I summoned the Late King’s ministers to a meeting room in the royal citadel.
“Administrative Officer.”
“Yes, Lord Protector.”
“Do not simply write that the King died.”
“Pardon?”
The kingdom’s language was rather plain.
I had ordered the royal administrative officer to write letters informing nobles across the land of the King’s funeral.
He was using words as overly condensed as, ‘The King died.’ So I spoke up.
“See that each and every phrase describing the Late King is written poetically. You may summon a writer if you wish.”
First, I had him prepare the Late King’s death notice.
Next, we had to discuss the immediate matters of the Late King’s funeral and the new Queen’s coronation.
“We will hold a grand funeral and coronation. Summon one thousand nobles and diplomatic envoys from thirty countries to the palace and have them mourn the Late King.”
“Pardon?”
The Privy Council ministers, who had been quietly listening, reacted.
Every one of them seemed incredulous, but I ignored them and continued.
“An outlay will be necessary for that, so Finance Minister, prepare accordingly.”
“One thousand nobles and diplomatic envoys from thirty countries? That is impossible.”
I was acquainted with Count Tranquia, the Finance Minister.
Having served two Kings as Finance Minister, he had kept the wartime economy running well enough and was the minister responsible for the kingdom’s supplies.
He had done his part with supplies in the war against the Empire, so I had thought there was no need to replace him as Finance Minister.
Yet from the very first agenda item, he opposed me harshly.
“Impossible?”
“I will be direct. The country has no money.”
“In the Royal Domain?”
There was no way.
The Royal Domain was the most fertile territory in the kingdom and its center of trade. How could it have no money?
“That is correct.”
“Why?”
“To maintain the Lion Unit, we are pouring in not only the royal family’s assets, but debt as well. At this rate, the King will have to go around borrowing money.”
It was not entirely wrong to say that the Lion Unit’s upkeep was enormous.
An army—especially a standing army—was a veritable money-devouring hippopotamus.
Lately, I had even heard that its wages were overdue.
Of course, reducing the Lion Unit, which safeguarded royal authority, was unacceptable.
All the more so now, when a young Queen had just ascended the throne and royal authority had yet to be established.
“You all served the Late King, and you should spare nothing in honoring him. I am not asking you to raise funds, only to spend a few coins for the country and the King. Why begrudge it so? We must show through the ceremony that many remember him. Only then will the nation’s dignity stand, will it not?”
“It is not that I begrudge it. I am saying this because we do not currently have that much money. We must scale it down. Let us invite only fifty nobles and envoys from four friendly countries.”
The Finance Minister’s opposition to spending funds could be said to be him doing his duty.
But was that man talking about extravagance?
To speak of Count Tranquia, the Finance Minister.......
The office that should have been occupied by the kingdom’s most upright and inflexible person was held by a man brimming with adaptability.
I had not thought poorly of that adaptability, and because I regarded a grand funeral as mere pomp and ceremony, I could understand him.
However, now that a new Queen had ascended the throne while still young and unable to properly wield even the Royal Regalia, I believed that even pomp and ceremony were essential.
But if the treasury was truly like that.......
There was nothing to be done.
“Very well. Then, is there anyone among the Privy Council members here who will make a donation for the Late King’s grand funeral and the new Queen’s coronation?”
“.......”
“.......”
“The Lion Unit was founded so that the royal family would take the lead in handling armed disturbances within and beyond the kingdom. Once the coronation is complete and the Lion Unit returns, the military upkeep costs of each territory will lessen. Trust in that and donate.”
No answer?
No one here had a brain.
When a new Queen and Regent came in and asked them to put up a little money for the former King’s funeral and the new Queen’s coronation, they should show their loyalty.
It was only natural to want to make an impression on the new Queen and Regent.
There was a ruler who would hold power for eight to ten years, and a young Queen who would live for decades and govern the country.
They should have been willing to provide a suitable amount of funding and make a show of it, yet there was not even a common courtier who would flatter for favor?
I understood the meaning of that silence.
They were placing their bets elsewhere.
“Very well. Let us discuss this again.”
They were the Late King’s ministers who had worked in the Privy Council for a long time.
There was even a minister who had served four Kings.
They could not be ignorant of politics, so rather than their minds being slow, it meant they had placed their bets elsewhere.
***
“Every one of these measures strengthens royal authority.”
A grand funeral, a grand coronation, recalling the Lion Unit, and so on.
The Regent, the Lord Protector, had issued nothing but measures to strengthen his own authority as soon as he seized control of the government.
They could be seen as measures for the new Queen, but no one thought so.
No matter how exalted a young Queen became, only the Regent’s power would grow stronger.
“It cannot be helped. We cannot make a child who cannot even wield a sword into a monarch. Still, he is acting recklessly. Do you know how many troops the Grand Duke of the North has brought?”
“Will he not pull out more than half of the northern forces? If the North means only to lock itself down without expanding further, it is not a region that needs so many troops.”
The Finance Minister answered decisively.
“Five hundred cavalrymen and two thousand heavy infantrymen.”
“Pardon?”
“Only that many?”
“Once the Lion Unit and the Duke of the East’s forces suppress the eastern disturbance, they can commit all their troops against the royal citadel. They will know perfectly well that the disturbance itself is the Duke of the East’s intention to seize the Lion Unit.”
“Hmm.”
“If the Duke of the East invades with all his strength, our young Queen and the royal citadel will fall into his grasp.”
Third in the royal line of succession.
It was an open secret that the Late King’s brother coveted the throne.
The strength he possessed could only be checked if the Grand Duke of the North, the Lord Protector, committed his full strength.
Yet he had not even committed all of that strength.
“But the Grand Duke of the North is renowned as an undefeated master strategist.”
The royal citadel’s ministers, who had naturally expected more troops to come, were dumbfounded.
There were surely some who thought that the Grand Duke of the North must have something to rely on.
He was young, but renowned as a brilliant strategist.
The Finance Minister, who had formed ties with the Grand Duke of the North while handling supplies during the previous war, countered.
“He earned that reputation only by never fighting a losing battle. If tens of thousands of eastern soldiers descend, he will certainly flee with the Queen, flee after abandoning the Queen, or negotiate with the Duke of the East.”
The Grand Duke of the North did not undertake reckless battles and fought only battles he could win, so his supply demands were lower than those of other commanders.
The Finance Minister thought highly of that prudence, but precisely because he knew that prudence, he undervalued him.
An individual could possess transcendent valor.
And there were certainly those who could change the tide of battle with that valor.
The Grand Duke of the North was one such person, but he was the weakest among them.
‘He is weak himself, so he has no choice but to be cautious.’
The Finance Minister judged that he was not a person capable of overturning an absolute advantage.
“Still, would this not be confronting the Lord Protector too directly? In any case, the royal citadel is currently under the Grand Duke of the North’s control, and are we not in the royal citadel now?”
“The Grand Duke of the North is a man who fights with his head. Politics are the same. If he harms us, whom the Late King trusted and favored, would he not know that the strengthening of royal authority he advocates is a sham? Look even now.”
The Privy Council was originally the King’s closest circle, which supported royal authority.
By treating the King’s child favorably, he would broaden his own position as Regent.
If that was his calculation, then he could not readily cast aside the Late King’s confidants either.
If he wanted the Late King’s child to be treated favorably as Queen, then his logic would hold only if he likewise trusted those whom the Late King had trusted and used.
“Asking for donations was a clever ploy, but seeing that he retreated, it is certain that he has no intention of forcing the issue. Seizing control of state affairs takes a long time. He will soon bring us a compromise.”
“No matter how clever he is, he is only a knight who knows a little of letters and affairs.”
***
The kingdom was full of problems.
The immediate problem was recalling the Lion Unit, which symbolized the King’s majesty, to the Royal Domain.
“Have you come?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Knowing that the Late King and the Duke of the East were in conflict over the Lion Unit, I had placed intelligence agents throughout the capital.
Why had the Lion Unit, which was loyal only to the royal family, gone to the Duke of the East?
It was because I had received the shocking report that its wages were overdue.
But no matter how I calculated it, I could not understand how the Royal Domain had no money.
Even in the Northern mountainous highlands, which were more barren than this, there was enough money to maintain twenty to thirty thousand troops.
After receiving the report on the kingdom’s current financial state, I could not help but be horrified.
“Is this truly the kingdom’s annual income? Does this place collect less tax than the North?”
“It is hard to believe, but yes.”
“The Royal Domain is not a territory this destitute.”
“Presumably because it is the one operating the Lion Unit.”
“Of course it is. Even taking that into account, does this financial state make any sense for the Royal Domain?”
“They say the losses during the war were great. At present, it seems sufficient funds can be secured only by disbanding the Lion Unit. Even so, it has recovered greatly compared to the wartime period.”
The greatest cause was the enormous war expenditure poured into the wars fought during the Late King’s reign.
More than half of those expenses had gone into founding the Lion Unit.
Maintaining ten thousand personnel at all times and tolerating no vacancies, the unit that protected the King and the Royal Domain had been created by pooling nearly all of the royal family’s military strength.
“That cannot be done.”
“Is it not a force that Your Highness cannot use right now anyway?”
“That is true, but we cannot fail to prepare for war with the Empire. If an invasion comes before the North is fully pacified, even the Lion Unit will not be enough.”
The Lion Unit was the kingdom’s supreme elite force, supporting the Royal Domain and royal authority. Thanks to its overwhelming combat power, the kingdom had barely been able to maintain its balance with the Empire.
Until the North was fully pacified and the northern frontier facing the Empire was protected by a natural barrier, we could not stop operating the Lion Unit.
If expansion into the North allowed me to draw a defensive line where I wished as the border, I could calculate that we would be able to repel an Imperial invasion with only about half of our current forces.
Only then could we reduce the army and put the able-bodied men who had served in it to productive work.
“Northern expansion will be carried out with the Royal Domain’s resources after the Queen’s rule is stable. Therefore, the Lion Unit must be maintained.”
I intended to give the new Queen a world free from enemy invasion.
If she were invaded even after Her Majesty began ruling in her own right, the world would say it was because the young Queen was weak.
“Then do you have another method?”
“To state the conclusion, it is a problem of corruption. The tax system has no defect, and there has been no particular problem with the economy. If we solve this, it will be enough.”
Considering the Royal Domain’s population and economic state, there was clearly not merely a thief letting taxes leak away, but one swallowing the whole of it.
Due to depression over his tragic family history, the Late King had withdrawn from state affairs about four years ago. From a year ago, once he became gravely ill, he had left politics entirely to the Privy Council.
With the King not keeping watch, I could only imagine how freely his underlings had divided up and shared the King’s authority among themselves.
But.......
Total eradication of corruption.
Such a slogan was dangerous.
Because there was not a single noble who did not engage in corruption.
More precisely, they used every kind of trick to commit corruption legally.
Even I did not run things so cleanly.
That was the nature of power left unchecked.
‘If the graft is moderate, I will use it as leverage to threaten their lives, have Her Majesty pardon them, and make them loyal to the new Queen and afraid of me.’
The Finance Minister of the Privy Council had earned merit in the war against the Empire.
Even now, he was skilled at maintaining supply lines and procuring materials, so I intended, if possible, to win him over.
That was what I was thinking when.......
“That is.......”
“Hmm?”
The ledger the intelligence agent handed me did not look ordinary.
Wait?
“????”
If the embezzlement had simply been ordinary, I had intended to say, ‘Sigh, he did earn merit, so let us give him an appropriate warning, make him sweat, and bind him to the new regime through loyalty,’ and just set the discipline right.
That was what I had intended to do.......
“Is this right?”
“We also thought it seemed utterly impossible.”
“......Does he have some personal grudge? This is practically the level of saying that this bastard is the reason money does not circulate in this country. Is that even possible? No, leaving that aside, where does he pile all this up?”
The accusation materials were so absurd that I had to question them despite the agent being one of my trusted subordinates.
If he truly embezzled this much, he would need a considerable treasure warehouse, and that warehouse would have to be a conspicuous facility.
“At present, if it is not him, we cannot trace where these goods and gold have leaked away to.”
It was enough to make me wonder whether he had sunk it in the sea.
No matter how long he had been embezzling, the amount he had taken was clearly enormous.
I changed my mind.
This would not do.
“Very well. We will punish the bastard and fill the treasury first.”
“Your Highness, but the evidence is not clear. To do this rashly.......”
I understood the concern.
The Royal Domain and royal taxes had leaked enormously.
But they could not determine where they had gone.
‘They mean there is no physical evidence.’
But evidence did not matter.
Only the King or the Finance Minister could move sums this large anyway.
And.
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
“I trust you as well.”
“It is an honor.”
“There is no reason for me not to believe the accusation of someone I trust.”
With appropriate authority and trustworthy testimony, that was evidence and justification.
The way of the northern mountain folk was that clear-cut.
***
“Did you summon me, Grand Duke?”
“Ah, Finance Minister, you have come.”
I greeted him warmly with a smile.
Invoking our acquaintanceship from the previous war, I had Count Tranquia come to the sanctuary where the Late King’s frozen remains lay.
“You must have something urgent to say.”
“That is right. I summoned you because I wished to discuss what happened at the Privy Council meeting.”
When I treated him politely instead of speaking down to him, the Finance Minister’s expression relaxed somewhat, and he smiled slyly.
“The Late King’s matter is regrettable, but it is heaven’s affair. Counting money is a human affair. You must face reality, Grand Duke.”
The Finance Minister seemed to think I had asked for a private audience in the sanctuary because I wanted his sympathy before the Late King’s body.
I smiled and bowed my head to him.
“Yes, I could not help but admit that I was rather rash.”
“Ah, that is not so. How could I stop your loyalty to the Late King from coming first? It is only.......”
The Finance Minister tried to find a compromise with a wry smile.
I answered with a smile.
“That is why I have decided to silence forever the mouth of the one who saw that rashness.”
“Ah, is that so, p-pardon? Mmph!?”
Red liquid stained the Frost Sword, symbol of royal authority, and at the same time, a head and its headless body collapsed.