The Martial Unity

Chapter 3763: The New Contenders

Prime Minister Edward sneered at the thought of Prince Raul becoming Emperor. As far as he was concerned, the prince embodied the worst traits of his father and magnified them a hundredfold, while lacking any talent and skill in the domain of political intrigue.

”Kandria will be destroyed if that naive fool ascends the throne. As for the others...”

There were princes who favored conquest, war, as well as a pacifist harmony approach to foreign affairs, like that of their fathers. Prime Minister Edward had contempt for all of them for failing to understand what made the Kandrian Empire great in the very first place.

However, since the Unfolding, there had been even more princes and princesses who had adopted new political positions, including the Star Princess, Princess Rumalia, who sought to focus Kandria’s resources and efforts on the Race to the Stars. She saw the future of all of Gaian Civilization span across the cosmos, and saw the conflicts within Gaia to be meaningless in comparison.

”A starry-eyed dreamer with no anchor in reality.” Prime Minister Edward huffed.

There was even an Adventure Prince who had managed to gather support to explore the true world and gain more resources and territory. The true world was enormous, and the prevalence of satellite jamming technology meant that human civilization didn’t actually know too much about the lands within the continents, and even less about the oceans of the true world.

The emergence of six mega-continents and countless major and minor islands harboring hybrid species had lit a long-quenched thirst for adventure and the unknown, coalescing in a prince who harbored an adventurous spirit, Prince Rulius. He had managed to gain the support of the still-influential adventurer’s guild that still existed, even though Rui’s rule over the Beast Domain had greatly curbed their authority.

”A restless child who is being used by expansionary forces to fulfill their ambitions.” Prime Minister Edward shook his head.

The unveiling of the other races had also given birth to human supremacy, with the Human Prince, Prince Raegard, advocating for an ideology that emphasized homo martialus as a superior race that ought to be put above all other races in the true world, considering everybody else to be inferior and sub-human.

This was hardly a surprising development.

Each and every race in the true world had its fair share of this type, some races more than others. The light elves, the tekvores, and the evolutionaries were most prone to this kind of thinking, and Prime Minister Edward knew that it was impossible to stop this ideology from gaining popularity in human civilization.

”Still, a dangerous ideology with delusions of grandeur that threatens to make us an enemy of all of Gaia.” Prime Minister Edward sharpened his eyes.

Conversely, there was also the Pluralist Princess, Princess Rekar, who believed in racial plurality. She pointed to successful examples such as the Hlakaschken Trade Empire to demonstrate that all races could exist in peace and harmony with each other.

She spoke of a world where humans lived next to elves, dwarves, giants, tekvores, therianthropes, and evolutionaries.

”A naive fool, just like the others,” Prime Minister Edward snorted. ”Just because racial supremacy is delusional and foolish does not mean that racial plurality is any less suboptimal. There are genuine, meaningful differences between the races in our bodies and, most importantly, in our minds and societies. We are not the same, and this difference will always create a sociocultural tension that increases the probability of civil war.”

In his estimation, the reason that the Hlakaschken Trade Empire was stable was due to the external forces binding the empire together, along with trade and economic factors serving as an extremely powerful glue. But it was not easy to replicate those factors and variables, and it was not worth trying, as far as Prime Minister Edward was concerned.

There were other minor contenders as well. For instance, the Prime Minister was aware that there was a new Underworld Prince who was being empowered by a mafia that spanned an entire continent, smuggling esoteric goods through the embargo that had been established to prevent esoteric goods from reaching enemy nations. However, because the trade was still so new, it didn’t have the kind of influence and power that the others had managed to gather.

There was also, strangely enough, theocratic princes and princes with religious support from the Faith of Dawn and Virodhabhasa Theocracy who sought to elevate Rui to the status of an officially recognized deity within the Kandrian Empire, and the Panama Continent managed to gain some support as well.

There were princes and princesses who ran on the notion of inertia, trying to continue what their father had started, but they didn’t have the competence to earn that much confidence from many parties. There were princes who advocated for constitutional reform, creating a new kind of state, such as democracies or monarchies, but they didn’t gain as much support as the seven most powerful princes and princesses.

”Right about now, each of them must be aware of the victory condition,” Prime Minister Edward remarked with a calm, analytical tone. ”Winning the approval and endorsement of their most esteemed older brother is the only condition they need to satisfy to achieve victory. And out of all these, the one who is most likely to succeed is...”

His eyes sharpened as they fell on two profiles.

”The People’s Prince or the Princess of the Sea.”

Rui was not ideologically extreme or dogmatic. He wasn’t even ideological in the first place, which Prime Minister Edward appreciated. But it also meant that most of the princes had no shot at appealing to him. The Star Princess and the Adventure Prince had a chance at successfully winning him over. They also benefited from the fact that they hadn’t tried to assassinate him the way that the Princess of the Sea once had.

The People’s Prince would have been perfect if he were younger, but he was quite old already, and it didn’t have a good look to support such an old, soft man ascending the throne in a time when the Kandrian Empire needed to project power and strength more than ever.

”The question is what will Rui Quarrier choose to do.”