The twelfth Emperor of the Urgalia Empire, Sarion Urgalius, is my father.
That’s it, end of explanation――――just kidding, but honestly, that’s about all I can say.
I had no love for my father, no respect, none of those feelings at all. Probably he felt the same way about me.
This has nothing to do with me remembering my past life. Even without those memories, I probably would have felt only this way toward my father. That’s how little interaction there was between us as father and son.
Since it’s a good chance, let me explain the inner workings of the Urgalian imperial family, including my brothers who died recently.
My father Sarion was the legitimate son of the Emperor Cassius of Two Generations Ago, and he took the throne after the Great Emperor died. My father was fourteen at the time.
At that point, my father already had a son with a serving girl. This was the First Prince, Dantario.
After taking the throne, my father welcomed a princess from the eastern allied kingdom of Kassia. This was the former Empress, Lady Adelaide.
By the way, the Kingdom of Kassia, the Empress’s homeland, and the Kingdom of Kassia that tried to attack from the east when I fought Selseta are the same country.
The previous King of Kassia sent his daughter to marry into the Urgalia Empire and pushed a friendly policy, but his younger brother opposed this, raised a rebellion against his older brother, and took the throne.
Because of this, the Kingdom of Kassia switched from pro-Urgalia to anti-Urgalia, and the Empress lost her homeland as a backer. That means she lost her political value as a wife.
To make things worse, no children were born between my father and Empress Adelaide. Since the First Prince was already born, it was clear the cause was with the Empress.
As I said before, for royalty and nobles, having an heir is the top priority.
Normally, Empress Adelaide would have been cast aside and another wife brought in. In fact, I heard there was a move to do that.
But the one who stopped it was none other than my father Sarion. Empress Adelaide had a gentle and kind personality, and she loved young Dantario, who had lost his real mother, like her own child. Dantario was also very attached to the Empress, so my father had not the slightest intention of casting her aside.
Maybe seeing that the young Emperor’s will was firm, the move to remove the Empress settled down. What happened instead was a move to recommend a secondary wife, but my father stubbornly refused this too.
To put it simply, my father kept only Empress Adelaide as his favorite for ten years. Still no children were born, but as Dantario grew, he showed brilliance in his words and actions, so there was no need to worry about the next generation of the Empire――at least, that’s what my father seemed to think.
But among the nobles, discontent was swirling against Dantario, who was born from a commoner serving girl. Especially the Noble Clans who valued bloodlines felt this strongly, and the move to recommend a secondary wife to the Emperor grew stronger year by year.
In the end, the pressure from the Noble Clans grew so large that my father feared “at this rate, the Empress and the First Prince might be in danger.”
Unable to resist, my father welcomed Perilla, daughter of the Marquis Lirgana family, a powerful Noble Clan, as a secondary wife.
Perilla gave birth to the Second Prince Julius in the year she married, and the Third Prince Garland two years later. This calmed the Noble Clans’ discontent, but instead, a secret struggle over the next throne began.
My father tried to install Dantario as Crown Prince, but Perilla and the Noble Clans, who wanted Julius to inherit the throne, naturally blocked it.
It was possible to force Dantario as Crown Prince using the Emperor’s authority, but if he did that, the Noble Clans’ hostility would turn toward Dantario.
In the two hundred years of Urgalia Empire history, not a few royals were killed by nobles. On the flip side, not a few nobles were purged by royals, so it’s about even, but anyway, for that reason my father could not make Dantario Crown Prince, and the installation of a Crown Prince was postponed again and again.
――Now, here is where I finally enter the story.
From what I’ve said so far, you can probably tell, but the one my father favored was only Empress Adelaide, and welcoming a secondary wife was due to pressure from the nobles.
It’s hard to think that such a father would reach out to a new woman. But as a fact, I was born, and my father acknowledged me as his child.
How did that happen? The reason is as follows.
The year before I was born, the eastern Kingdom of Kassia gathered a great army and invaded the Urgalia Empire. The King of Kassia talked with neighboring countries and formed a coalition army, and with a massive force of over two hundred thousand, they instantly occupied five eastern provinces of Urgalia.
In response, my father issued a conscription order across the entire Empire, organized a great army of over three hundred thousand, and opened the tip of the spear against the Kingdom of Kassia.
This war, which began in early spring, ended up continuing until late autumn. My father spent over half a year without returning to the Imperial Capital, continuing to command the war at the eastern border.
My father, who was also a Horned Cavalry (Rongāra), not only commanded from the rear but sometimes went to the front lines and swung his sword himself, fighting deadly battles with enemy soldiers.
If that kind of situation continued, the body would inevitably get aroused, and to calm that, he would want a woman’s body.
Still, he couldn’t bring the Empress to the battlefield, so my father kept suppressing his physical desires. But sexual desire is one of the three great desires, alongside hunger and sleep. If it’s temporary, fine, but it can’t be suppressed for a long time.
It was Marquis Gregor Gram, who was a civil official attached to the Emperor at the time, who sensed the Emperor’s uncontrollable desire and found a girl with certain background, good looks, and who could keep her mouth shut.
Needless to say, this woman is my mother.
My mother was the daughter of a quasi-noble without inheritance rights, and during the war with Kassia, she served my father devotedly. My father, who showed narrow-mindedness toward women, acknowledged my mother’s devotion and had her serve him at night.
This way my mother became pregnant with me, but she did not use that fact to demand a position in the imperial palace, and apparently planned to quietly give birth and raise me among the commoners.
So, there was a possibility I would be born as a quasi-noble. Actually, that possibility was higher.
The reason I was born as a royal, even if imperfectly, is because Empress Adelaide, who learned about my mother through some means, persuaded my father and welcomed my mother into the imperial palace.
Unfortunately, my mother died from an epidemic when I was small, but since I was a baby, she told me over and over, “You must never forget the Empress’s kindness,” Remembering that, I decided to show respect to Empress Adelaide alone.
Well, even without my mother’s instruction, I would have shown respect to the Empress. The Empress was a kind person who cared for me, who lost my mother, more than anyone else in the imperial palace. If I didn’t have memories of my past life, I surely would have adored the Empress like a mother.
――Well, this has gotten quite long, but that is the inner workings of the Urgalian imperial family.
After that, Dantario, Julius, and Garland killed each other, and I took the throne as Emperor, as I’ve said before.
I felt no sadness at all about the deaths of my three brothers, and no emotion welled up for my father who collapsed because of it, but I couldn’t bear to watch the Empress, who had raised Dantario like her own child and treated Julius and Garland equally even though they were the secondary wife’s children, grieve over losing them.
And I couldn’t bear, in a different way, to watch the secondary wife Perilla, half-crazed, screaming at the Empress, “It’s all your fault, you plague goddess!”
Some time passed since my brothers’ deaths, and just when the imperial palace was finally calming down, if my father died, that muddy chaos would surely happen again. Thinking that, a sigh escaped me without me realizing.
”Take care of the Urgalia Empire,” my father rasped with his final breaths.
I bowed my head solemnly at my father’s bedside. “Leave it to me. May Mother Urgal’s protection be with you, Father.”
I repeat, I held no parent-child affection for my father. But I didn’t hold a grudge either. Rather, I was even grateful that he let me live a comfortable life as a royal.
So there was no lie in my words mourning my father on his deathbed――if this had been my past-life father, I might have thrown one or two complaints at him for only loving my brother, but well, that doesn’t matter.
Maybe he wasn’t reassured by my words, but not long after, the former Emperor Sarion passed away.
As Emperor, and as the only remaining son, I had to manage my father’s funeral, receiving condolences from the Chancellor, dukes, generals, and others, while being busy with funeral preparations until late at night. I had no time to mourn my father’s death.
Even when I returned to the bedroom, I didn’t feel like holding Shiron or Ney and I just collapsed onto the bed.
Shiron, with a solemn look, carefully undressed me as I lay collapsed on the bed. Should I just leave changing to Shiron and fall asleep――as I was thinking that, a night-watch imperial guard reported a visitor from beyond the door with an apologetic tone.
I reflexively furrowed my brow.
I had told the Chancellor and other court officials that I was returning to the bedroom. This was the time when the Emperor who lost his father could finally be alone. Normally, even if there was business, it would be put off until tomorrow.
Besides, urgent matters should have mostly been dealt with already, so it was hard to think there was any business left that would require waking the Emperor in his bedroom.
Who in the world is this rude visitor, I thought, and when I tried to check the name, the door suddenly opened, and a noble lady with two serving girls strode into the bedroom.
Needless to say, entering the Emperor’s bedroom without permission is the height of disrespect. Probably Shiron is raising her eyebrows behind me.
Before I could even open my mouth, the noble lady raised her voice dramatically. “Oh, Arses! You must feel so terribly helpless losing your father. This mother shall comfort your heartache. Now, cry as much as you wish upon my chest!”
The moment I heard that, a chill ran down my spine.
If you look only at appearance, the noble lady before me has features that could be called beautiful. In addition, she had a body that seemed to push the “thinness” that is this country’s standard of beauty to the limit.
Would it make sense if I said she looks like a European female athlete at a figure skating competition?
Her limbs are long like a crane’s, and her waist especially is so thin you wonder, “Where do her organs fit?”
But her slightly upturned eyes and the way her voice gets shrill when her emotions run high are negative points for me. Why? Because they remind me of my past-life wife.
I let out a deliberately loud sigh before answering, “I appreciate your concern, Lady Perilla. But unfortunately, I’ve never considered you my mother, so I’ll decline the comfort. If that’s all you came for, please leave.”
When I responded coldly, the noble lady’s expression, which had been smiling until then, froze instantly, and from under the cracked mask, a condescending look down at me appeared.
Yes, yes, that expression suits you better――I laughed to myself inside while facing Perilla Lirgana, who had been my father’s secondary wife.
Trivia:
- Arses calling himself a puppet in the series title hints that his role as Emperor may be less powerful than it appears, and this chapter shows how he was born almost by accident and only became Emperor after his brothers destroyed each other.
- Empress Adelaide convincing the Emperor to bring Arses’s mother into the palace is the single reason Arses was born royal instead of a quasi-noble, meaning his entire imperial status depends on her kindness, which explains his unique respect for her.
- Perilla screaming plague goddess at the Empress connects to the epidemic that killed Arses’s mother, and her choice of insult hints she may have known about the mother’s death and used it as a weapon.
Translation Notes:
1 ↩ A special military unit in the Urgalia Empire. The source uses both the English term and the katakana reading, suggesting this is a known elite class of warriors, possibly with horns.
2 ↩ A reference to the Buddhist concept of the three fundamental cravings: food, sleep, and sex. The source treats this as common knowledge in this world.
3 ↩ A blessing phrase invoking a mother deity or founding figure named Urgal. The exact nature of this figure is not explained here, marking it as a culturally specific religious expression.