If You Devour Poison / Doku wo Kurawaba Sara Made

Chapter 47: The Royal Prince

No matter the country or the era, inheritance disputes were an unnecessary burden.
The late King's younger brother, Borzeff Pluf Palcemith, was a picture-perfect idiotic prince. Borzeff wasn’t a prince born to the queen or a consort, but an illegitimate child born from a dalliance with a palace maid by the King two generations before. Yet, he had been brought up the same as the princes before him and was never discriminated against.
Perhaps that wasn't enough for him.
By not drawing a clear line between him and those children who held legitimate rights, a common misconception rose within Borzeff. Without reflecting on his birth or his status, he began to boast that he, a man of common birth, would become king and usher in a revolution within Palcemith.
To make matters worse, Borzeff possessed a handsome face, a characteristic of the Royal Family and was reasonably smart. Making a point that the founder of the kingdom, the Hero Palcemith, was also from the streets, he spread propaganda throughout the realm that brought the masses to his side. He challenged the right of succession of Vikram's father, Legivan Trison Palcemith, who had long been established as the Crown Prince.
The ones baffled were the incumbent King, still in the prime of health and the legitimate successor, the Crown Prince.
The King summoned Borzeff, who had been bustling about the kingdom, spreading rumors all around, and patiently explained his position and role. But Borzeff, drunk on his pet theory, turned a deaf ear to him.
At last, the King drove Borzeff away to a distant foreign nation for a few years under the pretext of being a special envoy. When the source of the rumors was no longer present, the people that had been swayed by the rumors would also gradually disappear. In the meantime, the King, who had completed the Crown Prince's accession to the throne without a hitch, moved to the royal villa with his consorts. And by the time Borzeff completed his duties and returned to the country, it was King Legivan's administration that ran the country.
Borzeff stomped his feet and decided to lay in wait for the next opportunity to strike.
That opportunity came around when King Legivan's wife, Illumina's, family got caught up in a scandal and fell into ruin.
Stabbing at the weak points of the Queen's backer was going well, and he was increasing his allies amongst the nobles and the vassal leaders, but his plans were crushed midway.
The young Prime Minister Anderheim had secretly joined hands with the King.
At that time, I was obsessed with hiding that fact from outsiders while strengthening my connections with the King. This was just around the time Crown Prince Vikram was born. Looking at it from the standpoint of a regent, proximity to the King would make matters worse. There were countless vassals other than me aspiring to become regent. If they were all removed from the beginning, the backlash would be huge.
With his doors to kingship once again closed by me, Borzeff was in despair and recklessly took action. He kidnapped Queen Illumina and tried to force King Legivan to abdicate of his own will.
As long as a crown prince was born, even if Legivan were to abdicate, the right to succeed to the throne was already his. While Borzeff served as a special envoy in the other country, he had birthed a daughter with a local high-class prostitute. It seemed like he wanted to consolidate his position as regent by marrying his daughter to Vikram.
...Weren't his thoughts too similar to mine?
Of course, this tricky rebellion was easily suppressed with the back of my hand, thanks to the efforts of the Royal Knights.
Although Borzeff was royalty, his crimes were nevertheless grave. He was sentenced to eternal banishment from Palcemith, and in the end, returned to the country where he had spent his time as a special envoy.
Influenced by that, I successfully made my daughter Julieta, who was born later, Crown Prince Vikram's fiancée at age seven.

"I don't understand his obsession with becoming king in the first place."

Inside the carriage running along the paved road heading towards the castle.
Locking gazes with Morino, who sat opposite me, I muttered as if troubled.

"...Even I cannot comprehend that, perhaps it is what kingcraft entails?"
"Hm. If these are the actions the Royal Prince took post-studying kingship, he must be extraordinarily dumb. Listen, Morino, mistakes are only useful till their second time."
"...Till the second time, you say."

Nodding back to Morino, I turned my gaze to the landscape passing by the window.

"You can search for solutions after your first mistake. But if you make a mistake a second time, it is no longer simply a mistake, but a failure. It meant your methods were fundamentally wrong. ...Tackling it a third time the same way is the height of futility."

After a gap of nearly twenty years, Borzeff had plotted a third coup d'etat, this time to unseat Vikram, the next King.
His Royal Highness seems to want to be on the throne more than anything else. He had the audacity to disregard his eternal banishment and enter the country just because the previous King was dead.
I do not have a shred of interest in the power of the state.
However, there are certainly people like Borzeff who are blindly obsessed with it. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather pull strings from behind the scenes and enjoy the marionettes dance than stand in the line of fire and have power like the King.
Well, to each his own.
There were less than fifty days left until the Dragon God Festival.
I planned to create a few "cracks" in the Crown Prince’s and Nasha's relationship in the meantime. After seeing them flirt next to each other at the circus, I had no doubts that the Crown Prince and Nasha believed each other to be fated lovers, who had the blessings of all those around them.
What would happen if I confronted them with proof that it was a misunderstanding, especially just to Nasha?
By the way, I won't be doing anything.
Already, even without me taking action, the bottle of wine rolled down slowly from the top of the hill, gradually picking up speed, bouncing around and affecting its surroundings, all the way to the bottom, rolling down to the depths, before finally shattering.
If one had to deduce from the pattern of actions Nasha had taken so far, first of all, it had a definite development.
I had planned to show it to Crown Prince Vikram and enjoy his reaction from a reasonably close distance... but my plans went awry. But this wasn't all I had to show.
The basement of the Asbal family mansion was built in such a way that strangers can't get into it easily, so the two of them hiding there will be safe for the time being. As long as they didn't go blindly into the secret pathways that led to the underground waterways of the capital, they probably won't be found by their pursuers.
...They would find the gold bars in the basement if they walked around a bit anyway. I looked forward a little to Nasha's reaction to discovering them.

"...In any case, our first priority is Jolga."

I remembered the face of Peragene, Borzeff's wife, whom I had met only once before.
She was a high-class prostitute who maintained her curvaceous body even while giving birth to Borzeff’s daughter. She was a beautiful woman with a voluptuous body of excellent proportions.
Borzeff too was originally a handsome man, but I wonder if you can say the same now, compared to Jolga.
After all, both Borzeff himself and Peragene were already of considerable age. He could in no way be compared to Jolga, who continued to train his body and still served as a Knight Commander and was renowned for his good looks.

"...If this turns out to be like shooting a wasted shot, I have to think of a suitable punishment."
"P-Punishment...?"
"Well. I have a string that I got as a souvenir the other day..."
"...?"

As I prepared to give an appropriate retort to Morino, who tilted his head in confusion, the gates of the Royal Palace materialized in front of my eyes.

"...It's been a while."

After resigning as Prime Minister, it’s been over four months since the last time I stepped foot in the palace.
But still, this place was where I was in control of everything... In a sense, this was my home ground.
On top of that, I have no position or status to bother about right now. I was free.
That was why.
Even if my opponent was the Royal Prince, who had all the nobles and vassals on his side.
I had no intention of losing.