Chapter 33 — The Meeting

Everyone present was clever (with the possible exception of a certain pig-headed, unworthy descendant?). They were exceedingly skilled at inferring an entire ancestral line's character arc from a single fart, so a simple exchange between Gao Yang and Francis II was enough to make plain the tone of this meeting—and, by the way, to deduce that the King and that ancient Grand Duke had already reached some manner of consensus.

The lady seated at the King's left seemed to frown slightly; a second glance, and there appeared to be no change of expression at all. But as the only Grand Duchess among the three Grand Dukes, her very presence had drawn more than a few glances from Gao Yang.

She was a woman of around thirty, mature and beautiful as Hedy, yet with far more of a cold, aloof air than Hedy. She wore a long white gown, a silver-fox stole draped over her shoulders, and to these were added white silk gloves and a head of silver-white curls, so that her whole person seemed wrapped in ice and snow. This beauty, like a queen of winter, was so striking in the Oak Hall that she made one thing abundantly clear: white does indeed have a high reflectance.

The entire left half of Francis II's body was brighter than the right...

Such was the present Grand Duchess of the North, Victoria Wilde. Gao Yang matched the hastily crammed knowledge in his mind to the living person before him, and at the same time recalled the founding of the Second Dynasty: the one who had propped up a bastard son to take the throne had been the Wilde family of the North.

But as things now stood, the descendants of that bastard son were no longer much under the Wilde family's control.

Noticing the gaze from across the table, that "Lady of Ice and Snow" gave a wooden nod—presumably a greeting. Seeing this, Gao Yang waved his hand: "A deadpan face, just like the Xuanmai Sect. I told Wilde back then that he ought to marry a lively southern girl and neutralize that face of his a bit—he wouldn't listen. Now the affliction's passed down to his descendants..."

The Grand Duchess of the North's face twitched ever so slightly. Then Gao Yang looked to the Grand Duke of the West and the Grand Duke of the East, and drawing on the corresponding knowledge in his memory, exchanged a few words about matters concerning their ancestors. At last his gaze settled on the empty space between the First Minister and the Grand Duchess of the North—where there was no chair.

That had once been the seat of the Cecil family, but a hundred years ago the chair had been removed. From then on, three Grand Dukes remained of the four, and the South of Ansul had no Grand Duke. The nobility directly under the Crown, rank upon rank, became the ruling bloc of the South, while the Cecil family was squeezed into the most remote corner.

Noticing where Gao Yang's gaze had fallen, everyone—Francis II included—could not help but hold their breath. The atmosphere seemed to tighten in an instant, shifting from the friendly, genial stage of family small talk into the main body of the meeting—that is, the stage of bickering, cursing, and pounding the table.

But Gao Yang merely glanced at that spot, then a relaxed, natural—even somewhat disdainful—smile spread across his face. He looked at the King across the table: "Let's get to the point. Next, my descendant, Rebecca Cecil, will explain to you all the disaster that occurred in the South of the kingdom. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the real trouble."