Chapter 70
Why the Emperor?
Wouldn’t this scandal have damaged the Emperor’s reputation as well?
It certainly had. The Imperial Family’s image had suffered so badly that the Emperor himself formally apologized to the Duke.
Even so, the youngest Imperial Prince had long been notorious as a shameless womanizer.
When the scandal first broke, most people’s reaction to learning that he was involved had simply been, Well, that sounds like him.
A scandal between the youngest Imperial Prince, a man who had never possessed any reputation to lose, and the Duchess of Spencer, who until then had been nothing more than an ordinary noblewoman.
The honor of the Spencer Ducal House suffered a devastating blow because of it.
And who stood to gain the most?
The Emperor, who had always been forced to weigh the Spencer Ducal House’s reaction whenever he made a political move.
After the scandal broke, the Duke of Spencer shut himself away in his estate for half a year, suspending all public activities while he dealt with the turmoil within his household.
During that time, the Emperor pushed through more new bills in the Imperial Council than ever before.
Once the hunt was over, the Emperor no longer had any use for his hunting dog. A troublesome son to begin with, he had no need for the youngest Imperial Prince once he had cast the Emperor’s most dangerous rival into the gutter.
Yet these claims remained nothing more than conspiracy theories because nearly all of them could be rebutted.
The claim that the Prince preferred mature older women was merely a distortion of the fact that he had a taste for married women. It simply wasn’t widely known that he had also courted women his own age and even younger.
If the Emperor had truly been trying to bring down the Duke, then why had he written to the Duke every single day during his seclusion, begging him to return? Why had he gone so far as to banish his own son from the capital forever, silencing him completely?
As for the unprecedented number of new bills the Emperor passed, that was only because the Duke, who normally kept the noble faction in check, was no longer there.
The Emperor’s faction was thrown into such disarray merely because the Duke withdrew from public life for a short time. If he were gone altogether, the one who would suffer the greatest loss would be the Emperor himself.
More importantly, if the Emperor had truly orchestrated such a scheme, then why had the Duke remained his staunchest supporter ever since?
And so on.
Even so, there were always people who believed the conspiracy theory. Every year, new believers would appear.
Why had no one ever been able to refute the part about the newspaper?
The Emperor’s apology had been nothing more than a performance.
Too many of the policies that benefited the Emperor had been passed to dismiss it as merely taking advantage of attacks from the noble faction.
Even now, twenty years after the scandal, those who believed the theory had never disappeared.
Of course, Abel had never cared in the slightest about such conspiracy theories.
The only reason he was recounting all of this at such length now was because the Commander of the Holy Knights happened to be one of those believers.
After parting ways with the Commander and returning to his room, Abel turned to Felix.
“Felix, have you heard that theory before?”
“I was aware that people said things like that.”
“And you didn’t know the Commander believed it?”
“…No.”
Then again, it was hardly the sort of thing one could bring up in front of other people.
Though, for something so difficult to speak of openly, the Commander had certainly voiced it with remarkable confidence in front of Abel.
“And on top of that, Gregory supposedly helped the Emperor.”
That Gregory had played a part in bringing about the affair between the Duchess and the youngest Imperial Prince.
“By the time the scandal broke, Gregory was already one of the three most influential figures in the Temple.”
Counting the years in his head, Abel narrowed his eyes.
“But what could Gregory possibly have gained by joining forces with the Emperor?”
What was there for Gregory to gain from bringing down the Spencer Ducal House?
In response to Abel’s question, Felix answered in a low, subdued voice.
“It would have given him a reason to cut off his family.”
Ah, I see. So he had been looking at it from the wrong angle.
“Because the scandal would have dealt a blow to the Duchess’s birth family as well?”
“I’ve heard they suffered even more than the Spencer Ducal House.”
That made sense. Between the Duke and the Emperor, the easier target would naturally have been the Duchess’s family.
“So Gregory abandoned the family that had served him so well, once he’d established himself in the Temple?”
On the assumption that he no longer needed the backing of his family.
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