“I trust the King.”
[Grand Duke, entrust the North to a dependable subordinate. Select ten thousand swift elite soldiers and enter the royal citadel as soon as possible.]
It seemed the rumor that the King was gravely ill had been true.
I could have entered the royal citadel at once, but an order to bring elite soldiers was no different from telling me to seize control of the capital.
Some voiced their concerns, saying we should proceed cautiously, since it was a suspicious order that should never have been given.
But if the rumor that the King was on the verge of death was true, we had no time to delay.
Marching with the North’s heavily armed troops as ordered would take time.
“And His Majesty trusts Your Grace as well, does he not?”
I gave a snort of laughter at my subordinate knight’s words.
In the end, I decided to go to the royal citadel alone.
Naturally, my subordinates objected, wary of schemes within the royal citadel.
When a king was gravely ill, he often tried to purge dangerous powerful ministers before handing the throne to his successor.
Of course, I was not so helpless that I could not escape alone, and the intelligence from the agents I had dispatched to the capital in advance was reliable.
“That is right. I will go ahead, so join me in the capital within two days.”
After riding without rest for a full day, I arrived at the royal citadel.
The sun had set, but it was not yet so late that people could not remain active with lamps lit.
I was dressed in the unmistakable attire of a noble, so the guards at the outer walls of the royal citadel let me through.
“Who goes there?”
A guard knight at the inner ward blocked my way.
I was wearing proper plate armor with an elegant cloak draped over my shoulders, so without another word, I pointed to my shoulder insignia.
“Look at the crest. Then look at my attire.”
“Ah....... Are you the standard-bearer of the Grand Duke of the North?”
“No. I am the Grand Duke himself.”
“Pardon? Ah!”
Only after looking at one of my eyes did he seem to recognize me.
It was widely known that the Grand Duke of the North had only one eye.
The guard knight hurriedly sent a signal to the inner ward, and before long, a reply came from the palace.
“Your Grace, His Majesty’s order was for you to enter with troops. Yet you have come alone? Did you not receive the order?”
“I came alone because I am confident that I can stand in for ten thousand soldiers.”
“However.......”
“Do not worry. Five hundred elite cavalrymen will arrive by the day after tomorrow at the latest. If more are needed, I will abandon one northern outpost and send an additional two thousand heavy infantrymen to join us. I have already made the preparations. Is that still a problem?”
“The Lion Unit has not returned, and the royal citadel’s defenses are presently weak. If something were to happen.......”
Hearing the knight’s words, I understood.
The Lion Unit that guarded the royal capital was away at the moment, so they were worried about a foreign attack.
“One hundred people who know how to wield a sword will be enough. Assemble them.”
Even a barony would have more than one hundred reserve soldiers.
Much less the royal family and the capital.
There was no way they lacked that many.
One royal knight stopped another knight who was voicing his concerns.
“The Grand Duke is the Dragon’s Eye. Let us trust him.”
“Thank you.”
The royal knights led me to the King’s bedchamber.
The King’s bedside was a place even nobles could not casually enter.
If he was receiving an outside guest in his bedchamber rather than the throne room, I thought he truly must be gravely ill, and indeed, the King was.
“Your Majesty!”
“......You have come?”
“Please remain where you are, Your Majesty.”
After our nation won two wars against the Empire, the honorific used for our king had been elevated to “Your Majesty.”
Yet unlike that elevated form of address, the King’s health had worsened day by day.
In the time since I had last seen him, the King had grown terribly thin.
He was only in his early thirties, the prime of his life, and on the battlefield he had displayed valor befitting a king.
But now, he looked like a convict sentenced to hard labor whose life had only barely been preserved by meager meals.
“Please lie down.”
“COUGH, COUGH. I do not even have the strength to swallow my saliva. If it gets into my windpipe, I cannot stop coughing. Ha. COUGH, COUGH, HACK!”
The King had so little strength that he could not even cough properly. It was enough to make me pity him.
“Then please speak less.......”
“No. If I do not speak now, I will never have another chance. That is why I summoned you. You must know why I called you from the far North.”
Bringing the Northern Army to the royal citadel had not been a scheme.
The King truly meant for me to seize control of the government.
I had thought he might have no choice if he wished to pass the throne to his child in his powerless state, but it was still unexpected.
If the legitimate heir had a flaw, the King’s brother, who possessed the next strongest claim, would try to seize the throne.
The King’s brother, the Duke of the East, was a warrior who believed the country should become a military state and wipe out every foreign enemy. His base of support was strong as well.
I, too, was one of the military nobles who shared his convictions.
“Why do you not pass it to your brother?”
“The throne is not something one gains merely because one says one will have it, because one wants it.”
“Then why do you not make your brother regent?”
“What guarantee is there that he will not secretly lock my child in a tower and kill her?”
“Then why have you summoned me?”
The King managed a difficult smile.
“Because only you valued loyalty differently. Do you remember what you said to me on your first campaign?”
“......You remember that?”
When I was even more of a greenhorn, the King had once asked me a question.
‘What do you intend to do once you capture that fortress?’
‘Naturally, I will offer it to Your Majesty!’
The surrounding nobles had given me cold looks and heaped reproaches upon me, but the King seemed to have liked that answer very much.
The land a lord acquired belonged to the King in principle, but not in reality.
Most lords wanted their right to rule the land they won through war to be recognized. They had no duty to serve a king who would not grant them that.
It had been an unintended bit of flattery from a time when I did not fully remember my past life and was only vaguely influenced by it.
In the past life I remembered, when a general who served the King reclaimed land, it belonged to the King.
He remembered so well a story from my childhood, when those memories had come and gone.
“Because you acknowledged me, I, too, could be a king. I thank you, my lord.”
And for that, the King thanked me.
While the other nobles were loyal through feudal contracts, I was simply loyal as though it were my fate.
That must have been the influence of my past life.
At the King’s single word of gratitude, so many things flickered through my mind.
‘A collateral from a branch family? I have not found anyone as capable as this man to govern the North. If necessary, I will cut off the heads of every bastard in the main house and install him.’
The King had recognized me.
‘How could I place the stigma of defeat upon my undefeated general?’
The King had literally saved me.
‘His blood is different, so he cannot be trusted? Hah, so those of the same bloodline are dangerous? Are complete strangers more dangerous? Which of them coveted your titles more?’
The King had trusted me.
And yet, he was thanking me.......
I had merely acknowledged and followed him as King, just as he had acknowledged me.
“No, Your Majesty.”
“That is why you are the only one I could think of to entrust with my young child.”
And now, he meant to trust me with his child’s future as well.
My blood was mixed with that of the royal family, and I had many military accomplishments, but such treatment for a noble of a different surname was extraordinary.
“Do you mean the Princess?”
“Meet the Princess. Do not look back on the past with me; discuss the future with the Princess. That is why I summoned you. Cough, go on.”
“......Yes.”
It certainly seemed that His Majesty would not live much longer.
Guided by the King’s guard knights, I saw a girl asleep with her head on the Privy Council’s meeting table in an office near the King’s bedchamber.
Behind her stood a palace woman attending to the girl, and she offered me a formal greeting.
I returned it with a nod and waited as the palace woman woke the girl.
“Your Highness. The Grand Duke of the North has arrived.”
“Ah.”
Princess Casertania. Her nickname was Princess Casena.
As the King’s eldest daughter, she was currently the royal family’s sole legitimate, direct-line heir.
However, her position was quite precarious.
Her youth, her sex, her birth to a posthumously elevated Queen who was little different from a concubine, the absence of a Queen Mother, her ambitious uncle, the existence of an younger half-sister born to a divorced, deposed queen whose status was higher, and the fact that the mother of that half-sister was an imperial princess from another country, among other things.
Though she was the King’s sole legitimate child and he had built tremendous authority through his victories, there was ample room for her succession to be threatened.
“I greet Your Highness.”
I folded my arms in salute and bent one knee in the formal manner due the royal family. The Princess gave an “Ah!” and froze. Then, unlike her earlier exclamation, she said:
“Ahem, hm, ahem. I-I greet the Dragon’s Eye, the Grand Duke of the North. Thank you for coming.”
The Princess’s voice trembled at first, then grew steadier as she continued her greeting.
The lady attending the Princess added a word to me.
“She is afraid of people she is meeting for the first time.”
I had met her several times when she was younger, but it seemed she did not remember.
My eye had been fine then, so perhaps she could not recognize me.
“N-no! My lady. I have met the Grand Duke before.”
“I am glad you remember.”
“Yes, I remember. Carrying that red bundle....... Carrying that red bundle. Ah.”
Then the Princess’s gaze and voice began to tremble again.
It seemed she had seen me when I presented the King with the head of the leader of a mountain-tribe rebel army that had defied the kingdom.
The little child who had happily tried to offer me a handshake seemed to realize she was the kingdom’s heir. She had tried to act like an adult, but.......
After recalling the “red bundle” I had brought, the girl became like a child who had heard a frightening story.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“N-no. No, I am not. I will not be afraid.”
So she was afraid.
Of course, whether or not she was afraid of me now had no meaning at all.
“Forgive my presumptuous question, but it seems we do not have much time, so I must ask. Your Highness, you may soon become Queen. Therefore, if you become Queen.......”
“I-I am going to become Queen soon?”
“Yes, it appears Your Highness will inherit the throne.......”
There was something strange about the Princess’s condition.
Her eyes filled with tears, her cheeks flushed, and she fanned them with her hand as she sniffed.
“Ah, um, sniff, hic, j-just a moment. Sniff. Ah, ahh. Sniff, sobbbbb.”
Princess Casena turned her gaze away, turned her face away, and clenched her teeth, but in the end, a tear rolled down her cheek and she burst into tears.
Crying before a subject.
She was not merely like a child. She was simply a child.
Sons and daughters of kings and noble houses often grew up learning their family’s duties and were mature for their age, but the Princess did not even seem to have that quality.
It seemed that as the King had abandoned the affairs of state, the heir’s education had not been properly carried out either.
Make a crying child king?
A weak child was not fit to be a monarch.
I could fulfill my loyalty out of duty to the King, but I would never come to feel sincere respect for her.
If she was too immature, there would be difficulties in entrusting the government to her as well.
I intended, if at all possible, to serve the child of the King who had made me Grand Duke, entrusted territory to me, and placed his trust in me.
But even I needed the bare minimum of something that moved me.
“You are the one who must become Queen. You must not avoid this.”
Somewhat disappointed, I pressed her, and she wiped away her tears before answering.
“If I become Queen, it means my father will no longer be in this world.”
“.......”
“So please do not say such things. I do not want a position that God gives me by taking away my father.”
With those words, the Princess began to wail even harder.
Her words that she did not want to be Queen, and her tears, were persuasive.
The throne was certainly a position one could only attain after losing one’s father.
‘She thinks of her parent before glory......’
Yes, she was still a child.
It would be fine to teach her ruthless reason little by little.
For now, she would have to carry out the King’s last command, hold a funeral and a coronation, and transfer power to me.
“Even so, Your Highness, you must discuss what comes after you become Queen with me now. Do not abandon your duty simply to weep.”
I knelt to meet the Princess’s gaze and patted her shoulder.
Having seen how gravely ill the King was, my expression must have been dark as well.
When I forced even a slight smile to hide my concern, the Princess finally stopped crying.
“Grand Duke.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Th-then!”
“Yes.”
“For my royal father to take such measures, th-th-that.”
“Please speak.”
“It must be words he left with marriage...... between you and me in mind. What do you think?!”
It seemed she was not merely a sheltered girl from the depths of the palace who could do nothing.
The King’s intent would not have been very different.
In the eyes of the public, I was a young hero who had won great achievements at an early age, risen from a baron of a collateral line to a margrave and then a Grand Duke, seized military command over the kingdom’s North, and became a powerful minister with a different surname.
Even without any justification to found a new dynasty, I could easily overthrow the country or declare the Grand Duchy of the North separate and independent, then establish my own domain.
Furthermore, to consolidate the young queen’s power, a noble who would become a powerful consort needed to govern jointly with her.
The moment I heard that, I removed my eyepatch.
“Do you still think so after seeing this?”
I believed I had been born quite handsome, but the memories of my past life kept colliding, and I had spent a long time living as a madman.
Then I learned that half of my memories from my past life were inside a certain dragon.
Only after I killed the bastard, took his eye, and transplanted it into myself did I fully recover all my memories of that life.
It had certainly been a great help in this life, but one of my pupils had become long and vertical like a crocodile’s, while the flesh around that eye had taken on a jaundiced hue.
With it covered, I was handsome, but once I revealed it, I was nothing more or less than a monster with one eye separate from the rest of my face.
As the Duke of the North, a lower noble’s daughter might endure it and discuss marriage for the sake of her family, but.......
A daughter of the royal family was different.
She came from a house so high that even if she saw a face like X and said, “It looks like X,” I would have to accept it.
“I-I-I!”
The Princess, too, started at the sight of that eye.
It was the same reaction she had shown when she remembered the red bundle.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“I-I, if I can help Father as the princess of this country, and if that allows Father the King to rest his ailing body and govern in comfort, I-I-I-I will try to love even a h-hunchback prince.”
“Is that so?”
“Y-yes. Therefore, if anything, your eye is cute.”
Anyone could see from her trembling, stammering voice that she did not mean it, but I felt relieved.
It was a textbook answer, and she seemed capable of giving something up for the country and for her own safety.
She did not seem to possess the qualities of a wise monarch yet, but.......
I could see a small possibility.
Just as the King’s acknowledgment had made me Grand Duke, perhaps my acknowledgment could make her a proper monarch.
As for what she lacked....... If I trusted her and put her to work, she’d grow on her own.
“My Queen.”
“Ah, y-yes. Grand Duke.”
Perhaps startled to see me kneel on both knees and bow my head, the Princess began to stammer again.
I would have to correct that lack of confidence first.
The pride of being the legitimate heir would become the source of the power that came from her.
“So long as Your Majesty does not cast me aside, this subject will simply devote all his loyalty, become Your Majesty’s shield, and protect Your Majesty.”
“Ah.”
“Therefore, please give the position of consort to another powerful high noble. Make him the armor that protects Your Majesty and ease my concerns.”
“......!”
I acknowledge as Queen the daughter of the King who had acknowledged me.
The present King had boldly acknowledged both my ability and my loyalty, and he had bestowed much grace upon me.
The loyalty I had not yet fully given to such a King, I would offer to the successor he chose.
Since I would be loyal anyway, there was no need for me to become the Queen’s closest consort.
Whoever became consort would serve as the Queen’s personal guard and close confidant, sharing her fate.
I had already sworn to share her fate, so it would be better for the Queen to have a different consort who would die with her if things went wrong.
“Th-thank you. Thank you, Grand Duke.”
The Princess smiled as she thanked me, but tears were pouring down her face.
Judging by the way she had kept stealing glances at my eye and the corners of her eyes trembled, she still seemed afraid.
If a princess born to marry the finest prince in the world had no choice but to marry a one-eyed monster, of course she would be afraid.
She no longer had to, so she must have been relieved and grateful, but the one-eyed monster had not gone anywhere, so she was still frightened.
I could understand why she cried.
However, a monarch’s tears must not be commonplace.
For roughly eight to ten years, until she came of age.
I’d rule this country and make the Princess into a proper monarch.
‘A regent.......’
Perhaps there were surprisingly not many things a king could do as king.
But a regent, with the single justification of acting for the king, could do anything.