Chapter 117

The second fact he discovered was that erotic novels based on real historical figures enjoyed staggering popularity. One could even find works inspired by people who had lived a century or two ago. This genre was so prevalent that one might almost call it a tradition of the empire.

Not long ago, he had come across a satirical poem claiming that Armand III had crept through a secret passage in broad daylight just to have an affair with the beautiful Countess Freyr, slipping between her legs as easily as a rat in a cheese pantry. However, to his knowledge, Armand III was one of the rare emperors who had loved only Empress Bénétin and had never taken a concubine.

Then there was another Countess, reputed to hike up her skirts for anyone who offered her a little money or a trinket, who had been mockingly dubbed not the ‘Lady of the Verdure’ but the ‘Lady With Grass on Her Knees.’ The novel in which she appeared was so egregiously indecent and insulting that it was almost fortunate her name was left unspecified. Even Eugène, who had nothing to do with her, found himself frowning.

The Countess, treated almost like a prostitute, was bad enough, but the depiction of the Count, her husband, in that novel was even more vile. He was portrayed as little better than a pimp, arranging his wife’s bed partners and selling her body to purchase his own comfort.

The third thing he came to realize was connected to this. There were far too many people in the world willing to slander others without reason. Malicious gossip that would be traded drunkenly over a tavern table was instead being printed and published openly. The realization shocked Eugène, as anyone could tell with a little thought that such tales were absurd, and yet outrageous defamations were being circulated without shame.

For example, the book, ‘About the Virtuous Young Lady Fontaine,’is a provocative erotic novel based on the story of a young maiden, who, fated to spend her life in a convent, covets a friend’s fiancé, and secretly hides in the place they had promised to meet, ultimately seizing him for herself.

She, as beautiful as a rose blooming in the morning, only reveals her identity after having sex several times in the dark, and the man, shocked to discover that he has defiled the virginity of a noble maiden, has no choice but to break off his original engagement and take her as his wife.

On the surface, it may seem like an ordinary erotic novel, but examining the details more closely reveals that the author’s intentions are far from simple. Each of the characters in the story was strikingly reminiscent of real people.

Young Lady Fontaine’s father was a Margrave who wished to possess his only daughter exclusively. He was a domineering figure who forcibly sent her to a convent, unwilling to marry her off.

The knight assigned to stay by her side to protect her chastity secretly harbored feelings for Young Lady Fontaine and occasionally expressed his desires in overtly carnal ways, intimidating her. However, outwardly, he performed the role of a loyal knight, so unsuspecting onlookers praised his nobility, calling him the last true knight of the age, for giving up on marriage to fulfill his duty and staying by his master’s side.

Given that all the surrounding characters are described in this manner, it was impossible not to guess which real-life figure served as the model for Young Lady Fontaine.

The outrageous slanders against members of the imperial family did not end there. A novel titled ‘Memoirs of the Duchess Didrey,’ which recounts the life of a young lady born as the youngest daughter of a certain Duke. It tells the story of a young lady who, because of her father’s unwavering favoritism toward his eldest daughter, developed an irrational craving for a man’s love.

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The man’s lover led a miserable life. In her youth, she had been as fresh and beautiful as a green forest, even bearing a suitable noble name, but by her parents’ coercion, she was forced to marry a man she did not love, and afterward endured severe hardship due to her husband’s family’s rapid decline in fortune.

The young lady’s husband, feeling sympathy for the woman’s plight, could not attach himself to his household even after marriage. He followed only his lover, watched and agonized over her suffering for years, and finally brought matters to fruition.

The man paid the woman’s husband a substantial sum, rescued her, and provided a separate residence. He approached her not as a nobleman with a mistress, but as a head of household with a wife, and the woman even became pregnant.

Once matters reached this point, the young lady could no longer restrain herself. She gave the woman’s son, the one she had with her original husband, fruits favored by pregnant women, whispering that he present them as a gift to his mother.

The unsuspecting young boy delivered the young lady’s gift to the woman in full. The woman, delighted by the treat given by the child, passed away quietly that night as if falling asleep. The cause of death was heart failure. It was precisely the same cause of death as her brother’s.

The woman died together with her unborn child. The husband mourned the woman’s death and returned to his family home after disposing of the small house where they had lived. The young lady laughed happily, believing that everything would be back to normal now, but her husband, who already harbored suspicions from the moment the woman died, was enraged when he witnessed the scene.

He accused her of the woman’s death, as well as of the prior, highly suspicious death of her brother, berating her fiercely. He insulted the young lady, calling her a serpent’s kin and saying that with such a vile heart, she could never be loved by anyone, then left the place.

He never returned to the young lady afterward. More precisely, he could not have returned, for he himself had passed away from heart failure in less than a week.

Eugène, flipping through the pages in hopes of finding something useful, eventually reached the conclusion and wore a nonchalant expression. It was true that his feelings toward Grand Duchess Alienor were not particularly favorable, but that did not mean he could take pleasure in seeing a noble lady of the imperial family subjected to such grave slander.

She had supposedly harbored incestuous desire toward her father, her brother, and even her own son, and was said to have poisoned without hesitation, whether kin or a pregnant woman, anyone who once fell out of her favor. How could such a thing possibly be believable? The notion of a poison capable of killing in a way that merely appeared to be heart failure was utterly far-fetched, and many of the factual details in the story were, at their core, nonsensical.

The death of Armand IV, the brother of Grand Duchess Alienor, had occurred after the Grand Duchess was already married and had a child. Whatever the state of their marriage, her husband, Duke Fernand, had been her most important political partner and had served as her limbs in her stead until he lost power when the grown-up Ebroin V rose to prominence. According to what Eugène knew, he had not died of heart failure, but of pneumonia.

What a pounding headache.

Pressing his temples, Eugène closed his weary eyes. Perhaps it was from having spent days with his head buried in a dust pit, but his throat felt scratchy and hoarse, and his eyes were dry and stinging. Following Baron Bouilhet’s kind advice, he had brought an iron thimble to make it easier to turn the pages, but after wearing it for too long, it seemed the strain had reached his joints, for the base of his thumb ached with a stiff, dull soreness.

Most of the books bore titles that were, at least outwardly, quite decorous, but with a measure of experience, one could quickly discern whether a work was an erotic novel, a libelous pamphlet, or simply an ordinary ‘forbidden book.’

However, even Eugène could not know in advance where within them the information he sought might be recorded. A radical treatise did not necessarily reveal greater insight into the events of the day, and a libelous work did not simply collect shameless scandals without discrimination.

In fact, Eugène had confirmed the political stance the Eastern nobility held regarding the Bern River Special Tax through a popular melodrama titled ‘The Bride of Reville,’ which humorously depicted the hardships and trials an ordinary maiden of the Eastern region faced while preparing her dowry.

In his view, the work was not merely a satirical novel, but a piece of highly sophisticated political propaganda engineered by the Eastern nobility. It went beyond merely satirizing the policy failures of Armand III, and in effect defended the position of the Eastern nobles by justifying the claim that, ‘for this reason,’ the prices of Eastern produce would inevitably have to rise again.

As he had confirmed upon further review, not long after the book was published, the Eastern nobles, using the burden of the luxury tax as their excuse, once again drove up the price of wheat. Unable to control the rapidly soaring prices, Armand III was left with no choice but to withdraw the luxury tax policy, and his popularity plummeted to the ground.

Eugène felt bitter and drew a new book from the shelf.

Or, as with the one he had just chosen, there were also works structured in such a way that one had no choice but to examine their contents page by page as they were collections of opinion pieces from handwritten newspapers bound together in the style of an anecdote compendium. Rather than being organized in any fixed format, the book was a haphazard collection of sexual scandals, political editorials, theatrical or poetic criticism, and lewd, biting satirical verses. Even its title was ‘A Report on Historical Scandals Without the Slightest Sense of Shame’.

The anonymous author of this book had boldly listed in the publication information that it was ‘published East of the Andolyn River.’ That was to say, it had been published in Shaak, an enemy nation. The title alone did not particularly invite one to pick it up, but in his experience, collections of editorials from handwritten newspapers were excellent resources for grasping public sentiment of the time. Despite his reluctance, Eugène opened the book.

As expected, the preface began with sexual accusations against Armand III and his mistresses. Initially convinced of Armand III’s innocence, Eugène could not help but find his convictions quietly wavering as the evidence continued to mount. It seemed that, as it turned out, Armand III had indeed been quite the womanizer.

Moreover, contrary to present-day perceptions, the fact that he had never taken in a concubine was not regarded favorably by the public of the time. Armand III was perceived as deeply irresponsible because he only dallied with the women of Balustre and never formally took in concubines. His policy failures, suffered in succession while in conflict with the Eastern nobility, were another factor that left the citizens disillusioned.

The following section was devoted to critiques of the plays popular at the time. Those reviews, written with an indiscriminate jumble of grand literary concepts, employed a style that, by present standards, was so exaggerated in wit as to feel affected. Then came an utterly impenetrable satirical poem titled ‘Round and Round and Round,’ followed by yet another political editorial, this one denouncing Kayediv’s excessively benevolent foreign policy….

Eugène, idly turning the pages as he grasped the overall flow, halted when he was nearly at the end. After a brief pause for thought, he leafed back to the very first editorial he had only skimmed earlier. There, he found a series of expressions that struck him as uncomfortably familiar, and his brow furrowed in earnest.

‘His yearning for lust was so fervent that, to share the same bed as the Lady of the Verdure, he would gladly have abolished the Bern River Special Tax. Considering Your Majesty’s nature, might you not, at least once, have regretted having gained no such incidental benefit and abolished an innocent tax for nothing? For those who lament the absence of moonlight, you speak to your new daughter-in-law of the Morning Rose, yet what use are roses when compared to the wondrous moonlight that illumines the darkness? A distasteful notion, perhaps, but watching Your Majesty’s singular obsession with sensual pleasure, one cannot help but think. Was it not because you could not bear to yield a beauty even to your own son that you took as your daughter-in-law not the Princess of the Moon, but a paltry wild rose from a convent?’

T/N:I feel like quite a few might be confused by the references made in this chapter, so I’ll drop a very short explanation here. The character, ‘Young Lady Fontaine’, is based on the late Empress (Mother) Héloïse, the mother of Ebroin V. ‘Lady of the Verdure’ is the late Duchess of d’Estuaire, mother of Duke La Mer, formerly Count d’Estuaire. ‘Princess of the Moon’ is Viscountess Gagnon, paternal aunt of Duke La Mer.