episode_0187

“Princess Elizabeth, His Majesty the Emperor has summoned you.”

A slightly unusual message delivered by a knight who visited the moment I sat on the bed to go to sleep.

“At this hour? Me?”

Frowning slightly and pointing to my chest with my finger, I asked the knight in disbelief.

“Yes, His Majesty personally ordered me to bring you.”

“That’s quite strange.”

I wonder why she is calling me so urgently at this late hour, and not my sister.

Especially with Mother directly giving the order.

“Hmm~ It’s all ambiguous…”

I try to think of possible reasons one by one, but they all have flaws, so the possibility is not that high.

I really don’t know what’s going on.

Well… I’ll find out if I go.

“I’ll leave right away.”

“Yes.”

I put a shawl over my shoulders, got up from my seat, and approached the knight.

The knight, who slightly bowed his head, opened the door and walked ahead of me, guiding me to where my mother was.

And so, without any particular conversation, we walked slowly through the darkness, with only the sound of footsteps quietly echoing.

“We have arrived.”

“The Audience Chamber…?”

The place we arrived at after the silence was the Audience Chamber, where two knights were guarding the firmly closed door.

While I was feeling bewildered by the fact that we had come to the Audience Chamber, not my mother’s room or office, the knight exchanged glances with the knights guarding the Audience Chamber and opened the door to the Audience Chamber.

“If you go inside, His Majesty is waiting.”

As a small gap appeared, just enough for one person to barely pass through, the knight stepped aside and gestured for me to go inside while looking at me.

“… Okay, thank you for the guidance.”

There were a lot of things I wanted to ask, but I smiled at the knight, thanked him, and squeezed my body through the narrow gap.

I pressed my chest firmly to fit my body into the gap and carefully moved my steps so that my clothes wouldn’t get caught, and as I entered, I saw my mother sitting on the throne with a bored face, relying on the faint light of magic lamps, and Marchioness Shannon standing next to her with a subtle smile.

Confirming that my mother was waiting, I hurried to the middle of the Audience Chamber and lightly bowed to my mother.

“Your Majesty, I heard you were looking for me.”

“Yes, Elizabeth, you came earlier than expected, I hope I didn’t disturb your sleep?”

I didn’t know if the person sitting on the throne was the Emperor or my mother, so I greeted her thinking it was the Emperor, but my mother smiled softly as she mentioned Elizabeth instead of Victoria.

Not Emperor and Princess, but mother and daughter.

A smile appeared on my lips, and the tension eased.

If we are facing each other as family, it can’t be that serious.

“No, I wasn’t sleeping, and even if I was sleeping, I would have to come when my mother calls.”

So, as I raised my back, I lowered the formality by one level and treated my mother as her daughter.

“Hehe, thank you for saying that, sit here for now, as the story may be long.”

“Yes.”

Perhaps she liked that, my mother gently curved her eyes, laughed softly, and pointed to the chair next to the throne.

It was a bit questionable that the chairs were lined up and facing the entrance of the Audience Chamber, but I thought someone else would come and sat down on the chair without complaint.

“Then, may we begin the story now?”

As soon as I sat down and looked up, a middle-aged man was kneeling with a sullen expression, bowing his head in the spot where I had been standing.

“…!?”

Goosebumps rose, and I felt a sense of suffocation from the chills.

How long has he been there?

Whether he was in the room from the beginning or came in the middle, I had no idea of the man’s existence until he spoke.

“Tsk, what a morbid taste, what’s wrong with entering normally like last time, you damn bastard?”

As I felt bewildered and my fingertips trembled, my mother clicked her tongue lightly and rebuked the man, showing her displeasure.

“I thought it would take too long if I waited for the two of you to finish talking, time is more important than gold for informants.”

“What a frustrating guy…”

My mother shook her head as if she was speechless at the man’s answer.

“Ahem… be careful next time.”

“I’ll try.”

However, perhaps this had happened often before, she casually wrapped things up with a light warning and leaned back on the throne, raising her hand to her forehead.

“Did you hear why I called you?”

“Yes, I heard you had many questions about Baron Howard’s movements.”

“Yes, I think his recent actions are a bit peculiar.”

“William…?”

Why is his name suddenly coming up?

He was too simple a man to call me and a secret informant out late at night to talk about.

Even his secrets are just the hidden books tucked into his bookshelf.

“I think Baron Howard is showing a lot of interest in the prairie lately, what do you think this means?”

The questions deepened further at my mother’s words.

Has William ever been interested in the prairie?

He made strange clothes and met a prairie elf, but he’s not the type to be interested in the prairie.

Even if he is interested, it’s because of the clothes.

There’s no value in considering other reasons.

His way of thinking doesn’t revolve around any other topic.

That’s why I’m going through so much trouble, and if he’s a man who can think about other things, I won’t be able to live with the unfairness.

“Other than meeting the Transcendental Elf, he doesn’t have any particular interest, there were no conversations other than about clothes, and there’s nothing to interpret other than clothing stories to call it a code.”

“Why did he suddenly make clothes that nomads would like?”

“The clothes that the nomads are showing interest in are also closer to a fluke, I think Princess Victoria would know more about this part, is that correct?”

“That’s right, he was aiming to make riding clothes for the nobles, but it was a miserable failure.”

The man’s story was not much different from what I thought.

Rather, I couldn’t understand why my mother, who had been watching William until now, thought he had great ambitions.

“Hmm… this messes up my plan…”

After listening to me and the man, my mother pouted her lips and muttered in a dissatisfied voice.

“What plan?”

“When I thought about it carefully, it’s important to raise William’s status, but it’s also important to raise the family’s status.”

“Well… but Duke Hume’s family isn’t that bad, is it? The territory is large and the history is long, and it’s practically equivalent to a princely family.”

“Still, ‘Baron’ isn’t cool, even if it’s difficult to give a duchy right away, there should be a special title like ‘Marquis’ or ‘Frontier Count’ to save some face.”

“…?”

Is… that so?

It is true that nobles who defend the border have even greater authority and honor.

However, if you ask, ‘Is the Hume family a family whose honor will be enhanced by just that kind of title?’ everyone will tilt their heads.

No, there was a very important issue before that.

“But, Mother, the Hume County has no border.”

“That’s why I asked if he was interested in the prairie, if he was interested, I was going to give Duke Hume and Baron Howard some prairie land and promote them, but I didn’t expect him to have no interest.”

“……”

What kind of coercion is this?

I was at a loss for words.

“Tsk… should I just bestow the duchy that became a direct territory during the last civil war? It seems perfect to give the duchy to the eldest son and the baronial title to Baron Howard.”

It wasn’t impossible, but if that happened, my sister or her descendants would have to wage a desperate political battle to kill the influence of the Hume family.

And if I were to marry William on top of that…

“Mother, do you want to divide the country you barely patched up in half again in your grandchildren’s generation?”

“Of course I’m kidding, I’m not senile enough to block my daughter’s marriage path.”

When I asked with a genuinely worried expression, my mother smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

“Haa…”

If it’s a joke, I wish you would make the tone or nuance a little easier to understand.

“So, it’s going to be difficult to promote Baron Howard within March, right?”

“Yes, with the aftermath of the recent inquisition, it’s best to watch for a few months.”

“That’s a shame… then, how about just giving the Hume family some prairie land and raising their title?”

“Well, there’s no problem even if Your Majesty does it tomorrow, and the Hume family will also like it if you give them some prairie land, if you want to make the Hume family even happier, you can give them the title together, because the Hume family can keep it without succession.”

“I see.”

“And, regarding the promotion of Baron Howard, I recommend that you decide after watching how much the Baron’s clothes spread in the prairie, if it seems to be spreading widely in the prairie, you can confirm the title of ‘Friend of the Different Races’ and put him under Count Tigris as a viscount.”

“That’s not bad, can the intelligence department stir up some wind in the prairie to speed up the time a bit?”

“I think it’s possible for about one quarter.”

“Then I’ll ask you to do that, it would be even better if you could time it to coincide with Elizabeth’s birthday.”

“Understood.”

My mother, who had given orders to the man from the intelligence department, waved her hand lightly as if the business was over.

Then, the man bowed his head and got up from his seat, turned around as he was and walked out of the Audience Chamber very normally.

“Now that the story about Baron Howard is over, shall we talk about Elizabeth now.”

“Yes?”

As the man disappeared and the door of the Audience Chamber closed firmly again, my mother turned her body towards me and put her chin on her hand, wearing a sly smile on her face.

“How far have you gone with William these days? It seems like it’s been half a year since you started targeting him in earnest, have you had a few secret meetings?”

“Certainly, I’m also a little curious about this, it’s been half a year, so even if you’re slow, wouldn’t you have had at least a kiss?”

And then, a word from the mother who is curious about her daughter’s love life and the mother’s long-time friend.

“……”

I couldn’t help but distort my face and blush.