The Twelve Kingdoms: Dreaming of Paradise

The stone table there was situated to catch a refreshing breeze.
    "It seems that I owe you an apology, General."
    "Not at all. The error appears to be ours."
    "It would be entirely logical of you to seek an audience with the Marquis. I'm sure you find this quite awkward. You having not so long ago installed a duly-appointed Empress in your Imperial Palace, and we—with the Marquis as our leader—having struck down our own king."
    "I've been informed of the Royal Hou's mercilessly tyrannical actions toward his subjects."
    Shouyou nodded. "I know it is an ugly truth to put forth, but during the reign of His Highness, six hundred thousand people were executed, often for the most trivial of sins."
    "Six hundred thousand—"
    It would be said in years hence that the land was covered with corpses. The arithmetic averaged out to at least one from every household in the kingdom.
    "His Highness loathed sin. There could be no forgiveness, no matter how slight the offense. Pick a man's pocket or leave the fields at harvest to attend the fair—the death penalty attended both equally. That's the kind of place Hou was."
    Sei did not challenge this information. He appeared to be well-informed on the subject.
    "At last, the Marquis of Kei called together the other Province Lords and mounted an insurrection. We murdered our King. The Marquis led the alliance. So it would be natural for you to assume that having deprived the King of his life and the throne, the Marquis would then occupy it. And we assumed the same."
    Four years before, the other eight Province Lords answered Gekkei's call, as had Shouyou and the ministers. Chuutatsu was treading a path to extinction. They must arise and revolt. Chuutatsu and Queen Kaka were assassinated. Hourin was killed. The curtain of Chuutatsu's reign was rung down.
    The disease was eliminated. But Chuutatsu had been the rightful ruler. When a king died, the kingdom soon followed him into the grave. Between Chuutatsu's ruinous reign and the fires of insurrection ignited by Shouyou and the rest of them, the Imperial Court was left in tatters. They had to somehow patch things together without worsening the era of the empty throne.
    That had been the goal of the conspirators from the beginning. They had killed the king, sending the kingdom further along its downward path. So it was their duty to set things aright.
    Nevertheless, once Gekkei, the leader of the revolution, had tied together the minimum number of loose ends, he passed the reins of government on to the Imperial bureaucracy (now half its original number), and retired to Kei Province.
    "The Marquis hadn't the slightest desire to inherit the Kingdom. His goal all along was to stop the slaughter, not to become the substitute king or rule the Kingdom."
    "And yet the news that reached our ears was that the Marquis of Kei was guiding the Imperial Court of Hou."
    "That was how things evolved. The Marquis believes that, in the abstract, it is an offense against nature that we traitors should rule at all. The real world, however, begs to differ. Without the guidance of the Marquis, everything would unravel. Because he is the leader of our alliance. Having accepted that role, without his direction, the Court would cease to function."
    Being abandoned by Gekkei amidst the chaos following the king's assassination had sent them reeling. They couldn't just come up with another leader. He had called up the ministers and Province Lords, and once the insurrection was accomplished, had organized their allies and directed what they should do. To lose such a critical element threw everything into confusion. Somebody had to step into the role, but nobody stepped forward to shoulder the responsibility.
    The opinions and expectations and complications multiplied. Nobody could get anything done at all. Shouyou finally penned a desperate petition calling for Gekkei's return, the one thing the Imperial Court could agree upon. In response to these frantic cries, Gekkei at last returned to the Imperial Palace. In the four years since then, the Kingdom of Hou had moved forward under his direction.
    "However, the Marquis has sought no position for himself within the government. He refuses our nominations. He says that the job of running the government belongs to the ministers, and he will only help out where he can. In fact, the Marquis is the Province Lord of Kei and normally resides at his palace there. Only at certain critical junctures, and when we request his