Late at night, only two ladies-in-waiting remained in the room.
Esterházy and Hunyadi.
Using a diversion as an excuse, I had come down to my homeland and spent day after day digging into Hungary’s history.
To achieve the Great Compromise, I needed accurate information, and in Vienna there were too many listening ears.
Esterházy explained to me what had happened in Hungary in 1848.
“Vienna’s strategy at the time was simple, Your Majesty.”
Esterházy continued in a dry tone, pointing to Croatia, Vojvodina, and Transylvania as though they were encircling Hungary.
“When Hungary’s blade was aimed at our throat, we struck at Hungary’s rear. Namely, the ethnic minorities within Hungary.”
Beside her, Hunyadi clenched the hem of her skirt.
“Jelačić… Croatia…”
“Hunyadi, do not show Her Majesty your emotions.”
Without so much as blinking, Esterházy restrained Hunyadi.
“We promised Jelačić autonomy and had him attack Hungary. When the Hungarians forced Magyar assimilation, we made use of their hatred.”
The empire’s way of surviving: make them hate one another, and make them depend on the emperor.
“So, Chief Lady-in-Waiting. What was the result?”
“Everyone lost. Hungary lost its center, and Croatia was discarded after serving its purpose.”
Hunyadi added to Esterházy’s words.
“What Hungary received as punishment, Croatia received as reward.”
“Punishment and reward?”
“It means that rebels and loyalists alike ended up equally oppressed. Thanks to that, His Majesty the Emperor lost the trust of every minority.”
Ha. So all that remains is distrust toward one another.
The rebels turned their backs because of punishment, and the loyalists because of betrayal.
How on earth am I supposed to reconcile this?
“That is why His Majesty the Emperor intends to go on an imperial tour together with Her Majesty the Empress.”
“Would that not have the opposite effect?”
“His Majesty the Emperor is law and order. To rebels, he is an object of fear.”
“And Her Majesty the Empress has shown mercy and love. You spoke to them in their own language and soothed their wounds, did you not?”
Esterházy and Hunyadi each told me the roles of the emperor and the empress.
“They will set down the stones they meant to throw at His Majesty the Emperor, and throw flowers to Her Majesty the Empress instead. That is… the only possible point of compromise.”
So I have to dress up prettily, go there, and charm them with, Our Josef may be a poor emperor, but please forgive him.
If that is the role, it is not as though I cannot do it.
I have a talent for that sort of thing. As long as my mother-in-law’s influence does not reach me, like with Rudolf, who has been left alone in Vienna this time, there is nothing I cannot do.
“But Josef could not have acted arbitrarily, could he?”
Back then, Josef was only eighteen, having just become emperor. He would not have had the ability, would he?
“Your Majesty’s guess is correct. His Majesty was only eighteen at the time. What could a boy who had just come of age have known?”
One of the reasons Josef kept trying to send me outside was to protect me from my mother-in-law.
After all, when I married, I had only been a young girl of sixteen.
“Cardinal Rauscher must have oppressed them, calling it God’s will, the chancellor must have excised all emotion, and Colonel Coronini must have done the same.”
“And is there not one more person?”
“Hunyadi.”
Esterházy warned her, but this time as well, Hunyadi did not back down.
“The one who placed His Majesty the Emperor on that throne and made it possible for those men to become his teachers.”
I knew without her having to say the name.
The person who manipulated Josef from behind and made an eighteen-year-old boy stain his hands with blood.
“In the end… it was the archduchess’s work.”
Josef had been a well-trained villainous actor, and the director and screenwriter were someone else.
“Do the Hungarians know that?”
Hunyadi shook her head with a bitter expression.
“The nobles know. But for the common people, what they see is everything. The person who gave the orders and signed the execution documents was His Majesty the Emperor.”
The position of emperor is originally just that sort of position… one that must bear responsibility.
Even so, this is…
“What I must do is clear.”
He is her son.
I fly into a rage just imagining Rudolf being made to stand as a scapegoat.
“I must show them that Josef had no choice but to do it.”
But how?
Josef’s political leanings are close to Archduchess Sophie’s, are they not?
I cannot say about his personality, though.
“Pack our things. If I stay a few more days, my rear will grow too heavy and I will not be able to leave.”
“Will you return to Vienna at once?”
“Sophie and Gisela will go straight to Vienna.”
“Understood, Your Majesty.”
I will pass through Salzburg, sweep all the way across the western side of the Austrian Empire, and then go home.
As for the east, I will travel there later with Josef.
***
Josef looked down at the military reform proposal lying on his desk.
‘Marshal Radetzky.’
He rolled the name around in his mouth.
It had been reassuring.
There had been a time when the mere mention of that name guaranteed the empire’s safety. In 1848, when everyone fled, he had been the old lion who alone raised his sword and defended the empire.
The general who had shown his last flame at Solferino.
But he was no longer here.
‘Your Majesty is still young. You must listen to the counsel of your elders…’
Count Grünne’s cautious voice, which he had heard during the day, buzzed in his ears.
Counsel? No, that was interference. Men who, the moment Radetzky disappeared, rushed in as if they had been waiting, trying to bind his hands and feet.
I am no longer the boy of eighteen.
I am not the Josef of that day, trembling under Mother’s skirts as I received the crown.
Josef had to show them.
The emperor himself had to command the army and make every decision.
‘No one can be allowed to control the empire from above the emperor’s head. Even if that person is Mother.’
‘Your Majesty, if you wish to speak more of politics with me… forget Vienna’s opinions for a moment.’
Josef picked up his pen and signed the document roughly.
‘Austria is my empire.’
*
The door to the study opened without even an announcement from the attendant.
Standing there was Archduchess Sophie, dressed in black.
In her hand was a copy of the personnel order Josef had approved just moments before.
“What on earth is the meaning of this, Your Majesty?”
Without even offering a greeting, Sophie set the document down on the desk as though throwing it.
“To cast aside Austria’s long-serving loyal retainers with a single stroke. They are the ones who protected Your Majesty amid the chaos of 1848.”
“They are old, Mother.”
Without lifting his head, Josef answered dryly as he organized the papers.
“The times have changed. Now that Marshal Radetzky is gone, the army needs new and agile commanders. Those intoxicated by past glory who cannot see reality will only become a burden.”
“A burden! If not for them, there would be no Your Majesty today!”
Sophie’s voice rose.
Only then did Josef set down his pen and look straight at Sophie.
Josef’s cold, light-brown eyes shone exactly like hers.
“How long must I keep paying off a debt from ten years ago? I am the emperor. Making decisions for the future of the empire is my authority and my duty.”
“Authority? Duty? Do not delude yourself.”
As Sophie braced her hands on the desk and leaned forward, an intimidating shadow fell over Josef.
“The reason Your Majesty can sit in that seat now and proclaim yourself emperor is because I, and those old loyal retainers, stained our hands with blood and trampled the rebels for you. Do you think you stood there by your own strength?”
“So! Even now, do you want me to go on acting as Mother’s puppet?”
Josef sprang to his feet. The chair fell backward with a loud crash, but neither of them so much as blinked.
“Must I ask Mother about every matter, use only the people Mother has chosen, and follow only the path Mother has laid out? Do you know how many subjects died futile deaths in Italy?”
The emotions Josef had kept suppressed burst from his mouth. But Sophie did not retreat.
Rather, she looked at Josef with even colder eyes.
“Watch your tongue, Your Majesty.”
“No, it is not wrong. Mother does not trust me. Are you not wracked with anxiety that I might ruin the army, that I might scratch this empire, your own creation?”
Sophie’s eyebrow twitched.
As though sighing, she spoke in a tone meant to admonish her son.
“Your Majesty, I raised you to be an emperor who commands the army, not a doll in a military uniform.”
Those words stabbed Josef where it hurt most.
“Look at what Your Majesty is doing now. That is not command. It is mere bravado to hide your insecurity. A true monarch does not cast aside loyal retainers; he knows how to make use of them.”
“Even when those loyal retainers cover my eyes and ears?”
“They are protecting Your Majesty!”
“I do not need protection! I am…!”
Josef clenched his fists so tightly that his nails dug into his palms.
“I am no longer a child. My army is mine to command. Mother should now concern herself with the affairs of the inner household. Affairs of state are my domain.”
It was an unmistakable order for her to leave.
Sophie looked at her son as though she could not believe it.
Josef, the son who had always been obedient, the good son who had only ever answered “yes,” was turning his back on her.
“Sisi. That child has made Your Majesty like this.”
“Mother! Why on earth are you bringing the Empress into this?”
“That child must have poured sweet poison into Your Majesty’s ear. Weak things like mercy, love, and compromise.”
“The Empress merely offered me comfort! She treated me as a person, not as a statue, unlike Mother!”
“The emperor is not a person!”
Sophie’s shout rang thunderously through the study.
She glared into Josef’s eyes and spoke in a low, fierce voice.
“The emperor must be the empire itself. The moment he is swayed by emotion and shaken by compassion, the empire collapses. That child grew up in the free-spirited air of Bavaria; she does not know the weight of Vienna.”
“So you tormented the Empress in order to make her endure that weight?”
“I taught her! As befitted the position of empress!”
Suppressing the anger welling up within her, Sophie gripped her fan tightly.
“Your Majesty, listen carefully. Hungary and Italy cannot be ruled with love. What they want is not Your Majesty’s mercy, but Your Majesty’s head. The Empress’s method will fail.”
Josef clenched his fists and brought out the words he had kept buried inside.
A single sentence, filled with the sense of inferiority he had hidden all his life.
“… Maximilian is truly enviable.”
“Franz Joseph!”
“Is he not? He even brought home a wife Mother likes.”
Sophie cooled her boiling anger into ice and stared at her son as though looking at a stranger.
In that gaze was an emotion harder to endure than contempt.
Disappointment.
“… This is not worth hearing any further.”
Sophie turned her back just like that. Perhaps it would have been better if she had slapped him across the face.
“Ha…”
Josef rubbed his face with both hands.
“Sisi…”
As if by habit, he called his wife’s name.
‘Where is she now? What would she say to me? Would she embrace me as she did in Milan, or…’
“I miss you.”
‘Would she be disappointed to see me fail, just as Mother said?’
Josef let the words slip out to himself like an echo in the empty study.