***

High nobles were arriving in the capital one after another.

Leticia listened to Luka’s report while reviewing the list of high noble families.

“You need to meet all the families ranked Count or higher. Nominally, ‘Prince Sion’ is looking for a marriage partner. Many of those families don’t have daughters to marry off, but in those cases, the head of the family will come out, so it will be easier to talk.”

“They’re meeting Prince Sion even without daughters?”

“They can just adopt a niece or distant relative. Usually in such cases, they add a larger dowry, which is good.”

Luka shrugged and added, “That’s how noble marriages work. Anyway, I’ve divided the list into two categories, so remember them well.”

“Don’t I need to persuade both? What criteria did you use to divide them?”

“On the right are the ladies who have some say in their families and have received political education. You can directly persuade them. On the left are the innocent ones—don’t mention anything in front of them, but find opportunities to speak separately with their family heads.”

It was strange for the sixth prince to suddenly meet with high nobles.

So Leticia planned to visit the families before the debut ball under the pretext of marriage.

Nathan had spread the word that Leticia’s goal was “to frame the Emperor for filicide” to persuade the Second Prince Rasiel, but Leticia’s purpose did not end there.

Leticia wanted to overthrow the Herta Imperial Family that ruled the Empire.

She wanted to reduce the imperial family to just another ordinary family.

So that all the power they had enjoyed, and the tyranny perpetrated with that power, would no longer be possible.

Some might say that whichever family becomes the imperial family, the same tyranny would occur if they held power…

Then why not make it so that no specific family monopolizes the throne?

Like the self-proclaimed empires that existed before the first Herta appeared.

In the Empire, they neither call nor teach about the empires that reigned before the first Herta as empires.

How could the imperial throne not be passed down within one family, but instead move according to the power of different families?

But Leticia liked that system.

Honestly, whether it was an excellent system or not didn’t matter to her at all.

What mattered was that the Herta Imperial Family, reduced to an ordinary family, would have to watch as others sat on the throne they had naturally inherited.

To see the family that ‘used to be’, the Herta Imperial Family, plotting to someday return to the throne.

They would be frustrated every time someone else sat on the imperial throne.

When Leticia first heard this plan from Astrid, she asked if it wasn’t too cruel.

But Astrid stroked Leticia’s head and whispered:

“What’s cruel about it when no one dies, Leti? We’re just arranging for various families to sit on the throne. When families that covet the throne check each other, there won’t be victims like our Leti anymore.”

Things like setting fire to a theater troupe and k*lling everyone inside would never happen again.

Even if that conclusion came not from the very human thought that “it shouldn’t happen,” but from the inhuman calculation of not giving other families justification to attack.

Sometimes such things were more reliable than human compassion.

“We’re taking away the legitimacy and power of the Herta Imperial Family. In fact, it was never really theirs to begin with.”

Her teacher was right.

The first Herta’s golden eyes, the curse left by Herta, the ability to control weather through that curse—none of it belonged to the Herta Imperial Family.

They were only taking back what had never belonged to the Herta Imperial Family in the first place.

Leticia wondered what the Herta Imperial Family would call themselves after losing the name ‘Herta.’

Sometimes she would list different names and imagine it.

Perhaps this was what her teacher meant by the pleasure of revenge?

***

The only daughter of the Moreta Marquis family disliked the prince who was visiting today.

Though she had never met him, from the moment this prince Sion or whatever became her potential husband, she had prepared herself to intensely dislike the boy.

She had already set her sights on a decent son-in-law candidate from a vassal family.

There was absolutely no need for her to marry a prince and live supporting him.

Her family agreed with this, but they still said she should meet him once, so they sent a halfhearted invitation.

She thought he would decline such an insincere invitation, but surprisingly, he insisted on coming.

She waited for the prince in the marquis’s residence in the capital, fully charged for battle.

Meaning she had made no preparations whatsoever to welcome a guest.

The butler asked with his eyes if this was really acceptable, but she was confident.

She didn’t know what confidence he had to enter her territory, but she was sure she could make a disgusted face at whatever the prince said.

What could he do about it anyway?

After the prince’s debut ball ended, she would return to her territory and happily get along with the cute husband candidate she had already picked out.

Why should she, the heir to a marquis’ family, care about the sixth prince, who wasn’t even the Emperor?

“Greetings, young mistress.”

…or so she had thought.

She watched in a daze as what looked like a masterpiece painting walked in.

The masterpiece painting that looked like an artist’s life’s work spoke human language. The prince’s golden hair fell slightly across his forehead as he bowed his head. The golden eyes beneath steadily gazed at her.

“Ah, so that’s why…”

So that’s where the confidence came from, he trusted his face… She murmured unconsciously.

With a face like that, they should have warned her. Then she would have prepared herself mentally. She clutched her arbitrarily racing heart.

No. I have a decent husband candidate…!

The face of the cute, handsome man she had thought of as her husband candidate gradually became blurry and hard to remember. What did he look like again? That guy.

No. I have a family to protect…!

At that thought, she finally came to her senses and guided the prince.

“Th-this way, Your Highness.”

Since she hadn’t really considered him as a husband candidate, she hadn’t prepared a tea time in the flowery garden.

She sat across from the prince in a clean but rather empty drawing room.

The prince smiled slightly.

Don’t smile… She held her wavering heart with steel-like ambition. Her heart seemed to lack discipline.

“Young mistress, you have no intention of marrying me.”

“It’s not exactly that… I mean. Yes, yes… I don’t.”

After answering with a feeling like spitting blood, the prince smiled more broadly.

It felt a bit like a mental attack that made her slightly dazed.

“That’s fortunate. I don’t have that intention either.”

“…? Then why did you come here?”

“To make you a proposal more important than marriage. For instance, related to the imperial throne?”

The excitement of seeing an excessively handsome man gradually subsided.

She stared at the prince with cold eyes. Did he think he could seduce her with his face and get her to take a hand in the imperial succession dispute?

“Our family has no intention of getting involved in succession disputes. And if I may add, I have absolutely no interest in the position of Empress.”

At her firm answer, the prince nodded as if he had expected it and asked:

“Then what about the position of Emperor? Are you not interested in that either?”

While visiting similar high noble families, Leticia always made the same proposal. And every family answered the same way.

They didn’t want to take the risk.

Then they all asked Leticia the same question.

But who could refuse the imperial throne?

To Leticia, that wasn’t so much a question as it was an answer.