The Red Pill
The red pill.
...Fuck, fuck, fucking hell...!!
I wanted nothing more than to unleash a relentless barrage of four-letter words, but by sheer force of will, I swallowed them down and stomped my tiny feet down the endless corridor.
Much to my dismay, I had recently discovered that four-letter words were strictly forbidden here. Which meant the only curses I could spit out were mild, bloodless profanities that lacked any real punch.
"...Your Highness! Please, you truly cannot do this...!"
"Shut your mouth, Rose!"
The fact that a tutor had held me captive for five excruciating hours to pore over Machiavelli's The Prince was a minor grievance. The true horror, the absolute catastrophe, was the simple fact that I had been subjected to a lesson in statecraft at all.
What was statecraft? The education of kings. The discipline of ruling a nation, wielding sovereign authority, and governing subjects—in short, the comprehensive curriculum designed exclusively for someone destined to sit upon a throne.
Had I been tenth or lower in the line of succession, they wouldn't have let me within a mile of such lessons. Throughout human history, East or West, the number of royal scions permitted to receive the royal education was strictly limited.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense could deduce that much. Hell, it was common knowledge even to someone like me, who had double-majored in Creative Writing and Asian Languages at a no-name provincial college.
To put it bluntly, what happens if you teach the art of supreme governance to distant cousins buried deep in the succession order? You get an instant War of the Princes. You get chaos, bloodshed, and a fractured realm.
Every ambitious royal bastard who ever cracked open a primer on kingship would convince themselves they were born to rule, igniting rebellions and treasonous conspiracies at every turn.
That was why only a select few—an exceedingly tiny handful—ever received the honor. Only those in the direct, legitimate line of succession were granted the privilege of learning how to rule.
Take a legitimate firstborn son, for example. You teach statecraft exclusively to the eldest son, while making damn sure the second, third, and subsequent princes never catch so much as a glimpse of the word 'Emperor.' If you didn't, historical anomalies like Grand Prince Suyang would sprout like weeds, endangering the rightful heir and shattering the principle of primogeniture—the single least chaotic method of succession ever devised by humankind.
"Your Majesty—!!"
"...Mind your decorum, Princess."
Bypassing the royal guards, shoving past the fluttering ladies-in-waiting, and ducking beneath the arms of startled footmen, I burst straight into the royal presence chamber. Rose, whether completely exhausted by my antics or simply terrified of the Queen, had abandoned the chase and stopped short of the threshold.
Sitting in her high-backed chair, sipping tea poured by a liveried Indian attendant while perusing the morning papers, was my great-grandmother: the sovereign of this empire, Queen Victoria. Seeing me barge in, she made little effort to conceal her surprise.
...Damn it all, I'm the one who should be having an absolute breakdown here! It was a minor miracle that I hadn't let loose a string of filthy dockworker obscenities in front of this ancient matriarch. My superhuman restraint deserved a medal.
"...Your Majesty, this one finds herself in the most profound bewilderment..."
"...Leave us. All of you."
Until this very morning, I had lived under the comfortable delusion that the Queen kept me close simply because I was a pitiful, orphaned youngest great-granddaughter. Just like that drama from my past life—you know the one, where the soup-shop owner's son is reincarnated as the youngest grandson of a mega-conglomerate tycoon, soaks up the chairman's doting affection, and eventually climbs to the top of the corporate ladder.
Except I was more than satisfied remaining a pampered great-granddaughter. In twenty-first-century Korea, losing a chaebol succession war meant getting sidelined into early retirement with a consolation severance package of tens of billions of won. But here?
"Princess, no matter how pressing the urgency, as royalty bearing the blue blood of this realm, your dignity—"
"Your Majesty, what am I? That is to say... what, pray tell, am I to this realm?"
This was a nineteenth-century royal house. One wrong step here didn't mean exile to a luxury penthouse—it meant an early grave.
My grand plan had been simple: do absolutely nothing as the adorable royal baby, attend leisurely afternoon tea parties like a proper heroine in a romance fantasy, and eventually die an eccentric, wealthy spinster. I had resolved never to show an ounce of interest in the crown, the government, or anything resembling state affairs.
Yet every passing day in late nineteenth-century Britain had shattered my modern assumptions. A constitutional monarchy? A parliamentary democracy?
Bullshit. Absolute, unadulterated bullshit.
From what I had witnessed firsthand, this country was a ruthless autocracy with a level of centralized authority that would make the Joseon dynasty blush. Cabinet meetings were convened right here at Windsor Castle. Whenever a crisis erupted, the Prime Minister came scurrying to my great-grandmother to beg for her royal blessing. Gray-haired European diplomats who jabbered in French and German were constantly arriving at Windsor's gates. Foreign ambassadors didn't bother waiting in London; they came straight here.
10 Downing Street? Whitehall? Big Ben, the shining beacon of parliamentary democracy? All royal set dressing. This place was a despotic monarchy in all but name; the polite, ceremonial figurehead Britain I used to see on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels simply did not exist.
And now, they were trying to drill the secrets of autocratic rule into me? A four-year-old child?
"...Princess, what in heaven's name is the meaning of this outburst?"
"What manner of creature am I, Grandmama?!"
Puffing my cheeks, I took short, waddling toddler strides until I stood directly before the sovereign's chair, craning my neck to meet her gaze.
"What on earth am I to you, that I was forced to sit for five hours reading Machiavelli's The Prince and cramming lessons in statecraft?!"
Behind the Queen hung a staggering gallery of oil portraits. Back in Korea, I had memorized the royal lineage of Joseon—Tae, Jeong, Tae, Se, Mun, Dan, Se, and so forth—though I couldn't picture any of their faces beyond King Sejong and King Jeongjo. How the hell was I supposed to recognize the endless parade of monarchs of Great Britain, of Ireland, of England, and the ancient Heptarchy?
To me, they were all just stern, bearded white men in gilded frames. The only reason I had recognized Queen Victoria in the first place was because she featured prominently in modern Korean history textbooks—specifically in imperialist political cartoons depicting the European powers carving up Qing-dynasty China like a pie. Beyond her, the only British royals I knew were Queen Elizabeth II and that scandalous adulterer, King Charles III.
And now, she was giving me lessons in kingship...
"...Hah. In this stubborn temper, you take after your grandfather to the letter."
"Your Majesty...!"
"...There are only the two of us present. Call me Grandmama."
My grandmother is an entirely different person, you're my great-grandmother... But this wasn't the time to nitpick genealogy.
"Very well, Grandmama! Why on earth am I being made to study statecraft—"
"You are the heir presumptive of the United Kingdom, and of the British Empire."
"...Come again?"
A strange, discordant noise seemed to ring in my ears. Struck completely dumb, I could only stare at Queen Victoria as she folded her newspaper, set it on the mahogany table, and let out a weary sigh.
"Aye. To put it in terms a four-year-old might grasp... your future is We."
"...Oh. Holy heavens above..."
My brain completely short-circuited. Thinking was officially canceled.
"...Whew. We knew this day would come, though perhaps four years of age is rather premature."
"Your Majesty... no. Grandmama."
"Speak, Victoria."
Pronouncing the very name we shared, the Queen wore an expression that was difficult to parse. For a fleeting moment, it felt as though she were staring into a mirror across time, projecting her entire past onto me.
I had thought I was reborn into a fluffy historical romance, but this was turning out to be a grim, angst-ridden survival novel. My appraisal of nineteenth-century Britain plummeted to an all-time low—not that there was much room left beneath rock bottom anyway.
"...Who were my father and mother?"
"...Hmph. Truly, you did not utter a single word until you were three years of age. We feared some terrible affliction had harmed you in the womb when your parents succumbed to the influenza... yet now that your tongue has loosened, your words flow like a torrential river."
"Answer me, Grandmama..."
Queen Victoria took a measured sip of her hot tea, then gestured toward a plush, miniature armchair placed beside her own—a seat arranged so deliberately it looked as though it had been waiting for me all along. Grudgingly, I marched over on my stubby little legs and scrambled up into the cushions.
The Queen herself picked up a porcelain saucer and handed me a cup.
"...Catch your breath first. In all Our long years, We have never seen a four-year-old blaze with such righteous indignation. At least, not among Our own flesh and blood."
Considering my great-grandmother had birthed a small army of children, who in turn had legions of their own, producing an endless swarm of royal cousins down to my generation... why in God's name did it have to be me? All I had ever asked for was an easy, peaceful, lavish existence.
"...If We are to explain, We suppose We must begin with Edward."
Letting out another long breath, the Queen pointed her wrinkled finger toward one of the grand portraits adorning the chamber wall.
"That gentleman is Our beloved late consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha."
"...You speak German... very well, I take it."
"Ha! Our Prince Consort was a German, and Our very dynasty is of German blood."
How utterly absurd. The royal house of an empire spanning the globe, ruling the waves, traced its roots straight back to the very nation that would become its mortal enemy in two catastrophic World Wars.
"...And the second child We bore him, Our eldest son, is your grandfather, Edward."
"Th-that much, I know..."
"Indeed? And if your grandfather is Our eldest son, what title does he hold?"
"...His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales."
The Queen looked at me as if statecraft should have been painfully obvious from that fact alone.
"Your grandfather stands first in the line of succession."
"I know that, too...! But why does that mean this one must—"
"...Edward had an eldest son."
As she spoke those words, the corners of Queen Victoria's stern eyes grew faintly moist.
"...Are you crying, Grandmama?"
"Nonsense. Old age brings water to the eyes unbidden. At any rate... Edward's eldest son was your father."
"...Pardon? I... must have misheard...?"
What kind of utter nonsense is this?! Wasn't King George VI the father of Queen Elizabeth II, and King George V her grandfather? Shouldn't George V have been the eldest son of Grandfather Edward?!
"And you—Victoria Alexandrina Helena Mary Adelaide—are the sole child born to Our eldest grandson, Albert, and Our beloved daughter-in-law. Tell Us, then: as the only daughter of Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, what does that make your station?"
"...The sovereign... grandchild..."
"You see clearly at last."
God, I needed a cigarette. I was physically four years old, but the phantom craving hit me like a freight train.
"If your grandfather Edward stands first in the line of succession, then you, as his eldest son's sole child and direct scion, stand where?"
"...Second in line..."
"Precisely. Which is why We—Victoria—are your future, Victoria."
...Right. Perfectly clear.
Listening to my great-grandmother—my supposed future self—my resolve hardened into stone.
My new career aspiration was Prince Gwanghae. The deposed king. The outcast ruler.
Rather than inheriting the crown of this half-baked pseudo-nation called the Not-So-Great British Empire, it would be a thousand times smarter to renounce my claim to the throne, seek political asylum in the United States, and live like an absolute monarch off stock dividends and real estate investments...!
"...Your Majesty."
"Does the Princess finally feel inclined to apply herself to her studies?"
"...Henceforth, this one shall live solely and unapologetically for herself..."
"...What manner of Gladstone-esque drivel are you spouting now, Princess...?"
Unable to fathom my twenty-first-century individualist declaration, the Queen tilted her head in utter bewilderment. Ignoring her scrutiny, I gripped the teacup with both hands and downed the steaming hot liquid in one reckless gulp, pretending with all my might that it was twenty-year-old single malt scotch.
"Waaah!! Rose, I burnt my tongue...!!"
"...Good grief."
Aside from the catastrophic blistering of my tongue and the roof of my mouth... from that fateful morning onward, I was irrevocably trapped. Caught in the iron grip of fate, I had officially become the heir presumptive to the vast and suffocating British Empire.