Alkan took the seat of White Minister in the year 1065 of the Royal Calendar at the age of twenty-nine.
Alkan worked hard as the head of House Riga and as the White Minister while carrying the burden of Riga’s past successes and failures. When he had just begun to think of retirement, an event occurred that suggested a major turning point in history was at hand.
The arrival of a hero.
The impetus of this event was the issue surrounding the investiture of the crown prince.
The king died the same year that Alkan became the White Minister. A year later, the new king ascended the throne at eighteen years old.
As was suggested by his posthumous name of Yuulala Eran, or the Sword King, the new king had a personality full of vigor. The Sword King was one of the founding king’s nicknames, so this posthumous name fit him exceptionally.
He had wed a consort before his enthronement, and a year after he became king, a son was born. He was the first prince.
There was a problem with the first prince—his maternal grandfather was a marquis who was starting to openly demonstrate ambition for expanding territory. The cabinet ministers were concerned about the influence of this marquis and were not enthusiastic about naming the first prince the crown prince.
The next year, Alkan’s daughter wed the king and became the second queen consort. Two years later, she birthed a son who became the second prince.
There was much argument over which prince should be named the crown prince, and much time passed without the issue being decided on. In the year 1096 of the Royal Calendar, the king turned forty-eight years old, and the investiture could not be delayed any further.
By that time, the first prince himself had become more of a problem than his maternal relatives due to his clear intention to use military might to expand the kingdom’s territory.
Alkan opened the Privy Council after thorough preparation. Normally Privy Council sessions would be performed with only the king, the cabinet ministers, and others related to the case present, but when it came to important matters, everyone above a certain rank participated.
Votes for the second prince numbered ten to one until the twenty-two-year-old Julius Mercurius overturned the course of events with the following statement.
“It is an ancient tradition that the eldest son inherits the house. Does that not apply to the kingdom as well?”
No one took this worse than Alkan’s eldest son, Garrest. He felt a deep sense of anger toward Julius for trampling on Alkan’s carefully laid plans.
Garrest was then approached by the Baron of Paulo to ask if he wanted to attack House Mercurius together.
The head of House Nadal had changed twice since the house returned to the Baldemost Kingdom and had its territory renamed as the baron’s domain of Paulo. Bolan was thirty-four years old at the time. He was a childhood friend of the thirty-eight-year-old Garrest.
House Nadal was a house of superior military strength, but for a while after returning to Baldemost, they didn’t get a chance to show that. Eventually, however, the king became assertive when it came to suppression within the country, and House Nadal was given a big stage on which to flourish.
There were many forces throughout the expansive kingdom that were not obeying the king’s rule. The Baron of Paulo had been accepting royal orders and putting down one rebellious influence after another.
When Bolan inherited the house, Garrest began to frequently act with him.
Bolan was perfectly okay with financing his missions himself as long as he had a moral cause and stage on which to make a name for himself, and he even set out on expeditions far from his own domain that wouldn’t gain him any profit. His knights were unrivaled in their strength, and his achievements far outpaced anyone else’s.
By the time Bolan’s military fame had resounded throughout the country, Julius Mercurius appeared like a comet.
In the year 1088 of the Royal Calendar, various forces that had been driven from the country joined hands with the barbarians of Jami Forest and tried to attack the royal palace with an army of twenty thousand. At the young age of fourteen, Julius gathered two thousand soldiers and enlisted the help of six S-rank adventurers and laid out a defense camp in the town of Micaene in just two days. He then took advantage of the enemy’s weak coordination, killed two commanders, and halted the enemy army’s advance for a whole week. The lords then finally amassed their troops and exterminated the enemy.
With this battle, the kingdom drew much closer to total suppression.
Afterward, the king used Julius for many important jobs, and the boy continued to live up to expectations.
The baron’s domain of Paulo was far from the royal capital. House Mercurius was located within the royal capital. The lords weren’t thrilled with the Baron of Paulo’s army passing through, so naturally, royal commands for subjugation began to more often fall to House Mercurius.
Over time, Bolan was filled with a deep desire to challenge the military might of this great fourteen-year-old commander who regularly routed armies larger than his own.
When Alkan was told by Bolan that he was going to attack the Mercurius estate in the royal capital and then told by Garrest that afterward they would enter the royal palace and pressure the king into crowning the second prince, he was shocked by the radicalism of their plan.
“When are you going to attack?”
“In the middle of the harvest festival, of course. That way we’ll have the attention of the entire country.”
That was an answer he never would have expected. But once he gave it some thought, he realized it wasn’t such a bad idea.
There would be no one in the labyrinth on the day of the harvest festival, so he could devise a means to send that hindrance Panzel to his death.
The chief vassal Pan’ja Raban was old and bedridden.
Most importantly, despite the fact that this plot was equivalent to treason, he felt no maliciousness in Bolan’s words.
This might work.
Alkan then reached a point where he could no longer turn back.
He had been overly thorough with his preparations, and as a result, the actions of the second prince’s faction reached a larger scale and became more radical than he’d expected. The first prince being named the crown prince would be a crushing defeat for House Riga and its sympathizers. Mass political confusion would likely ensue. If wars then began to be waged to gain territory with no moral cause, it would likely spell the kingdom’s ruin.
But House Riga would be throwing away its pride if it used force to make the king abdicate and place the second prince, Alkan’s own grandson, on the throne. They could not afford to lose the struggle over the investiture of the crown prince, but they could not afford to steal the country, either.
All right!
Alkan made up his mind.
First we will defeat Mercurius. We will defeat them and send Julius through the gates of hell. Then we will gain control over the royal palace. But we won’t steal it. We will negotiate directly with the first prince and get him to abandon hopes of a foreign campaign. We should be able to break the first prince’s heart with the death of Julius. Only then will we crown the first prince. I will apologize for my crimes with my death. Then House Riga should be safe in Garrest’s hands.
The plot moved forward, and then the day arrived.
The only people who knew of the plan to send soldiers to the royal palace after defeating House Mercurius were Alkan, Garrest, Bolan, and a number of Garrest’s closest aides. Alkan would take care of everything after they occupied the royal palace.
Bolan marched his soldiers into Pantram Square, which was lively with exhibitions, stalls, and crowds of people, and called out the following.
“Listen up! I am Baron Bolan of Paulo! I have led my northern warriors here today to cross swords with the renowned young general of this kingdom, Julius Mercurius. My observer is Lord Garrest of House Riga. Let us have an honest contest of military strength!”
The crowd then grew very lively, vacated the square, climbed up onto nearby buildings, and shouted cheers of encouragement for the Northern Knights marching on House Mercurius’s residence. That was a good indicator of how charismatic a general Bolan was.
A delighted Alkan roared with laughter when he received this report in his villa in the royal capital. He then felt relief at the steady stream of reports saying that House Mercurius was having to devote all its resources just to defend themselves against the Northern Knights.
Everything was going according to plan.
But when he next received a report that the knight Panzel had returned, invaded their camp by himself, and taken Garrest’s head, he felt as if his world had been flipped upside down.
This report might have meant the ruin of all his plans, but Alkan felt strangely moved.
A hero might have just arrived.