The New Sun – 2
Deep within the Imperial Palace stood a building known as the Solar Hall. As the emperor’s private living quarters, it was the most sacred place in the empire—so sacred that even during the New Year’s Audience it was never opened.
Ordinarily, therefore, only a handful of ministers personally summoned by the emperor were permitted to set foot there. Yet now nearly a hundred people lay prostrated before the Solar Hall.
“Your Majesty! This empire cannot go on without Your Majesty’s wise rule! We beg you to retract your will!”
“Retract your will!”
When the Duke of Victory cried out at the head of the throng, every high official bearing the rank of minister or vice-minister slammed their foreheads against the floor in unison and echoed him.
Of course the gesture was largely for show. Among the vice-ministers and above were more than a few elderly gentlemen; if they truly smashed their heads, someone was liable to be carried out on a stretcher. And one could hardly dare spill blood in the emperor’s presence in the first place.
“Your Majesty! Your subjects still need you! Retract your intention to abdicate!”
“Retract it!”
After the Duke of Victory, the highest-ranking minister of the administrative branch took up the cry. Under normal circumstances the duty would have fallen to the Minister of Palace Affairs rather than the Minister of Finance, but the latter was suffering the consequences of failing to resign like a certain someone else.
His throat is going to give out completely.
Unfortunately I was suffering right along with him. More than an hour had already passed since we prostrated ourselves before the Solar Hall, and I had long since lost count of how many times we had begged His Majesty to reconsider. At some point even the Duke of Victory and the minister had run out of fresh lines and begun recycling the same sentences.
Still, there was nothing for it. That the abdication declaration was genuine was a public fact that needed no repeating; precisely because the emperor meant it, we had to mean our plea that he withdraw it. After decades of grinding himself to dust for the empire, would it not leave a bitter taste if his final act met with no one’s sorrow?
Yes—this was the last courtesy and respect his subjects could offer an aging emperor. I clung to that thought and endured.
…Even so, I wish it would end soon.
A sigh threatened to escape. I needed to be back in time for club activities, and the back of my neck had been prickling for what felt like forever. Being forced to kneel in the front row right behind the Duke of Victory alongside the ministers meant every eye was on me.
Damn it, I hadn’t wanted to be up front either. I had planned to melt into the crowd of vice-ministers.
“You’re the minister-designate, aren’t you? In a way you’re the last minister His Majesty will ever appoint. Of course you belong with the ministers.”
The minister’s strangely persuasive argument had dragged me into the front rank—exactly where the emperor would see me the moment he stepped out of the Solar Hall.
And since I was going to be in plain view, looking too fresh and young next to all those silver-haired gentlemen might make His Majesty feel slighted. Consequently I was slamming my forehead rather harder than the older men around me. Not only was my throat raw; my skull felt ready to crack.
Truly a pitiful state of affairs.
When the tearful petition show finally reached the two-hour mark, the emperor and the Crown Prince at last emerged from the Solar Hall.
“Why do my subjects neglect their duties and harm their own bodies?”
At the emperor’s deliberately stern rebuke, the Duke of Victory kept his head bowed and spoke.
“There is no duty heavier for a subject than to serve His Majesty. Yet the sovereign to whom we have devoted our entire lives has declared his intent to abdicate. We lowly servants can only beg that you retract that will.”
“I understand your loyalty, yet my resolve is firm. Raise your heads.”
“How can incompetent men who will no longer be able to serve Your Majesty raise their heads before you?”
The ritual exchange of words continued until, at last, every subject bowed as one. The emperor heaved a great sigh. Even so, not a single person present stirred.
In any normal situation an emperor who kept his emotions under iron control would never sigh in front of his ministers. The sigh itself proved that everything was theater.
“You do not serve the man Corvus. You serve Emperor Eimanka XVI, who upholds the will of the Great Emperor. Henceforth that will shall be borne by the Crown Prince.”
The cue that the performance was ending made heads begin to lift one by one. Continuing to make a nuisance of oneself after the emperor had called a halt would itself be disloyalty.
The emperor surveyed the faces that had risen, then quietly took the imperial crown from his own head and set it upon the waiting Crown Prince.
What the hell.
Even I was taken aback. Abdication might have been declared, but the Crown Prince had not yet undergone a formal enthronement. Placing the imperial crown on a mere heir was far too extreme a gesture.
The Crown Prince seemed to share the thought; he froze solid, unable even to consider removing the crown. For once I actually felt a twinge of sympathy for him.
“The noble will of the Great Emperor has passed through fourteen preceding sovereigns and reached me. From this day the Crown Prince shall uphold that will as Eimanka XVII, and you shall serve the rightful successor with absolute loyalty.”
Yet the emperor spoke the words again before the frozen Crown Prince and the agitated ministers.
The rightful emperor who would now bear the Great Emperor’s will was no longer himself, but the prince.
“Therefore return to the places where you ought to be. When next you gather, revere the new sun.”
“We receive Your Majesty’s will!”
The abdication was sealed.
It was heavy. The crown resting on my head was unbearably heavy.
Though it was only the informal laurel crown used in daily life and not the full ceremonial diadem of an enthronement, a crushing weight pressed down on every part of my body.
Is this the weight I must bear from now on?
I almost reached up to touch the crown, but stopped myself. With the abdication confirmed, with my father and the officials watching—I could not remove it with my own hands. I must not show any sign of finding the weight of the title “emperor” too much to bear, or of trying to escape it.
As Father had said, from this day forward I must carry the will of the Great Emperor. I must become the rightful master of this empire.
For the imperial house and for the empire I must endure this weight and press onward. For the sake of the imperial grandson who would one day succeed me as well—I must.
“Crown Prince.”
“Yes, Father.”
Watching the officials slowly begin to withdraw, Father spoke in a low voice.
“How is it?”
Depending on how one heard it, the question could seem abrupt. One might even wonder whether it was a question at all.
Yet somehow I understood exactly what he meant by those few words. A strange thing.
“It is heavy and it is frightening, yet I will not flee.”
Father showed no reaction to the answer. He neither frowned at the weak admission of fear nor nodded at the resolve not to run. He simply continued to watch the retreating officials in silence.
“That is enough.”
After a long silence Father spoke those words and turned back into the Solar Hall.
I was left bewildered. What had he meant by “that is enough”? That I should remain wary of the crown’s weight? Or that I must never run from it even so? Perhaps both.
That is enough, then.
Yes. That was enough. If the self who had sworn to be wary of the weight yet never flee from it—if the self I was now—was enough, then that was all I needed.
As Father had said, the master of the empire from this day forward was me. It was time to listen not to Father’s true intent but to my own heart, and to move forward. I had no other choice now.
With that resolve I set out for the Crown Prince’s palace. The Ministry of Palace Affairs would soon begin preparations for the abdication; I would be busy as well.
…The moment I returned to the Solar Hall to give the crown back to Father came only after a considerable stretch of time had passed.
After returning to the Academy with the principal, I spent a brief interval face-to-face with him.
“We shall have to declare another temporary holiday before long.”
“It seems this year is full of auspicious events.”
I answered the principal’s mention of a holiday with something suitably neutral.
The departure of the reigning emperor was a sorrowful matter, yet the accession of a new emperor was an undeniable cause for celebration—enough that the Imperial Academy would close its doors in commemoration.
“The minister is right. This truly is a joyous year.”
The principal smiled faintly at my reply.
Whether that smile sprang from genuine delight or from the enlightened detachment of a man watching one catastrophe after another explode in sequence, I could not say. The latter seemed far more probable.
“To live long enough to see a new sun rise once more… I really must have lived quite a while.”
At the principal’s laughing remark Beatrix flashed through my mind; I hastily scrubbed the thought away.
Beatrix was a half-elf, so one only counted twenty percent of her age. That was settled.
“It is proof of how much you have devoted yourself to the imperial house and the empire. Something to be proud of.”
Thus, under the guise of offering the principal a word of praise, I steeled my own heart. Beatrix was a beautiful lady in her (human) twenties who had devoted herself to the imperial house and the empire.
I decided to leave it at that.
A change of emperor was a momentous event not only for the empire but for the entire continent.
“His Holiness the Pope himself intends to bestow a blessing upon the new emperor. Given that the Church and the empire have been on friendly terms for centuries, it is only natural.”
“…I see.”
News of the confirmed abdication had raced through the empire’s diplomatic channels and spread across the continent with astonishing speed; even Tanian, a key figure of the Holy Kingdom, already knew of it.
What surprised me more was that the Pope himself would attend and deliver the blessing. As Tanian said, the long friendship between empire and Church made it natural—yet the abdication declaration had only been made today. To receive word of an event that had occurred that very morning and decide on the same day that the Pope would travel to a foreign country?
Isn’t that a little too fast?
The speed of their administrative processing was insane. At first Tanian had spoken so casually that I assumed a cardinal was coming.
“When the new emperor takes the throne, Ainter will no longer be an imperial prince—he’ll be the emperor’s younger brother! Amazing!”
“Then we won’t be able to speak to him so freely anymore.”
Meanwhile Ryutis was thumping Ainter on the back and snickering, while Later casually tossed out a joke of his own.
I had briefly forgotten. Once the Crown Prince ascended, Ainter would cease to be the emperor’s son and become the emperor’s younger brother.
Imperial prince versus imperial brother…
Son and younger brother certainly felt different. The latter somehow carried more authority.
“It’s fine. His Highness the Crown Prince is the one who will become more exalted; I remain as I am.”
Ainter simply smiled gently and shook his head at the two princes.
I doubt that.
I barely managed to keep my itching mouth shut and quietly averted my gaze.
Regrettably, as the emperor’s younger brother he would receive both a title and a fief; he would not remain exactly as he was. He might even end up running himself ragged as the emperor’s right hand.
Still, that future was surely better than living under the constant suspicion of his siblings and teetering on the edge of a purge.