The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 387 Tyrant (14) - Preparing for War As it turned out, Trisha's claim that they could provide fresh kindling to excite the people within a month was wrong. Unlike executions, where cutting off a head produced an immediately visible spectacle, something like bureaucratic reform needed considerably more time before the common people actually felt its effects and it was reflected in public opinion. Trisha had grown up always thinking it was unsightly to watch people (mainly a certain blood relative named Nikolaus) stubbornly insist they weren't wrong even when they clearly were, so in order not to become like them, she immediately admitted defeat. "I'm sorry, Duke Valencia. I was wrong. Please just consider it the nonsense of a kid who doesn't know how the world works, and forgive me." Trisha bowed her head and apologized with the utmost courtesy, which, for the one on the receiving end, only made it more infuriating. "....." Watching Duke Valencia unable to say a word, his lips only opening and closing uselessly, Beatrix privately pitied him. After all, if one looked closely, Trisha's apology this time was a perfect piece of deception. What made it especially vicious was that she had no intention whatsoever of deceiving herself. Sure enough, Duke Valencia creaked, "Kiik, kiik," like something broken. "...W-wrong? Forgive you?" It wasn't that Duke Valencia viewed the Emperor's reforms negatively because he was some stubborn, closed-minded old fogey. Of course, as the blue blood of a family with a long history, he wasn't entirely without a somewhat conservative and aristocratic bent, but for a duke, head of his house, he actually possessed a rather flexible and pragmatic way of thinking. So he had simply judged, "correctly," that the Emperor's reforms made no physical sense. Yes, correctly. To put it as an analogy, it's like how buying cheap land that's expected to keep rising in value and then putting up a building on it is a correct and rational investment. Even if a massive earthquake suddenly struck the area and ruined everything, you couldn't call the investor foolish for it. That's simply a natural disaster. The duke had judged correctly. It was just that the Emperor turned out to be something on the scale of a natural disaster. Realizing this fact anew, Beatrix felt a sense of unease. 'What if Trisha ends up getting hurt?' Since the Emperor hadn't separately designated an heir, Trisha currently still retained the position of Crown Princess. And the relationship between Trisha and the Emperor did look fairly good, too. But that was only because the Emperor had no other children of his own. What if, after the Emperor eventually had a child, he came to feel the Crown Princess was in the way? And decided to get rid of her? Was there any way to oppose that? Against that monstrous Emperor? Beatrix, the ruthless politician, told herself that in such a case, the best course would simply be to offer Trisha up as a sacrifice and grovel flat on the ground. But Beatrix the mother, rather than lose her daughter after already having lost her son— "Mom? Mother? Please, don't make that face." At the voice that came from below, Beatrix's train of thought was cut off. Her daughter, with her lovely, doll-like looks, smiled brightly and spoke to her mother. "It seems like the Dowager Empress has had her hands full with all sorts of things lately. His Majesty is keeping an eye on it in his own way, but wouldn't it be good in many respects if you went and helped her in person, Mother?" Beatrix was not a foolish woman. So she immediately grasped what her daughter was trying to say. "...Yes, I'll be sure to go and keep her company." "Yes, I think that would be good." The duke, who had been flustered for a while, also seemed to have somehow managed to pull himself together, and after clearing his throat, he asked Trisha. "Your Highness the Crown Princess. Then might you perhaps have some idea of what His Majesty intends to do next?" In fact, this was a matter that not just the duke but every minister and noble in the empire was curious about. An Emperor who had seized absolute power along with his own loyal faction. Just what was he going to do with that power? To this, the Crown Princess answered. "Preparing for war." *** To clarify in advance, it wasn't as if Alondre had come down with that time-honored ailment peculiar to emperors who seize absolute power — the "I want to color in the map and play land-grab" disease. Strictly speaking, even the phrase "preparing for war" was something of a joke. Because the empire was already in the midst of an invisible war. A room with just the Emperor and her, no one else. Staring at the map, Trisha let out a deep sigh. "Honestly, the more you dig into these people, the more there is to dig up. How could you let the continent get into this kind of state and just leave it alone?" On the world map Trisha originally remembered, the empire was the single power holding the most territory marked in its color. If you went purely by land area, the Liu Empire wasn't far behind either, but the empire was still narrowly larger. But the map of this world was different. There was a power that held more land than even the empire or the Liu Empire. "The Cardian Republic has gobbled up the entire central region...!!" Back in Trisha's childhood, the continent had seen a sensational event, one worthy of being recorded in the history books. The Cardian Republican revolution. It was the incident in which the commoners, having endured the corruption and exploitation of the royals and nobles for as long as they could, finally snapped — hanging or cutting off the heads of every one of their betters and declaring, "There will be no more monarchy in this country, ever again! Banished even from my heart!!" As was typical of monarchies, the Cardian Kingdom had been tied by blood to the other neighboring kingdoms, and those neighboring kingdoms — appalled that their own relatives had been massacred by lowly commoners (and, conveniently, also eyeing the chance to swallow up the kingdom under that pretext) — sent in their armies. A newly born, unstable political system. Multiple fronts, with every nation sharing a border being a hostile power. A vacuum of high-level talent left by the massacre of the noble factions who had held all manner of secret arts and mana cultivation methods. That the republic's fate was as good as a candle flickering in the wind was both the public opinion and the common sense of the time. But the republic did not fall. No, far from falling, it instead ground up every invading enemy that came at it and devoured them whole, achieving the monstrous feat of expanding the republic's own territory instead. Nathan Bort. The war hero who would later come to be called Premier made his name far and wide by smashing every piece of the old common sense and prejudice centered on knights and mages, and he overhauled the military completely as well. A republic that should have fallen by all rights had proudly come to claim its place among the great powers (though, predictably enough, it turned into a dictatorship in the process). Still, in the original history Trisha knew, the republic's revolution had ended right there, confined within the republic itself. Even without openly turning hostile, the empire had quietly kept it in check, and there was a fear that if the republic pursued a full-blown expansionist policy, the empire might enter the war in earnest. But here? "Are you an idiot? A fool? A moron? Those people are trampling through the central region, then the western region, one after another, smashing every royal house to pieces — and you just leave them be?!" The empire, by its very existence, was essentially the final boss of class-based hierarchy. Even if the Premier wielding dictatorial power had faded its ideology somewhat, at its core it was a republic that denied class hierarchy and professed equality and democracy — which made it hostile to the empire by nature from birth. Naturally, once the republic grew strong enough, the empire was bound to become its target sooner or later, yet Emperor Mihail and his close aides had simply left them alone, for no better reason than that the republic wasn't attacking the empire right away. As a result, all sorts of petty kingdoms across the central region were "revolutionized" by the republic one after another, and its territory had now grown even larger than the empire's own. Even so, it wasn't something to dismiss as mere victories against small, minor states. All the nations of the central region had banded together, centered around Ravelocia Kingdom with its own 6th Rank archmage, and fought back — and they'd been crushed utterly all the same. The Emperor gave a bitter smile as well. "That's right. In truth, the empire doesn't have much time left. Because the early containment failed, the republic has grown far too strong, and it's obvious to anyone that we're the next target they'll be aiming for." "The other great powers, hmm. They won't be of any help, will they." "The Liu Empire sits at the far eastern edge, so it's physically too far away. Hasht is nearly as distant as the Liu Empire, and on top of that, it's on bad terms with most of the continent's nations now, which don't believe in the gods." Neither of them bothered to bring up Omnium. Because it was a place that was perfectly harmless as long as you didn't go in — but if you did, you'd die, shot by an arrow. "At the latest, the enemy will invade within half a year. So, Trisha, I'm sorry. It seems the research into your return will have to be put off a little while longer." "No, it's fine, really. I'd feel uneasy about leaving right now anyway. I need to check on the state of 'the me from this side' — whether she'd actually come back into this body if I went back." If asked which was more precious to her, the mother from this side or her original mother, well, it would obviously be the latter. Still, Trisha didn't want to see this side's mother grieving over the loss of her daughter either, as much as she could help it. Nor did she want to see her losing to the republic and having her head cut off. "Then is military reform next? Given how rotten the top brass were, I'm sure the military's in just as much of a mess." "No, I'm planning to deal with something else before that." "Like what?" "Pacifying the provinces. From what I've seen, a number of territories where imperial influence is weak have effectively turned into warlord states, so I need to deal with that first." At the words the Emperor spoke so calmly, Trisha froze stiff like ice for a moment. And then she said. "Couldn't we just find a way to bring Mom along back to the original world together? Buy one, get one free on moms!" "...Were you seriously expecting me to say yes?" "Hmph."