As to how Raphael's arrival in Trevero came to be known to Alfonso and Ariadne, some would say it was purely coincidental, others would say it was because the tastes of the three, or more precisely, Ariadne and Raphael, were extremely similar.
So, this was something that was somewhere between coincidence and inevitability.
“Shall we go for a change of pace?”
“Yes? A change of pace?”
Alfonso took Ariadne's hand and went on a date to the city of Trevero. Since they had decided to get married, Alfonso had nothing to hold back.
He cleared his schedule and took off his security. Since she was with him, there was no danger unless he sent a platoon. Putting on his hooded cloak was just the bare minimum courtesy.
One day, when he ascends to the throne and becomes King and Queen, he will never come to Trevero like this again, and he will certainly never be able to roam the city freely again.
So he wanted to create a precious memory for Ariadne before that.
The specific dateand location was chosen by Ariadne. The place she wanted to go was inside the walls of Trevero, in a shop selling old books.
And there he was.
“...Raphael?”
Ariadne was the first to notice Raphael, and only too late did she realize that she had called out the name of an old friend with whom she had had a subtle aura in front of her lover.
She looked at Alfonso with a momentary tremor in her pupils.
If he had just moved away, he could have passed by without encountering her, but Raphael ended up hearing Ariadne's voice like a ghost.
He looked up from the precious ancient book he had been reading, his nose buried in his monocle, and with his mouth slightly open, he looked at Alfonso and Ariadne.
“Ari...? Alfonso...?”
Ariadne hung her head in extreme awkwardness. She had done nothing wrong, but she felt as if she had done something terribly wrong.
Raphael saw something a little different in this situation. Alfonso was casually linking arms with Ariadne. Not the courtly escort, but a real arm-in-arm.
The distance between them was close, Alfonso's elbow resting just near Ariadne's chest, but neither of them paid any attention to it.
Raphael noticed that the atmosphere between them had changed.
It was Alfonso who added fuel to the fire of those doubts. He approached Raphael with a kindly smile and open arms.
“Raphael!”
Alfonso tried to embrace Raphael. Raphael barely managed to avoid the close combat with his old friend, using his remaining exercise fingers.
He had not practiced swordsmanship since he had devoted himself to the Holy See, but he decided that he would start practicing again starting tomorrow.
“Alfonso! What are you two doing here?”
He was talking about the incident where he came out to play secretly without an escort.
“Safely! Yeah? Inside! Yeah? Indoors! Surrounded by the Knights!”
Alfonso whispered to Ariadne while Raphael fired like a machine gun.
“Let’s ask Raphael about that.”
“Huh? That’s it?”
“I felt a bit awkward asking the Cardinal, but I can trust Raphael.”
When Ariadne did not explicitly refuse, Alfonso cut Raphael off mid-sentence.
“Raphael. I have a favor to ask.”
He bent down and whispered in a low voice to Raphael.
Raphael jumped up as if he were on fire.
“What?! Marriage?!”
"Shhhh!"
Ariadne quickly intervened and stopped Raphael.
“It’s still a secret!”
Alfonso added with a sad smile.
“I thought about it and realized that we only need to write our own marriage vows and get the priest’s approval. The rest is up to us. So we’re going to keep it simple for now.”
Alfonso bent down and kissed Ariadne on the cheek.
“I’ll make it really grand later. I’m sorry I made you get married in secret.”
“No...”
Raphael's head spun furiously as he concentrated on the sight of the two cockroaches doing something disgusting, or rather, something he did not like.
He had to distract himself somewhere else.
“No, wait a minute.”
Something flashed. He felt like he had caught a clue to the vague sense of discomfort he had felt earlier.
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
Raphael counted everything from the beginning.
“The matter of Princess Lariesa hasn’t been resolved yet, and we don’t have His Majesty the King’s permission?! The only reason we have to hurry now is...”
Raphael realized this himself while he was speaking.
That kid is in a hurry because he has something to take responsibility for. There was no other answer.
He covered his mouth.
“You guys slept...!”
“Shhhh!”
A terrified Ariadne rushed in and covered Raphael's mouth. Trevero spoke Latin in everyday life, so no one could understand Etruscan.
But she was so flustered that she didn't have time to think about that.
Raphael easily dodged Ariadne's lunge and covered her ears with both hands.
He whispered affectionately to her like a real older brother in a fairy tale.
“Miss Ari, don’t listen to me for a moment.”
And then his face completely flipped over. It was a transformation from an angel to a demon.
“Alfonso de Carlo! Do you have a conscience or not?!”
Although he tried to keep his voice as low as possible so that others would not hear, the staccato rebuke he contained was conveyed clearly to Alfonso.
“Wow, there must be a cross hanging on the wall in each of the Holy See accommodations, so they did something like that under one?!”
Alfonso just laughed and stepped back. Raphael leaned forward and rebuked him.
“Huh? Huh? You wanted to do something like that? You wanted to do something like that with Gon looking down from the wall and the statue of the Virgin Mary on the table? Huh? Huh?”
Raphael, whose potion had doubled, pulled out one of the hands that had been covering Ariadne's ear after a tongue attack and hit Alfonso on the shoulder!
"Ouch!"
But only his own hands were hurting from the rock-like muscles. His imagination went wild, and Raphael gritted his teeth and cried.
“What did you do to Ari with that stone-like body! Aaaah!”
In the meantime, his hand hurt, and tears welled up in his eyes.
I'm going to exercise starting tomorrow. I don't know what I'll use the money for, but I'm definitely going to exercise.
“You’re telling me to officiate the wedding. You don’t have any conscience, you son of a bitch...”
“Hahaha. Sorry.”
As a sign of apology, Alfonso did not avoid Raphael's hand even once. In anger, Raphael hit Alfonso's shoulder once more, but only his hand hurt more.
“Ouch...”
Philip IV went straight to see Pope Louis without even taking lodgings.
Considering that usually, a working-level official would announce the arrival of the monarch in advance, set up the route including the accommodations perfectly, and then make detailed arrangements for the meeting place and other protocol before the meeting between the two heads of state takes place, this was a truly unusual case.
As a result, Pope Louis had to leave his new, old successor, Cardinal de Mare, alone in some library or other while he went to see Philip IV.
“I am so grateful for the warm welcome despite my difficult request. I don’t know where to put myself.”
Philip was very polite to the Pope, as if he had come to ask for a favor.
Philip IV looked much thinner and more stern than Louis had heard. The Pope thought about it and then burst into laughter.
'If someone saw me, they'd probably say I'm smaller than they'd heard from rumors.'
It's natural, since he's about to die.
The Pope asked directly the King of Gallico, Philip IV:.
“What brings you here? I guess you have special business since you came in such a hurry.”
Philip IV also preferred to get straight to the point. He didn't have much time.
“Let me speak frankly. Your Majesty, I beg you to grant me a general pardon for the ‘Law of Allemand.’”
The Law of Allemand was a church law that prohibited the inheritance of illegitimate children. In the Central Continent, where there was no gift tax or inheritance tax*, the Law of Allemand surprisingly did not pose a major problem in terms of property.
All one had to do was give cash or a farm to an illegitimate child before death or in a will, and that was it.
However, the story was different for titles that were attached to status and were passed down, and for the right of succession to the throne, which can be seen as the final evolved form of titles.
Wrinkles like crow's feet appeared around the Pope's eyes.
“Why should I do that?”
The Allemand law of amnesty granted the same rights to illegitimate children as to legitimate children if they were born during a specified period, either in a certain year or on any date set by the Pope between 1101 and 1113.
“If you do something like that, there will be a bloodbath in the Central Continent.”
If there is a country with a Queen, things get complicated.
If a son who was excluded from the right of succession because he was an illegitimate child appears and claims, "I am the legitimate heir, so give me the crown," the Queen who inherited the throne due to the Allemand law, which predates the Salic law that prohibited women from succeeding, will face an awkward situation.
Fortunately, none of the major countries in the Central Continent currently had a Queen, but the same thing could happen with a noble title.
“The line of succession to the throne will change many times.”
If an illegitimate child were older than the legitimate heir to the throne and claimed primogeniture, or if the direct line of succession died out and a cousin succeeded to the throne, there was bound to be chaos.
“There will be big and small fights. How will these fights be resolved? In the end, it comes down to strength.”
Those who have military power, or those who rely on military power, will become rulers and gain titles. Those who have the right will be pushed out.
Pope Louis was keen to protect the legitimate rights holders, but he had no intention of enduring the chaos that was now upon the Central Continent.
“The Central Continent must be stabilized.”
Then wouldn't they have sent a large army to Yesak? The Fourth Crusade was just around the corner. If you're worried about your back, you can't go to war.
“Forget it.”
To the Pope's refusal, Philip responded with the whites of his eyes shining brightly.
“You can’t ask for it with your bare hands.”
There was a sense of desperation and resignation about him.
“I’ll give you some Pisarino.”
Pisarino. It was a port owned by the Gallico kingdom, which Trevero, who was trapped in the inland between the Gallico and Etruscan kingdoms, had longed for.
[Author's Note]
The modern inheritance tax system is believed to have originated in England in 1894.
The origins of something similar to an inheritance tax can be traced back to 1796 and 1694, depending on the theory, but these two were not exactly the same as today's inheritance tax or gift tax.
The setting of the work is about 300-400 years earlier than above, before the modern development of the tax system.
The premise is that there is no inheritance or gift tax yet, and the tax system is largely based on poll tax, land tax, and customs duties used as secondary tax sources.
So, this was something that was somewhere between coincidence and inevitability.
“Shall we go for a change of pace?”
“Yes? A change of pace?”
Alfonso took Ariadne's hand and went on a date to the city of Trevero. Since they had decided to get married, Alfonso had nothing to hold back.
He cleared his schedule and took off his security. Since she was with him, there was no danger unless he sent a platoon. Putting on his hooded cloak was just the bare minimum courtesy.
One day, when he ascends to the throne and becomes King and Queen, he will never come to Trevero like this again, and he will certainly never be able to roam the city freely again.
So he wanted to create a precious memory for Ariadne before that.
The specific dateand location was chosen by Ariadne. The place she wanted to go was inside the walls of Trevero, in a shop selling old books.
And there he was.
“...Raphael?”
Ariadne was the first to notice Raphael, and only too late did she realize that she had called out the name of an old friend with whom she had had a subtle aura in front of her lover.
She looked at Alfonso with a momentary tremor in her pupils.
If he had just moved away, he could have passed by without encountering her, but Raphael ended up hearing Ariadne's voice like a ghost.
He looked up from the precious ancient book he had been reading, his nose buried in his monocle, and with his mouth slightly open, he looked at Alfonso and Ariadne.
“Ari...? Alfonso...?”
Ariadne hung her head in extreme awkwardness. She had done nothing wrong, but she felt as if she had done something terribly wrong.
Raphael saw something a little different in this situation. Alfonso was casually linking arms with Ariadne. Not the courtly escort, but a real arm-in-arm.
The distance between them was close, Alfonso's elbow resting just near Ariadne's chest, but neither of them paid any attention to it.
Raphael noticed that the atmosphere between them had changed.
It was Alfonso who added fuel to the fire of those doubts. He approached Raphael with a kindly smile and open arms.
“Raphael!”
Alfonso tried to embrace Raphael. Raphael barely managed to avoid the close combat with his old friend, using his remaining exercise fingers.
He had not practiced swordsmanship since he had devoted himself to the Holy See, but he decided that he would start practicing again starting tomorrow.
“Alfonso! What are you two doing here?”
He was talking about the incident where he came out to play secretly without an escort.
“Safely! Yeah? Inside! Yeah? Indoors! Surrounded by the Knights!”
Alfonso whispered to Ariadne while Raphael fired like a machine gun.
“Let’s ask Raphael about that.”
“Huh? That’s it?”
“I felt a bit awkward asking the Cardinal, but I can trust Raphael.”
When Ariadne did not explicitly refuse, Alfonso cut Raphael off mid-sentence.
“Raphael. I have a favor to ask.”
He bent down and whispered in a low voice to Raphael.
Raphael jumped up as if he were on fire.
“What?! Marriage?!”
"Shhhh!"
Ariadne quickly intervened and stopped Raphael.
“It’s still a secret!”
Alfonso added with a sad smile.
“I thought about it and realized that we only need to write our own marriage vows and get the priest’s approval. The rest is up to us. So we’re going to keep it simple for now.”
Alfonso bent down and kissed Ariadne on the cheek.
“I’ll make it really grand later. I’m sorry I made you get married in secret.”
“No...”
Raphael's head spun furiously as he concentrated on the sight of the two cockroaches doing something disgusting, or rather, something he did not like.
He had to distract himself somewhere else.
“No, wait a minute.”
Something flashed. He felt like he had caught a clue to the vague sense of discomfort he had felt earlier.
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
Raphael counted everything from the beginning.
“The matter of Princess Lariesa hasn’t been resolved yet, and we don’t have His Majesty the King’s permission?! The only reason we have to hurry now is...”
Raphael realized this himself while he was speaking.
That kid is in a hurry because he has something to take responsibility for. There was no other answer.
He covered his mouth.
“You guys slept...!”
“Shhhh!”
A terrified Ariadne rushed in and covered Raphael's mouth. Trevero spoke Latin in everyday life, so no one could understand Etruscan.
But she was so flustered that she didn't have time to think about that.
Raphael easily dodged Ariadne's lunge and covered her ears with both hands.
He whispered affectionately to her like a real older brother in a fairy tale.
“Miss Ari, don’t listen to me for a moment.”
And then his face completely flipped over. It was a transformation from an angel to a demon.
“Alfonso de Carlo! Do you have a conscience or not?!”
Although he tried to keep his voice as low as possible so that others would not hear, the staccato rebuke he contained was conveyed clearly to Alfonso.
“Wow, there must be a cross hanging on the wall in each of the Holy See accommodations, so they did something like that under one?!”
Alfonso just laughed and stepped back. Raphael leaned forward and rebuked him.
“Huh? Huh? You wanted to do something like that? You wanted to do something like that with Gon looking down from the wall and the statue of the Virgin Mary on the table? Huh? Huh?”
Raphael, whose potion had doubled, pulled out one of the hands that had been covering Ariadne's ear after a tongue attack and hit Alfonso on the shoulder!
"Ouch!"
But only his own hands were hurting from the rock-like muscles. His imagination went wild, and Raphael gritted his teeth and cried.
“What did you do to Ari with that stone-like body! Aaaah!”
In the meantime, his hand hurt, and tears welled up in his eyes.
I'm going to exercise starting tomorrow. I don't know what I'll use the money for, but I'm definitely going to exercise.
“You’re telling me to officiate the wedding. You don’t have any conscience, you son of a bitch...”
“Hahaha. Sorry.”
As a sign of apology, Alfonso did not avoid Raphael's hand even once. In anger, Raphael hit Alfonso's shoulder once more, but only his hand hurt more.
“Ouch...”
***
Philip IV went straight to see Pope Louis without even taking lodgings.
Considering that usually, a working-level official would announce the arrival of the monarch in advance, set up the route including the accommodations perfectly, and then make detailed arrangements for the meeting place and other protocol before the meeting between the two heads of state takes place, this was a truly unusual case.
As a result, Pope Louis had to leave his new, old successor, Cardinal de Mare, alone in some library or other while he went to see Philip IV.
“I am so grateful for the warm welcome despite my difficult request. I don’t know where to put myself.”
Philip was very polite to the Pope, as if he had come to ask for a favor.
Philip IV looked much thinner and more stern than Louis had heard. The Pope thought about it and then burst into laughter.
'If someone saw me, they'd probably say I'm smaller than they'd heard from rumors.'
It's natural, since he's about to die.
The Pope asked directly the King of Gallico, Philip IV:.
“What brings you here? I guess you have special business since you came in such a hurry.”
Philip IV also preferred to get straight to the point. He didn't have much time.
“Let me speak frankly. Your Majesty, I beg you to grant me a general pardon for the ‘Law of Allemand.’”
The Law of Allemand was a church law that prohibited the inheritance of illegitimate children. In the Central Continent, where there was no gift tax or inheritance tax*, the Law of Allemand surprisingly did not pose a major problem in terms of property.
All one had to do was give cash or a farm to an illegitimate child before death or in a will, and that was it.
However, the story was different for titles that were attached to status and were passed down, and for the right of succession to the throne, which can be seen as the final evolved form of titles.
Wrinkles like crow's feet appeared around the Pope's eyes.
“Why should I do that?”
The Allemand law of amnesty granted the same rights to illegitimate children as to legitimate children if they were born during a specified period, either in a certain year or on any date set by the Pope between 1101 and 1113.
“If you do something like that, there will be a bloodbath in the Central Continent.”
If there is a country with a Queen, things get complicated.
If a son who was excluded from the right of succession because he was an illegitimate child appears and claims, "I am the legitimate heir, so give me the crown," the Queen who inherited the throne due to the Allemand law, which predates the Salic law that prohibited women from succeeding, will face an awkward situation.
Fortunately, none of the major countries in the Central Continent currently had a Queen, but the same thing could happen with a noble title.
“The line of succession to the throne will change many times.”
If an illegitimate child were older than the legitimate heir to the throne and claimed primogeniture, or if the direct line of succession died out and a cousin succeeded to the throne, there was bound to be chaos.
“There will be big and small fights. How will these fights be resolved? In the end, it comes down to strength.”
Those who have military power, or those who rely on military power, will become rulers and gain titles. Those who have the right will be pushed out.
Pope Louis was keen to protect the legitimate rights holders, but he had no intention of enduring the chaos that was now upon the Central Continent.
“The Central Continent must be stabilized.”
Then wouldn't they have sent a large army to Yesak? The Fourth Crusade was just around the corner. If you're worried about your back, you can't go to war.
“Forget it.”
To the Pope's refusal, Philip responded with the whites of his eyes shining brightly.
“You can’t ask for it with your bare hands.”
There was a sense of desperation and resignation about him.
“I’ll give you some Pisarino.”
Pisarino. It was a port owned by the Gallico kingdom, which Trevero, who was trapped in the inland between the Gallico and Etruscan kingdoms, had longed for.
[Author's Note]
The modern inheritance tax system is believed to have originated in England in 1894.
The origins of something similar to an inheritance tax can be traced back to 1796 and 1694, depending on the theory, but these two were not exactly the same as today's inheritance tax or gift tax.
The setting of the work is about 300-400 years earlier than above, before the modern development of the tax system.
The premise is that there is no inheritance or gift tax yet, and the tax system is largely based on poll tax, land tax, and customs duties used as secondary tax sources.
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