No Regression for the Victor - Chapter 51

However, like the Crown Prince, the nobles too had been born into this world with the right to enjoy all these things, and they believed it was his role not to treat as human those who, knowing no bounds, dared covet what was his, but to trample them without mercy.

Thus, the capital nobles who held posts as officials in the Imperial Palace judged it wise to side with the Crown Prince, if only to avoid provoking his temper.

Those who instead chose to support Mikhail Ivan Osbrandt were mostly the lords of the provinces. They were plagued every year by the endlessly multiplying monsters, no matter how often they were suppressed.

By imperial law, dungeon breaks below the fifth level were the responsibility of each region’s local lord to resolve. Yet not every territory possessed enough military strength to handle the monster problems within their own lands.

Every year they had to hire roving mercenaries to keep monsters from invading their villages. A fief lord who could not bear these costs would either become the vassal of a larger neighboring domain or be forced to sell his land and fall to the status of a title-only noble.

So it’s easy to imagine what it meant to them to have a prince who slew monsters for them without demanding any great reward.

Stories of the young yet strong and beautiful Second Prince, more dazzling than sunlight itself, spread from children’s lips like legend. At festivals in villages everywhere, tales were told of Prince Mikhail of Osbrandt, the Empire’s young hero. Count Progen of the grand domain of Delwyn had, in fact, long since begun honoring the Second Prince as nearly equal in status to the Crown Prince.

Thus stood the Second Prince, backed by the people and provincial lords, and the Crown Prince, supported by the capital nobles. The Emperor could not easily raise his hand for either side.

The Second Prince was a warrior of extraordinary might. Moreover, being one who could not abide being tied to one place, it was more reasonable for him to continue as he was now—helping his brother resolve crises across the Empire and serving as a grand general—than to sit upon the throne.

Yet the Emperor, though he had not often shared a bed with the Empress, had lived long as her partner and knew her nature better than anyone. She would never leave alone a seed of discord like the Second Prince.

Even now it was plain, save for her daughter, who was already infamous as the madwoman of the Empire, the other Imperial Family members had all perished in seemingly accidental but clearly engineered ‘misfortunes’.

It was only a matter of timing. Once the Crown Prince took the throne, she would stop at nothing to have the Second Prince killed. She had tried repeatedly to have him assassinated even when he showed no interest in succession, so how much more relentless would she be now that he had dared challenge the line of inheritance?

The ideal vision of the Crown Prince ascending the throne, later coming to his senses, casting off the Empress’s kin, and joining forces with his younger brother to govern the Empire… but that hope had long since become impossible.

In the end, the Emperor would have to choose one side. Would it be the pale scholar who knew only how to brandish the whip his mother and uncle had handed him while sheltered in her skirts, or the fighter who had grown up among mercenaries? Even the latter was not a reassuring heir.

It was well enough that the Second Prince had won the hearts of the people and provincial lords. But how could one seat as heir a raw, thunderbolt-like youth who had never been schooled as a sovereign, who hadn’t even properly mastered the etiquette of the Imperial Family? Could someone who had done nothing but fight with a sword survive the political arena, where dozens—hundreds—of serpents waited to devour a single careless opening? The Emperor could not be sure.

‘Haah…’

And yet, since matters had come to this, he had no choice but to take a side, and do so in a way all could accept.

After days of deliberation, the Emperor finally declared a trial to determine the merits of the Crown Prince and the Second Prince. The term would be one year. Because the imperial throne demanded both civil and martial excellence, the two would undergo tests set by the Emperor himself to decide which of them was truly fit to ascend as sovereign.