I got the message that I beat the game on day 51, but I beat it by denying the request to see what it did, since I already beat the game the normal way/
I might have secured my seat on the Council of Crowns (day sixty-seven [67]), but I'd rather have climbed the ranks of the Council of Science, or at least been entertained with Christmas Day chemical demonstrations. Y'know?
But I did the mage thing on day 1 and instantly lost happiness and population, and because low happiness leads to population loss it took me a full 7 or so days just to get back to the starting point.