”…Please don’t say such dismal things, Arses. I am King Sarion’s wife. You are King Sarion’s child, so you are my son, are you not?”
Perilla somehow kept her face composed while giving me a twitching smile.
She probably wants to win me over and grab the seat of Queen Mother. The Queen Mother is the Empress Dowager, meaning the Emperor’s mother, and in some cases she can hold enormous power as the Emperor’s guardian. Empress Dowager Cixi of China is probably the famous example.
Back when Julius and Garland were alive, she wouldn’t even spare me a sniff when I greeted her, and yet now listen to her talk――no, if I write it like that it sounds like I’m holding a grudge about being ignored, so let me correct that.
I’m not angry about being ignored by Perilla. If anything, I was grateful she ignored me.
As I said before, Perilla has a face similar to my wife from my past life, and looking at a face like that was nothing but painful for me. If she ignored me, I only had to give the bare minimum of courtesy in return.
So even after I became Emperor, I left Perilla alone, but it seems she saw my attitude and jumped to the conclusion that I didn’t care about the past.
The other party is an eleven-year-old child grieving over the loss of his father, so she must have thought that if she was a little kind to me, she could easily win me over.
I sigh on the inside. Talking at length was also a pain, so to hurry my so-called mother along and send her home, I threw out a short question.
”Does Lady Perilla know what I like to eat?” I asked.
”…Huh? What are you suddenly saying?” she asked.
”I am asking whether you know what I like. If you are a mother, shouldn’t you at least know your son’s favorite food?”
When I asked again, just as I expected, Perilla was at a loss for words.
She looked back at her ladies-in-waiting as if asking for help, but naturally they didn’t know the answer either and showed flustered faces.
I snorted out through my nose and shrugged like I was fed up.
”It’s a frozen sweet made from mog milk. Lady Adelaide would have answered right away,” I said.
A mog is a creature that lives in the Urga Mountains, just like the Horned Horse (Longa). If the Horned Horse (Longa) is the key to war for the Urgal People, then the mog is the key to daily life.
Mog milk is very rich and sweet, and it’s tasty whether you drink it as is or use it in cooking. And if you stir this milk slowly and then freeze it, you get a frozen sweet similar to vanilla ice cream from my past life.
Well, to be exact I think there are more steps involved, and what you get is ultimately only “something similar to vanilla ice cream,” The taste and texture can’t compare to Japan’s, but even so, I liked vanilla ice cream in my past life, so I liked eating mog frozen sweets.
Lady Adelaide and I often ate frozen sweets together, so if she heard what my favorite food was, she would have gotten it right away. Of course, there was no such history between me and Perilla, so she couldn’t possibly know.
Even after I became Emperor I still eat it now and then, so if she had looked into it even a little, Perilla and the two ladies-in-waiting should have known, but the fact that she hadn’t looked into even something this small showed how little interest she had in me.
When I gave Perilla a cold look, the daughter of the Marquis Lilgarna family made her shoulders tremble, and then, unable to bear it, she raised a shrill voice.
”Adelaide!? What of that dreadful woman!? Surely you do not intend to place that wretched creature upon the Queen Mother’s seat, Arses!? Is she not a woman of an enemy nation who cannot even bear children!” she screeched.
”Lady Perilla, watch your mouth. Lady Adelaide is the one my father named as Empress. Slandering Lady Adelaide is the same as slandering my father,” I said.
After scolding her like that, I twisted my lips in a nasty way and said with a poison no eleven-year-old child could ever produce.
”To begin with, it was Garland, the son you bore, who caused the ‘Night of the Three Princes’ Death (Lusha Gora)’. If not for that, my father would not have collapsed either. Before you slander Lady Adelaide, why not take a look at yourself?”
The “Night of the Three Princes’ Death” (Lusha Gora) is a phrase that refers to the incident in which the Empire lost Three Princes of the Empire in a single night.
The one who caused the incident was, as I just said, the Third Prince Garland.
Garland, who was utterly devoted to his older brother the Second Prince Julius, had long intensely hated the First Prince Dantario, who was Julius’s political enemy.
It is also said that Garland, who was confident in his own bravery, was warned by Dantario on a certain battlefield that “your courage is no more than the courage of a common brute. Try to look at the bigger picture,” and he held a grudge over it.
Even so, the reason Garland did not act was because his older brother Julius held back his violent younger brother.
For Julius too, Dantario’s existence was a thorn in his side, but he understood that removing Dantario by force would only leave a root of disaster for later rule. He must also have calculated that in the end, he, who had the support of the Noble Clans, would win, but including all that, Julius was a prince who could make rational judgments.
Garland, who at times even rebelled against his father Sarion and mother Perilla, was loyal only to Julius, so no blood was spilled in the conflict within Urgalia over the imperial throne.
――But on that night, things suddenly moved.
Garland took only the close aides he trusted and suddenly attacked his eldest brother Dantario. What moved Garland, now that the man himself is dead, no one can know.
And unfortunately for the Empire, this attack achieved the greatest possible result. Dantario was struck down by Garland.
What enraged people about this were the officers and soldiers who supported Dantario.
Dantario had no support from the Noble Clans, but instead was very popular with commoners and lower nobles. Dantario’s popularity in the military was especially high, and among young officers many believed that Dantario, firm and fair, was the one who would carry on the Founding Emperor’s great work.
When they learned of the attack, they rushed in a panic to Dantario’s side. But by then Dantario had already been struck down by Garland.
Those who learned of the First Prince’s death were first stunned, and then went mad with rage. Without anyone taking command, they all attacked Garland at once.
――At this time, it is not known why Garland stayed at the scene leading only a small number of soldiers.
Maybe he thought that if he struck down Dantario and his close aides, the other courtiers would quietly follow him, the Third Prince. Or maybe he was arrogant, thinking that with his own bravery, driving off the soldiers who came after would be no trouble at all.
Either one sounds likely for the rough Garland, but in the end Garland’s expectations were wrong, and the Third Prince was cut all over his body and killed by the enraged soldiers who supported Dantario.
The soldiers of the Dantario faction, their anger not yet cooled, decided that this whole thing was a scheme by the Second Prince Julius, and moved toward even more revenge. Knowing Garland’s usual words and behavior, they probably could not think of anything else.
――Still, it seems Julius was probably not involved in this matter.
If Julius had been the mastermind, then at the point Dantario was struck down, he would have eliminated the officers of the Dantario faction. Or there was also the option of executing Garland for the crime of killing his eldest brother.
As I said before, thinking about later rule, it would only be a disadvantage for Julius to be suspected of assassinating Dantario. After pinning all the crime on his younger brother, he could mourn Dantario’s death and hold a grand funeral. If he did that, the soldiers of the Dantario faction would not be able to openly complain.
But the action Julius actually took was only gathering information. Even if he sensed that a riot was breaking out, he had not grasped the details.
Naturally, he seems to have secured his own surroundings, but if he gathered soldiers clumsily before he understood the details of the riot, he could be misunderstood as the ringleader. That worry seems to have made Julius’s movements slower than ever.
Maybe he linked Garland’s absence with the outbreak of the riot and tried to avoid being seen as his younger brother’s accomplice.
That was when the enraged soldiers of the Dantario faction attacked. Julius was also a warrior of no small skill, but the force of the officers and soldiers burning for revenge for the First Prince was tremendous, and the Second Prince, praised for his brilliance, also lost his life in an instant.
――The above is the end of the civil war left in the Empire’s history known as the “Night of the Three Princes’ Death” (Lusha Gora).
Just in case, let me say this: there is absolutely no truth to the idea that I was involved behind the scenes or anything like that.
That night I was sleeping peacefully when Shiron woke me by pounding on me, and while I got myself ready so I could run away at any time, I was lamenting in my heart that my easy royal life was over now.
Putting that aside, if you had to blame one person for why the “Night of the Three Princes’ Death” (Lusha Gora) happened, it would be the Third Prince Garland.
If Garland had not gone out of control, that tragedy would not have happened.
And I think one of the reasons that drove Garland to kill his brother may have been the existence of his mother Perilla.
Perilla slandered Empress Adelaide and Dantario at every opportunity, and that reached even my ears as an outsider. Naturally, her son Garland must have heard his mother’s resentful grumbling even more often.
This is only a guess, but maybe he was also egged on with, “For your brother (Julius), remove Dantario.”
If this guess is correct, then it can also be seen that the “Night of the Three Princes’ Death” (Lusha Gora) happened because of Perilla――well, this is only a guess so I don’t intend to tell anyone, but even so, as Garland’s mother, Perilla cannot be unrelated to that tragedy.
When I heard that same Perilla slandering Lady Adelaide as “a woman of an enemy nation who cannot even bear children,” I could not stay silent.
That is exactly why I put poison in my voice and threw at Perilla, “Why not take a look at yourself?”
――Perilla’s reaction to my words was nothing.
Rather than ignoring me, she probably did not understand what had been said to her. She was blinking her eyes over and over.
After a little while, her face suddenly stiffened. And then she began trembling all over. It seems she finally understood what my words meant.
She suddenly screamed-or rather, snapped.
”Silence! You snot-nosed brat born from a lowly womb!”
Perilla, who roared in a high voice that stabbed at the eardrums, strode right up in front of me and then raised her right hand and slapped my cheek with all her strength.
Smack! A sound as good as in a comic rang through the bedroom.
After a moment, Shiron’s angry shout of “What are you doing to His Majesty, ma’am!” overlapped with the flustered screams of Perilla’s two ladies-in-waiting, and the imperial guards who had been watching the situation in confusion at the bedroom entrance rushed in in a panic and pinned Perilla down.
In the middle of this untimely chaos, as for what I, the person at the center of it, was doing, I had taken the blow that shook my vision straight on and was on my knees right there. Something hot dripped from my nose, wet my lips, and then ran down my chin and pattered onto the floor.
The color soaking the carpet was the color of blood. It seems Perilla’s blow had made my nose bleed.
Shiron immediately ran to me and hurriedly began treating me. While thanking Shiron, I was laughing to myself on the inside.
Perilla is the late Emperor’s consort and the daughter of a Noble Clan. It was obvious that if I made Lady Adelaide Queen Mother, she would raise a fuss.
Even if I tried to drive her out of the imperial palace to prevent that, she would surely dig in her heels and stay while waving around her status and position. For my part, I wanted a reason to expel Perilla from the imperial palace early and legally.
Perilla made that reason for me herself. She called the Emperor “a snot-nosed brat born from a lowly womb,” and on top of that slapped him. Even if she were cut down on the spot, she would be in no position to complain.
Duke Inselm and Marquis Lilgarna would probably plead for her life anyway, so even if I couldn’t execute her, it was more than enough as a reason to drive her out of the imperial palace.
――It was worth making that unfamiliar provocation.
While being held down by the imperial guards, I looked at Perilla still struggling and slightly lifted one corner of my lip.
Since I was holding my nosebleed, it probably did not look cool at all, but at that time I did not notice that.
And as a result of this incident dragging on and on, I also did not notice the future in which the eastern Noble Clans, led by Marquis Lilgarna, would raise a rebel flag against me with aid from the Kingdom of Kassia.
The busy first year of the Emperor was not even half over yet.
Trivia:
- Perilla’s face resembling Arses’s past-life wife is why he avoided her, which she mistook for indifference and used as an opening to try winning him over.
- Arses deliberately provoked Perilla into slapping him so he would have a legal reason to expel her from the imperial palace before she could oppose Althaide as Queen Mother.
- The eastern Noble Clans, led by Marquis Lilgarna, will later rebel against Arses with aid from the Kingdom of Kassia, and Arses did not see it coming.
Translation Notes:
1 ↩ A fictional beast unique to this world. The author invented the name, so it is kept as-is. The text also calls it a “milk cow” in the original, but this is a worldbuilding term, not a real animal.
2 ↩ A fictional war beast of the Urgal People, paired with the mog as the two pillars of Urgal life. The original glosses it as “Horned Horse.” The author invented the term, so it is kept as-is.
3 ↩ The original Japanese name of the tragedy is written with kanji meaning “Night of the Three Princes’ Death” and given the reading Lusha Gora. Both the translated meaning and the original reading are kept so readers can follow either usage.