The Empress Tames the Tyrant - Chapter 24

As the years passed, the nobles’ words held less sway in the Grand Council, and the Emperor began to assert his stubbornness. Moreover, he ordered a portion of the national treasury to be used for stabilizing the frontier territories, which was giving Duke Nigel a serious headache.

“I shall take a short recess.”

At the Emperor’s unilateral announcement, the nobles bowed and withdrew. Duke Nigel, unable to hide his resentment, immediately moved with quick steps to the largest reception room next to the audience chamber. Naturally, his faction followed the Duke.

“Duke, you endured well,”

Marquis Seil said, representing the faction, and offered a glass of water, but the Duke, unable to hide his flushed face, roughly knocked away the Marquis’s hand.

“Truly foolish!”

Clang! The glass shattered on the floor, but no one looked at it.

“It’s becoming more and more absurd every day!”

“Duke, you are absolutely right, but please lower your voice.”

“Ha! The people of the frontier, you say? They are merely lowly beings sent to expand the territory line in the first place. Just keep them alive and maintain the map of this empire.”

To Duke Nigel, such people were no different from livestock. Moreover, what noble would want to waste money on the people of the frontier, whom they didn’t even know and would never meet in their lives? For the Emperor, who wasn’t even a noble, to say such things was nothing short of a sign of doom.

“Until a few years ago, he didn’t pay any attention to state affairs, but starting two years ago, he arbitrarily decided on a budget to spend on the frontier. Who has been taking care of the empire all this time, yet he tries to lecture me!”

Signs that Cayenne would become an obstacle had been visible for several years. Especially after he came of age, his imposing presence became increasingly burdensome.

“Duke, calm yourself. He will be returning to Rubeo soon anyway.”

“Yes, it will only be a short while.”

As the Duke’s faction said, fortunately, he hadn’t been coming to the Imperial Palace because he was busy trying to turn that shabby Rubeo into a trading city, but it wouldn’t be like this forever.

“The late Emperor was troublesome in his youth, but that was only temporary. For the rest of his reign, he was a very ideal Emperor.”

To Duke Nigel, an ideal Emperor was one who didn’t pay attention to anything and just stayed cooped up in the Imperial Palace, lazily wasting time. The late Emperor, who had lost his mind after losing his wife, was exactly that kind of Emperor.

“But the situation is different now.”

Cayenne was too young. He had a long time left, and plenty of potential. More than anything, he had grown up much earlier than Duke Nigel had anticipated.

“I wonder how many years we can endure like this.”

He let out a troubled sigh.

“Five years, no, what if the Emperor tries to reclaim his ruling power even after three years?”

Duke Nigel, who held almost all the power in the empire as a regent, already believed that he was the only one who could lead the future of this empire.

“Not yet. Didn’t you see his awkward appearance in the formal attire today?”

Today, Cayenne repeatedly adjusted his posture, as if the formal attire was uncomfortable, and eventually unbuttoned his collar.

“Yes, he doesn’t suit the name of the Imperial Family, nor the position.”

Cayenne’s legitimacy was stronger than anyone else’s, but the fact that his father had abandoned the young prince was a rather ambiguous situation. More than anything, in the empire’s tradition of valuing refinement, an Emperor who still roamed the battlefields and engaged in slaughter was even more so.

“The era of warriors is already over. Such things are just old tales from when this empire was founded.”

Marquis Seil said calmly.

“Hmph, it seems the Emperor certainly inherited the blood of his ancestors.”

Duke Nigel, feeling a little relieved, sneered. He was referring to the ancestor who had supposedly founded this empire by wielding a sword at the forefront.

“Yes, I can endure this humiliation as much as necessary.”

The Duke regained his composure.

“However, we need to speed up our plan a little.”

As his lips twisted into a vile smile, the others nodded.

“The Emperor might have the strength to hold a knife to my throat in three years. But I won’t wait for him.”

Duke Nigel understood exactly what he was doing. It was the empire that the great late Emperor had entrusted to him directly. He couldn’t let Cayenne ruin all of this just because he was his son.

“Yes. Besides, mercenaries will soon be invading Rubeo, so he will have to leave the Imperial Palace in a hurry again.”

Marquis Seil twisted his lips.

“Mercenaries, you say? How would we know?”

The Duke patted Marquis Seil on the shoulder.

“If anyone heard that, they might misunderstand that we are creating the battle in Rubeo.”

“It was just a guess. But Rubeo will still have endless enemies, and three years will pass easily.”

The Duke nodded in satisfaction. Hiring mercenaries anonymously to plunder Rubeo, and supplying weapons and food to the barbarians who were always on the verge of annihilation, were all part of their scheme to keep the Emperor tied down in Rubeo from the beginning.

“Rubeo is a truly unfortunate land.”

It wasn’t that Cayenne was protecting the battlefield of Rubeo. It was because Cayenne was in Rubeo that the battlefield was created there. He wondered what kind of expressions the people of the barren Rubeo, whom the Emperor seemed to care so much about, would make if they knew this fact, but that pleasure would have to be postponed.

“Well, I need to prepare to return to the Grand Council. You have prepared all the materials I ordered, haven’t you?”

“Of course.”

Duke Nigel couldn’t dare to insult the Emperor’s authority, but he deliberately created professional and complex reports that he, who had not received formal education since childhood, could not possibly understand, embarrassing him.

“To not even understand the important matters of the empire, what is the difference between him and a commoner?”

“Fortunately, he can read and write, can’t he?”

“Well, for someone who grew up in the wasteland, it’s commendable.”

Pfft, Duke Nigel completely regained his composure and sneered.

The Duke intentionally reported even easy state affairs in a difficult way to mock Cayenne’s ignorance, and the culmination of that was the Grand Council like today, which happened once a year, so the Emperor’s pride, who had to keep listening to reports he couldn’t even understand, would be in tatters.

“In the end, he will realize how foolish he is and have no choice but to flee to Rubeo. He can receive as much praise as he wants for slaughter in that lowly land.”

No one in this room recognized Cayenne as the master of the empire. Not only that, but they regarded him as a being inferior to themselves and despised him inwardly. Even though he was the only successor of the late Emperor and his bloodline was noble, it was for the ridiculous reason that he had been abandoned by his father at the age of seven and lived a vulgar life.

The most miserable fact was that Cayenne had to live feeling that fact since he was a child.

❖ ❖ ❖

Drip, a drop of water fell from Alicia’s blue eyes, drawing a line on her cheek.

“How could such a thing?”

At first, she didn’t even realize she was crying, but when Emma kindly handed her a handkerchief, her eyes finally welled up.

“Didn’t anyone, didn’t anyone stop the late Emperor?”

Alicia’s clear voice was slightly choked with tears.

“Yes, the late Emperor at the time was so deeply heartbroken that he didn’t listen to anyone and couldn’t listen.”

Alicia knew Cayenne’s past roughly and thought there was nothing more to be surprised about. In the first place, the information Alicia wanted from Emma was about his tastes and interests.

“Seven years old, he was still just a child.”

“I couldn’t bear to look at it. The only one who stepped forward at that time was Count Hayer. He volunteered to go and protect the territory of Rubeo, which was a wasteland at the time, and under that pretext, he took the prince with him.”

Emma’s eyes were also teary at some point.

“The Count protected His Majesty the Emperor, not Rubeo. If it weren’t for him perhaps the late Emperor.”

Emma, unable to continue speaking, lowered her head. Alicia also knew that his childhood was not smooth. The fact that he didn’t even know proper dining etiquette, even though he was born a prince, was proof of that.

But, that young child was blamed for his mother’s death and even almost killed by his father!

” I didn’t know.”

“It’s not Her Majesty the Empress’s fault.”

Alicia had lived as Empress for 10 years in the past, but she didn’t know that he had suffered such a terrible fate when he was young. That matter was, so to speak, taboo.

And it was because she had never tried to know him like this before. It was the same in that they didn’t treat each other as husband and wife.

“The knight who is currently assisting His Majesty is the son of that Count Hayer. He was born in the same year as His Majesty the Emperor and grew up together.”

Glenn, the expressionless man who was always by his side, came to mind. Cayenne ignored the laws of the Imperial Palace and didn’t even bring attendants, which was often embarrassing, but he seemed to keep that much close to him without any reservations.

“And the late Count Hayer and I shared a secret.”

“A secret?”

Emma nodded slowly.

“Now that I have met Her Majesty the Empress in person today, I think I can finally tell you that secret.”

Dianne’s will was always a debt in Emma’s heart. No matter how strict the late Emperor’s orders were to seal the truth, wasn’t Cayenne’s situation too pitiful?

“His Majesty the Emperor doesn’t know why his mother passed away.”

“What?”

“No, to be exact, he knows it wrong. That was the late Emperor’s order.”

Alicia’s eyes widened. Seeing those watery blue eyes, a corner of Emma’s heart was relieved.

“It is true that she was struck by an assassin’s sword instead, but she was bedridden because her body was weakened by a miscarriage at the time. There is quite a time difference between that incident and Dianne’s death.”

“But…”

“The late Emperor may have wanted to relieve the guilt of the miscarriage. I can’t dare to guess, but perhaps he needed someone to blame for the death of his most beloved.”

Ha, Alicia unknowingly let out a sigh.

“Then, does His Majesty still know that she passed away because of him?”

“Yes, I am also a sinner for not conveying the will that Dianne left behind.”

The late Emperor, who suffered from madness, was a target of fear. After such a late Emperor died, Cayenne ascended to the throne, but he, who had spent a cruel childhood, was no longer the kind prince that Emma knew.

He had already forcibly covered up deep wounds, and no one dared to mention his parents. The fact that the chief of staff, who had first attempted that, was killed on the spot may have been the reason.

“That will can I hear it?”

It was something that even Cayenne, who should know that fact more than anyone else, didn’t know.

“Yes. I was afraid that this secret would be buried after I died. Until I met Her Majesty the Empress in person today.”

Emma had finally found someone to share the secret with. And she came to have a hope. That this beautiful woman before her would save Cayenne’s heart.