The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 375 Tyrant (2) - IF (E/N: For those unaware, 'IF' is kind of a generic terms in stories to represent 'Well, what IF that happened instead of the canon story...?') Tact, fundamentally, is a kind of intelligence. And in that regard, Trisha was a girl who had reached a certain level of mastery. The expression, eyes, breathing, and posture of the maid who had called her "Crown Princess," the structure of the bedroom that had somehow changed, and the fact that she herself had failed to notice any of these changes throughout her entire sleep. After putting all of this together, Trisha delivered the line that seemed most fitting for the situation. "You've got no sense of style. Here, you're supposed to answer with, 'Tch, how did you figure it out? My disguise should have been perfect!'" "Oh, ah." Only then did something like a sigh of relieved laughter spill from the maid's lips. "My apologies, Your Highness. I was too foolish to think that far ahead." "It's fine. It was just a passing whim." The calculator inside Trisha's head spun rapidly. 'I don't recognize this maid's face, yet she's acting as though she's known me for quite a long time.' 'The layout of the room is different from before I fell asleep. Whether I was the one who was moved, or I was left in place while the room itself was changed, I'm not dull enough to have slept through something like that without noticing at all.' 'Judging by the maid's attitude, attire, and complexion, her health doesn't seem bad, and she seems to hold some sense of familiarity toward me. Above all, the fact that she just let my remark slide as though it were nothing is worth noting.' Having finished sorting out the situation, Trisha simply entrusted her body to the maid. More precisely, by watching the maid's gaze and the path of her movements, she had deduced how she herself was supposed to move. It was right around the time she had just finished getting dressed. Knock, knock! — Your Highness, I've come because there is something urgent I must report. A knock sounded from outside the door, followed by a man's voice. After a brief silence, Trisha gazed steadily at the maid. Whatever she made of that look, the maid opened the door. At that, a man dressed as a knight entered, and he bowed his head to Trisha with an extremely courteous manner. "His Majesty wishes to dine together with Your Highness, and has ordered that you be brought to him as soon as you're ready. Please, let us go." Trisha took a moment to list, one by one, the many problems that had arisen in this brief span of time. First. No man other than a blood relative is permitted to set foot in the palace where a female member of the imperial family resides. Entering an imperial family member's bedroom, of all things, is entirely out of the question. Second. This man had just approached Trisha with a sword at his waist, boldly and without hesitation. Unless he was a knight personally appointed by that member of the imperial family, this was disrespect on a scale that warranted the extermination of his entire clan. Third. This man had just effectively issued a command to Trisha under the guise of a suggestion to "hurry and go." Even granting that this man had come under the Emperor's orders, the acceptable limit would be to announce the matter and relay the message — the authority to decide should, by rights, belong to Trisha herself. What this man had just done was borrow the Emperor's authority to treat a member of the imperial family — no, according to what these people were saying, the "Crown Princess" herself — as his equal or even his inferior. What did it matter if his voice, expression, or tone of speech were polite? His very conduct itself was the embodiment of disrespect. That a person like this could openly wander the palace invoking the Emperor's name, and that her mother Beatrix had let him live — both of these were far from normal. Trisha found herself half-convinced of a hypothesis she had only ever entertained in the back of her mind. — This was not the imperial palace she knew. But without revealing that conclusion on the outside at all, she simply gave a small nod. And so, after following behind him for some time. "Oho, come here, Trisha. My darling daughter." Watching the "Emperor," who sat at the head of the imperial dining table and welcomed her with such composure, Trisha thought to herself for a moment. 'Hmm. ...Who exactly is this person?' Trisha wasn't so heartless a person as to fail to recognize her own father, so the real Emperor was naturally ruled out. She had even considered whether the parents might be different in "this place," but at the very least, Trisha's own appearance, as she'd seen in the mirror earlier, was identical to the one she'd always known. Wasn't it strange, though, for the parents to have changed while the child's appearance stayed exactly the same? After agonizing over it for what felt like ages inside her head, though outwardly for less than two seconds, Trisha soon arrived at the answer. '...Uncle Mihail?' Just as Trisha had countless siblings like Alondre and Nikolaus, Trisha's father, Fried Wenli Eizern, also had brothers and sisters. Mihail was the one directly below Fried among them — in other words, her second uncle. In the original world, he had been a man with almost no presence at all. A man who lowered himself to the point of servility before the Emperor, and who, beneath a mask of affection toward his family, had always been reading the room around him. That very man was now sitting in the Emperor's seat, calling Trisha his daughter. Even as he was being waited upon with two women Trisha hardly even knew flanking him on either side. It was absurd. She had no idea what was going on, and confusion was unavoidable. But, to say it again, Trisha had sharp instincts. Without letting a single trace of negative emotion toward the "Emperor" before her show on her face, she smiled sweetly with a face like a fairy's. And having deduced what form of address and what attitude she ought to use toward him, she adopted whichever option seemed most likely to be correct. "Yes, Father. Good morning. I'm glad to see you looking so healthy again today!" "Haha, indeed. You're as pretty as ever, too. Don't you all think so?" "Of course, Your Majesty. That Her Highness is so clever and lovely is all thanks to Your Majesty's grace as well." "It's true. I almost want to ask her just how her skin stays so lovely, honestly." Behind Trisha's beaming smile, her gaze quietly examined and analyzed the two women's words and conduct. In words, they praised and showed Trisha respect. But in reality, emotions like jealousy, a sense of superiority, and derision showed through in their manner. The jealousy was probably about her looks. The sense of superiority and derision were probably about Trisha's circumstances. A country where the Emperor ate his meals flanked by women on either side, and where those mistresses had the nerve to look down on the Crown Princess herself. There seemed to be an awful lot to investigate, Trisha thought. *** Trisha had one small, trivial talent. First, she imagines that there's a piece of paper. And then, she imagines that there's a pen as well. She moves that imaginary pen to write something on the paper. Paper with content written on it this way always exists in a corner of her field of view, unless she separately decides to "get rid of it." If she touches it with her hand, she can feel the texture of the paper, and she's also able to unfold it to check its contents. Unless she specifically tries to erase it, the contents never disappear or change on their own. Of course, since this paper exists only within Trisha's own senses and perception, there's no risk of anyone else discovering it or catching a glimpse of its contents. To Trisha herself, it's nothing more than a convenient little trick that spares her the trouble of preparing or storing writing tools separately, but when she once mentioned it to the maid who had looked after her as a small child, the woman looked at her with something like fear in her eyes — so perhaps it's a talent that would be difficult for other people to manage. In any case, it's a useful skill for sorting out a situation like this one without leaving behind anything that could serve as physical evidence, so Trisha began organizing, in this imaginary notebook, the information she'd gathered over the past several days. ── ── ── ── ── [On the Strange World] It's a strange world. It seems similar to the reality I originally knew, yet different in all sorts of ways. At first I assumed I'd fallen victim to some prank by a Dream Demon-type devil or to some kind of hallucination magic, but since all ten of my self-administered mental health tests came back showing nothing abnormal, I'm now considering other possibilities. At present, the most likely explanation is something close to the "parallel worlds" dealt with in spatial magic theory. Further investigation is needed into why I ended up in a place like this, and what the way back might be. ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── [On How This Differs From the Original World] There are many differences, but among them, there's one thing that seems to be the most fundamental cause. Father died much too soon. Cause of death: sudden death from illness. Since even the eldest Crown Prince was only around six years old, his ascension to the throne was, understandably, problematic no matter how you looked at it, and the Crown Prince even had a "disqualifying condition" to boot. (I'll go into this disqualifying condition separately, later.) Over the question of a regency system, an acting-regent system, or the next succession to the throne, countless people voiced their own opinions and split into factions, and amid that chaos, Uncle Mihail seized the throne. ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── [On the Imperial Succession] Of course, it isn't normal for a younger brother to become the heir when the Emperor's own children are alive and well. But once the "elder statesman" within the imperial family took Uncle Mihail's side, and Uncle Mihail declared, "Once my elder brother's young children have grown up, I will hand the throne over to them," most of the ways the ministers had to check Uncle Mihail simply vanished. For someone outside the imperial family to stand against the imperial family, they likewise need to put forward a member of the imperial family — but the member of the imperial family who should have served as the rallying point was far too young, and since the uncle had even gone so far as to say he'd embrace them, the moral high ground slipped away. The problem was that Uncle Mihail had absolutely no intention of being satisfied with just that much. ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── ── [On the Position of Crown Princess] Having ascended the throne, the uncle cut down the talented people his elder brother — that is, Father — had cultivated, and planted his own people in their places. In the government that was supposed to assist the Emperor in running the nation, flatterers gradually increased in number, and those with real principles, whether by their own will or someone else's, left the palace or went into hiding. And then, the Second Prince, whom the uncle had taken as his own adopted son, died in a "riding accident." The Third Prince "missed a step on the stairs," the First Princess died of "food poisoning," and after that, there were countless other "unfortunate accidents" as well. Yes. When someone's true intentions are this transparent, that in itself is, in a way, a level of mastery all its own. The reason I survived is simple. Because my mother, who has currently gone down to the provinces to manage my maternal family's household affairs, serves as one of the leading figures of the anti-imperial faction, alongside Duke Valencia. In other words, my head is still attached to my shoulders only because people are wary of my mother, who put it on record that she'd fight to the death the moment anyone laid a hand on her daughter. The uncle was once nearly finished off entirely by my mother's hand in a political struggle within the imperial family, so he's quietly wary of her. On top of that, apparently the reason Mother couldn't finish off a fight she'd already won, and was instead pushed out of the imperial family to become a commoner, was that our dear brother Nikolaus fell for the uncle's scheme and betrayed Mother. That was a clever scheme, striking right at the one weakness of a mother who's ruthless about everything else but can't bring herself to be that way with her own children. Although the brother who fell for it is still the biggest moron among morons. Anyway, that's why, right now, I'm the only one of Father's children left alive and walking around in one piece. What a truly magnificent position, Crown Princess. No wonder everyone around treats it with such contempt. ── ── ── ── ── As Trisha kept steadily continuing her notes like that, she soon paused her pen for a moment before a certain entry. And then, with a small sigh, she soon resumed writing. ── ── ── ── ── [On Alondre Arcandel Eizern] Honestly, all throughout this process of investigation, I've been holding onto one single question. The question is, just what in the world had Brother Alondre been doing all this time. Of course, I understand that, logically speaking, it would be impossible for a young Crown Prince who lost his father at age six to stand against an uncle who was already a grown adult. But Brother Alondre was never a logical being to begin with, was he? But contrary to what I expected, no confrontation between Brother and the uncle ever took place. Even now, Brother Alondre is alive and well, living and breathing in the palace of the Empress— no, of "Dowager Empress Eleanor." He didn't submit. He wasn't defeated, either. There was simply never a fight to begin with. Honestly, this is a story I can't believe even the tiniest bit, not even so much as a single peppercorn's worth. — This world's Alondre Arcandel Eizern was born an idiot. ── ── ── ── ──