Chapter 8 — Back to the Light of Day
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
Beside her, Rebecca took up the tale. "A hundred years ago, the last king of Ansou's First Dynasty, Dalian III, died of a sudden illness, leaving no heir. By then the royal house was already riddled with conflict—even Dalian III's own right of succession was disputed—and after the king's death, the queen and the regent failed to seize control of the situation in time. The result was the 'Misty Moon Turmoil.'
"Members of the royal house with collateral claims to the throne fought over the crown in the Misty Moon of Ansou 635. In the third week after the Misty Moon ended, the court intrigue escalated into civil war, and the various royals and the great nobles behind them turned to open force. The Cecil family was dragged into it as well…
"The root of the disaster was Marquess Grumman. The Grand Duke Cecil of that time was advanced in years but still hale, and his relations with his eldest son, Grumman Cecil, were badly strained. The marquess must have sensed the danger… so he plotted in secret and joined that civil war. Not yet the head of the family and lacking the standing to rally others, Marquess Grumman set his sights on his legendary ancestor…"
Gao Yang pressed a hand to his forehead. "Now I remember. It was my shield he took, wasn't it?"
Heidi nodded and went on in Rebecca's stead. "Marquess Grumman first placed the Grand Duke Cecil of the day under house arrest, then took your sacred relic from the ancestor's tomb—the Shield of Ansou, Guardian of the Kingdom—and in the name of the Cecil heir declared for Prince Tosh. In March of that year, Prince Tosh was assassinated; Marquess Grumman promptly declared for Prince Fidic. In April of that year, Prince Fidic was defeated and took his own life…"
Gao Yang: "…"
But that was not the end of it. Heidi had more to say. "After that, Marquess Grumman approached an uncle of Dalian III and used his remarkable eloquence to forge an alliance. But the month after that, the Northern Grand Duke Brun Vild, who had kept out of the civil war all along, suddenly thrust a youth onto the stage and declared him the bastard son of the king before last. The Northern Grand Duke then entered the war with that as his筹码—his bargaining chip—and ended it in the Misty Moon of Ansou 636. On the eve of the war's end, Marquess Grumman tried the same trick again, preparing to declare allegiance to the new king, but before the declaration could be issued, he was set upon on the battlefield by friend and foe alike and cut down under a hail of blades.
"After that came Ansou's Second Dynasty. Of course, the very term 'Second Dynasty'… is still a rather sensitive topic."
At this point Amber, who had been listening in silence all the while, spoke up slowly: "The whole farce lasted barely a year, yet it reshuffled the order of the entire kingdom… Who on the whole continent doesn't know this history?"
"Because the one who finally took the throne was a bastard, the war is also called the Bastard War in private," Heidi said. "So many great nobles were involved in the civil war that a great many families were implicated. But that, after all, is part of the rules of nobility, and with the realm in utter chaos at the founding of the Second Dynasty, the new king urgently needed to restore order—which required the strength of the old nobles. So most families were not wiped out entirely. Except…"
"Except the ones who jumped the highest, right?" The corner of Gao Yang's mouth twitched uncontrollably. This whole stretch of history left even him—an elder who had looked down on the world from on high for a hundred thousand years—feeling thoroughly uncomfortable. He could only marvel that life truly outdid fiction; fiction at least demanded a basic logic. How had that Marquess Grumman come by such prodigious talent? "I suppose no one could stir up more trouble than Grumman Cecil?"