When you get +50 relations with a kingdom or its ruler, whichever one that was, you get a relatively good weapon. The kind elite troopers use.
...which is to say: The kind you can loot off elite troopers.
So unless you're either a pacifist or a martial underachiever, you can just kill (or knock knock) some doods and take theirs. Which might also have desirable modifiers, like, mostly, tempered. Unlike the one the ruler gives you, which is always a normal weapon.
For seeing which ruler drops what item, open the item editor and look for the ruler's names in the item name.