By the time I turned two, I was a lot more mobile, and I could get away with a lot more talking without raising any eyebrows. I stuck to two simple words or less, though—I didn’t want to risk outing myself.
Things had changed a lot for me recently: I was starting to get male visitors to my residence. Specifically, a geezer and a grandpa. Apparently the former was the Chancellor, while the latter was the Minister of Ceremony. Both used the excuse of “paying their respects” to try and win me over while trash-talking the other. Not much point trying that with a kid my age, if you asked me. Maybe they were trying to get me to imprint like a baby bird.
Anyhow, these two were the political heavyweights who held my life in their hands, each spearheading their opposing factions. Even the ladies who minded me were part of the conflict. Though I had twenty of them, I only ever saw ten at once, and they swapped each day. I suspected the two shifts each worked for separate factions.
I doubted they were crack agents, though, because they had recently taken to gossiping while I was playing. It was rude of them to slack off right in front of the emperor—and I wholeheartedly approved of it. Dish away, ladies!
For brevity’s sake, let me condense what I learned into a primer of sorts.
First, the geezer—er, I mean, the forty-ish looking guy with a medium build. As the Chancellor, he stood at the apex of the empire’s political scene. I know what you’re thinking: Shouldn’t it be the emperor at the top?
And you’d be right—on paper.
His name was Karl de Van-Raul—though he was also known as Duke Raul, or the Second Duke Raul—and basically the entire empire’s political sphere answered to him. To the Minister of Ceremony and his faction, Duke Raul was a fat cat plundering the empire to line his own pockets. I should note: We were family. To be exact, he was the eldest son of my great-grandfather’s younger brother. He was also the older brother of my deceased grandmother.
In other words, my grandparents—the previous emperor and his empress consort—were cousins. Fun fact: up until their marriage, the Empire had recognized consanguine marriage as a serious breach of the law.
Why did it become legal, you ask? Well, I can’t say for sure, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that Chancellor Karl’s little brother was the empire’s chief spiritual leader.
What, did you not get the message earlier when I said Duke Raul was a fat cat abusing his position? The more I heard about him, the more corrupt he seemed. Whatever, it wasn’t really my business.
Next came the grandpa—more accurately, the old man who insisted on playing the part of my grandpa: Phillip de Garde-Agincarl. Also known as Duke Agincarl or the Grand Duke, he was the Minister of Ceremony and another relative of mine. If I remembered right, he was the younger half brother (his mother was different) of my great-grandfather. More importantly, he was my mother’s father, which made him my actual grandfather. To the Chancellor’s faction, he was a schemer who manipulated the empress and invented new government positions to jam up the political process.
Case in point, all the positions he created were reserved for members of his faction. Naturally, their salaries came out of the empire’s treasury. Long story short, he was just as much of a vulture as the Chancellor was.
As for the power balance between their factions, the Chancellor’s faction currently had the upper hand, while the regency—yes, not the “Minister of Ceremony’s faction”—was losing ground. This was because the regent of said regency didn’t make public appearances.
For the unaware, a regent is someone who administers a state while a ruler is otherwise indisposed or not yet of age. The current regent of the Bundarte Empire was my mother, Acretia. While the most powerful individual in the empire was the Chancellor, on paper, the regent was second only to the emperor. But if the regent refused to leave her residence, it was no wonder the Chancellor’s faction was gaining in influence.
Why didn’t she make public appearances, you ask? Simple: because she was still grieving the recent loss of her child, who died of illness. While we’re on the topic of death, my father died before I was born. If that timeline sounds a bit jumbled to you, that’s because my esteemed mother has a lover, with whom she’d had her now-deceased child—while ignoring my existence entirely. Apparently, the affair had started while my father was still alive.
Not to be callous, but I didn’t think her child “dying of illness” was much of a surprise. The same couldn’t be said for Acretia, apparently; word on the street said she’d collapsed from shock at the news. Still, all I could think was, You know it’s probably your dad who did it, right? Throwing another possible heir into the struggle for succession only could’ve ended one way.
As you would expect, I didn’t have a warm feeling to spare for her, especially since I still remembered my mom from my previous life. The difference between them was like night and day. To be honest, I didn’t even want to call Acretia my mother.
Stepping back for a moment—you’ve got to figure it’s kind of catastrophic that the ladies-in-waiting know enough to gossip about this, yeah? Royal families have been disgraced for less. No doubt other countries knew about it too. Man, this empire really needed to get it together. If that was even possible...
Ah, I should also mention that my wet nurses had stopped coming by, since I didn’t need to be breastfed anymore. Since I was no longer an infant but a fully-fledged child, my care would be entrusted to the ladies-in-waiting from now on. Much had changed, including the fact that they could now touch me if necessary. Unlike my previous world, the line between child and infant was clearly drawn here.
Apparently, the wet nurses had been married noblewomen from the neutral bloc, which meant that their departure left me with even less breathing room.
“Neutral bloc” was a blanket term that referred to anybody not in the pocket of the Chancellor’s faction or the regency. There weren’t many of them, but they made up the majority of the imperial court and political body. Well, they used to.
Most of the neutral bloc were basically bureaucrats, and they tended to own no territory, though some had bits and pieces out in the sticks. In comparison, Dukes Raul and Agincarl were landed nobility, as you’d expect from their titles, and many of their lapdogs were too.
If I were to involve myself in politics, the neutral bloc would be my only potential allies. Since they owned no land, the collapse of the empire would mean the loss of their power. Their lives depended on a stable state. On the other hand, the landed nobility would be fine if the empire collapsed—they could simply swear fealty to another country or declare independence. Then again, more and more of the neutral bloc had been throwing in their lot with the Chancellor or the regency lately. Not a surprise, when the alternative was losing their positions.
If I couldn’t count on their help, then it was probably best to avoid politics entirely. The risk was simply too great.
Incidentally, my wet nurses had come from the neutral bloc because of the inherently fragile nature of the average infant in this era. If either faction had staffed my wet nurses with their own attendants, me dying—even from natural causes—would kick off a huge dispute over who’d screwed the pooch. And when it came time to pick the next emperor, the faction that looked most at fault would have a hard time installing their puppet.
In any case, with my wet nurses gone, all I had around me were the ladies-in-waiting, who were definitely in the pocket of one faction or the other. I felt surrounded by enemies.
Not that they were actively trying to spy on me or anything. I even felt a little bad for them—in the end, it was always the people in power who came out on top, while the rest of us had to obey. I couldn’t hold a grudge against the ladies-in-waiting when they probably never had a say in the matter.
The Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony, though? They could eat dirt. No decent person manipulated a kid, child emperor or not. Plus, I’d been your average prole in my previous life; I had no love for any of these swaggering aristocratic bloodsuckers.
I know that sounds rich, given the position I’d been reincarnated into, but honestly, being emperor really didn’t suit me. I’d much rather have been an up-and-coming adventurer making a name for himself.
Once I was old enough, maybe I would slip away and live as a commoner. If I had to spend my life sleeping with one eye open either way, I’d sooner do it living as a free man.
Still, if I wanted that, I’d have to learn more magic.