Quote:*pats on head* Poor baby.
Used. Discarded. Oh, woe is me. The humanity of it all.
Quote:Hmm. We could trade scenes for that and this, maybe?
Eh. No worries. Maybe I'll work on MS some. Actually, am working on MS some ... though the output's nowhere near the sort we had going, which is a bit of a shame.
Speaking of which...
Varen read through the scout's report with a frown. It wasn't, directly speaking, the material that was upsetting him - the man had carried off his mission with perfect competence and his handwriting actually wasn't abysmal, which was rare in any army - but instead the agenda that mission had been designed to further.
What the hell was his father -thinking-?! The war with Zaibach had been over for more than fifteen years and they -still- hadn't recovered - even if Fanelia had actually had a large enough army to carry out an actual invasion - which they didn't! - most of the Empire was just desert and scrublands now that their industries had collapsed. The country would cost more to rule than its taxes could produce! But if that wasn't his goal, then provoking a war the way he was was nothing but pointless savagery. And these nonsensical scouting missions into Freid and Asturia were even worse. They were allies, not enemies, long-standing and trusted ones.
Then a phrase jumped out of the text and caught his eye. 'The isolated location and high workforce retention of the Melef plants will likely make their infiltration and capture impossible'... Abruptly, the entire thing made an ugly, awful sort of sense.
Zaibach's role in his father's plan wasn't economic, it was military. However destitute the lands of the former superpower might be, they were still vast and well-populated, and if Father stripped them of enough of their able-bodied manpower, they'd be unable to mount any sort of effective rebellion. Fanelia's army wasn't big enough to take even one of their allies by storm, but it would provide more than enough troops to keep any number of Zaibach draftees in line.
Stopping the plan outright would have been easy enough - as Crown Prince, Varen corresponded fairly regularly with Queen Millerna and Duke Chid, and however fondly they might have looked on his mother's late royal cousin, -neither- was inclined to trust the Prince Consort of Fanelia's intentions any farther than they could have thrown a Guymelef. But, however simple that solution might have been, it would also have involved a war - a war which, ultimately, none of the participants would win. All four of the kingdoms would lose tens of thousands of casualties and bleed their treasuries dry to finance it, leaving them prey for any outsider who felt the urge to step in and snap up an easy conquest. Even the 'best case scenario', where the two faithful allies moved to preempt his father's attempt to conquer Zaibach and fought it out on -those- terms, would destroy Fanelia for the second time in as many generations, and far more thoroughly than the Empire's burning of the Capital had managed.
He couldn't let that happen. He -wouldn't-. Not to his home, not like -that-.
But how to cut it off? Now there was a hell of a dragon to slay - one without any weak points, ev-
He had been holding the report loosely as he bent over the desk, staring through it and entirely distracted by his thoughts, and when the key hit him he dropped the paper and sat bolt upright.
A ruling King of Fanelia must go, alone, to slay a dragon and return with its heart if he wished to hold his crown by right rather than in trust. More, existing precedent, if the dust of those fusty tomes of law hadn't fouled his memory, stated that, so long as there was -some- legitimate claim, the Rite of Dragonslaying bore more weight in disputes of inheretance than strict consanguity.
In short, a King, or Queen, who had -not- performed the Rite could and would be displaced by a Prince who -had-. His father's biggest political supporters were mostly the old noble families, whose farming estates, dragon preserves, and hired men-at-arms had made them major powers in his grandfather's and great-grandfather's generation. They knew that a conquering King-in-all-but-name would be in a position to hand out sufficient lands and industrial holdings to restore the influence they had lost to the mercantile and investing classes - but they were also, thanks to their emphasis on tradition, the power block most likely to be swayed by a rule as frankly obsolete as Dragonslaying.
Van Fanel, legendary war hero, might have been able to shoulder the social aspects a crown brought with it, but -Varen- Fanel, nearsighted scholar and son of a monster and a nonentity, would have a far tougher road to walk.
In short, the only problem with the plan was that it ended up with him as the King.
Well, that and surviving the damn Rite.
Ja, -n
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"