How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 4

by Dojyomaru

  “No way! You and me, we’ve just met, haven’t we? Let’s start out as husband and wife, okay?” she said.

  “You’ve already gotten to the end goal there!” I shouted. “We’re supposed to start as friends!”

  “You two... Why are you getting along so well when you’re just meeting for the first time?” Liscia demanded.

  While I was diligently playing the straight man in Roroa’s comedy routine, Liscia gave me a cold look.

  Whoa! Now that she mentioned it, she was right!

  Roroa cackled. “You’re good at this, Mr. Souma. You make a good straight man.”

  “Why are you so easygoing?” I asked. “Are you really an Amidonian princess?”

  “Sure am. If ya’d like, I can do a formal greetin’ and everythin’.” With that said, Roroa dropped the silly grin and did a respectful curtsy. “I am Roroa Amidonia, daughter of Gaius VIII, of the former Principality of Amidonia.”

  When she acted that way, she mysteriously started to look like a princess.

  “...And what exactly is Princess Roroa doing here?” I asked.

  “Ohh. I’ve got me a good reason for that.”

  “You’re already back to speaking casually?!”

  “It ain’t nothin’ to get so fussed over. I mean, after all...”

  With her best smile on her face, she dropped the biggest bombshell of the day.

  “After all, I came here so we can get hitched.”

  “Hold on!” Liscia shouted.

  While my brain was still frozen, processing Roroa’s sudden declaration that she was going to be my bride, a flustered Liscia ran over to Roroa.

  “You’re a princess of Amidonia, aren’t you?! What are you talking about?!”

  “I’m just doin’ what you did, Sis,” Roroa said.

  “Sis?!”

  Roroa was calm in the face of Liscia. “Sis, you’re a princess of Elfrieden, ain’t ya? When ya first agreed to marry Mr. Souma, it was all to give him a just cause for rulin’ the kingdom, wasn’t it?”

  “How did you know that?!” Liscia burst out.

  It was only natural for Liscia to be surprised. Roroa had an accurate grasp of what our situation was.

  “Never underestimate a merchant’s information network,” said Roroa. “Well, anyway, it’s the same for me. If I’m marryin’ into the kingdom, and bringin’ my country with me, Mr. Souma’ll gain the Principality of Amidonia, and a just cause for rulin’ it. By mergin’ with the kingdom, the reparations the principality needed to pay’ll be wiped out, and by bein’ integrated into the kingdom, we can receive food support from there, too. Don’t you think it’s a marriage that benefits the both of us?”

  Roroa was emphasizing how it was beneficial to both parties in her reasoning, but Liscia only seemed more reluctant. “That’s... I mean, yes, our betrothal was an arrangement for the country’s benefit at first. But, now, I sincerely want to support Souma. I even feel affection for him. Aisha, Juna, and myself, we all chose to be by Souma’s side of our own free will!” She practically shouted a confession of her love at the end.

  I was startled. There was this girl who felt so strongly about me. Hearing her talk so passionately, I could feel my cheeks burning.

  Roroa’s cheeks turned a little red at Liscia’s declaration, too, but she immediately snickered. “Ahh, there ain’t no problem there, then. I’m pretty fond of Mr. Souma myself.”

  When she said that so plainly, it was Liscia’s turn to be dumbfounded. “You ‘re fond of him...? But this is the first time you’ve ever met, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve seen his face before,” Roroa said. “When I was in hidin’, he was on the music program. That sure was a revolutionary new way of usin’ it. I can think of more applications, too. Dependin’ how it’s used, you could make a real mint off of it.” Roroa snapped her fingers gleefully. “I know! The royal and princely families have got a system of royal warrants of appointment, yeah? It’s a system where high quality gifts we receive are given our official approval. It’s a guarantee of the product’s quality, but it’s also an advertisement that there’s somethin’ good enough about it to make it worth guaranteein’. So, how about ya make even just a small amount of time on the Jewel Voice Broadcast where, for a price, you’ll show advertisements for people’s products? If there’s a big business lookin’ to advertise themselves and their product, don’t ya think they’d pay good money for that?”

  “I see,” I said. “Run commercials, huh. I had overlooked that...”

  Because the Jewel Voice Broadcast was currently being used as a public broadcaster, I hadn’t considered the idea of running commercials at all. I had never thought it would occur to anyone in a world without television to want to sponsor commercials on it, anyway. But, like Roroa was saying, there were merchants who advertised themselves as purveyors to the royal family. If we set up a place for them to advertise, the funding might start to pour in. If that let us cover the costs of producing programs, it would mean that much more room in the national budget.

  While I was thinking that, Roroa put her hand on her hip and smiled. “I think you can bring the kingdom and the principality together and lead us into a more prosperous era, y’know. Besides, if I’m with ya, I figure I’ll probably be able to see more fun things like that, and I’ve always thought, if I’ve gotta marry someone, it’d better be someone interestin’.”

  “...I understand your thinking, but... Are you okay with this, Roroa?” I looked Roroa straight in the eye as I asked her that. “I’m... the man who killed your father, Gaius VIII, you know.”

  The moment I said that, a wave of tension ran through the people from the kingdom’s side.

  Roroa’s father Gaius VIII had fallen in battle with the kingdom, and I was the one who had led that force. In other words, to this girl, I was her father’s killer.

  Roroa shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “If you’re gonna say that, well, I went and drove my own brother out of the country. Used my connections with the merchants to set up simultaneous revolts and everythin’.”

  “Wha?! That was you?!” I burst out.

  The only riots that the kingdom had stirred up were the ones around Van. We hadn’t been involved at all in the revolts by vassals or the popular uprisings that had broken out elsewhere, but who would have thought that she was behind it all...

  What a girl.

  While I was still trying to process that, Roroa waved her hand. “Ya don’t need to feel bad for what happened with my old man. Or would ya rather I give you a vengeful ‘How dare you kill my father!’? Then do you want to force me to submit to you, and make me say, ‘I can’t believe I had to bear the child of my father’s killer...’?”

  “I don’t have that kind of sadistic fetish!” I shouted.

  “Souma,” Liscia muttered, looking disturbed. “That’s a little much...”

  “Why are you acting a little creeped out, Liscia?! That’s just something Roroa came up with on her own, all right?!”

  Ahh, I didn’t know what to say. Maybe because I’d been raising my voice a lot more than I was used to; I was starting to feel dizzy. This fake Kansai-accent girl totally had me dancing to her tune.

  I sighed. “Listen, Roroa...”

  “What?”

  “You really don’t hold it against me? Not in the least?”

  “...Well, when ya say it like that, it’s not like I feel absolutely nothin’ about it.” Roroa crossed her arms in front of her chest and closed her eyes. “Even with the way he was, he was still my old man. But he was tryin’ to kill you too, wasn’t he? On the battlefield, it’s kill or be killed. There ain’t much ya can do about that. It sounds like you returned his remains good and proper, so ya won’t hear any complaints out of me.”

  I was silent.

  “Well... it just means the two of us got on poorly enough as father and daughter that I’m able to leave it at that.” Roroa looked a little lonely. “My old man and my brother were so obsessed with takin’ revenge on t
he kingdom, they couldn’t see anythin’ else. Amidonia’s a poor country. We’ve got valuable mineral resources... but that’s it. Our food self-sufficiency rate is low. It ain’t the Royal House of Elfrieden or the people of the kingdom that’re makin’ our people suffer right now. It’s hunger and poverty. What we really needed were jobs and food. That’s what Colbert, the bureaucrats, and I were all thinkin’ when we desperately worked to scrape together money. But, my old man and his lot, they would immediately put it all into the military.”

  As Roroa talked about that, her eyes went ice cold. The playfulness from before was gone, and her voice was filled with disappointment in her family and a sense of resignation.

  “If they’d used it right, the starvin’ people, the girls forced to sell themselves, the children sold off so there’d be less mouths to feed, we could’ve cut down on all of that,” she said. “Stirring up hatred against the kingdom and using that to keep down dissent, that ain’t healthy. It’s sure to fall apart eventually. But, still... my old man didn’t listen to me when I tried to set him straight. I wonder when it was, really... that I stopped seeing them as family...”

  “Roroa...” I said softly.

  Roroa shook her head and collected herself, then smiled. “For me, my only family members are Grandpa Herman, Mr. Colbert, who’s like a big brother to me, and all the nice men and women who live in the principality’s markets. It ain’t a family that’s only related to me by blood that I want to protect. It’s a family that I care about.”

  A family she cared about who wasn’t connected to her by blood, huh...

  During the post-war talks, Julius had given up on Roroa because she might have become a political enemy of his. And now, Roroa had also turned her back on Julius.

  Though they were on even terms, why was it I felt more of an affinity with Roroa? It was probably because, unlike Julius, Roroa understood the importance of family.

  “I want to ask one more thing,” I said. “The other day, there was rioting in the north of the country that was put down by Julius, right? Was that something you instigated, too?”

  “I’d never do that!” Here, Roroa was indignant for the first time. “In fact, I arranged for the revolts to all happen at the same time to prevent a situation just like that! It’d get my brother tied up so he couldn’t suppress the people! I’d’ve never allowed an uprisin’ that was sure to meet a horrible fate like that!”

  Despite her vehemence, her voice was full of sorrow. It didn’t seem like she was lying.

  “Well, was the revolt in the north a natural occurrence, then?” I asked.

  “That ain’t it, either,” she said, shaking her head. “Look at the geography. What’s near the north where the riots broke out? Wasn’t there some people actin’ shifty up there?”

  “Ah...! The Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria!”

  Amidonia bordered the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria in the north. What was more, the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria had gathered its forces along the border in the name of defending their coreligionists.

  Roroa nodded with a frustrated look on her face. “There ain’t no borders when it comes to religion. As close to the Orthodox Papal State as that region is, there’re a lot of followers of Lunarian Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Papal State probably stirred up the believers there, tellin’ them it was a direct order from the pope, or somethin’ like that. I’m sure they planned on sendin’ in troops to protect those believers.”

  “But the north is hardly fertile land,” I said. “I mean, it’s bad enough that they were rioting over it. Was there any reason the Orthodox Papal State would want it?”

  “It ain’t the land they want,” she said. “It’s the people. Believers. If they’re zealous believers, no matter how hard the lives they lead, they’ll never break away from the center of the faith. The troubles and hardships they face are all trials bestowed on them by their god, they’d say. That’s why that country doesn’t have to think about the daily lives of its people. So long as they’re performin’ the right rituals, they’ll support them. That’s why that country wants all the believers they can get.”

  “That’s problematic...” I murmured. “And, hold on, Roroa, it sounds like you’re not so fond of Lunarian Orthodoxy.”

  “I don’t give one whit about Lunarian Orthodoxy itself,” she shot back. “What I hate is the people who use religion to politically enrich themselves, then do radical things and hurt people around them who don’t have anythin’ to do with it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “On that point, I can agree with you.”

  It seemed that mixing politics and religion was trouble, no matter what world you lived in. Normally, religion was something that existed to soothe the hearts of people, but some people used it as a justification and excuse for their actions. Interpretations of doctrine changed with those in power at the time, and those who didn’t adhere to their doctrine would be branded as heretics and punished in the name of their god. Honestly, there was nothing worse than that.

  “If it were an option, I’d go the rest of my life without ever having anything to do with them,” I said.

  “Too bad it’s not,” Roroa said bluntly. “That country’s sure to try and make contact with you.”

  “Why? I’m not religious at all, you know?” I said.

  “Because that country hates the Star Dragon Mountain Range and the Gran Chaos Empire, that’s why.”

  “I can sort of see why they’d hate the Star Dragon Mountain Range, but why the Empire?” I asked, surprised.

  The Star Dragon Mountain Range was essentially a nation for the sentient dragons.

  The faith which worshiped Mother Dragon who lived there was one of the two largest faiths on this continent, tied only with Lunarian Orthodoxy. (Though I didn’t know what kind of faith was practiced in the Demon Lord’s Domain.) So I could understand the Orthodox Papal State hating the Star Dragon Mountain Range, which was the center of Mother Dragon worship. But why would they hate the Gran Chaos Empire, too?

  “You know how Empress Maria of the Empire is called a saint, right?” Roroa said. “That’s just somethin’ the common people saved by her policies started callin’ her on their own; but in Lunarian Orthodoxy, the pope is the only one who can recognize someone as a saint. In fact, there’s a woman in Lunarian Orthodoxy who’s called a saint. That’s why the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria sees Madam Maria as an unforgivable villain who’s misrepresentin’ herself as one.”

  “If the people just started calling her that on their own, I don’t see how that’s any fault of Madam Maria’s,” I said.

  “They don’t care about that,” she shrugged. “In a theocracy, what the people look for more than anythin’ is charismatic leadership. If they recognized a saint who appeared naturally, it’d impact their credibility. That’s why, now that Elfrieden’s grown bigger by absorbin’ Amidonia, the Orthodox Papal State won’t be leavin’ you alone. Somewhere, somehow, they’ll try to make contact. Could be they’ll offer you some made up title like ‘Holy King’ and try to drag you into their conflict with the Empire.”

  Urgh... That sounded both possible, and undesirable.

  Because my secret alliance with the Empire was just that, a secret, other countries couldn’t find out about it. Actually, it would be a problem if they did find out about it, so the intelligence branches in both of our countries were working hard to conceal it. That meant I couldn’t openly admit to being allies with them.

  The church offering those in power religious positions in order to make their own influence unshakable was something that had been seen in Earth’s history. They might try to turn us into the Holy Elfrieden Kingdom and have us lead the charge against the Empire for them.

  That said, I wanted to avoid conflict with the Orthodox Papal State as much as possible. The troublesome thing about religion was that even if you crushed the center and their leaders, the believers would still be left behind. When believers were oppressed, it formed stronger bonds between them, a
nd when their leaders were killed, they only became more revered as martyrs. Worse yet, the vast majority of believers were ordinary people, unconnected to any scheming inside the organization. If I tried to eliminate all of those believers, it would make me the primary culprit of a genocide.

  The Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria... They were a truly troublesome group to deal with, one I would rather not cooperate with or oppose.

  While I was starting to feel fed up with all my unpleasant imaginings, Roroa clapped her hands, as if to signal it was time for a change of mood. “Now, that’s enough about the Orthodox Papal State for now! What you ought to be decidin’ on first is your marriage with me.”

  Roroa looked straight at me with those beady little eyes of hers.

  “Mr. Souma... Do ya want me? Or don’t ya?”

  “Urkh...”

  I was at a loss for words. If she asked it that way, there could only be one answer.

  “...I want you,” I said.

  Desperately, at that. There was no room for doubting it. After all, the benefits of taking her as my wife were too great.

  First of all, a marriage to Roroa would help emphasize the legitimacy of my rule over the annexed Amidonia. Roroa was loved by the people of the principality. If they saw her happily married in the kingdom, the people of the principality would feel less worried about being incorporated into the kingdom.

  On top of that, her talents were appealing. The ahead-of-the-curve economic sense that had allowed her to come up with the idea of using commercials as a source of revenue, and the network of merchants she had built up on her own, were incredible. It was also good that she seemed likely to know any underhanded tricks that the nobles might use that Hakuya and I tended to miss. She was just the kind of person I had been wanting.

  Besides... I liked the way Roroa thought. It was that mercantile spirit, you could say. While she had a realistic view that “the world’s all about money,” she still had a sense of honor and empathy. While it had never been allowed to bear fruit thanks to Gaius and his lot, she had been trying to use the money she earned for the sake of the people. For the sake of the people she cared about, she had been ready to confront even her own brother.