His mare, who had served the king almost as long as the butler, trotted slowly out of the back gate as soon as her riders were ready.
“We’re going to go a little faster.” The king held his son a little tighter and spurred his mare onwards.
When leaving by the castle’s rear entrance, there were no other buildings in sight. The capital was located in the southern part of the country, and further south past the capital was an expansive nature preserve, owned by the royal family and comprised of vast grassy fields, deep forests, and steep mountains that had towered over Gracis since its inception. It was a special land reserved for the royal family and those who were granted the king’s permission.
Solye had run his mare up a grassy hill that overlooked the castle and the entire capital behind it. The sun had already risen, and they could see the chimneys on houses down below puffing out smoke from what must have been the fires that cooked their breakfast.
“This is my favorite spot, you know. You’re only the second person I’ve ever brought up here, Herscherik.”
Solye climbed down from the horse and held up Herscherik, who had been immobilized on the saddle. His first horseback ride was bumpier than expected, and it had taken a toll on his rear end. Another ten minutes of that and Herscherik would have started crying for an entirely different reason. With her riders dismounted, the mare trotted some distance away and began munching on grass. Glancing at his horse, Solye sat on the ground, still holding Herscherik, and placed him on his lap.
“Hold on,” Solye said, then he uttered a string of words, as if he was singing. While those words were unintelligible to Herscherik, a gust of wind blew as if to answer a call, whirled around them to shake the grass, and swept off into the distance as Solye finished reciting them. Herscherik didn’t understand what had happened, but he at least understood that something had happened.
“...The first person I ever brought here was your mother, Hersch. What do you think she said on our first outing? ‘I’m starving! I should have brought lunch!’”
Herscherik didn’t understand why his father had suddenly started telling a story about his mother. On the other hand, Solye smiled in remembrance. To Herscherik, his father seemed different from his usual self, somehow, who had always had a gentle smile shaded with sorrow. Now, though, his smile was as clear as the cloudless sky. As Herscherik remained speechless, his father chuckled and looked over the castle illuminated by the morning light before beginning to tell a story in the same tone one might use for reading from a children’s storybook.
“...Let me tell you about a king...who’s just a puppet. It may seem like everyone admires and serves him, but he’s really nothing more than a marionette pulled by unseen strings.”
Herscherik didn’t ask who that king was, because he could easily tell that his father was talking about himself.
“That king was never supposed to be a king at all. He was studying things like farming and only wanted to help his father, the king at the time, and his older brothers. He studied hard, too. But one day, his father and brothers fell ill. And that left no one else to be king.
“At the tender age of ten, the king didn’t know a single thing about politics. That’s when a villain used the young king to take control of the country. Even after the young king became an adult, that villain tried to control the king as he pleased.
“At first, the king tried to fight the villains around him. For his country, for his family, and for his people... But the villains bested him.”
In contrast to his smile in remembrance of Herscherik’s mother, Solye was now expressionless. It was as if he was trying to prevent the pain of the past from hurting him again.
“Your oldest sibling, Hersch, was actually a sister. But she left us when her brother was still in their mother’s belly. The same illness that befell the king’s father and brothers had taken her to the Garden Above.”
“The same...?”
“Yes, the very illness. It only afflicts royalty. No one knows why. There had been no cases until a member of the royal family showed symptoms, and they never found a cure. We didn’t even have time to try and save her...” Solye tightly gripped the fist he wasn’t using to hold up Herscherik. “After she passed, he said to the king, ‘How unfortunate. Let’s hope the same fate doesn’t befall your next child.’”
His expression had flashed from tense neutrality to somewhere between anger and pain. Herscherik was already surprised by his father, who had only ever shown his gentle side so far, displaying any kind of negative emotion, but the story itself was astonishing in its own right. On the surface, the villain’s statement was a show of sympathy. Reading between the lines, though, one could see the suggestion that the same thing could happen again. Anyone with a little perception would have realized who it was that had pulled the strings to kill the king’s father, brothers, and firstborn. When Herscherik realized this, he could feel the blood drain from his face and chill in his veins.
How could anyone do such a thing...?
There was no proof. But Herscherik couldn’t entertain the possibility of his father lying to him. It helped that he had heard Ruseria’s story before this, too—not to mention Barbosse’s mocking, condescending expression. Herscherik’s intuition was right to judge the minister as a scoundrel on his first impression.
This is too cruel...
How could anyone be so cruel? Herscherik didn’t understand. He’d had a niece in his previous life. When Ryoko first met her, she immediately adored her and wanted to protect her unconditionally. Ryoko would have done the same for any other baby, too. Why would this man ever kill an infant? Herscherik didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know.
“...So, the king stopped fighting. He chose his family over his country and his people,” his father concluded, with a weak laugh. To Herscherik, it seemed like he was crying instead. “I resigned myself to being a marionette.”
Solye had no other choice. In order to protect his family and those dear to him, he had to do as Barbosse told him.
Barbosse was cunning. He had brought in wife after wife for Solye, to increase the number of hostages that chained him to the castle. The ladies knew nothing about any of this. They had no secret agenda or jaded outlook on their lives; they only came in hopes of supporting the king. That’s why Solye couldn’t reject them, and the villains seemed to have chosen those women specifically with those criteria in mind. If Solye had refused, they might have been killed, deemed useless as a hostage. Even though Solye knew he was only tightening his noose each time, he couldn’t refuse them. These women were no fools, either. Once they were in the royal quarters and understood their positions, they couldn’t do anything about it, for the same reason as Solye. Just as he wanted to protect his family, so did they. In order to protect each other, no one could fight back... Except for one queen.
“Herscherik, to tell you the truth, I didn’t think I’d marry your mother.”
She had been different. She alone laughed off her predicament and said to the dejected Solye, “Why would I need any other reason to be with the man I love? I’ll beat those cheap schemers back into the world of bad melodramas where they belong!” With that declaration, she fit right in to the royal quarters, cheered up the other wives, and loved their children like her own. Never bothered by the insults of the minister or other nobles, she often shut them down with her own words. She was a proud and kind woman undaunted by anything. But even she couldn’t contend with the power of nature. Leaving her child behind, she departed for the Garden Above. The only silver lining was that at least she didn’t fall to Barbosse’s schemes.
“So, Hersch, I will protect you. I’ve known I would since the moment you were born.”
...I didn’t realize.
Drawing on his memories of reading novels and playing video games in the fantasy genre during his previous life, Herscherik had always felt strange about his situation. Despite being a prince, Meria was the only one who ever took care of him. In any of those fantasy stories, a prince was always surrounded by various servants, workers, and men- and women-in-waiting. At first, he thought that they were trying to keep the expenses for their Seventh Prince low by only having Meria tend to him. Now, Herscherik understood that he had Meria alone by his side so it was easier for the king to keep an eye on any unwanted interactions. Moreover, his father had come to see him at various times of the day to make sure he was all right. Even if a nefarious figure were to bribe the workers of the royal quarters, they couldn’t so easily sneak in if they didn’t know when the king would be with Herscherik. If Solye was this thorough, Herscherik thought, he had probably restricted visitors, too. Unlike his brothers, Herscherik had no family on his mother’s side to protect him. If someone was going to use a prince to threaten the king, it was more likely that they would come for Herscherik, who posed the least risk.
Solye spoke to the speechless Herscherik, controlling his tone as if to suppress his emotions. “When he came up to us at the party last night, I thought maybe he could be the one to defeat that evil man... I had hope.” A short-lived hope. Even he was just another marionette dancing to the pull of Barbosse’s strings. “...I’m sure you’re disappointed that your father’s such a selfish king, Herscherik.”
After a moment, Herscherik shook his head.
If I was in your shoes, I think I would have done the same.
He would have protected his precious family before faceless strangers, too. Herscherik did understand that it was selfish for a king to do so. A king had to be devoid of self, the lonely top of the social pyramid. A king had the duty and responsibility to prioritize the country and its people over his beloved wife or his own children. He should take advantage of his family members in any way he could, then cut them off when they were no longer useful. In that sense, Solye did fail as a king. But as an individual, could anyone have accused him of being selfish? Sealing away his own emotions, suffering through humiliation all this time... If he was the patriarch of any other family, no one would have blamed him for his choices.