Chapter 8

The incident began because he, who was younger, spoke before his older brother, the first prince.

After all, it was just the words of a child.

Normally, it should have been easy to dismiss it as a mistake and let it slide.

However, the child pointed out the mistake when the young boy introduced as his brother was using the playground equipment incorrectly, and not only that, he repeatedly explained and guided him to the correct way.

All the adults present were so shocked that no one could intervene.

What was especially unfortunate was that the mother of the older brother, the queen, and the mother of the child, who was nothing more than a concubine, were both present.

It was supposed to be a gathering of the two women who had given birth to the king's children, only five months apart, but in reality, it was an occasion for the queen to probe the concubine's future plans.

The concubine, who had a low status and no significant backing, was a very nervous woman.

She had never intended to compete with the queen.

Nevertheless, her child, whom she had given birth to with great effort, had become a troublesome presence for the woman who was married to the highest authority in the country and had a powerful family.

The queen's hostility was obvious.

She began to spread the word that the concubine's child was a defective child with a significant mental impairment.

The royal education, which was supposed to begin at the age of two, was delayed by two years from the usual schedule.

And the powerless concubine, each time, felt increasingly uncomfortable and lived a life that wore her nerves thin.

The concubine died before her son turned five.

The only son left behind understood clearly.

He correctly understood that his mother's premature death was his fault.

The queen intended to have her own son succeed to the throne.

Yet, another woman had given birth to a prince of the same age, and that child had behaved like an elder, surpassing her own son. That was why he had incurred her displeasure.

Conceiving a child is a matter of divine will. There was nothing that could be done about it.

However, what he did afterward was indeed his own fault.

At that time, he vaguely understood that the young boy introduced as his brother and his mother were a significant threat to his own and his mother's future.

So he tried to be kind to his brother in his own way.

It backfired.

The reason the incident could not be prevented was simply because he did not understand people well enough. He came to this conclusion without much delay.

He learned that he needed to change his attitude depending on the person he was facing.

Having discovered this, he found the most important thing to prioritize.

It was the observation of people.

Nicholas Iest Wisteria began this on the day his mother died.

Nicholas decided to keep his mouth closed as much as possible until he could gather enough data from his observations of people.

This led to further speculation that he was intellectually delayed, but since this was also a subject of observation, it was not a problem.

He memorized the faces and names of all the people who lived, worked, and visited the palace, and kept their relationships in his head.

It was not difficult for him, as he never forgot anything he saw or heard, but as a member of the royal family, he faced many restrictions, so he gradually expanded his network with the help of a certain collaborator.

It was also important to know the genealogies and backgrounds of the nobility. For this, he needed to visit the palace library, but the queen kept a close eye on the education of the second prince.

The queen had delayed Nicholas's education because she was annoyed by his superior abilities compared to her own son. Nicholas always aimed to achieve lower grades than Albert, but to be safe, he maintained a low academic level two years below his actual age.

This seemed to work, and the queen gradually relaxed her surveillance, judging that the superiority of the first prince was secured.

She probably also wanted to avoid the possibility of it becoming known that he was deliberately lagging behind in his studies.

Of course, the permission was only for the palace library used by officials, not the library where books dedicated to the royal family were kept.

Since he needed the former more, Nicholas gratefully complied.

However, there were time restrictions on its use.

Thanks to his speed reading and instant memory, this was not a problem, but unexpectedly, the sight of him reading books at an impossible speed was perceived as merely flipping through the pages, and it was assumed that he could hardly read the text.

The queen, pleased by this, pretended to sympathize with his illiteracy and loudly spread the word.

It also worked to his advantage. The queen seemed to take great pleasure in the contrast between the first and second princes, and often dragged him to gatherings of the nobility.

Thanks to this, the speed at which he collected samples for his observations of people accelerated.

Eventually, he began to piece together the causal relationships and construct logical frameworks.

Everyone was connected like a river entangled in relationships, and he floated a grass boat in his mind, predicting how it would flow and playing with the boat.

Soon, he began to make inferences about what might happen soon, and many of them turned out to be correct.

In this country, the results of his observations of the thoughts of the ruling class, called the ruling class, were taking shape in Nicholas's mind.

So it was only natural that it would happen.

Manipulating human actions artificially and guiding them to the desired conclusion.

Of course, it was just out of curiosity.

Recalling the reason he started his observations of people, there was no need to do such a thing.

No, it wasn't entirely out of curiosity.

Nicholas had a foster brother.

His name was Conrad.

He was the son of a maid who served Nicholas's mother, but after she died, he quickly turned his back and now served the first prince.

And the queen, who never ceased to harass him, frequently showed him the traitorous foster brother, so he often saw him.

The queen did not understand.

The foster brother, who was thought to have betrayed him, was a cunning man who served two masters.

He was a foster brother, after all.

He must have had some thoughts about Nicholas's abnormality.

Even if a political upheaval occurred, he was maintaining connections with both sides so that he could serve either master.

Nicholas, for his part, valued Conrad's agility because there were many things he could not do as a member of the royal family.

However, the reason Conrad served the second prince was due to the second prince's abnormality. If he were deemed incompetent, Conrad would immediately abandon him.

Therefore, Nicholas needed to show his strength to ensure that he was not completely abandoned and to continue to receive assistance.

To perform for Conrad, Nicholas decided to create a single letter.

With that, he managed to bring down a colleague who was an obstacle to Conrad's advancement.

To explain the details, first, he borrowed the handwriting of a certain person from the palace library.

The materials and manuscripts in the palace library were handwritten.

Although there were printed versions, materials and papers that were frequently used had to be regularly refreshed, so handwriting was still the norm.

The number of these was enormous, and unless they were particularly important documents, anyone other than specialists was allowed to copy them, so the writers were often acquaintances.

He searched for a suitable name among them and borrowed the handwriting and signature.

By "borrowed," he simply meant that he memorized them at a glance.

For Nicholas, who memorized everything he saw in the palace library, this was no trouble at all.

The owner of the handwriting Nicholas borrowed had no direct connection to Conrad's colleague. However, the nobility were connected like a river entangled in relationships.

Taking advantage of this, he sent a forged letter to a specific person.

The letter, which suggested embezzlement, could also be interpreted as a veiled threat.

In fact, it led to a chain of suspicion between two people who were involved in the diversion of food supplies, which escalated into a blame game involving others.

In the end, it became a major embezzlement scandal, and a considerable number of people fell together.

Of course, the colleague was not directly involved in the embezzlement, but because a distant relative was involved, he was removed from the path to advancement.

Nicholas was satisfied with the unexpected success, but more than that, he found pleasure in the manipulation of others and the satisfaction of driving them into the hole he aimed for.

Thinking that more experiments would be better, he continued to indulge in this solitary game that only he could play whenever he had the chance.

Conrad also began to accompany Nicholas in his pastime, and sometimes Nicholas would accompany Conrad in his pastime.

Most of the time, it was to help Conrad gain the favor of the first prince.

One day, as he was living a fulfilling life, he was ordered by the queen to attend a garden party.

It seemed to be a small social gathering of the children of the nobility, and Nicholas was to be dragged out to play a supporting role for his brother Albert.

Thinking that it would provide new observation samples, he went with a light step and there he met her.

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I somehow switched to third-person perspective. I'm reflecting on it. I'm sorry if it was hard to read.