Thanks to that, perhaps she should say, she wasn’t particularly criticized for anything she did. Unlike what she had thought, that whatever she did, she would suffer from thorny curses and absurd rumors….

‘Compared to Viscountess Falpang and Countess Mercien, the Empress Consort is quite gentle.’

‘Of course. How can they be compared? Though the Empress Consort was born from a humble womb, she is a kind and lovely person. I’ve known her since she was young. She was an intelligent and witty girl. What happened to her maternal family is truly….’

One afternoon, she remembered the words a court lady had whispered rapidly while fluttering her fan. Conversations with unclear boundaries between sympathy and disparagement were always a bad habit enjoyed by the ladies. According to them, it was like this.

Wasn’t the young and gentle Empress Consort a hundred times better than the emperor’s passionate concubines who acted as if their lives would wear out if they didn’t devour each other? One lady flared up at this and said, ‘What if that low-born woman forgets her duty as a surrogate and becomes empress?’

It wasn’t a surprising retort to Jeanne. They were all noblewomen with strong connections to the Empress Dowager’s ladies-in-waiting, and such poor backbiting from these ladies was a thorn quite familiar to Jeanne. Of course, it was still an untouchable sore spot.

But even the Empress Dowager’s impudent maid repeatedly chewed her up with such messy words.

If she had reacted to every word spoken about her, she might not have been able to live with her sanity intact. She soon heard a very familiar repertoire of retorts.

‘Isn’t she better than women who put poison in herbs to cause infertility or instigate r*pe by palace servants?’

It was a barbed rebuke. It meant that a woman whose mother was a concubine was better than those who disgraced the imperial family’s dignity with such shameful behavior.

‘Well, that’s true, but….’

The woman who had flared up closed her mouth. Jeanne didn’t know whether to be grateful to the concubines or what. In any case, thanks to them fighting among themselves and creating chaos, Jeanne had a relatively comfortable palace life.

Since they were in positions where they couldn’t forgive each other, she was naturally excluded from their conspiracies to bring each other down, and even the gossips who were desperate to hurt or break her targeted the concubines instead. So perhaps Jeanne should be grateful to them. But the matter of the Countess of Ortlen….

“Jeanne.”

“……Why shouldn’t I believe it? The one who conveyed this was none other than the Countess of Meteland, the Empress Dowager’s lady-in-waiting.”

“I have only you.”

It was a response that didn’t even make her laugh. The tears she had swallowed and ruminated on warmed her eyes. She felt the horror as she noticed her vision beginning to blur with moisture.

The emperor was a grail that couldn’t be monopolized. He was the sovereign and the man closest to God. So she thought it didn’t matter. From the time he began to fill the rear palace.

She thought she had put everything down…. No. She believed so, but was that not the case?

“Look at me, Jeanne.”

A long, elegant hand lifted her wet face. She glared at him palely, biting her rolled lips.

The man who had impregnated a woman who wasn’t his wife looked at her with a face that seemed like he was dying. Since his sickly face wasn’t surprising, there was nothing to react to. It would be different for the concubines in the rear palace. They were constantly hovering around him, trying to receive even a little attention.

But Jeanne….

‘I’m tired.’

Yes. Jeanne was tired. All of it was tiring and confusing. One way, then another. It was difficult to endure a husband more capricious than his eight-year-old son.

They say a couple becomes one body and soul, knowing and caring for each other more as time passes, but the more time Jeanne spent in the court, the more difficult he became for her.

His words and attitudes with unfathomable intentions, decisions she didn’t know how to handle, made it impossible for her to know what position to maintain in the court. But above all, the most difficult thing was his emotions.

“Honey.”

His gentle voice, enough to make her eardrums melt, was low and calm. She gently bit her lip and slowly turned away from the man casting a shadow. She wanted to stop. Sincerely, now….

“Stop it.”

She whispered softly, consumed by his shadow. Instead of pushing away his bare chest, she gently grabbed his arm. His thick arm, filled with muscle, was very masculine. She raised her gaze to face him. Layers of dissatisfaction were dissolved in the rounded light pooled in his eyes.

“What should I stop?”

“……Everything.”

“Jeanne.”

He traced her flat lower abdomen. It was a habit. She had lived as the emperor’s surrogate, always in a state of pregnancy. Jeanne endured that period with a sense of responsibility toward duty rather than love for him. Even as an ‘Eve,’ pregnancy wasn’t easy.

Born with an angular temperament and naturally full of self-love, he wasn’t affectionate to his children, but compared to Clodas, the late emperor and his father, and the high officials of the court, he could be called quite a fatherly father.

So ‘that’ decision was for a different reason. He called her again, “Jeanne.” She whispered the truth she had long buried and refused to let sprout.

“I want a divorce.”

His pale face remained calm without getting heated at all. Cesare stared at his wife’s clear face for a moment and then raised his hand to slap her cheek.

* * *

The slapped cheek stung. She straightened her turned head. Without biting her lip, she looked up at her husband. He had a frighteningly expressionless face. At a glance, he didn’t even look like an angry person. But Jeanne knew the emperor sickeningly well. He was an utterly unpredictable man, but the moments when he became ruthless were very consistent.

“……Your Majesty.”

“Say it again.”

The man, who didn’t even make a crooked smile, murmured in a low voice. She stared at him with a face that wasn’t frightened at all and then parted her lips.

“Please divorce me.”

The grip on her slender neck was rough. Jeanne glared at him without even letting out a short moan. Her eyes, with flickering light, were glossy.

He looked at his wife’s eyes, without a trace of moisture, and then used the hand that had grabbed her neck to hold her chin. It was a gentler touch.

“……Is it because of that woman?”

The emperor slid the corner of his mouth. His cool smile was languid. He seemed to have regained his composure. Jeanne shook her head and shook off the hand holding her chin. She quietly lowered her gaze. The emperor bent his knee.

“Jeanne.”

“……It’s not because of Martha.”

She thought of the woman who had conceived the emperor’s seed. Unlike her competitor, the Marchioness of Toulouse, she was a woman with a quite plain impression and a pretty smile that spread gently. Her family was said to be an old, prestigious family from the east.

The Marchioness of Toulouse, whose father was a major landowner in the southern granary region, was said to be jealous of such family prestige. Seeing how she had been confronting the marchioness, the number one in the rear palace, ever since entering the palace and receiving her title last year, she clearly had a temperament that wasn’t as mild as her impression suggested.

However, the problems of the rear palace were the problems of the rear palace. She thought she wasn’t in a position to complain since the emperor had decided to keep concubines.

Divorce was more of her internal issue. It wasn’t just her insignificant status that she could never overcome.

“So?”

“I want to stop.”

“What do you want to stop?”

“Being Your Majesty’s surrogate.”

She raised her lowered gaze slightly. His completely hardened face no longer showed even a hint of composure. It wasn’t satisfying. In her bleak mood, she didn’t know how to compose her expression.

She gently gripped the bed sheet. The man kneeling at her feet was frighteningly insensitive. It felt like facing an inorganic object that didn’t think.

When she tried to shake him off because it was terrible, her shoulders were suddenly grabbed. Without even being able to scream, she collapsed and was pinned beneath him.

“You must have gone mad.”

“……Your Majesty.”

“They say women who have given birth all go a little crazy.”

“……”

“Do you really lose your mind with each child you bear?”

The man, whose face remained undistorted, extended a cold hand. She stared at him as he grabbed her neck. She thought it would be better if he just killed her like this. Or cast her out somewhere. He was good at that sort of thing.

Jeanne thought of the many concubines who had been cast out by him. The emperor’s taste in women was unpredictable. Whether they were divorced or had children…. Even chastity or purity didn’t seem important to him. He didn’t even mind mixed blood with foreign races.