In This Life I Will Be The Lord Novel - Episode 225

Perez recalled, looking at the steaming warm tea.
“Remember, Perez. The Emperor decides the Crown Prince. Be careful not to displease the Emperor.”
In short, she was telling him to stay out of the way in this Grand Council.
She was worried that he might be harmed between Angenas, Jovanes who sided with them, and Lombardi who opposed them.
A subtle, silent smile spread across Perez’s lips.
It was a common occurrence when he thought of Tia.
‘She’s so cruel.’
She says they can’t make a vow to be each other’s forever through marriage, yet she worries about him like this.
She tells him not to love, yet she is so lovable.
So Perez poured more warm tea into the Emperor’s half-empty teacup.
“Now, tell me, Second Prince.”
Jovanes said, taking another familiar sip of tea.
“I’m curious what you have to say.”
Perez looked at the Emperor.
The situation where the one he despised the most trusted him was so amusing that he felt like laughing involuntarily.
“Would Your Majesty care to see this for a moment?”
Perez took out a few folded papers from his pocket and handed them to Jovanes.
They were old documents, with faded ink.
“What is this?”
Jovanes, though curious, began to read what Perez had given him carefully.
The papers were filled with writing.
Soon, shallow wrinkles formed between the Emperor’s eyebrows.
And he asked Perez,
“It’s an order form for goods from the Lombardi Trading Company?”
“That’s right.”
Perez nodded.
“Leather, timber, horses, grain, and iron.”
Jovanes read out the items listed on the document one by one in a low voice.
The rest were common items that anyone could order.
However, one word caught Jovanes’s attention.
“Iron, you say.”
The Emperor, having checked the quantity of iron on the order form, asked Perez,
“Was someone planning a war?”
His light tone, half-joking, was full of thorns.
But Perez was calm.
“It’s very faintly remaining, but can you make out the name of the customer at the very bottom?”
“Gerard… Brown?”
It was the name of the former head of the Brown family.
Jovanes’s eyes widened.
And he began to read the order form again.
“Your Majesty is right. The Brown family was preparing for war.”
Perez said to the Emperor,
“Those goods are the details of the items the former head of the Brown family ordered from the Lombardi Trading Company with money borrowed from Angenas.”
Perez looked at Jovanes, who was reading the order form with a scrunched-up face, with cold eyes.
“And at that time, the Empire was preparing for war with the Ruman Kingdom.”
Jovanes’s father, the former Emperor, had one dream.
To expand the Empire’s territory by winning wars of conquest.
However, at that time, the Empire was not in a suitable situation to wage wars of conquest.
But the Emperor’s will was firm.
Eventually, he began to seek help from his vassals to start a war.
Brown was the family that contributed the most resources among them.
“How did you get this…”
And Jovanes couldn’t possibly have been unaware of that fact.
He had simply remained silent.
“The Brown family kept it. And I also heard something interesting from them.”
Perez said, looking deeply into Jovanes’s wavering gaze.
“It was the former Emperor who arranged for them to borrow money from Angenas, and who also granted imperial permission for Angenas to exercise their premature collateral rights and take over their territory.”
Jovanes’s face turned so red it couldn’t get any redder.
Perez was referring to him as ‘the former Emperor’ as if it were someone else’s story, but he was Jovanes’s father.
After a moment of silence, Jovanes asked Perez,
“Did the Brown family head tell you to threaten me with this? To change the representative of the West to Brown?”
Jovanes was furious, as if he would immediately revoke the Brown family’s restoration.
But Perez shook his head.
“That document is for Your Majesty.”
“For me…?”
“If the Brown family were people who knew how to intimidate Your Majesty, the situation wouldn’t have come this far. They are foolish people who have kept such an unfair story for a long time without revealing it.”
And Perez said casually, as if it were nothing,
“But if such a story were to leak out, the Imperial Family’s dignity would obviously be in jeopardy, wouldn’t it?”
An Emperor who waged war with the help of loyal subjects and then instigated their downfall out of jealousy.
“So I asked for it and brought it. It’s not something we can just leave alone, a flaw in the Imperial Family that could be revealed.”
If this story got out.
Jovanes clenched his hands tightly at a hypothesis he didn’t even want to imagine.
The old order form was crumpled badly in his grasp.
“I don’t think the former Emperor’s judgment was greatly mistaken.”
Perez said to Jovanes in a relaxed voice.
“If a tool has served its purpose, it should be discarded and replaced with another.” Just then, a short knock was heard from outside, signaling that the meeting time had arrived.
Perez buttoned his outer garment and stood up.
“Today, the representative of the West will change.”
It was like a prophecy.
Jovanes looked up at Perez with wide eyes.
“I’m telling you this in advance so that Your Majesty won’t be humiliated just to keep a promise with Her Majesty the Empress.”
Having said that, Perez bowed briefly and walked out into the meeting room.
Left alone in the meeting room, Jovanes felt his throat parched and gulped down the remaining tea in his cup.
***
After the opening of the Grand Council was declared.
Emperor Jovanes looked around the assembly and asked,
“Is the Brown family head present?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The Brown family head, sitting next to me, said, bowing slightly according to etiquette.
“Is the Angenas family head present?”
Then, a loud voice from that side answered,
“Present, Your Majesty!”
Overdoing it.
Dewey Angenas even stood up abruptly and fawned.
He had already coordinated everything with Jovanes, and Clerivan was not present.
It was obvious he was beaming inwardly.
“Today’s Grand Council has been convened at the request of the chairman of the noble council to determine whether the Brown family or the Angenas family will become the representative of the West.”
As the Emperor explained the agenda of the meeting, a tension flowed through the assembly.
“And as a result of my personal review.”
Gulp.
Someone was heard swallowing loudly.
“The difference in the size of the two families’ territories is very slight.”
That was all.
Jovanes closed his mouth as if he had nothing more to say.
Of course.
I slightly bowed my head to hide the chuckle that escaped me.
However, the surrounding nobles began to murmur softly.
They must have expected the Emperor to side with someone and declare, ‘You are the representative of the West.’
I raised my head and observed the expressions of the Angenas family head and the Empress.
“…Ahem.”
This time, it was truly dangerous.
I almost laughed out loud during the Grand Council.
Of course, both of their faces showed clear signs of bewilderment.
Especially Dewey Angenas, who was timid, his face was pale.
“Your Majesty, I have a question.”
The Brown family head spoke.
“What is the extent of that slight difference, and which family has the larger territory?”
The Brown family head was calm.
He was acting perfectly like a noble, as if he hadn’t been living as a commoner and driving a carriage until recently.
Emperor Jovanes looked through the documents handed to him by his aide and replied readily.
“The Brown family’s territory is larger. The difference is… about the size of an Imperial direct domain.”
“Then…”
“Isn’t it decided?”
Just as the nobles began to murmur again, Jovanes added a remark.
“However, it is also true that the difference is too slight to change the representative family.”
“That’s right!”
As if this was his chance, Dewey Angenas once again sprang to his feet and said,
“We cannot accept that much of a difference!”
“No, what do you mean you can’t accept it?”
Finally, someone shouted angrily.
“Even if it’s a slight difference, didn’t His Majesty clearly state that there is a difference!”
As Emperor Jovanes took an ambiguous stance, the argument naturally flared up quickly like a wildfire in a dry field.
“We cannot give up the position of the Western representative family, which we have protected for the past 40 years, for such a small difference!”
The Angenas faction also raised their voices without backing down.
“Don’t tarnish your own honor, admit defeat, and step down! A noble should do so!”
“Honor, what honor! Even His Majesty said it! It’s an excessively slight difference!”
Both sides were arguing fiercely, just like in the noble council, but Jovanes did not intervene.
He merely watched as if observing a fire from across the river.
The Empress stared intently at Jovanes.
She must have felt his intense gaze from right beside her.
Jovanes rested his chin on his hand and listened to the back-and-forth arguments with an indifferent expression.
Then, as Dewey Angenas seemed to be losing ground in the verbal sparring, he threw a decisive move.
“Your Majesty, order a re-measurement!”