“Marquis of Lagarea—no, Bruno Henckel. As Leorino said, we have a hypothesis regarding your birth. Was the treatment of your mother, Princess Marfa, by my grandfather, King Tyrone, the reason for your betrayal of our country?”
Sluggishly lifting his head, the Marquis of Lagarea did not answer Gravis’s question, but asked in a hoarse voice: “…How do you know that? I have erased the memories of so many people.”
“Princess Eleonora, Leorino’s grandmother, remembers what happened then, as told to her by King Tyrone’s queen. She told him there was once a princess from a small kingdom who was summoned to the palace of her brother King Tyrone and later given to his vassal.”
“What…? Lady Eleonora… Hah-hah, I couldn’t have predicted that…”
Then King Joachim, who had been watching the situation in silence until then, quietly stepped forward.
“I’m certain that’s not the only thing you have against the royal family.”
“Your Majesty…”
“The loss of my mother to my father must have contributed to your resentment.”
The Marquis of Lagarea glared at the two royals with his suddenly aged, sunken eyes glistening.
“…Your mother was a whore, Joachim.”
Hearing the marquis’s slander, August and Ginter yelled in anger.
“Bruno! How dare you…!”
“That’s no way to address His Majesty!”
The king, seemingly unoffended by the insult regarding his mother, locked gazes with the Marquis of Lagarea.
Gravis tried to stop him. “Brother, he’s dangerous.”
“It’s all right. What can a tied-up old man do now…Marquis of Lagarea? Let me hear what you really mean when you call my mother a whore.”
The Marquis of Lagarea hung his head.
“…That woman, Brigitte, promised me her future. Not formally, but in secret, we were engaged.”
So the rumors the headmaster told Ionia were true.
“I knew from an early age that the former Marquis of Lagarea was not my real father.”
The men were silent.
“But…I still thought myself lucky. My father had no choice but to recognize me as his heir. That way I could inherit his title… But then I developed this ability, so I took away my father’s memory to…to be his true successor.”
The men gasped at the old marquis’s confession.
“Until then, I had held out vain hopes. If my true father, King Tyrone, had known that my mother was pregnant with me, he might have taken her as his concubine. I consoled myself with this thought and lived my life. But…”
Lagarea’s old eyes flared with loathing.
“But King Tyrone knew of my mother’s pregnancy, and instead of making my mother his concubine, he gave her to my father with his own child in her womb.”
“Bruno…” August looked at his best friend with a pained gaze.
“…Which made my mother no better than a whore, slandered for opening her legs and getting pregnant with the first man she met…”
Leorino’s chest ached violently. When he looked up at Gravis, the man’s face was also stiff with anguish.
“My mother was not some loose woman who would deserve such treatment…,” the marquis went on. “Even in my childhood, she was a kind, tenderhearted, helpless woman. If she had been allowed to bloom in her northern lands, she would have been happy…but she was violently trampled on by Fanoren… By Tyrone!”
Gravis asked, “…How did you learn that my grandfather knew?”
“Hah! Thanks to your despicable father. King George knew I was his half brother, and he was kind enough to go out of his way to inform me of that.”
The Marquis of Lagarea looked into the distance.
“When we first met, during the Vow of Adulthood, he said to me: ‘You are the unblessed seed who sprouted in the north…the seed of my father.’”
His confession shocked everyone.
“He also told me why King Tyrone abandoned my mother. ‘A woman and her child from a country that wags its tail to Zwelf would be nothing but a source of strife.’ …Do you understand? After taking my mother as his concubine, he thought it would be too much trouble if Zwelf annexed her homeland.”
“No…”
“Yes! Can you imagine a more absurd reason?! …He got the cause and effect the wrong way around! If only King Tyrone had not abandoned my mother, her motherland would have chosen the path of annexation with Fanoren! That man blamed my mother’s birth for all the consequences of his own ugly desires!”
The Marquis of Lagarea pounded the floor with his fists. Over and over.
“…He reaped what he sowed. As a result, my mother’s country chose Zwelf. George also told me this: ‘You are a bastard who has no right to live as a nobleman in this country, let alone royalty.’ …How could there be such a difference between George—one year older than me and promised the path to kingship—and me—born out of wedlock, whose mother was treated like a whore…?!”
Leorino closed his eyes, unable to watch the old marquis’s resentful tears.
“If that was all there was to it…I would have retreated to the countryside. If that had been all…I would have nursed my grudges far away from the capital…but George was interested in Brigitte. She was the simple daughter of a minor nobleman from the countryside, and despite having just married his rightful queen of such illustrious lineage and beauty…that man became abnormally fixated on Brigitte.”
Men of the Fanoren family may be driven to madness in the face of love.
It was King Joachim who had once said so to Leorino.
“I loved Brigitte for her naïveté and lack of pretense, but she jumped from me to George as easily as a common whore! As if our relationship had never happened…!”