Declaration of War

"...That concludes the investigative authorities' report. The hull of the RMS Stella Marine shows no damage, and she has completed her voyage and returned to port as scheduled."

Lucilla's voice alone filled the quiet conference room where the assembled ministers sat.

The collision between an Eastern fourth-rate ship of the line and a passenger vessel.

A warship had been sunk. The situation was accordingly grave.

A merchant ship and a warship carried entirely different weight in meaning.

"Hmm..."

Handled correctly, this was the perfect pretext to start a conflict.

Now that things had come to this, the other side would not sit still either. No one in the world stays quiet when their own warship has been sunk.

So they would protest hard. They might even use it as an excuse ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to extend their so-called training blockade of the high seas.

Issuing a declaration of war first was awkward. If they came at us like that, what then?

The answer was simple.

Make the other side declare war first.

"We'll protest first."

Before they could lodge a complaint, we would lodge ours.

Your ship hit ours — apologize and pay damages.

You're the ones who got a warship sunk, and you still want to play the victim?

If you didn't like it, you shouldn't have been doing that on the high seas.

"Focus the protest on the East's blockade of the high seas and their ongoing exercises. And bill them for the repair costs of the RMS Stella Marine as well."

It was the kind of petty aggression he would never have resorted to under ordinary circumstances — but they had started it, so the South had its justification.

His purpose was simple.

By any means necessary, force the other side to issue the declaration of war first.

"Also warn them that if they conduct further exercises on the high seas, more of these 'unfortunate accidents' may occur."

"Yes, sir!"

"And work the public opinion a little. Emphasize the East's fault."

Every major newspaper was on his side.

Ten years earlier, during the period when he had led the merchant revolution against the old industrialists, he had bought up small and medium papers and grown them into powerhouses.

It had been one of the first things he did the moment power was in his hands.

Root out the stagnant old press and bring in outlets that would serve as his speakers.

The papers that had watched the old giants collapse at a single gesture of his knew exactly what force his words carried in the South.

So they printed every demand he made, without omitting a single character.

Soon newspapers written exactly to his taste were distributed across the South.

It had already been ten days since the high-seas exercises began.

Grumbling had begun to surface among the citizenry.

"I hear our company might start restructuring over this. With the export routes blocked..."

"What is the Center doing at a time like this? Aren't we all citizens of the same empire? Why do they always take the Easterners' side?"

"Please. Central's been calling us Southerners trash for years. Same as always, I bet."

"I don't care who — just someone fix this already. Our company's going to die at this rate!"

And beneath it all, anger had been accumulating among the people without their quite noticing.

Citizens who had been driven harder under the pretext of "total war" were looking for somewhere to vent that anger.

Southern Grand Duke Kyle Leopold, who had set ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them to that hard labor?

No.

You could curse the Imperial Crown Prince. You could not curse Kyle Leopold. Not a single person would.

The generation that had been ground to dust in the factories like slaves until just eleven years ago was now the backbone of society.

"What? Kyle did what now?"

"Leave them. These new hires don't even know what the South was like before Kyle."

"Cursing Kyle, who gave us the labor standards law? It's the end of days..."

Those who remembered the South of eleven years past had long since risen through the factories to positions of some standing.

From people in their mid-twenties who had worked the floor since childhood, to those in their late forties.

To anyone who knew how brutal the old factory life had been, the present hardships barely registered as hardship at all.

And so their anger found another target.

"Then whose fault is it?"

"Obviously the corrupt nobles who forced Kyle into making those decisions. Do you know how much Kyle cares for us workers?"

The boiling public gaze turned east.

"This is all because those Easterners pulled a stunt."

"They violate international law with high-seas exercises, and the Center says nothing. They're in bed together."

"Idiots. They must not know what happened to the Sarsen domain when it tried something like this on us."

In the past they would only have complained about their lot.

The old South had been a fractured province that could not so much as raise its voice against such injustice.

But Kyle Leopold's South was different.

A province that could speak its mind in the face of unfairness. A land of the people, by the people, for the people. A land of opportunity where ordinary men and women could become great.

Citizens who knew how far the South had come were, this time as well, waiting for Kyle Leopold's solution.

"The more we rest, the more those bastards will look down on us! Cut the time we spend eating, smoking, pissing — and work!"

"All right, all right. Everyone focus on the job! The company may be shaky right now, but Kyle will give us an answer soon!"

The memory of victory in the last war kept people working diligently even through the uncertainty.

Some even kept their companies running at a loss, insisting that if Kyle said he would solve it, then it would absolutely be solved.

Even he was surprised by the polling results.

"Public opinion is better than I expected."

"Your Grace is the savior of the Southern people. Some of them would die for the South if you asked."

"That much?"

He gave Lucilla a skeptical look, and her expression said she could not understand why he was even asking something so obvious.

Honestly, he had known his standing with the public was not bad.

A leader with an eighty-five percent approval rating could run a legal dictatorship even under a democratic system.

But even that kind of popularity usually cracked when the economy turned hard or life got difficult.

Quite some time had passed since he had thrown every hand in the South into the grinder under the banner of total war.

He had been worried that his popularity was due to start slipping. This was a relief.

"I'd even been wondering whether I needed to start manipulating public opinion."

He always planned for the worst case.

It was a habit he had acquired the day he became Southern Grand Duke Kyle Leopold.

A leader was someone who prepared an umbrella before the rain fell.

By the time you were soaked through and started looking for one, it was already too late. Late responses changed nothing.

Like a great warship, the vast industrial complex that was the South could not change course easily. Turn too late in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠front of an iceberg and you still collided.

One wrong judgment, one bad turn of the helm of this southern leviathan, and the catastrophe might be irreversible — so he had been careful until now.

"With this, I can afford to judge a little more freely."

Even in a royal autocracy, you could not ignore the people's will entirely.

Even the Kim father and son who lived like gods in the neighborhood to the north put on crying shows in front of the crowds and at least pretended to care about public sentiment.

The Eastern Grand Duke would not be sitting pretty either.

Your warship gets sunk and you do nothing? You still won't declare war? The citizens would rise.

He was fine — he had spent the last eleven years showing them what he was. But the Eastern Grand Duke, who had spent those same eleven years doing nothing but play?

He rather doubted it.

"Call the Director of Intelligence."

William, Director of the Intelligence Department, entered the Grand Duke's office exactly twenty minutes later.

There was a slight tension on William's face. Whenever Kyle summoned the Intelligence Director in person, the matter was never ordinary.

This time was no different.

"I'd like you to work Eastern public opinion a little."

"Public opinion... Your Grace?"

"Yes. Nothing too difficult. Stir them up — push the war sentiment higher."

No answer came back saying it would be hard.

The Intelligence Department, equipped with the South's newest technology, its sharpest staff officers, and massive funding, had only one role.

To do exactly what he ordered.

As it was, the East had already taken a devastating beating over the past eleven years.

The South, completely reorganized by Kyle Leopold, had begun selling goods in every direction, and the trade figures of the East — once masters of the sea — had fallen day by day.

Eastern industry, run under corrupt nobles in the form of merchant guilds, craftsmen's guilds, and every other kind of guild, was being reduced to ash.

The goods the machines stamped out boasted uniform quality, superior performance, low prices, and overwhelming volume.

The merchant-house aristocrats who had reigned as the East's vested interests for a thousand years were not pleased with the situation.

Commoners who had once been forced to buy their goods at inflated prices, weeping as they paid, were now being flooded with Southern products.

Lower their prices now and try to compete?

Handicrafts competing on price against factory output was impossible.

So they hoped to use this chance to put the Southern companies in their place.

"If not now, when will we ever knock those Southerners down a peg?"

"We need to push a naval blockade while we have the chance — what the hell is Edward doing?"

"The Empire's seas belong to us. We have to teach those Southern thieves who are stealing our ocean a lesson."

Under that pressure, Southern agents moved into the guilds and began working the opinion.

Guilds that had long since stagnated technically and known only how to bleed the common people folded easily under the agents' influence.

Edward's support base clearly wanted a conflict that went beyond a mere naval blockade.

In the end, Edward could not hold out. He made the first move.