The illustration printed in one corner was the first thing to catch his eye.

“‘A Ballad of…… Flame and Loss’?”

Andrea read the tacky title aloud, skimmed the unremarkable cheap novel, then shifted his gaze back to the illustration.

A handsome man and a woman were depicted together in a state of undress, posed suggestively. For a drawing used in a rag like this, it was needlessly well done.

He let out a dry laugh and handed the magazine back to Nina.

“What’s it about?”

Nina launched into a detailed explanation.

“The male lead, ‘Captain Alain,’ goes through a string of affairs with various noble ladies and actresses at court. On its own, it reads like any other romance serial that’s been popular for years, but.”

She paused there, and Andrea prompted her.

“This kind of thing has been around for a while? Who reads these, and why.”

Nina shrugged and turned to face the men looking genuinely puzzled.

“Well…… vicarious satisfaction. Women have hidden desires too, and they need an outlet for them.”

“Ah, right, right. I am fully in favor of women expressing their desires.”

Bernay said it with a grin, cigar between his lips, while Edwin the editor-in-chief studied the magazine with genuine interest.

“The content aside, the artwork really is good.”

“Oh, look at Captain Alain’s back muscles. Even if I were a woman, I think I’d be moved by this.”

Roso, who was gay, was blushing. Bernay gave him a look.

“You’re already moved. Anyway, women have this strange fondness for a Casanova type.”

Their snickering died down the moment Nina continued.

“Regardless, what made me uneasy when I read this, what gave me a sense of deja vu, is that the male lead, ‘Captain Alain,’ looks rather like…… Your Highness the Crown Prince.”

“……”

“……”

A brief silence fell, and then everyone immediately began comparing Alain’s face to Andrea’s.

“Hmm…… now that you mention it, there is a strange resemblance.”

“Come on, all handsome men look alike.”

Nina pressed on with her sharp observation.

“The issue is that the public has already begun mapping ‘Alain’ onto His Highness the Crown Prince. On top of that, the storylines in this novel run parallel to the fabricated articles 〈Clemont〉 keeps putting out.”

〈Clemont〉 was a press outlet operated by Marquis Karan, the leader of the parliamentary faction, and it made a steady practice of publishing articles that subtly undermined Andrea’s every move.

That a treaty the crown prince had signed with a foreign nation had cost the defense budget a certain sum, that the tax reform he had pushed through last year had caused devastating losses to the manors, that the crown prince had shown favoritism to an opera actress, that several national treasures had been handed over to women, and so on.

Nina pointed out that whenever 〈Clemont〉 first broke a baseless scandal, the same incident would appear shortly after inside the pages of 『A Ballad of Flame and Loss』.

“Just last week, when Your Highness attended the opera and exchanged a brief greeting with an actress, it was blown out of proportion and ran across every newspaper. One week later, in this very serial, Captain Alain had a secret rendezvous with a prima donna.”

Andrea’s brow furrowed slightly at that.

If it was true, it was very clever indeed.

〈Clemont〉 fires the first shot with an outrageous scandal, and then a novel cements it with fiction……

They say a lie told often enough becomes the truth, but what if readers kept encountering something they had half-dismissed, now illustrated and repeated before their eyes?

Before long, rumor would settle into conviction in the minds of the kingdom’s people.

Andrea curved his lips into a thin smile, took the magazine back, and studied Captain Alain carefully.

“This is supposed to be me?”

Perhaps because he had been told as much, Alain’s face, shirt hanging off one shoulder as he pulled an actress close, did look somewhat like his own.

Nina spoke with urgency in her voice.

“My concern isn’t so much whether this novel is genuinely targeting Your Highness, though I am fairly certain it is, but rather that the reading of it that way has already begun spreading through the capital.”

“Hmm.”

Andrea’s relaxed expression tightened. He tapped a finger on Alain and confirmed what he had heard.

“So the public is reading this as me and enjoying it. This womanizer.”

Nina met his eyes and nodded.

“Regrettably so. Once an image takes hold, it becomes very difficult to change, Your Highness.”

The implication was clear. Action needed to be taken immediately.

The others’ expressions turned serious as well.

“Dear me, our crown prince does enjoy his pleasures, but a Casanova he is not…… We need to track this down at once.”

“But overreacting could end up doing the opposite and convincing people it’s true.”

If the royal household responded with alarm to a small publication like this, the public might well take it as confirmation.

A brief silence settled over the office. Andrea, who had been pressing his temple with an expression of mild irritation, brought the matter to a temporary close.

“We watch for now. We need to see a few more chapters to know how it develops.”

Ever thorough, Nina had an answer ready.

“You don’t need future chapters. Even looking back at the ones already published, the pattern is clear enough.”

She laid out the backstory: Captain Alain had been dishonorably discharged from a light cavalry regiment, fallen into gambling, taken up with a marchioness who paid off his debts, and then, unable to break his old habits, seduced a naive count’s daughter on the eve of her engagement and ruined the match.

Andrea’s eyes narrowed.

It aligned, with uncomfortable precision, with the slanders the queen’s faction had pinned on him when he stepped down from military command and began taking part in state affairs as crown prince.

He scratched his forehead slowly and asked.

“Where is that magazine’s main office?”

Nina shook her head, and the answer was not a good one.

“There’s no officially registered address. They keep changing their distribution routes, which makes them nearly impossible to trace.”

Andrea exhaled a short, almost amused breath.

The queen again? He had his suspicions, but no proof.

Aiden pushed his glasses up and spoke carefully.

“The more I look at him, though, the more the male lead really does look exactly like Your Highness. The way the hair is swept back from the forehead, the nose, those broad, clean shoulders……”

Roso and Bernay snickered, but Andrea was already rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, visibly bored with the subject.

Nina, on the other hand, had been the one raising sharp concerns this whole time, and it was only now, at the mention of Captain Alain’s bare body matching Andrea’s, that her face went red. She looked every bit as flustered as any ordinary young lady.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

After his morning visit to the 〈Daily Minerve〉 office, Andrea returned to the palace and began his afternoon schedule.

It had been nearly four years since he had stepped properly into politics, and the checks against him were still relentless.

The largest reason was the death of his birth mother, the late Queen Dowager Marietta, which had left her family stripped of influence.

Meanwhile, the Blanc Ducal House, the queen consort’s family, grew more formidable with each passing day.

The nobles rallied around that house had their sights set on nothing less than Andrea’s downfall, hoping to place the second prince Henry, born of the current Queen Fabienne, on the crown prince’s throne.

But Andrea had not made a single policy misstep. He had delivered results beyond expectations and built his base of support ever more solidly, and so they had turned to the press.

The plan was to bury him under a reputation for debauchery through fabricated articles and stir up public opinion against him from the outside, letting his image quietly erode.

The king was hot-tempered and lecherous, and his eyes were easy enough to cloud. That was the logic behind the strategy.

The kingdom’s people, of course, still adored the crown prince who had returned victorious from years of war, and for now they were consuming his scandals as entertainment, dismissing it all as rumor.

And apart from the bourgeoisie and newly risen nobles who had aligned themselves with the queen’s faction, the established families continued to stand firmly behind Andrea.

‘Even so, leave it long enough and cracks will form.’

After sitting through financial meetings all afternoon and receiving foreign ambassadors, Andrea rode out to the back grounds as the sun began to set.

Hard riding and clean air cleared his head.

But as he pushed through the wooded paths between the dense trees, one thing kept surfacing in his mind.

The image of Captain Alain, hero of that cheap serial.

‘That’s supposed to be me?’

The corner of Andrea’s mouth twisted.

Like h*ll it looks like me.

He had played it cool in front of his friends, but the truth was it had been quietly irritating him.