“Duke Sevensworth, you fiend! You’ve brought an impostor of my father?!”
In the midst of my recollection, the current king—no, the first prince—froze with surprise and began yelling.
“If you doubt his identity, why not ask him something only he would know? That goes for everyone else too. Please feel free to ask him anything you’d like,” I said in a calm voice.
The king wasn’t here by himself, though. The queen was here too. The nobles began nervously asking them questions about things that happened when they were in school and during private tea parties. Hearing their answers, the nobles began bowing to them with the highest level of formality.
The former crown prince, the fourth prince, and the dowager queen weren’t present. Neither the king nor the queen wanted to involve their children or their elderly mother, so as the people with the most responsibility on their shoulders, they’d come to handle this themselves.
“Now then, I think it should be obvious that we’re not impostors. I’ll give all the knights a chance to toss their weapons away. Do so, and I won’t brand you as traitors.”
Some of the knights showed hesitation, but ultimately, none of them dropped their weapons. It was only the queen, me, Ana, and Hans standing with the king, no guards or servants. In contrast, there were hundreds of royal guards around us. From any outside perspective, we were in a devastating position. Most likely, the knights who’d wavered had decided there was no benefit to following the true king now, while those who’d shown no hesitation were staunch supporters of the first prince and maybe had even been involved with the attempted assassination of the other royal family members.
“Don’t make me laugh! Knights, these are traitors to the crown trying to foment an insurrection! Kill Duke Sevensworth and the impostors immediately, but leave Lady Sevensworth alone. I won’t stand for a single scratch on her!”
You’re still trying to go after Ana?! You lowlife! I won’t forgive you! Up till now, the first prince had been observing the conversation between His Majesty and the nobles to see where their loyalties would fall, but he made his move after His Majesty failed to turn the knights. Judging from his expression, he was certain he’d come out on top, but he was sorely mistaken if he thought we were weaker. Lady Francess had likely told him that I was no longer able to summon golems, and thus, he thought he was safe from that threat.
Every last person who’d been sent to attack me and Ana had been captured and were being kept in the Sevensworth territory, meaning no one had been able to spread word of how powerful she was. I poured primordial mana into my ring and suddenly, four arachnes appeared and summoned a magic barrier that deflected magic and arrows.
“Eek! D-Demons!”
“Demons!!!”
“Oh no! They’ve come to destroy the world!”
As usual, the golems got a bad rap. The faces of all the knights went taut with fear while the nobles began screaming about how the end was nigh. There were some noble ladies who collapsed to the ground or even began crying.
By this point in time, I already had more than enough golems stocked in my mansion’s basement. I’d also been able to collect some of the ones that I’d lent my mother-in-law, as well as the ones I’d stationed at the fort.
As the golems protected us, Ana grew six wings of light and a radiant sphere enveloped her. In the next moment, every last noble was bound in what looked like a tube of light. They all fell to the floor along with the first prince, who was also bound. This magic not only took away the person’s physical strength but also their ability to cast their own magic. Though it was an advanced, college-level spell, I’d had Ana learn it just for today. It was already powerful, but when combined with Ana’s monstrous level of mana, it made it absolutely impossible for any of them to escape.
“What?! She’s the child of the gods!”
“Please bring us salvation!”
“Thank the gods! We’re saved! They haven’t abandoned us!”
The reception Ana got was the stark opposite of how my golems were treated. The nobles all prayed on their knees before Ana while begging her to defeat the alleged demons.
“Sir Gino! I did it!”
“Yeah, you did great; but of course you did. You’re my pride and joy!”
Ana smiled happily as I patted her on the head.
We all became very busy after that. In preparation for my arrival, the first prince had switched out a lot of the soldiers and knights in the palace for ones loyal to him, so I had our soldiers who’d been waiting outside, hidden by the Hartley clan, enter and capture all of them. Ana and the golems helped as well, and soon enough, the palace was once again His Majesty’s.
The nobles in the first prince’s faction were currently being rounded up across the kingdom as well. This was why my mother- and father-in-law had been so busy. They’d had to fool both their enemies and allies to determine who exactly was on their side and who was their enemy. The reason they’d stopped making public appearances was to stay under the radar and begin the preparations to sweep the entire first prince’s faction away in one fell swoop when the time came.
Of course, not all the preparations had been arranged so quickly. Take the family of the king’s concubine, for example—House Lefou. As a reward for approving the punishment toward House Florro for their bullying of Ana, House Sevensworth had helped to build a great ironworks in the Lefou territory. Many of the workers sent to help were also from our house and they became our secret plants, who now worked from the inside to do things like open the gates for our soldiers. My mother-in-law had been preparing many similar setups across the country for quite some time. When she revealed this all to me, I was once again reminded how big a difference there was in skill between us.
“I wanted to strengthen the king’s authority and bring stability to the country, but...it doesn’t seem like that’s possible,” the first prince muttered while blankly staring at the ceiling from the throne, where he was confined by tubes of light.
The fact that he said that in this situation showed how strongly he’d wanted a powerful royal family. If that was the case, it made sense why he’d try to assassinate His Majesty since the king had always relied on the strength of House Sevensworth to stabilize the country. If things continued as they were, our house would always be deeply intertwined with the royal family, and our power would continue to grow as well. The royal family would never be the strongest authority in the country. It seemed the first prince decided that he needed to get rid of us before we got too powerful, but for that to happen, he needed to first remove the current king, whose ties to the Sevensworths were too strong to be undone.
The first prince hadn’t simply stolen the throne out of pure greed. That wasn’t to say that his thirst for power hadn’t been a huge motivator, because it certainly had been—however, he had had his own vision for the country that he’d wanted to enact.
I was currently in the throne room as well. As a very large room with few exits, it was being used as a place to keep the important individuals locked up, and I’d been tasked with watching over them.
“Duke Sevensworth, from your perspective, was I lacking power? Was that where I went wrong?”
“No, I believe you were aptly powerful, Your Highness. Your ability to be unemotional, rational, and passionate about politics all made you perfectly qualified to be king.”
I could tell that he still hadn’t given up believing himself to be the king. That being said, I didn’t see him like that at all and I didn’t address him as such.
“Then why am I being removed from my throne?”
He’d pushed things too far. In order to sit on the throne that wasn’t his, he’d chosen the despicable route of assassinating his own family. That was why he was now paying the price. It took a lot of excruciating work to keep hold of something you obtained through unscrupulous methods.
The hate and anxiety from those around you would be like shackles, gradually becoming heavier and heavier. In fact, during his time as king, he’d been met with rebellion from both the fourth prince’s and the neutral factions, making his political authority unstable from every angle. Now he’d fallen to ruin from our family’s wrath. His greatest mistake was in trying to obtain something he was not fated to have.