TLFR 01

Chapter 1

The Troublesome Bastard

“This is absurd. To place a royal of Genear—and a bastard at that—in the position of crown princess!”

“They say she’s a mongrel who rolled around in the gutters of Genear’s imperial palace. How dare they offer such a thing as a gift…!”

Voices of outrage erupted from all sides.

Lezan’s emperor furrowed his brow as if troubled, and the crown prince’s expression was more serious than ever.

“Your Majesty. Cut off the envoy’s head and send it back. We must not be dragged into their schemes like this!”

“This is not a matter to react to emotionally, Count.”

“Duke Ardin. Then you mean to stand by and watch them humiliate Lezan like this?”

At a late hour, the secretly convened roundtable meeting had already been going on for two hours with no end in sight. Opinions on both sides were sharply divided.

Whether to accept the enemy nation’s absurd demand as it was, or reject it and fight.

It was last year—midsummer of Lezan Imperial Year 1132—that Lezan, the sun of the northeast and a thousand-year empire, was defeated by Genear, the newly rising holy empire of the continent.

After a war lasting seven years, Genear stripped Lezan of its claim to the southeastern granary region of the continent.

They also succeeded in establishing numerous colonies in the western part of the continent, transforming themselves from a kingdom into an empire.

Genear’s prestige soared ever higher by the day. They were bold and arrogant, and they were unhesitating in flaunting their power across the entire continent.

After subduing nearly all of the coalition that had maintained friendly relations with Lezan, Genear finally succeeded in obtaining a personal letter from Lezan’s emperor requesting a ceasefire.

And they found a way to bring the thousand-year empire of exalted stature to its knees in humiliation.

It was marriage.

They sent word that they wished to marry one of Genear’s royals to Lezan’s crown prince.

But if it had been only that, today’s meeting would not have grown so heated.

“The daughter of the second princess who committed adultery. And she didn’t even receive the Genear royal surname!”

That was right. The royal Genear was sending was a bastard of the imperial family. A girl born of an affair between the second princess and a wandering sorcerer of unknown origins.

The demand to take that woman as crown princess was no different from saying they intended to seize the position of Lezan’s empress.

Looking further ahead, it was also a scheme to mix the blood of Lezan’s imperial family with the blood of some beggar, no telling whose.

It was an utterly insulting demand. The proud Lezan imperial family and the noble council could not possibly accept it meekly.

“We cannot sacrifice the national treasury and innocent young men to war any longer.”

“Then do you think Genear will be satisfied if we bend now? I assure you they won’t. What they’re ultimately after is Lezan itself!”

The meeting grew more and more heated.

No one dared to storm out in the emperor’s presence, but everyone raised their voices, veins bulging and faces flushed.

The emperor likewise could not easily make a decision and did nothing but sigh repeatedly.

There was a man observing all of this.

He was seated in the chair directly opposite the emperor’s golden seat.

His perfectly fitted shirt and vest revealed tightly woven muscles prominently, displaying a deep masculinity. The motion of lifting the teacup before him was astonishingly straight and at the same time flexible. There was not even a trace of agitation on his refined face.

The first to notice that the person with the greatest speaking authority after the imperial family had kept his mouth shut the entire time was the crown prince.

“Duke Eleanor.”

He, who had been quietly observing the situation while drinking tea, raised his gaze. The man’s eyes were a highly saturated green.

“What is your opinion on this matter?”

“Yes. Grand Duke, please give us your word as well!”

Count Iarope, who had been pouring out passionate arguments, caught his breath and turned to the seat beside him.

“…Well.”

A soft smile for form’s sake rose on the man’s face.

“I was just thinking this has been a rather wasteful debate.”

The emperor’s eyes widened. Confused gazes gathered on the man one by one.

A voice without highs or lows continued.

“What they demanded is that the bastard be permitted to take ‘the most noble and sun-brilliant person in Lezan’ as her spouse. Nowhere does it state that the spouse is His Highness the Crown Prince.”

That was true. But among the imperial family, the only one who had reached marriageable age and could bear the modifier “sun-brilliant” was one person.

The person Genear’s personal letter pointed to was, without a doubt, the crown prince.

But.

Only the crown prince?

In that moment, the same thought crossed everyone’s minds around the roundtable.

The heir to the throne present here was not only the crown prince.

The master of Lezan’s north and its vast western plains.

The king of the Eleanor duchy.

Lezan’s war hero.

A royal second in the line of succession.

The man bearing all those titles was here right now. A silent realization swept across the roundtable. There was only one reason to include such an ambiguous phrase in a diplomatic letter: they had deliberately left room.

Eleanor was the only one among Lezan’s friendly nations that Genear had been unable to invade. It was also eight parts Eleanor’s merit that Lezan had been able to keep its capital to the very end. If asked which nation was more threatening to Genear, everyone would name Eleanor.

So if the Grand Duke was offered as the bastard’s match, it would mean they were willing to accept.

“I will take the royal of Genear as the Grand Duchess of Eleanor.”

A slow but forceful voice settled over the now-silent roundtable.

“…That bastard will surely have been educated to choose the crown prince first.”

The emperor raised an objection in a trembling voice. As if that were no problem at all, the Grand Duke’s answer fell immediately.

“I need only make her choose me as her husband.”

“By whatever means.”

The Grand Duke’s voice was neither high nor loud, but it had the power to overwhelm the assembly.

The emperor’s face brightened. If Eleanor came forward like this, there was no reason for him to refuse as emperor.

However, the crown prince could not readily accept the Grand Duke’s alternative.

“Duke. What means do you intend to use?”

“There’s no difficulty! He is the head of Eleanor, after all!”

Marquis Rchese cut in with an excited voice.

“A mansion as splendid and cozy as a palace, over a hundred servants, lavish feasts prepared every day, immense wealth. Eleanor is full of things that woman has never enjoyed in her entire life. If we coax her well…”

“If we do that…”

The marquis’s voice, which had been continuing cheerfully, gradually trailed off. It was because he realized the flaw in what he had just said himself.

Material abundance overflows in Lezan’s imperial palace as well. Which of Lezan or Eleanor was wealthier was not a particularly important matter to that bastard.

“Uh… then how…”

Not only Marquis Rchese but all the nobles seated around the roundtable glanced at the Grand Duke.

“As the Marquis said, there’s no difficulty.”

The moment the tip of his long index finger, which had been tapping the table at a steady rhythm, stopped, the man smiled like a painting.

“We simply tell the woman that we will treat her as a human being.”

No one pointed out that he dared to take a relaxed posture directly across from the emperor.

Everyone held their breath and listened to the Grand Duke’s voice.

“A bastard of a noble and a royal is a being lower than a worm. Something to be trampled and eradicated before it can sprout—a being that ruins nations and throws households into chaos. That woman has never once been a human being in Genear.”

The only one who saw the flash in his eyes when he pronounced the word “bastard” was the crown prince.

A fierce hostility glittered in the green eyes and then vanished without a trace.

“So two or three words will be enough. Eleanor is different from Lezan and Genear.”

“I, and this nation I command, will see you as a person.”

“I will love you as a person.”

The smile that had risen on the Grand Duke’s face was gone before anyone noticed. He concluded coolly.

“Then she will come over. Without fail.”

At the coldness in those words, half the room groaned, and the other half showed bewildered doubt mixed with fear. Count Iarope cautiously began.

“I, um… but is that truly all right, Duke? There is the duchy’s dignity to consider, and also the matter from ten years ago…”

There was no noble who did not know of the great tragedy that had occurred in the duchy ten years ago. The incident in which the former Grand Duke and Grand Duchess were brutally slaughtered by Eleanor’s bastard.

They had failed to turn away from a bastard just once, accepted her as a member of the family, and years later were wretchedly betrayed. The one who cut off the head of the bastard who raised a rebellion then was the current Grand Duke of Eleanor, who had been nothing but a boy at the time.

The Grand Duke gave an indifferent nod.

“It’s not something I’m particularly fond of personally, but I do not mix private feelings into public affairs.”

“Ah, if that’s the case…”

“Of course, that is also to say that Eleanor does not do things at a loss.”

At the coldly tossed words, the tension pulled taut again.

Only then did the nobles realize that what the young Grand Duke wanted was a kind of transaction.

He was not a man who moved solely out of patriotism toward Lezan. He was merely more generous and courteous than Genear—he, too, was a party seated at the negotiating table.

“For a price worth trading for the duchy’s dignity, the Gelnova Plains in the northeast would do nicely.”

At those terms, hesitation flickered across the emperor’s face.

Now that the great southern granary region had been taken by Genear, there were few fertile plains left to Lezan. Gelnova was one of them.

In any case, Eleanor was the last shield Lezan possessed. And besides, they were offering to handle even Genear’s bastard—what was a mere plain in comparison? After hesitating for a few seconds, the emperor raised his head as if he had made up his mind.

“Very well. I will give you Gelnova.”

Soon the attendant who received the order returned with the transfer document and the emperor’s seal. It took less than five minutes for the ownership of Gelnova to change hands.

A languid satisfaction spread across the Grand Duke’s face.

“I’m glad today’s meeting was not wasteful.”

“…You must be sure to win that bastard’s heart. Understood?”

The Grand Duke answered with a silent bow.

He was the man who, while facing Genear at the very forefront, had not yielded a single inch of the duchy’s territory. Rayeon Eleanor does what he sets out to do.

Especially when the opponent was a single small, weak woman. Only then did the emperor let out a long sigh of relief.

That day’s meeting concluded successfully.