The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#369 Ghost Sirius (9) - Many Things Gather Around a Gorgeous Flower Seria Rinkle had gained tremendous inspiration through the dream-stage and poured it into her work. But not every artist in the Empire had been able to do the same. In a way, it was only natural — dreams are inherently volatile by nature. Even if vivid while dreaming, the moment one wakes, the contents fade from the mind moment by moment. If that held true even for dreams occurring naturally without any special magical intervention, how much more so for a dream to which Lucidra had deliberately added a forgetting effect, in line with her secret pact(?) with the Crown Prince. Still, Seria had at least the image of "a male servant and a noble young lady's regret-ridden, devoted obsession" linger with her, and she'd applied it to the series she'd already been writing — but most artists, despite gaining deep inspiration within the dream, couldn't recall its contents once outside it. Formoski, a master fairly well-known in the field of chivalric literature, was one such person. "Damn it, I feel like I came up with some incredibly good material……!!" He couldn't remember the details at all. But the sensation of having felt, "Oh, this is good," remained vividly with him. Yet it still wouldn't come back to him. But it was definitely good…!! "AAAAAARGH!!" Thud! Thud! Thud! His wife watched, shaking her head, as Formoski repeatedly slammed his head against his desk from excessive stress. She did feel bad for him, but she wasn't particularly worried. After all, a writer was, at heart, always crazy to some degree — the only question was whether it was 1% crazy or 99% crazy. A madman acting like a madman was hardly anything surprising. "Instead of groaning away at your desk like that, why don't you get out and move around a bit?" "Right now, I can't do anything unless I resolve this nagging feeling." "That's exactly why you should move around more. Memories tend not to surface when you're fixated on one thing, but pop up out of nowhere when you're doing something else, don't they? And even if that doesn't happen, you might pick up some other material." "Hmmm." Formoski pondered for a moment, but soon nodded with a sigh. Even in his own opinion, his wife's words weren't far off the mark. The place his wife took Formoski to was the Astraea Theater in the imperial capital. "You wanted to see a play?" Formoski's face scrunched up instantly. "Honey. Theater is a decadent culture. If people get absorbed in this sort of thing, they drift away from books and grow dull-witted. A person ought to—" His wife didn't bother with a long, pedantic, tedious rebuttal about how novels, too, used to be treated as a decadent culture. "Shall we bathe together tonight?" "—A person ought to actively embrace new culture!!" Formoski capitulated instantly. "Hmph." His wife's eyes turned slightly cold at his overly swift surrender, but unfortunately, Formoski, hurriedly making his way to the theater, failed to notice. 'Hm?' And then Formoski felt a strange sense of unease. For some reason, the theater felt strangely familiar to him. Even though he was normally someone who wouldn't even glance at a play, so there was no reason the theater should feel familiar. "What are you doing? We need to take our seats." "Ah, um. Right." To be honest, Formoski didn't remember much of the play that followed. It wasn't that he'd dozed off. Nor was the play so terrible that his brain refused to retain it. No, if anything, even to Formoski, who had little experience with theater, it was quite an excellent play. To be honest, the story itself, dealing with a romantic entanglement between a man and a woman, was ordinary and clichéd, but far beyond that, the actress's performance was overwhelming. His wife seemed to feel much the same, murmuring in admiration in a voice so low it was barely audible to those around them. "Oh my…. Actress Stella. She was always skilled, but now she's really hit her stride." "…Is that so?" She was certainly outstanding. But couldn't she do a bit more than this? At the thought that surfaced in his mind, Formoski himself grew puzzled. Why would he, who knew nothing about theater, harbor opinions about whether an actress he was seeing for the first time today could do better or not? But even as he reasoned this way rationally, his feelings kept spinning out new thoughts. That actress, Stella, could definitely do better. Right now, she was merely holding back so the male actor playing opposite her could keep up. The scenario wasn't like this either. There had definitely been something more interesting and thrilling. Throughout the play, such emotions of unknown origin kept surging up wildly from deep within him, so the actual content of the play itself became a secondary concern. But if asked whether the ticket price felt wasted, or whether it would have been better to just stay home, the answer, without question, was no. After the play ended. Formoski's expression, looking as if he were possessed by something even after leaving the theater, proved as much. "Honey, are you all right? Why are you so out of it?" "…A thief." "What?" "A strange bandit, no, a thief. Not one after gold and treasure for their own sake, but a criminal with a certain aesthetic. And a woman chasing him, hm, a soldier? No, no, it has to be a knight." As though possessed by something, Formoski began scribbling down in his notebook whatever "inspiration" had surfaced in his mind. From his wife's perspective, it was something that could only make her tilt her head in confusion. After all, the play had been a romantic drama — so why on earth was a story about a bandit suddenly coming out of him? She had no way of guessing that her husband had already watched, in a dream, a play featuring Stella, and that the contents, mingled into his subconscious, had burst out in the form of inspiration upon seeing Stella's performance again. "Hmm, yes. A lady knight! A story of pursuit between an extremely rigid, frustratingly stubborn, but precisely because of that, upright lady knight, and a criminal with an aesthetic all his own!!" Since the forgotten content had dissolved into his subconscious and been dredged back up, it naturally differed considerably from the original. So much so that if Lucidra or the Crown Prince, who knew the full story, saw it, they'd be able to tell exactly how which parts had been altered, but an outsider unaware of the circumstances would simply mistake it for an entirely separate story that merely shared a similar flow or some elements. And that alone was enough. At the very least, Formoski — no, everyone in the arts who had watched the dream-stage and then witnessed Stella's performance again in reality — had, without exception, gained new inspiration. One composer turned into music a story of a witch, her hands stained with vice, who repents after the death of a musician with a pure heart. One sculptor carved a cat, and though it took the form of a terrifying monster, it gained fame for somehow making viewers feel a sense of sorrow. Such things kept happening, one after another. *** Stella Rosenberg is famous. Stella Rosenberg is not famous. It might sound like some kind of wordplay, but both were true. Within the "Empire's theater industry," Stella was the undisputed number one — the finest talent who had already proven her skill long ago. But looking at the Empire as a whole, Stella wasn't all that famous. To begin with, due to the previous emperors' disregard for — or outright suppression of — culture, the Empire's cultural industry hadn't developed nearly as much as its overwhelming national scale would suggest, and even what had developed prioritized fields like architecture, sculpture, and painting. Separate from Stella's own high standing within the theater industry, the status and recognition of theater as a field in itself was ambiguous, so Stella's own name recognition ended up stuck at a level where only those in the field, or those interested in it, knew her. It could be compared to how an averagely skilled player in a popular sport has far greater name recognition than the undisputed top player in an unpopular one. But this time was different. Because people from other industries, not insiders of the theater world, had watched Stella's play, gained inspiration, and created works of their own. "Isn't this just a simple coincidence? Or perhaps, with people around them saying it has some effect, they mistakenly credited the play for something they actually thought up through their own ability." "If it were one or two people, or even five or six, that logic might explain it. But when dozens upon dozens of talents working in the Empire's cultural sphere have all given similar testimony, we have no choice but to consider it a genuine effect." "Isn't this just another one of those trends that always crop up? It's common enough for everyone to jump on a subject once it suddenly becomes popular." "That would be hard to argue, given that those who received inspiration work in entirely different fields, and their subjects are all different too. To begin with, the stories these people came up with after watching the play bear little relation to the content of the play itself." Some praised it, some doubted it, and some defended it. A remark from Jean Deverg Salvastian, the former Imperial Minister of Culture who had once published a critique concerning Stella, poured further fuel on this trend. "This is an effect brought about by the empathy inherent in people. Art that surpasses a certain threshold, regardless of its field, holds the power to awaken the spiritual sensitivity of those who behold it. Those who witnessed Stella Rosenberg's performance achieved inner growth, as if drawn along by her mastery." "Ohh!" It was an interpretation far from the correct answer, but criticism, by nature, always mattered more for the interpretation than the actual fact, and more for the messenger than the message. (E/N: Not 100% sure about this translation, I think there is an idiom I'm missing) Since a master of high renown in the Empire's cultural world had stamped his certification declaring, "That actress's performance is at such a lofty level that it is opening the eyes of all who watch it!", not only those in the industry but even people who normally had little interest in theater flocked to the theater to see Stella perform. Stella's already-high value and standing within the industry soared even higher, and her name began to circulate even in high society circles frequented by haughty nobles and high-ranking officials. The number of guests visiting the Astraea Theater grew day by day, and while some watched only once and never returned, others developed an interest in theater as a field in its own right, taking interest even in performances beyond the ones featuring Stella. Stella's very existence had reached the point of expanding the entire pie of the theater industry itself. From the standpoint of reviving the cultural industry, this was as favorable a development as could possibly be. But as with all things in this world, attention wasn't always a purely positive thing. "This… could turn quite a profit, don't you think?" "Seems like the theater's been drawing a huge crowd lately. Even just slipping in the right advertising could be worth expecting results from." "From what I've seen, prestigious mage families and knightly houses have quietly been showing interest too. That 'inspiration,' in other words, falls in the same vein as a flash of insight or an epiphany — and apparently that kind of thing matters for advancing one's rank, even for those who aren't in the arts." "There are quite a few voices saying they'd rather not watch crammed into a cramped theater with ordinary guests, but invite her to their own homes and watch her at their leisure, again and again." "The theater's owner is listed as the Imperial Arts Association. If we try to use this commercially, won't those people kick up a fuss about it?" "Ah, come on, people who go on about art and whatnot love money even more, in the end. Sure, there might be a few stubborn types, but the Association itself isn't so much one powerful, unified force as it is more like a club, so we can steer the mood however we like well enough." "What about that actress, Stella or whatever her name is? If she's got strong backing, handling her wrong could turn into a real problem." "She's a noble, but not one from a house with any particularly strong influence or power." "You're not judging this just by her title and the size of her territory, are you? It'd be a real headache if some family member happened to be, say, 6th Rank or something." "No, no, nothing like that. A noble in name only, barely any different from a commoner. No background in central politics. If anything, does it help to know that Stella herself is the one sending money back to support her own family?" A talent capable of generating enormous influence and wealth. And yet, aside from her artistic reputation, she had no proper social foundation or force of arms to protect herself. Somewhere in a private chamber, the calculators of sinister financiers began turning. It wasn't really a big problem. Culture and art, after all, could never win against capital and power. (E/N: Will we get a redo of Miss K?)