Chapter 190: Civil War Had Become Unavoidable

"Brother! What are you thinking so hard about?"

"...What am I supposed to do with you?"

I’d been mulling over the love triangle involving Vermeer and Clara, but I gave up.

Stop shoving your face so close to mine, seriously.

She acted all prim and proper in front of Marquis Offenburg, yet showed her true colors without restraint around me, which caught me off guard sometimes. It seemed Lily was genuinely as comfortable with me as she’d be with a real older brother. Even though we were the same age.

Both her parents had passed away and the Marquis had raised her, so I could understand the attachment issues, but I really wished she’d break the habit of suddenly pressing her face right up against a man’s.

When I covered her face with my palm and pushed her away, she whined and flailed.

The Crown Prince had a rather uptight side, so he probably wouldn’t appreciate behavior like this.

Not that Lily cared. She did whatever she wanted here.

She wasn’t some foal let loose from its lead.

Starting with the rose garden, Rosengarden’s pride and joy, and continuing all the way to the secret passages connected to the underground sewers, she dragged Bodo around exploring every nook and cranny. Assigning Bodo to her had definitely been the right call.

Because it meant I was comparatively less exhausted.

Bodo, on the other hand, was sobbing and begging for mercy.

The first thing I did after bringing Lily into the household was send Hilda a letter with a lengthy explanation. I couldn’t risk my beloved wife getting the wrong idea.

Fortunately, Hilda’s reply was positive.

She even said she wanted to meet the girl who was like a little sister to me.

Thank God my usual conduct meant I wasn’t suspected of anything.

But the letter also included a request for oil paints and various art supplies. Apparently, the painter staying on my estate had asked for them, and Hilda said the Arzt couple had been taking such good care of him that his right hand had improved considerably.

He was currently painting a religious work at the Feuzen church at the request of Father Andreas. Whether it was wise to entrust a sacred painting to a thoroughgoing pessimist was... debatable.

Art supplies typically cost dozens of silver coins.

No wonder painters were so desperate to secure noble patrons.

The Capital Sentinel Force had launched an operation to sweep the slums. Louis’s slum organization, set up as a front to hide assassins, was utterly crushed. Beyond that, nobles who had been colluding with the East were also arrested.

The Judicial Minister was unleashed like a fish returned to water. The Administrative Department was busy cleaning up the embezzlement scandal and the Finance Department had lost much of its power, so the Judicial Department was strutting around as if it owned the place.

The Military Department was backing them too, so their momentum was unstoppable, and nobles who had been flouting the law were keeping their heads down, worried about getting caught in the crossfire. Surely some of the arrested nobles had been taken down over personal grudges as well.

What would happen once the Finance Minister returned was anyone’s guess.

In any case, the political situation in Breisburg was extremely volatile.

There had been plenty of complications, but in the end, I was nothing more than a bystander. The main players were the Grand Duke and the Crown Prince, through and through. Should I count it a stroke of luck that I didn’t end up center stage?

"All preparations are complete, my lord."

"I’m not even the owner of this place. Sorry to put you through the trouble."

"Compared to the Marquis’s whims, this was quite simple."

While Old Man Bertheim was away, Göring had effectively become my butler. He was the one who recovered Lily’s carriage from the duchy’s army and arranged its return, and he was the one who procured every item Lily wanted.

He’d even handled the preparations for our return to Feuzen.

When I asked if there was anything he wanted, he said he’d like a Bible, so I got him one. They say people become more devout as they age, and apparently Göring now had much to confess to God.

Those "sins" didn’t mean crimes, but rather repentance for actions that went against doctrine. The Church, which upheld asceticism as a virtue, had defined seven sins and taught its followers to repent of them.

"My lord! His Highness the Crown Prince has come to see you!"

Then an unexpected guest arrived.

It was the Crown Prince. He must have been given permission to go out.

I could feel Lily’s ears perk up. She had set up her own workspace in a corner of my study and was busy writing away. The Crown Prince didn’t know about Lily’s presence yet.

"Am I finally going to meet my future husband? Oh my!"

Introducing Lily to the Crown Prince at a moment like this, with her clasping her hands together and her eyes sparkling like a girl in love, didn’t seem like a good idea. In the end, the handmaids dragged Lily off to her room.

"Brother! This is so unfair!"

"I’ll introduce you later. Later."

After the commotion settled, I received the Crown Prince in the parlor.

"...You’ve gotten very thin."

"I’ve been through a lot."

I couldn’t help but be shocked at how gaunt he looked, incomparably worse than before. The Crown Prince gave me a bitter smile. Seeing Eisenach alongside him, it was clear the Crown Prince had endured a great deal of anguish as well.

"I was quite worried when you kept refusing visitors."

"After what happened to Vermeer, I finally came to my senses."

"Are you all right? Nothing hurts?"

At least the Crown Prince’s disposition hadn’t changed, which was a small comfort. That very fact was what made him suffer all the more—like Baron Constance, who had spent a lifetime in agony. But the Crown Prince seemed to have overcome his present crisis.

The Crown Prince’s disposition was still justice (good).

Yet it was clear that something had shifted within him.

"There was a time when our whole family went on an outing by the Main River. Louis was feeling pretty well that day. Did you know? Father loved eel, but Mother absolutely couldn’t stand it."

Lost in his memories, the Crown Prince burst out laughing, as if recalling a funny story. Evangeline, the cunning one, had pulled a prank on the Queen with an eel, and they’d once buried Louis in the sand while he sat quietly reading a book.

Playing pranks on each other, laughing together, forgiving each other even when arguments broke out. An ordinary family. The Crown Prince said all of it had crumbled. And he agonized over the fact that the root cause lay with him.

"When I heard the truth from Father, I wanted to die."

It must have felt as though his entire life had been denied.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

"So I tried to convince Father that Louis was the rightful heir, but it was already too late. Civil war had become unavoidable, and I was put in a position where I had to act as though a lie were the truth."

Acting as though a lie were the truth. Louis had said the same thing to me. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

But the meaning was entirely different.

The Crown Prince despised his current, duplicitous self. He wanted to follow his conscience, hand everything over to Louis, and walk away with a clean slate, but that would only have been the worst possible choice.

That was why he suffered.

The suffocating helplessness of being unable to go one way or the other.

"One day, I was looking in the mirror and a thought came to me. What would happen if I just died? Would it ease my mind to cast off this mantle?"

I could feel the turmoil that had consumed his heart, swaying like reeds fluttering along the banks of the Main River. The Crown Prince had wanted to escape through death, it seemed, but the reason he couldn’t was his sense of responsibility.

"And in the middle of all that, I thought of you."

"Of me, Your Highness?"

Why would he think of me?

"I heard that you came closer to the truth than anyone while handling all those matters. And yet you still treated me as the Crown Prince. Does a cursed bastard not disgust you?"

"...His Majesty has recognized you as the Crown Prince."

"So you support me simply because you’re following Father’s wishes?"

I sympathized with the Crown Prince and held goodwill toward him, but there was something I must never confuse: he was not my liege. Only the legitimate ruler of Beren, Grand Duke Karlus, was my liege.

What if the Grand Duke had branded the Crown Prince a bastard and cast him out? Perhaps I, out of sympathy, might have helped him, or perhaps other options would have presented themselves.

Right now, such hypotheticals were unnecessary.

Since the Grand Duke had recognized the bastard as the Crown Prince, it was only natural to follow his will. I couldn’t afford to be mistaken about this. The source of my authority was, without question, the Grand Duke.

That said, I didn’t blindly support the Grand Duke either.

Because I knew he was the most dangerous man of all.

That was why I was fated to occupy the dual position of being loyal to the Grand Duke while remaining wary of him. But outwardly, I needed to be the Grand Duke’s faithful vassal. Outwardly.