The Duke of the East had arrived early to attend the late King’s funeral and the Queen’s coronation.
And he had come without an army.
Once this additional letter was sent, most of the Kingdom’s nobles changed their stance and decided to send either themselves or their heirs to the coronation.
“With the Duke of the East present, the eastern rebellion is not a disturbance that could endanger the country, so they are less concerned about leaving their territories. ...They are good at dressing up their words, at least.”
Nobles were politicians, after all.
They truly were adept at dressing up their words.
“Have replies arrived from the thirty countries?”
“Yes, Lord Protector.”
We had invited every country, to which a letter would take at most fifteen days to reach and from which a reply would take at most another fifteen days, to attend the coronation.
“What do they say?”
“It seems that more than thirty countries will come. I do not know how they heard the news, but even the countries north of the Empire have expressed their wish to attend.”
“That is welcome news, but will it be possible?”
“They do not have the naval strength to support even that, but they are a seafaring people.”
“Very well. Order that preparations be made for their visit as well.”
Excluding pagan countries, our Kingdom was the most anti-Empire country on the continent.
The late King had ground his teeth whenever the Empire was mentioned, and I, once one of the late King’s Generals of the Four Directions, had taken more of the Empire’s territory than anyone else.
That was likely why the countries north of the Empire also wished to attend this coronation.
Originally, however, they had no land route connected to us without passing through the Empire, so we had not sent them envoys or letters.
It was difficult to maintain exchanges with them.
“They expressed concern over a weak queen, but changed their minds when they heard that Your Grace was the Regent.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs had a knack for saying flattering things.
“You are good at saying things that make one itch. But the Queen is not so weak... Well, a day will come when Her Majesty proves her strength.”
It was true that the Queen was still physically weak, but she dreamed of becoming a conquering queen.
I knew he meant to flatter me, but I left a rebuttal to the remark that Her Majesty’s weakness had concerned them and sorted through the foreign replies.
One amusing thing among them was...
“They are rushing to send people whose only distinction is their lofty ceremonial rank.”
“That is because... the Queen is unmarried, is it not?”
Among the special envoys in the foreign delegations attending the coronation, there were an unusually high number of unmarried men.
The coronation was an occasion to reestablish or confirm diplomatic relations with the Kingdom.
One might expect seasoned envoys to be sent, yet there were an unusual number of princes, ducal sons, and the like.
They were all children of rather renowned kingdoms and noble houses, but regrettably, they were third sons, fourth sons, seventh sons...
The tenth son of ten sons and two daughters was a little excessive.
“Ah, this man was said to have ten sons alone. Yet he is sending his youngest? That is too much.”
The direct arrival of kings’ and dukes’ blood relatives was, ceremonially speaking, the highest courtesy. But...
“Judging by the letters that even ask whether there will be a ball attended by the Queen...”
Both the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I let out hollow laughs.
Their purpose was far too obvious.
“I wonder whether they even know how our country shudders at foreign prince consorts or queens.”
“But is it not something worth considering?”
“It is something to discuss once Her Majesty turns eighteen.”
“Eighteen. That is a fine age.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs was quite the slippery fellow.
He was good at getting along with people.
The more political marriages a noble house had, the more common early marriages were.
Commoners generally needed enough wealth to establish a household, so they tended to marry in their late teens or early twenties.
But nobles merely had to inherit their families’ estates, so a culture took root in which they were engaged in their early teens and married in their mid-teens.
In other words, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had said, ‘That is a fine age,’ because he wanted to say something pleasing for me to hear.
It was proper for a Regent to step down at the wedding, the symbol that the Queen had become an adult, entrusting the protection of royal authority to the royal family’s in-laws.
But that was no different from declaring that I intended to keep my hold on power longer.
He had agreed with that.
If he had not meant to agree, he would have countered that the earlier the marriage, the better, would he not?
“Minister of Foreign Affairs! A letter from the Empire has arrived!”
“Hmm.”
“Hmph.”
Should we invite the Empire, the Kingdom’s enemy, to the funeral and coronation?
I thought about it briefly, but the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I came to the same conclusion.
‘We must still invite them and extend the highest honors.’
“It will not be a favorable reply.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs shook his head at the Empire’s letter.
But I did not think so.
If they meant to ignore us, could they not simply have sent no reply?
It was not as though our countries were friendly.
“The very fact that they replied may mean that they intend to come. What are they scheming? Let me see.”
The Empire and the Kingdom had endured a bitter relationship through several wars in the late King’s time.
Diplomatic relations had been severed, and only I, the Kingdom’s Grand Duke of the North who shared a border with them, and the Empire’s Mountain Duke exchanged contact at the noble level from time to time.
For that reason, even if I wished to make Her Majesty a queen recognized by the world, the Empire’s recognition would not come.
It did not matter whether they came or not.
Even so, it was undeniably the continent’s strongest nation, and we at least wished to show that we were trying to become friendly.
‘Come if you wish.’
That was the level of the letter I had ordered written.
The reply to it had now arrived.
In matters between nations like these, it would be unusual to answer, ‘All right, I will come,’ to a careless invitation that amounted to, ‘Come if you wish.’
“Hah. That bitch says she will come?”
Deposed Queen Elined, the late King’s former wife and the imperial princess who had borne him one son and one daughter, had informed us that she would attend the late King’s funeral.
“Would it not be better to refuse her?”
The usual universal honorific was Lady, but I had called her ‘that woman’ and worse. The Minister of Foreign Affairs immediately read the room.
There were plenty of uglier words with which to disparage her further, but as a noble, it was generally disgraceful to utter words below that level.
“No. Tell her to come. We have no reason to invite her and then turn her away, and she is a woman who bore the late King’s children.”
The words made me want to vomit, but on reflection, it was more likely to be an advantage.
Although the Kingdom was anti-Empire, the countless wars had caused us to encroach upon the Empire’s territories and exchange land with it. As a result, the Kingdom had a population of imperial descent.
A population descended from people who regarded the Empire as a homeland in their hearts.
A population that lived on the Kingdom’s land but had branch families and the like in the Empire, and thus wanted peace.
There was also a pacifist population nurtured by the Church of the Holy Spirit through sermons on the ideal of peace, which taught that the countries of the two great holy lands should not fight and should forgive one another.
While the Empire and Kingdom were mutually hostile as they were now, the number of such people of imperial descent and pacifists was not counted as very high.
But I judged that, given the Kingdom’s atmosphere, a considerable number of them likely existed in hiding.
“There will be no subjects who do not desire peace. Probably.”
Only nobles full of greed for land wanted to kill and fight.
The people, who would be content with a humble loaf of bread that kept their children from going hungry for one meal a day, would prefer that war not break out.
However, I had a greed for land.
***
The late King had three children.
His eldest daughter and the new Queen, Casertania, had been born to the King’s mistress at the royal family’s southern villa.
With Queen Elined, an imperial princess from an enemy nation who had been the legitimate queen consort and was later deposed, he had one legitimate son, a prince who was to become King of the Kingdom, and one legitimate daughter, the third child.
Once her two children had survived safely into the age at which they could receive infant baptism and live as servants of God, Queen Elined devised a plot to kill the late King and establish her own son, only to be deposed.
However, just before that plot was carried out, the prince met a mysterious death while still young.
It was presumed to have been an assassination intended to prevent Elined from asserting a claim to royal authority.
Whether the late King had a hand in that measure was unknown.
After all, it would have meant killing his own son.
Was such a thing possible, even for a man of power? One had doubts.
Power was a ruthless thing, so it could not be said that the possibility did not exist at all.
Still, the late King had been so doting on his children that one could not be sure.
The late King’s death came because the sickness of his heart, brought on by the successive deaths in his family—the child he loved and the new Queen—had spread to his body.
“You summoned me?”
The Minister of Intelligence appeared in the office.
I intended to ask something I had been unable to ask while the late King was alive.
After driving out Elined, who had been born an imperial princess, the late King brought in his mistress, Princess Casena’s biological mother, and made her his new Queen.
Princess Casena’s mother, the daughter of a count’s house, had been the King’s lover. She was pregnant with Casena’s younger brother, a prince, but died together with the child in childbirth.
Afterward, the late King lost his smile and withdrew from both politics and the battlefield.
The only children he left behind were Queen Casertania and her six-year-old half-sister.
The Kingdom had adopted male-preference primogeniture, and because the late King had left behind only two daughters, the elder-born Princess Casena ascended the throne.
But the Empire of Queen Elined had male primogeniture along with a bloodline-based succession system.
Bloodline-based succession was a law by which the eldest child was determined according to the mother’s status, regardless of who had been born first.
While she had a son, it had been proper for Imperial Consort Elined to assert royal authority for her own son. But once she was left with only one daughter by the late King, the interpretation of the law changed.
‘If they wish to apply Imperial law to the Kingdom, tell them to conquer this Kingdom first.’
For that reason, the faction that had killed the prince born to the Queen of imperial descent was half hailed as patriotic.
Despite having killed a prince, no less.
“Come in.”
“Yes, Lord Protector. Thank you for forgiving my lapse.”
I had confirmed that part of the Minister of Finance’s embezzled funds had flowed into the Kingdom’s counterintelligence corps, but I had not held him accountable.
Judging by the amount, it was more like hush money than proof that he was an accomplice. Corruption was too widespread to purge even them, and there would be far too many people to kill.
‘So long as they do not cross the line, we go together.’ That was the current personnel policy.
“It is an unwritten rule not to ask where operational funds come from.”
“Thank you once again.”
I knew the Minister of Intelligence’s identity because the late King had told me, but it was classified to outsiders, so he always wore a mask.
There could have been a deception in which someone else wore the mask and bore a different face, but I knew the face beneath his mask.
It was him.
There could have been a deception that forged even his voice, but if he had tried that sort of deceit, I would have taken his head.
“There is something urgent I wished to ask, which is why I summoned you. You will have heard. The deposed Queen, that bitch, is coming to the late King’s funeral.”
“What is it that you wish to know?”
“I wish to ask why the late King’s son died. Was it perhaps something the late King ordered? For the Kingdom?”
It was a sensitive matter, but I asked outright.
A father had killed his son.
It was shocking, but I would understand the late King.
If it had been for the Kingdom, it was the sort of thing he might have done.
Among royal families, killing cousins or uncles was commonplace, and history was not short on cases of siblings killing one another and even parents and children killing one another.
Was it only royal families?
Royal families, which had much to divide, were like that. Among lesser noble families, which had little to divide, plots and political marriages were mere child’s play when it came to succession and inheritance.
Assassinations and killings were commonplace.
“This servant understands it to have been the deposed Queen’s doing.”
“The official position remains unchanged.”
I had asked prepared for the possibility that the late King might have been so cold and merciless, but I received the state’s official position.
The deposed Queen was, in any event, a woman who had been expelled after clearly committing the crime of trying to kill her husband, the late King.
For that reason, she had been made to bear the crime of killing her son as well and was cast out.
Had she not been the Emperor’s daughter, she would likely have been executed, but there was a fundamental question.
Had she not devised that plot in order to enthrone the child she had borne herself as King, make him a puppet, and swallow the entire Kingdom whole?
Yet she killed her own son and resisted her husband?
There was a contradiction there.
Judging by what was plausible, it was more likely that the prince’s death had been a plot by the Kingdom than hysteria by the deposed Queen.
“No matter how I look at it, I cannot think of any reason why the deposed Queen, that bitch, would have to kill the child she bore herself. Did she truly do it?”
“I do not know her inner thoughts, but we understand that she committed the mistake while taking him hostage and issuing threats amid hysteria.”
I did not know whether the intelligence officer was concealing something or whether it was the truth, but the state’s official position had been decided in the late King’s time.
The deposed Queen, cornered after her plot was exposed, had ‘first killed her son to sever the royal family’s bloodline entirely, then plotted against the late King as well and failed.’
“Does that bitch have no maternal love at all? She is truly a woman mad beyond all measure.”
“But why do you ask such a question? Could it be that you suspect the late King?”
“The late King took to his bed afterward. How could that be? I do think there may have been a third culprit.”
“Your Grace, but this would appear to be an action that sends the wrong signal of exonerating the deposed Queen.”
“I know. I know it could become sympathy for the deposed Queen, that bitch. But she is the main culprit in the Royal Castle Fire Incident and the Attempted Poisoning of the Late King. There can be no room for compromise. Do not worry.”
“Then?”
“Because if there is even a clue that another force did it, we can seize their political weakness. And...”
I wondered whether I should say such a thing, but I was speaking to an intelligence officer whose face was unknown to the public. What could I not say? So I spoke.
He was not someone who would show his face and say it openly, and if he interfered with me that way, it would not be difficult to eliminate him.
I could see this man.
“Once we seize that weakness, we can turn it around and place the blame on them as a force that cooperated with the deposed Queen, then wipe them out. We can say that they took part in the deposed Queen’s plot to kill her son.”
“Your Grace truly is... a talent we would covet.”
“That is not a good compliment.”
Perhaps these assassins had acted for the late King or the Kingdom’s hawkish faction. I intended to fabricate a plot and frame the incident as though they had acted according to the deposed Queen’s intent, then eradicate them all.
“Even if it was something the late King did, it does not matter. In that case, I will bury it completely. Reinvestigate it once.”
The incident in which the King’s son died.
It had become the mother’s doing, and that conclusion benefited the country, so there was no reason to overturn it.
But if the truth of this incident became known, I would gain another card to use in politics.