completely in the late 990s, these attempts ceased entirely. The King was irritable, as one might be when they see the light of their life grow dimmer with every breath, and money always needed to flow, for his ordered expeditions did not come for free. The Queen's method of punishment disappeared. Stealing from Crete's coffers, or inconveniencing the King in any way which the Queen, now ailing, could realistically suss out, meant you made the King angry.

And the people of Crete still had fresh on their minds what happened to the recipients of the King's anger, for less than three decades are not enough time to forget a dragon's roar.