A few people asked about this, so I thought … why not?
Emily had next to nothing with her when she was brought to the Nameless World. Her watch, credit cards and suchlike might have brought her some cash, but the majority of her limited possessions were left with Void when she was sent to Whitehall. Nothing she had would have been more than a curiosity to the locals.
Void, having assumed the role of Guardian, assigned her a stipend (pocket money). He didn’t actually mention this to her because he was curious if she would think to ask. <grin>.
What Emily did, during SIM, was to find ways to turn what she knew (or half-remembered) from Earth into saleable concepts. Theoretically, her agreement with Paren (Imaiqah’s father) was that she would get a third of the proceeds. In practice, there was a great deal of information piracy from the very start, but she still got enough to make her a moderately wealthy young woman. That money was largely stored in Whitehall’s vaults.
When Emily was ennobled, her wealth jumped astronomically. She didn’t just get access to the resources of Cockatrice, she also got a claim on the barony’s future wealth. In effect, she suddenly had very good credit – anyone loaning money to her would know that even a mismanaged barony would still bring in plenty of gold. (And barons were quite happy to squeeze their subjects if their creditors came calling.) Her economic policies (insane by local standards) actually boosted her wealth – she might have been claiming a smaller slice of the pie, but the pie itself was much greater. It’s hard to draw direct comparisons between their world and ours, but Emily was probably rich enough to raise her own army.
Emily made a mistake at this point – she mingled the revenues of the barony (which belonged to the baron, not Emily personally) with the revenue from her investments. This will probably have baleful effects in the future.
When Emily gave Markus the money to start a bank, she also moved a substantial chunk of her own wealth into the Bank of Silence. This was mainly to show her confidence in Markus and serve as the bank’s base wealth, but also to give her a stockpile of cash outside both Zangaria and Whitehall. Most of the microloan investments paid off, boosting her wealth.
Emily ran into trouble when she abandoned Cockatrice. Most of the revenues belonged to the barony, as I noted, but some of them were rightfully hers. Emily had blurred the line a little too much. This weakened her because she could no longer count on future income, but – at the same time – she still had the wealth in the bank. (Imaiqah, currently serving as Baroness, is actually trying to separate the two sets of money, but Emily is unaware of this.) Emily hasn’t made a fuss about monies owed to her because, at base, she doesn’t think she needs them.
As of now, Emily isn’t poor, but she isn’t super-rich either.
The good news is that she doesn’t owe anyone money, certainly not on a large scale. King Randor isn’t trying to impede some of her investments in Paren’s former work. She also owns a house and a few other things that can’t be taken from her. The bad news is that she doesn’t have the wealth of a small country at her disposal. Large investments are beyond her.
Someone less honest than Emily could probably still make a good showing. She’s technically in exile, not stripped of her position. She could probably get loans and suchlike based on her potential future income. But Emily is too careful for that. <grin>.
The Chrishanger 
You are right, Emily does not need any more money for herself. One thing that a large amount of money would do for her is to make investments into the new economy using the ideas that she introduced. However, the new Bank can do a lot of that without any more large infusions of cash by her.
She already owns so many rare and very expensive books on magic, that she could spend most of the rest of a long lifetime reading and mastering them.
The second thing that a lot cash could help her with is building up a new style Military and its support structure to fight the Necromancers without having to convince a lot of very conservative and short sighted Monarchies to provide support. Once they see her building a very strong and effective new model Army, those monarchs would be forced to copy her innovations just to keep their armies competitive. Of course it will take quite a while for them to realize how effective those changes are, i.e. Emily would have to win some real battles with that new Army before they would really start to change.
If Emily, can not provide that financial backing for a new Army, then the future Queen Alassa of Zangaria will have to provide that backing, possibly with support by some of the more progressive city states such as Caleb’s home town.
That is the time frame in which a new Empire will become necessary. Large political units arise either by their own conquests, or in response to a very large external threat to a group of smaller political units. Those smaller monarchies, city states, and great Magical Houses are too jealous of their rivals and their own power, for them to combine willingly and easily into a new (3rd) Empire.
The second largest unknown is cooperation between the Necromancers to attack the Allied Lands before Emily can attack them.
The biggest unknown is what, where, and when the Faerie and will get involved. If Emily and friends do manage to defeat the Necromancers without political unification being finished i.e. a new Empire, then the Faerie will strike then. The Faerie do not want to see a new and powerful 3rd Empire with the Necromancers finished off.
The wild card is what the Demons will be doing.
I think that Emily will NOT become a Mediator (like I used think she would) because of the oaths to the White Council and the Allied Lands. She will need more freedom of action to do what is necessary to rebuild the 3rd Empire, defeat the Necromancers, and defeat the Faerie. Her eventual oaths will be to that new Empire as it is rebuilt.
“This is my World-I shall defend it!”
+1
One thing I’ve never really seen in this series is what kind of conversion ratio does Emily consider the money to be worth. I’m assuming that an average gold piece is worth a few hundred dollars US, but could easily be wrong by an order of magnitude. also, what is the ratio between gold and silver – I think the presence of portals would keep rates between countries fairly close (or you’d suddenly get traveling merchants arbitraging the heck out of it.)
It really depends on where you are.
Chris
A portal is expensive and a bottleneck. Just imagine you live near a placer of gold on the mountains. Food will become more expensive than gold, because a portal won’t allow to carry more than a ton of food dayly, specially if it is used in both directions and must be used to bring shoes, weapons and luxury items
That’s true.
Chris