In a Political Marriage, Isn’t It Normal to Treat Your Fiancée Well? - Chapter 19

“Damn those Seljuks!”

“It’s their fault, Father! We should protest!!”

“I wish we could but the Seljuk boy is in the king’s good graces. If we protest carelessly, we’ll be the ones who look bad.”

“Tch!”

“Besides, it’s their road they improved. We can’t complain about that!”

“Ah! How infuriating!”

“Damn it!”

All I could hear were my father and brother cursing Lord Arslan.

Why did they hate him so much? I couldn’t understand.

Later, I asked my mother, who told me it was because communications between Hart County and Seljuk March had been cut off.

As a result of the severed relations, we could no longer receive the benefits we had been getting from Seljuk March until then.

“If that was all, it would have been fine.”

“Is there something else?”

“Several years ago, the Seljuk March improved the wetlands in their territory. They poured an enormous amount of money into it.”

“I’ve heard about that.”

I remembered my brother speaking about it at the time as if it were utterly foolish.

He called it “a waste of money.”

“What an eccentric man. To think he’s the next margrave – it’s laughable,” and “What’s the point of road improvements? Is it really a project worth spending such huge sums on?” I still clearly remember how he mocked it.

He even made it a joke among his friends.

“But those road improvements weren’t wasted.”

“Eh?”

“You see, thanks to those improved roads, Seljuk territory has flourished with trade from other countries.”

“…What? What do you mean?”

I didn’t understand.

How could that lead to increased interaction? My mother answered my question.

“Seljuk March shares borders with other countries. By improving the wetlands, trade with those countries became easier. Now it’s become a trading hub. Merchants are flocking to Seljuk March in droves.”

Sighing, my mother murmured, “I’m jealous.”

“Those road improvements weren’t wasted. Rather, they were a great success. Seljuk March has prospered. But none of those benefits came to us. Of course not. After all, we have no relationship anymore. We’re just strangers whose territories happen to be adjacent. At most, we’re acquaintances who had some interaction in the past.”

“Eh?”

“The reason our county family had interactions with the Seljuk March family was because we jointly managed the gold mine. Once that ended, the interactions stopped too. There was never any personal relationship between us.”

“…”

“Thanks to the road improvements, the Seljuk March family has prospered. But we’re different.”

“Mother…”

“Just between us, the time when we had joint management with the Seljuk March family might have been the best. Even though we gained the gold mine rights, we’re getting more complaints from the mine workers. Reports of workers getting injured during work, having accidents… that’s all I hear now. Perhaps it was a mistake to leave all that to the Seljuk March family before. Managing our own workers was supposed to be our responsibility.”

“Eh? But wasn’t that the Seljuk March family’s job?”

“No, of course not. The people they hired were managed by them. But we didn’t need to manage the gold miners we hired. Our fathers-in-law were close, weren’t they? We handled things quite loosely. Now the gold miners are complaining terribly. Ah… if only we had maintained the joint management this wouldn’t have happened.”

Saying this, my mother let out a deep sigh.

I understood that something tremendously difficult was happening. And that Lord Arslan’s territory was prospering.

Every time I returned to my parents’ home, I ended up hearing my father and brother’s angry shouts, and each time I had to listen to my mother’s complaints too.

Even so, I couldn’t stop returning to my parents’ home because I had no place in the ducal household I married into.

That time too, I had returned to my parents’ home for a visit.