by Dojyomaru
Then Mary raised her palm towards the ceiling.
“The moon in the sky changes with the seasons, and her face changes depending on the day and place from which you see her. Furthermore, the patterns of the moon look like an animal to some, and a person to others. Faith is the same way. Even if our views differ, we all still worship God. What we see as Lady Lunaria, those of other faiths simply see as something else.”
I was silent.
That was an awfully poetic opinion. If she was speaking her true feelings, then that certainly was tolerant, but... I just didn’t think the way her country acted was in line with that.
“But you don’t recognize Mother Dragon worship, now do you?” I asked.
“God is in the sky, and in our hearts,” said Mary. “If you worship something that exists, it’s purely out of fear for that thing. What is Mother Dragon going to do for her worshipers? Is it not true that the Star Dragon Mountain Range has no relations with any country other than the Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom?”
“It’s natural for fear of something greater than yourself to develop into religious faith,” I said. “Isn’t Mother Dragon a symbol of nature itself, beyond the realm of human knowledge?”
“It’s a difference in the way we think,” Mary explained indifferently. “We think of faith as the bond that arises from God thinking of mankind, and mankind thinking of God. To us, Mother Dragon worship looks like an illicit love for Mother Dragon. We cannot recognize that as a legitimate faith. Of course, we understand that there are people who think that way.”
She wasn’t saying anything especially out of the ordinary, I supposed. If anything, she came off as logical. If these were her personal views, I almost wanted to talk with her at length about it some time. But there were some premises she was wrong about.
“This seems like a good opportunity, so I’d like to hear your opinion on something,” I said.
“What might that be?”
“I hear that spies from some other country have been sending spies to the royal capital recently...”
“To this country, you mean? It seems awfully stable, so it’s a surprise to hear that.” Mary said that without her expression changing in the slightest, of course. There had been no fluctuation in her emotions this entire time.
When it went this far, I had to start thinking she might not actually know anything about the Orthodox Papal State’s dark side.
“When one of my subordinates dispatched one of those spies, I’m told that the spy said, ‘Curse you, you infidel.’ They must have been a follower of some religion. You also believe in God, so perhaps you understand what the spy’s words meant, Madam Mary?”
“I am not that spy, so I couldn’t tell you, but...” Mary seemed to think for a moment, then replied without getting particularly worked up about it. “They probably saw their own life as a trial given to them by God. Those who would oppose them were unbelievers. In short, that was how they judged your subordinate to be an infidel.”
“So, basically, it wouldn’t matter if he was a follower of another religion or not?”
“From what you’ve told me, that was the sense I got. I apologize for my self-centered view.”
“...No, it was educational,” I said.
What was it? I felt I had less and less of a feel for her. I couldn’t sense anything like a motive behind Mary’s words. She gave serious answers to my questions.
...In that case, was this a negotiation?
In negotiations, both sides had goals, and the two sides bounced ideas off one another until they reconciled their differences. That was why they concealed information that was to their disadvantage, in order to lead the discussion in a direction that was advantageous to them. I couldn’t sense any sort of attempt to lead the conversation whatsoever in the way she was speaking and acting.
“...Let’s get back on topic,” I said at last. “You wanted to make Lunarian Orthodoxy our state religion, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, what merit is there for our country in doing that? Also, if you say you’re tolerant of other religions, it shouldn’t matter who is worshiping what. Why is Lunarian Orthodoxy seeking to become our state religion?”
“I will answer your first question,” Mary told me. “If you make Lunarian Orthodoxy your state religion, we are prepared to recognize Your Great Highness as a saint. You are already a king, so you would become a holy king. In addition, I will most likely be dispatched by the Orthodox Papal State to serve as your personal bishop. I will serve you as I would God.”
With that said, Mary bowed her head.
It was going more or less how Roroa had said it would. I’d never expected that the saint herself would come to serve me, though.
“The way you say that, it’s almost like you’re coming to marry me,” I commented.
“If Your Holy Majesty wishes, you may do with my body whatever you might please. I will offer my body and heart to you as I do in service to God.”
“I haven’t said I’m going to accept this holy king thing yet.”
“Forgive my presumption.” Mary bowed her head once more. She didn’t look like she felt guilty at all... or rather, the look on her face made me think she didn’t even realize she had done something wrong.
When I mentioned the marriage thing, Aisha jumped a little, but Liscia didn’t seem surprised in the least. All she did was stare at Mary with a serious look on her face. How did Mary look in Liscia’s eyes?
“And?” I asked. “If I become a holy king and have a saint dispatched to me, what merit are you saying that will give this country?”
“This country has grown to a scale where it is comparable to the Gran Chaos Empire. That is a product of your virtue, no doubt. If you gain the influence of Lunarian Orthodoxy as well, this country will have gained a degree of power that outstrips that of the Empire.”
“There’s another bold claim,” I said. “But the Empire still has more territory and more power than us, you know?”
Well, there were areas where our technology was ahead of theirs, but I wasn’t going to let that slip.
Mary silently shook her head. “Four in ten of the people living in the Empire are followers of Lunarian Orthodoxy. Those numbers are the result of Mother Dragon worship being unable to gain much of a foothold because the Empire fought the Star Dragon Mountain Range during the period in which they were expanding. In other words, close to half the population are followers of Lunarian Orthodoxy. If this country were to get into a conflict with them, with our influence it would be possible to break up the Empire.”
“You say some pretty scary things as if they’re nothing,” I said. “We have no intention of getting into any conflicts with the Empire.”
“It was merely a hypothetical. In short, I am telling you that you can gain the power to rival the Empire; the power to be the strongest among mankind’s nations.”
...Yeah. Well, looking at the relationship between the princes of Middle Ages Europe and the Roman Catholic Church, it wasn’t unthinkable. With the power of the ruler and the church combined, they would rule the country and drive out foreign enemies. It was an easy way of handling things. But that was only if you turned a blind eye to the power struggle between the ruler and church that would occur afterwards.
Right now, we were trying to move forward into a new era. I didn’t want to go imitating something people had done in olden times. “If I may say a word,” Hakuya, who had been silently watching things unfold up until now, spoke up. “I’m sorry to do this to Madam Saint, but I would like to speak with His Majesty for a short while.”
“Please do.”
With the saint’s permission, Hakuya walked up close to me. Then, leaning in and bringing his mouth to my ear as I sat on the throne, he whispered to me, “You seem out of sorts, sire.”
“Yeah...” I whispered back. “For some reason, I can’t get into the right mindset. I feel like there’s something weirdly off about her.”
“In regards
to that, I think we need to think of her as separate from them,” he whispered.
“We do?”
Hakuya nodded. “I’ve been observing all this time, and I believe she’s been exhibiting a lack of emotion.”
“Yeah, I noticed that, too.”
“I’m sure that the Orthodox Papal State had some reason for sending her here, but perhaps Madam Mary herself has no idea what that is? Could she have come here as just a saint, only to communicate the will of the upper echelons of the Orthodox Papal State, like a sort of messenger kui?”
“Huh?! She’s just a messenger, then?”
Mary wasn’t a negotiator, then?! That made a lot of sense... It had never felt like I was negotiating while I was talking with her.
I’d assumed she’d been given model questions and told what to answer if I asked certain things, and she had been negotiating with me based on that. That would explain why, when I’d given her questions they wouldn’t expect, like about that spy’s mindset, she’d given me frank and honest answers.
Either that, or it was possible she had been told to answer questions like that honestly. Even if her negotiation partner tried to extract vital information from her, if she hadn’t been told anything, she would just honestly answer, “I don’t know,” after all.
This wasn’t even a negotiation anymore. It was like having a text reader read out my e-mail for me.
I glanced over to Mary. When she noticed my gaze, she cocked her head to the side a little with no expression.
...I see, I realized. In a way, she is like a Diva.
In my world, there was an anthropomorphized text reading program called a Divaloid. It had gotten famous because you could use the synthesized female voice to read passages, or to sing songs, and it had caused a big boom, especially on video sharing sites. They’d added illustrations of a cute girl to it, and she’d even held live concerts as a virtual idol.
When I was talking to Mary, I felt like I was talking to one of those.
“Hakuya... How do you think we should negotiate from here on?” I whispered.
“I believe it would be good to ask for an answer to your second question from earlier,” he whispered back. “However, what you should weigh is not her own reaction, but the intentions of the Orthodox Papal State.”
“...Got it.”
Once Hakuya was back in his earlier position, I spoke to Mary.
“Sorry for the wait. By the way, I never did get an answer to my second question from earlier. Why is Lunarian Orthodoxy seeking to become our state religion?”
“For the sake of all mankind,” Mary said without hesitation. “The north of the continent has now become the Demon Lord’s Domain. Though its expansion has stopped for the time being, for as long as the Demon Lord’s Domain exists, mankind will never have peace. In order to attain peace, it will be necessary to invade the Demon Lord’s Domain and exterminate the root of the problem. However, the demons of the Domain are powerful, and it is impossible for any one country to face them alone. All of the nations of mankind must cooperate.”
It stood out as a hard-line position, but... that was understandable, I suppose.
Mary continued, “That is why we want you to become a holy king. With your power and our authority combined, it will be possible to unite all of the different nations, I’m sure. If you request their cooperation after you have unified the other countries, even that empire will follow your commands. Two out of five of their citizens follow Lunarian Orthodoxy, so they won’t be able to afford to ignore you. In that way, all of mankind will be united, and we will invade the Demon Lord’s Domain. Then, with the Demon Lord who is the root of all evil slain, we will liberate the north of the continent.”
Mary spoke all that without hesitation. It sounded like she was talking about the Crusades. In order to reclaim our lost land, we would be uniting countries through the power of religion. And so, they wanted me to become a holy king and wave the flag for that cause.
But... I’m sure that’s just the public face of it.
Only once I saw the people behind Mary would I be able to get the full picture of what their intentions were. Mary probably honestly believed this was to retake the north, but the people behind her probably thought differently.
The bit about uniting the nations of mankind caught my attention. There was already a system in this world trying to unite all of mankind: the one that Maria was leading, the Mankind Declaration. It was a flawed treaty, but, for the moment, it seemed to be serving its function.
For the Orthodox Papal State, they couldn’t be happy about a situation where Maria, who was (from their perspective) a “false” saint, was the leader of that pact and winning respect for it. The more Maria did to distinguish herself, the weaker the influence of their own saint would be, after all. A theocracy ruled through its religious authority. In other words, the loss of authority was a matter of life and death for the state.
That was why the Orthodox Papal State probably wanted to set up another body for international cooperation separate from the Mankind Declaration. They needed to create a new system where they could assert their authority. And they had picked me to do it.
I looked over at Hakuya. When Hakuya noticed me looking, he closed his eyes and nodded once, then shook his head. He’d likely reached the same conclusion I had.
In light of that, he was hinting to me that, “We shouldn’t accept this offer.”
...Well, of course not. That being the case, there was something I should ask.
“By the way, what will happen if I refuse to adopt you as our state religion?”
“It would be disappointing, but we would have no choice but to accept,” said Mary. “We can’t force you into accepting.”
They were backing down surprisingly easy. I thought they’d say something like, If you don’t accept our demands, we’ll have all of our followers in your country riot, or something like that.
While I was thinking that, Mary continued, “However, I suspect,” her expression still not changing. “I suspect that we would end up waiting.”
“Waiting?” I asked.
“Yes. We could only wait until either you have a change of heart, or a new candidate to become the holy king appears.”
I inhaled sharply in surprise.
Urkh... So that was how they’re going to play it, huh. Basically, if any country started to get stronger, or a ruler began to become famous, she was saying, “We’ll take this exact same offer right to them.” If they did, her earlier comment that “Two in five of the Empire’s citizens are followers, so if we feel like it, we can split their country” would be something that might happen to our country, too.
Mary might not have intended it that way herself, but it was one heck of a threat.
This is... I shouldn’t decide on this right here and now.
I didn’t want to accept it, but if I was going to refuse, I needed to tell them that only after carefully considering the countermeasures available to me. At the very least, I wanted to have a lengthy discussion with Hakuya about it.
I rose from my seat and said to Mary, “I understand your request, Madam Mary. However, I cannot give an immediate answer due to the gravity of the request. I would like time to think it over. We will continue this discussion at a later date.”
“But of course,” she said. “I will be praying that you make a good decision.”
Mary meekly took her leave. The negotiations hadn’t been concluded, but she didn’t look disappointed at all to me.
I looked closely at Mary’s face. I had been looking at it the entire time we had been negotiating, but it felt to me like her expression had hardly ever changed. She was like a doll.
A doll... Artificial...?!
That was when I realized it. What exactly it was that felt “off” about her.
◇ ◇ ◇
By the time my meeting with Mary came to an end, it was already late at night.
When we returned to the governmental affairs of
fice, Roroa and Juna greeted us there. I spotted Carla with the maids standing by in the center of the room, too.
“Welcome back, darlin’... Wait, what’s wrong?!” Roroa cried.
“Um, is something the matter, Your Majesty?” Juna ventured.
The two had been smiling at first, but once they saw my face they instantly took on looks of concern.
Ha ha... Was the look on my face right now that bad? It might well have been.
Juna touched her fingers, soft and cold like little white fish, to my forehead. “You don’t seem to have a fever, but... are you not feeling well? Would you like to take a little rest?”
“Hey, Big Sister Cia! What happened to darlin’?!” Roroa burst out, rounding on Liscia.
“Don’t ask me! I don’t know!”
I said, “Oh... It’s okay, I’m fine,” weakly brushing Juna’s hand away, then sat down at the governmental affairs office’s desk. Then: “Sorry. Liscia, Aisha, Juna, Roroa... could you come over here?” Then: The four of them looked to each other, and slowly came over to me. When they got close enough, I spread my arms wide and gave all four of them one big hug.
“Eek?!” Liscia yelped.
“My word!” cried Aisha.
“Oof...” said Juna.
“Wait! Darlin’?!” Roroa shouted.
They all let out weird little cries of surprise, but I ignored that and hugged them tight.
For anyone watching from the side, it might have just looked like we were forming a scrum; and it wouldn’t have been very sexy, but I could feel the warmth from all four of them. That let me finally calm myself. Once I had gotten a good full minute of that, I released them.
Liscia fixed her now-slightly-messy clothes and asked me, looking a little angry as she did, “Geez... You’re going to give us some explanation for what that was all about, right?”
The concern for me that I could hear hidden behind the anger in her voice made me a little happy.