The Imposter King
“……You want me to kill the King of Bellos?”
Had I misheard her?
I stared at her, wondering what on earth she was talking about, and Sylvia jumped, waving her hands frantically.
“N-no, that’s not it.”
Not it?
Sylvia hesitated, stammering before speaking with caution.
“The father currently in the kingdom… he is not my real father.”
“You mean he’s not your biological father?”
“That’s not what I mean! ……I mean that an imposter is posing as my father.”
What?
“……Explain yourself in detail.”
I thought it was going to be some secret-of-birth drama. Suddenly, the genre had shifted into horror.
“Well, you see….”
Sylvia began her explanation slowly.
“It hasn’t been long since I became certain he was an ‘imposter.’ I’d felt a sense of unease for a while, but I never dared to imagine it.”
“Unease?”
“Yes. For instance, he fails to remember things he absolutely should know….”
“Give me an example.”
“He forgot the location of the secret passage passed down to the royals of the Bellos Kingdom.”
And there was more.
Sylvia recounted the suspicious circumstances she had observed.
“……That’s not all of it.”
“Then?”
“I don’t know if I should say this, but… call it a gut feeling. He looks exactly like the father I remember, yet I keep feeling this intense, jarring sense of wrongness….”
Sylvia had been calm at first, but perhaps she was getting worked up as she spoke; her story became a bit disjointed. Still, I understood the gist of it.
“Enough. I understand what you’re saying.”
I didn’t think it was impossible. After all, this was a world where ghosts and spiritual concepts actually existed. Why not a sixth sense?
“D-do you believe me?”
“Yes. I believe you. So, get on with it. You said you had concrete evidence, didn’t you?”
Forgetting things he should know. A daughter’s intuition. While those could be grounds for suspicion, they weren’t direct evidence that I, the Emperor of the Empire, could use to declare a foreign king an imposter. Sylvia surely knew that as well.
Sylvia pulled a small, folded piece of paper from her pocket.
“It’s, um, this.”
I took the paper she offered and unfolded it.
“This is….”
The paper bore a symbol I knew all too well. It was the mark of the heretics who worshipped an outer god. Specifically, the one depicting a tongue.
“Again?”
These bastards again? I had just finished rooting out the ones hiding in the Empire.
Now they were popping up in the neighboring country?
“A-a drawing similar to this was hidden on the back of the imposter’s neck.”
She’d managed to see that. Or rather, since she was already suspicious, she must have observed him carefully enough to find it. If he really was an imposter, he would have kept it well hidden.
“Does Your Majesty know what this drawing means?”
I knew it all too well.
“It’s the symbol of the heretics.”
“Heretics?!”
Sylvia sprang to her feet. It seemed she hadn’t known exactly what the mark was.
“Ah….”
She stumbled, looking shell-shocked, before sinking back into her seat.
“……Then, really, truly… my father is…?”
She had suspected it, but hearing the confirmation that her father was truly an imposter seemed to be a massive blow. I was a bit shocked myself to learn the King of Bellos was a fake. That meant it had been like that in the original story, too.
“Just how long has it been….”
Sylvia muttered, her lips trembling.
“Who knows.”
It was a vicious situation. From Sylvia’s perspective, some unknown entity had killed her father and was wearing his skin to play the part. Knowing the truth, the original story looked different now. Specifically, the process by which Sylvia became Queen.
There was a high probability she had taken advantage of the chaos to dispose of the imposter wearing her father’s face. To think the backstory of the original work, which I hadn’t known, was like this. It was unfortunate for Sylvia, but it was helpful in many ways. There might be hidden details in the settings of my memories that even I didn’t know.
However.
“Why go to the trouble of asking me?”
Considering Sylvia’s capabilities, if she had the evidence and the certainty, couldn’t she just move to overthrow him herself? Of course, there was the risk of failure. With my help, that risk would be non-existent, but Sylvia wasn’t the type to only consider failure. Given her personality, she would have certainly kept the aftermath in mind.
“I am, after all, just an outsider from your perspective.”
“……That is….”
Sylvia hesitated. Asking for my help meant borrowing foreign power, which carried significant risks. Unless it was a situation where she ‘absolutely’ had to, why bother? Unless she lacked the capability.
“……My own power was insufficient.”
……?
Perhaps sensing my confusion, Sylvia spoke as if she were frustrated.
“How is a princess supposed to solve something like that on her own?”
Huh. Well, that was true. I’d just assumed she could do it because she was competent.
“The kingdom isn’t in chaos; it’s stable. If a princess suddenly claims the King is an imposter and needs to be dragged down, how do you think people would react?”
Hmm. They’d think the princess was trying to seize the throne.
“And waiting for the right moment because the kingdom is stable won’t work either. If I start gathering forces, it’ll be noticed immediately, won’t it?”
“That… is also true.”
Suppose Sylvia worked hard to gather evidence and presented it. Would the imposter just say, ‘Oh, you caught me’? Obviously, he’d counterattack, perhaps by claiming the ‘Princess has gone mad.’ She would need people to take her side, but as she said, the moment she started gathering people, it would be obvious.
“So that was it.”
I understood now. The reason Sylvia could clean up the kingdom’s chaos and become Queen in the original story. The original story took place during a time when the Empire was collapsing and the entire continent was in turmoil, didn’t it? That was why Sylvia had had plenty of time to build up her strength in the shadows. Then, taking advantage of the great chaos when the Empire finally fell, she overturned the board and seized the kingdom.
That was it. It all fit together now.
Damn it.
It’s you again, Empire?
‘So, in the end, I was the cause….’
If I had left things alone, or if Sylvia hadn’t asked me for help and just stayed quiet, the Bellos Kingdom would have been the first to go under. What kind of bullshit is this?
“……Then, did you send the marriage proposal to me from the start for this purpose?”
“Yes.”
Sylvia nodded. That was it. Sending the proposal to me must have been Sylvia’s decision, not the imposter King’s.
“……Why did the imposter allow it?”
“I played the part of a girl in love quite well. ……Besides, from the imposter’s perspective, he can’t fully devour the kingdom until I’m gone, so he might not have suspected much.”
“Because you’re the successor?”
“Yes.”
“I heard you have a younger sibling.”
“My sibling is fine. There’s a large age gap between us. He’s wary of me, but he has no interest in my sibling.”
“So you’re confident you can seize the kingdom before your sibling comes of age.”
In the end, Sylvia was the only one under his close watch.
“Is that why you were waiting at the border in advance?”
“……Yes.”
The reason she was waiting at the border before I even replied was the same. It was so she could flee immediately if something went wrong.
“Tsk.”
I crossed my arms and pondered. What should I do? In many ways, considering the future, it was right to grant her request. But it was hard to accept immediately. I already had the Trier Kingdom situation. In the midst of that, the Empire kills another country’s King? Since that King was actually a heretic in a skin suit, the Empire wouldn’t be the villain. The problem was—
‘If the Empire wants to, can’t they just slice our throats too??’
It just looked like the Empire was too quick to chop off the heads of foreign kings. It didn’t matter if the Empire was right or wrong. The fact alone was enough for the surrounding countries to be on high alert. Of course, they wouldn’t want their own heads chopped off, so they would act submissive on the surface, but—
‘Then my abdication….’
Once I handed the throne to Theodore, they would surely start raising their heads again in reaction to their forced submission. It wasn’t a welcome prospect for someone like me who just wanted to live a quiet life after a smooth abdication.
“……Your Majesty?”
But I couldn’t just ignore this, either.
“I will… think about it a little more.”
“Th-that is….”
Sylvia’s eyes trembled.
‘Ah.’
Thinking about it more was just another way of saying no.
“……It’s not that I’m refusing. I just think it would be better to resolve this without me intervening directly if possible. Princess Sylvia, even from your perspective, it would be better for the future if you didn’t have to borrow the Empire’s power.”
“That is… yes, that is true, but.”
Sylvia conceded. Right. It’s better for you to resolve it on your own rather than being a princess who borrowed foreign power.
“We’ll talk again later. Stay in the detached palace for now.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Now, what do I actually do about this?
*
“The King of Bellos is an imposter?!”
Serena, who had returned after finishing her business in the Enfield territory, opened her eyes wide.
It’s been a while, Serena. Did you do well in your hometown? You were half-dead when you left here, but you look full of life now.
“A heretic that mimics forms… is that ability common?”
“Hardly.”
If it were, I would have rooted out the heretics long ago. Even if their personal combat strength is negligible, the ability to mimic others? There is almost no ability more troublesome from the perspective of managing a country. It was likely a very rare ability, one permitted only to a few heretics who were high-ranking and specialized. It was highly probable that only one person could use it.
“Then we must catch him this time. If he succeeds in escaping, he’ll likely be a headache in the future.”
Elizabeth muttered.
“Should I go and slit his throat?”
Lily, please refrain.
“……It would be better to capture him alive if possible. If that ability is the type that can be transferred to someone else, killing him might just lead to a new one appearing.”
“Capture him alive….”
Everyone fell into deep thought. A way to oust a King who had seized a kingdom without leaving a trace of Imperial intervention.
“……Your Majesty, there is one thing I want to check.”
Elizabeth, who had been thinking for a long time, raised her head.
“Wouldn’t the power of the Great Spirit of Water—Leviathan—be effective?”
“Yes??”
Serena, who had been suddenly called upon, jumped in surprise. Come to think of it, the fact that Serena was a spiritist who had contracted with Leviathan’s terminal was a state secret.
“Certainly.”
Serena, you’re really earning your keep.
“I-I only just got back??”
That’s just too bad. Please suffer through it one more time.