Braune en Froisbourg was born the eldest daughter of a Marquis.
Her father, Marcel, was Steward of the Royal House of Leroy. The chancellors of the Kingdom of Santeneri had traditionally borne the title of “Steward.” In other words, Braune was the daughter of Santeneri’s chancellor.
The Kingdom of Santeneri, a great power in the western part of the Central Continent, had a long history.
Not long after the Central Continent recovered from the upheaval of roughly fifteen hundred years ago known as the “Tide of Peoples,” the Santeneri region began forming a single political and cultural sphere centered on the authority of House Leroy. In time, this became the unified state known as the Kingdom of Santeneri.
No one used the name anymore outside official ceremonies, but the kingdom’s formal title was The Sole Kingdom on Earth, Protector of the Orthodox Faith. That alone spoke to the length of its history.
House Froisbourg, to which Braune belonged, was nearly as old.
According to family tradition, its history began some nine hundred years ago, during the early stages of the Santeneri Unification War, when its first head distinguished herself and was granted Froisbourg as a fief. That first head was said to have been a woman, a formidable warrior who aided House Leroy and shed blood on actual battlefields.
Most likely, it was nothing more than a story.
What was indisputable, however, was that generations of the Froisbourg family had taken the tales of their founder, Braune Ene en Froisbourg, very seriously indeed. As proof, every eldest daughter of House Froisbourg without exception inherited the name Braune.
Braune herself might appear gentle and easygoing at first glance, but like all the eldest daughters before her, she had been raised to live as the first Braune had.
Thoughtfulness. Composure. Precision.
She had been brought up to cherish such qualities.
Braune did not like the new king who had taken the throne the previous year: Grois XIII—Grois Ene en Leroy.
He was twenty, two years younger than she was.
A little immaturity would have been understandable.
But there were limits.
Grois had been far too extreme even during his years as crown prince. Perhaps some of it came from his determination to lead the country as its future king.
Yet to Braune, it looked like nothing more than a feverish mixture of reactionary nostalgia and radicalism, thrown together without any order at all.
The crown prince idolized the achievements of Grois VII, hailed as the ruler who had restored Santeneri to greatness, and believed himself to be Grois VII reborn.
Grois VII had defeated the Empire when it attempted to interfere in Santeneri, forced the duchies within Santeneri’s territory into submission, and brought the Santeneri Unification War to an end.
A great king.
Grois VII had also been deeply devoted to the Orthodox Faith and proclaimed himself its “Protector.” He believed that unifying Santeneri was a mission bestowed upon him by God.
Five hundred years ago, that would have been perfectly acceptable.
That was an age when knights on horseback still dominated the battlefield.
But now?
It was hopelessly anachronistic.
The crown prince’s policies rested primarily on two pillars.
Strict enforcement of Orthodox doctrine.
And expansion of overseas territories.
Perhaps because he had become too deeply immersed in the teachings of the Orthodox Church, he had even begun invoking the antiquated concept of “magic power” in his effort to restore what Orthodoxy called “the good old social order.”
It was not merely a matter of suppressing the rising commoner class.
Even within noble society, he demanded rigid hierarchy, envisioning an ideal world in which nobles obeyed the king absolutely and commoners obeyed the nobility without question.
And the basis for this was the Orthodox teaching that “a person’s place upon the earth is determined by the amount of magic power they possess.”
It would have been laughable if it were not so serious.
How was one even supposed to measure magic power?
This was not a fairy tale.
Not a single human being on this earth could conjure flames from the palm of their hand.
For more than a century, it had been widely accepted that the Orthodox doctrine of using some mysterious force called magic power as the basis for social class was little more than a mechanism of authority designed to preserve fixed relationships between ruler and ruled.
Then there was the expansion of overseas territories.
That was pure fantasy.
Braune had heard a concise account of the kingdom’s near-bankrupt finances from her father, the chancellor.
Santeneri’s fleet had been ground down by the previous king’s repeated interventions on the New Continent and the failures that followed. There was no prospect whatsoever of rebuilding it.
Things had deteriorated so far that proposals had even been made to sell the kingdom’s remaining warships to foreign states.
And if anyone seriously intended to rebuild both the navy and the similarly weakened army, cooperation from the commoner class would be indispensable.
In both money and manpower.
If the new king genuinely wished to pursue such a policy, then naturally he ought to favor the commoners—in other words, he ought to pursue reform.
Instead, he advocated both a fossilized restoration of Orthodoxy and an aggressive policy of expansion.
A bundle of contradictions with no connection to reality.
Her father had admonished him over it again and again.
Even late at night, long after the rest of the household had gone to sleep, the light in her father’s study would remain burning.
Once, worried about his health, Braune had gone to check on him and found him sunk deep into a sofa, red-faced from drinking strong liquor.
She knew perfectly well who was responsible for that sight.
As the daughter of the chancellor and of one of the kingdom’s most powerful noble houses, she knew that her own name had been raised as a candidate to become either the crown prince’s principal queen or one of his secondary consorts.
The Orthodox Faith prescribed monogamy, but it had long since become customary for kings to take secondary consorts in order to preserve the royal bloodline.
And “secondary consort” did not mean mistress.
Such women were proper daughters of the highest nobility. Although their position lacked formal recognition from the Orthodox Church, they were effectively treated as queens.
Not only within Santeneri, but by foreign countries as well.
Braune could never forget the words Grois had spat out at her one afternoon when she had attended a tea gathering as part of her “work.”
“The instant I ascend the throne, I’ll throw those whores out of this palace.”
According to Orthodox doctrine, the union between a man and a woman was sacred and exclusive.
To Grois, who sought a return to strict Orthodoxy, the institution of secondary consorts must have seemed abhorrent.
But the women being thrown out would hardly remain silent.
Each came from one of the most powerful noble houses in the kingdom.
It could even lead to civil war.
The king we are about to place on the throne will probably become the ruler who destroys this country.
And I am supposed to become his wife?
Not a chance.
◆
About a year after the crown prince ascended the throne as Grois XIII, word came that the king had fallen ill.
Braune would have been lying if she claimed she felt no joy.
During that year, her father had endured repeated abuse to his face before finally being suspended from court.
In other words, he had fallen from power.
And who had replaced him?
No one.
King Grois wished to rule personally, just as Grois VII had.
One could imagine Braune’s delight when her father’s downfall completely eliminated any possibility of her marrying the king.
One could equally imagine her disappointment when she learned that Grois had recovered after spending only about a week bedridden.
And yet, over the two months that followed, something about King Grois changed.
About a week after news of the king’s recovery, a royal messenger suddenly arrived at the Froisbourg residence in Strois.
The king was summoning her father.
The entire household was thrown into turmoil.
Depending on what happened, they might even need to consider fleeing the country.
Braune herself was the one who urged her father to do so.
Fortunately, the messenger had brought no soldiers.
Perhaps they could claim illness to delay his appearance and use the time to prepare.
Braune bore the name of their founder.
When the moment came to act, she acted.
But her father rejected her insistence that they flee.
He would fulfill his duty to the very end as Steward of the Kingdom of Santeneri and of the Royal House of Leroy.
Nothing she said would change his mind.
Instead, he ordered Braune to return to their domain and begin preparing for exile.
But he must have known that she would never obey.
Before leaving, he handed her a vial of medicine that was supposedly “effective against every suffering in this world” and instructed her to drink it if anything happened.
Then he boarded his carriage.
Her father had been summoned in the morning.
He returned safely that evening.
Braune could hardly believe her eyes.
Father came back!
But an even greater shock awaited her.
Her father’s first words were nothing short of astonishing.
“His Majesty—will become a great king.”
His voice trembled.
He looked ready to burst into tears.
“Braune. His Majesty wishes you to attend tomorrow’s tea gathering. You must go. Then tell me everything you felt. I need your judgment. I still cannot trust my own instincts.”
◆
When Braune met the king again for the first time in several months, outwardly he had not changed at all.
His blond hair was still cropped short.
His face was still clean-shaven.
His eyes were still green.
The king had always liked sweets.
He used to bite into the pastries served with tea with deliberate roughness, crushing them in his mouth and scattering crumbs across the floor.
Most likely that too had been an imitation of the Grois VII he admired.
Indifferent to trivialities.
Bold and unrestrained.
Always ready for battle.
A cheap imitation.
Braune was fastidious by nature, and she had always found his childish behavior unbearable.
Whenever she had to accompany him for tea, she tried to keep as much distance between them as possible.
Otherwise crumbs and even spit might come flying her way.
He had completely misunderstood what masculinity meant.
That was what she had always thought of him.
Which was why the first thing that made her notice his “change” was the way he ate.
The king was eating his pastry carefully.
Not excessively so.
He was merely eating it normally.
But compared with his exaggerated performance in the past, even that looked astonishingly delicate.
The next surprise came when he dropped some crumbs.
The pastries he preferred were light and crumbly, so bits easily broke away.
Sure enough, some fell.
“Ah. I spilled some…”
He murmured the words.
He spilled some?
That King Grois had just said, “I spilled some”?
Braune could not hide her shock and stared at him.
Noticing her gaze, the king spoke with a slightly embarrassed expression.
“I’ve shown you something unsightly. Forgive me, Lady Braune.”
She stared blankly as he tried to brush the crumbs from his lap.
A servant hurried over to clean the floor.
“Ah, sorry… This pastry is, well… very good, but it’s a little difficult to eat neatly.”
He said sorry to a servant?!
Impossible.
But what exactly was impossible about it?
The fact that he had done it so naturally.
Was this an act?
But why would he have any reason to put on such an act?
“Lady Braune?”
“Y-Yes, Your Majesty.”
“This tea gathering feels a little too stiff, doesn’t it?”
“That is only a reflection of Your Majesty’s august presence.”
The completely insincere reply came out automatically.
With the old Grois, it would have been the safest possible answer.
“Having an august presence is a fine thing. But I think we could be a little more relaxed. For example, has anything interesting happened in your life lately, Lady Braune?”
“Interesting…?”
The question was so strange that she did not know how to answer.
“Please, don’t think too much of it. I only mean ordinary conversation. For example, yesterday I discovered how fascinating this watch is. I’ve used it as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, but when I finally took the time to examine it properly, I was amazed by how elegant it is. I found that discovery very interesting.”
“A watch, Your Majesty…?”
“Yes. This one.”
Grois took his pocket watch from his coat and showed it to her.
It was an unremarkable gold watch.
He opened the cover to reveal the dial.
Since the two of them were seated across a table, Braune could not make out any of its details.
“This pattern here is remarkably delicate. Fascinating, really. Knowing that there is a craftsman in my country capable of making something this wonderful… somehow makes me feel proud.”
He unhooked the chain connecting the pocket watch to his coat, then slowly stood and approached Braune.
In the past, even if she had hidden it outwardly, every hair on her body would have stood on end.
But this time, she felt no revulsion at Grois coming closer.
He walked slowly, almost measuring each step.
It seemed to her that he was taking the utmost care not to frighten her.
The king held the watch out by its edge, careful not to touch Braune’s hand.
She accepted it with both of hers.
◆
Many of Santeneri’s watchmakers were immigrants from the Empire.
In Santeneri, outbreaks of xenophobia occasionally swept the country, encouraged by fanatical reactionaries such as Grois XIII.
One such outbreak had occurred about a century earlier.
A royal edict ordered the expulsion of immigrants from the Empire, particularly followers of the Scripturalist sect, which Orthodox doctrine regarded as heretical.
Since a large number of watchmakers belonged to that sect, many were driven out of Santeneri.
As time passed, a small number eventually returned.
Santeneri’s watches were made by people from precisely that sort of “minority.”
The old Grois would probably have praised the expulsion of the watchmakers as “a victory for Santeneri’s pure blood and true Orthodoxy.”
And now the king was saying he felt “proud.”
In Braune’s palm, the tiny second hand of the pocket watch continued to move with the faintest ticking sound.
A trace of warmth still lingered in its gold case.
The warmth of the man called Grois.
“Your Majesty, regarding something I found interesting… I’m afraid nothing comes to mind immediately. If I may have the honor of being invited again, please allow me to make it my homework for next time.”
“Yes, please do. I’m sorry for suddenly asking such an odd question. You’re very kind, Lady Braune. You’re willing to forgive my mistake.”
I can’t take this anymore.
Something was very wrong.
The king had become strange.
Braune blinked her blue eyes several times, then gave him one small nod after another.