After finishing my bath, I looked in the mirror and thought to myself.
Who am I?
The empress who gave birth to a son!
“That is a relief.”
“What is?”
“…I was worried that Your Majesty might have been feeling unwell of late.”
A mistress’s mood was always important.
After all, I had heard that in the early days of my pregnancy, Joseph’s displeasure had made the Imperial Palace feel as though everyone were walking on thin ice.
“Still, there’s no mistress like me.”
The ladies-in-waiting all fell silent, as if by prior agreement.
“Enough. At first, you were all frantic because you couldn’t get hold of me.”
“Your Majesty…!”
In the mirror, I was smiling as though amused.
The fact that the court ladies had held their places in such an atmosphere since childhood also played a part.
To be precise, the separation of public and private matters had begun to revive, at least within the Empress’s Palace.
“I was joking. Did you say the Duchess of Metternich was coming today?”
“Yes.”
My only friend in Vienna. But now we had to part.
“The wife of an ambassador must have a hard life, too.”
Hadn’t she said she was going as ambassador to France?
I looked out the window at the nobles foolishly arguing with one another in front of the door.
What did it matter who went in first?
Etiquette was not written down like statutory law.
Custom simply continued on, from one generation to the next, and the next after that.
“Chief lady-in-waiting. There is something I’m curious about.”
“Please ask, Your Majesty.”
“How are you able to memorize so much etiquette?”
“How… do you mean, Your Majesty?”
Esterházy was silent for quite some time.
The other ladies-in-waiting were the same.
It seemed the only ones curious about it were me and Ferenczy.
“I hardly know what to say… It is not as though one must be taught how to breathe or how to blink in order to know it, is it?”
……
Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
Ow—my eyes hurt.
All of a sudden, I’d started paying attention to how I breathed and how I blinked.
Esterházy continued her explanation regardless.
“Etiquette is precedent. For instance, the reason Her Imperial Highness Archduchess Sophie brought back old etiquette was because there was precedent for it, and the reason Your Majesty distinguished between public and private matters was because there was the precedent of Her Majesty Maria Theresa.”
“Is that also why the ladies-in-waiting never use ambiguous expressions?”
“It is, Your Majesty. Because Your Majesty must not feel the slightest misunderstanding or confusion from our words or conduct.”
So they would not mix personal opinions into my judgment.
I had simply thought that strong-willed people who spoke bluntly were the ones who survived, but that was not it.
“It is time for my etiquette lesson.”
“We shall withdraw.”
While the others waited outside, I asked Esterházy,
“…Then why did you recommend a reader?”
It was only natural to wonder.
Esterházy was an embodiment of custom and precedent.
So why had she created an exception in Ida Ferenczy, who broke custom head-on?
“As I recall, only those who are stiftsfähig may become chief lady-in-waiting, court lady, or lady of honor.”
Only those of perfect noble lineage going back sixteen generations were called stiftsfähig.
But Ida Ferenczy was merely an ordinary minor noble.
That was why she had become a reader rather than a court lady.
“Because the loyalty of the stiftsfähig was ambiguous.”
“So you recommended someone who would belong only to me.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
They were people who had to represent the interests of their own houses, and those houses were surely ones the Archduchess could wield.
“Your Majesty needed someone who was Yours alone.”
She looked at me reflected in the mirror as she spoke.
“Lady Ferenczy is a powerless minor noble. In this palace, she can survive only by relying on Your Majesty’s favor. For that reason, her loyalty is never ambiguous.”
“So you were following the principle that ‘Your Majesty must not feel the slightest misunderstanding or confusion from our words or conduct.’”
While avoiding criticism for breaking custom, she had planted a close aide who would be absolutely loyal to me and fulfilled her duty of securing my stability.
…What a frightening woman.
“Now I understand why the Archduchess assigned you to me as chief lady-in-waiting.”
Esterházy lowered her head, showing deference.
It was strange in itself to assume that the person at the very pinnacle of the Empress’s Palace would be incapable of politics.
But to me, she had usually been someone who provided answers, not someone who tried to manipulate me with her own opinions, so I had been mistaken for a moment.
“Let us begin the etiquette lesson.”
In any case, I had to become even a little more accustomed to etiquette.
*
“The Duchess of Metternich has arrived.”
Having said so, Esterházy left with the ladies-in-waiting.
The only friend I met without my ladies-in-waiting.
Pauline smiled brightly and made a court curtsy.
“It is an honor to see Your Majesty like this. And I offer my sincere congratulations on the birth of His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince and Her Highness the Princess. The entire empire rejoices in Your Majesty’s health and the birth of an heir.”
I approached her, took her hand, and helped her up.
“Pauline. Congratulations on your marriage. And on becoming the wife of the ambassador to France. Once you leave Vienna, my only friend will be gone, so I feel terribly sorry to see you go.”
I stroked my now-slender stomach.
“If not for my pregnancy, I would have gone in person to congratulate you.”
“Your words alone are more than enough, Your Majesty. I suppose I should convey my thanks to Their Highnesses as well.”
“Your thanks?”
“They showed filial piety by allowing Your Majesty to complete a duty more important than my wedding.”
“Filial piety, is it?”
For that, I had suffered quite a bit.
The ladies-in-waiting and midwives had said it would be easier than the first time, but in the end, it had taken an hour longer than before.
“At any rate, I’m truly glad to see your face before you go to Paris.”
We immediately sat down and talked.
“Now I cannot run my mouth carelessly before Your Majesty. You have given birth to the Crown Prince. Even Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess has no pretext now.”
Mm… not exactly.
Pauline, who had been expecting something from me, asked with a startled expression,
“Surely… Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess has not taken both Their Highnesses as well?”
I nodded.
Joseph, you awful man….
Perhaps because she knew who might be listening behind us, Pauline could not bring herself to curse.
“Still, His Majesty the Emperor apologized to me.”
“His Majesty did?”
‘Sisi, I am sorry… It seems the officials in Vienna still trust Mother more.’
Damn it, what was the point of being an absolute monarch!
Even so, he had broken away a little from being a complete mama’s boy.
“Still, I succeeded in one thing.”
“What would that be?”
“I moved the nursery to the Imperial Palace.”
“…The nursery, Your Majesty?”
I nodded.
You could call it a small victory.
“Her Majesty Queen Theresa raised her children herself, didn’t she?”
Maria Theresa was, at least in the Habsburg family, practically an all-purpose cheat key.
As empress, I could not create a new precedent, but when it came to following an existing one, even Joseph could not object.
If I could not have them, then Archduchess Sophie could not have them either.
“If the Archduchess wants to raise the children, she will have to clash directly with His Majesty the Emperor, so she must feel some pressure.”
Listen to me. I’ve only been bragging about myself.
“You asked to meet because you wanted to ask about Empress Eugénie, didn’t you?”
Pauline took a brief breath.
“Congratulations, Your Majesty. No official in Vienna would dare touch His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince while he is in His Majesty the Emperor’s residence.”
Before changing the subject, Pauline offered me a brief compliment.
“What sort of person was Empress Eugénie when Your Majesty met her in Paris?”
Well.
But I could not confess the truth about this.
That her relationship with Napoleon III was good and yet bad….
“She will welcome the wife of an ambassador. But she will not be pleased.”
It was true that Empress Eugénie and I had become close, almost like friends, but on a national level, we were enemies.
The Italian question still had not been resolved, and had merely been patched over for the time being.
“I have heard rumors that the Empress of France takes great pride in the new art and architecture of Paris. In Vienna, as you know, we value tradition more highly….”
Mm, so what would help win Eugénie’s favor?
“Riding in the Bois de Boulogne became a fond memory.”
Pauline looked at me with interest.
She, too, was a rider who was as highly regarded in Europe as I was.
“As an Austrian noble, might I not put her in a bad mood?”
How sensitive were lineage issues in Paris?
“She herself is a great noble of Spain. Whether the proud French accept that is a separate matter.”
As for rank, as long as she did not make a mistake, it should not displease her.
“Pauline, you are a Metternich and a member of the Sándor family, are you not?”
The Sándor family was an old and distinguished Hungarian noble house.
“You are telling me to appeal to her pride as a Grande de España.”
I lifted the teacup to my lips.
Among the French nobles who treated her as a nouveau-riche empress, there would be the wife of an Austrian ambassador who recognized her true bloodline.
An ambassador was not merely an agent, but a post with the authority to conclude agreements on behalf of a state by one’s own independent judgment.
There was no harm in Pauline becoming close to the empress.
***
Joseph looked into the mirror with sorrowful eyes.
‘My mustache….’
The mustache he had grown was nowhere to be found.
His fingers trembled despite himself as they traced the smooth sensation.
It was cold, unfamiliar, and humiliating.
At eighteen, when he had donned the imperial crown without yet having shed the air of a boy, it had been the armor he had desperately grown in order to look like an emperor.
It had been a mask to play the adult before his ministers, before the army, and before his mother.
But now, in the mirror, an awkward young man stood with an utterly bewildered expression.
‘Sisi, I am sorry… It seems the officials in Vienna still trust Mother more.’
Yes. He had said that.
‘Is that so? Then, Joseph, grant me my wish now.’
He had been certain that Sisi would insist on raising the children herself, and Joseph had said he would grant her anything.
‘Shave off that mustache at once.’
“……”
Joseph once again looked at the boy in the mirror with sorrowful eyes.
“Haa.”
Letting out a long sigh, Joseph headed to the marital bedroom to sleep.
“Wow, Joseph! You look much better now.”
Sisi greeted Joseph with a radiant smile and praised him.
“Do I… truly?”
“Of course. You look much neater and more proper.”
At those words, Joseph’s mood lifted, if only faintly.