Herald of Steel

The nobleman who had proposed the fantastic idea of directly giving money to the imperial concubines forgot that the concubines did not necessarily have to spend their money on what was expected of them.

Neither did he take into account the fact that the women he was giving money to were not normal girls, nor that they were in a highly irregular environment.

This was the palace harem among all things, one of the filthiest places in the whole country!

Filled to the brim with men and women who were totally morally bankrupt and full of schemes, how could the regular forces of market demand and supply ever hope to survive?

Especially when many things in the whole empire depended on what happened there.

Crowns literally changed hands, and entire noble families could be taken to the top or dropped to the all consuming abyss just based on a single word uttered into the right ear.

This was no exaggeration either- once a noble family had been literally destroyed to its last member because a concubine in favor with the king falsely accused that family’s lord of making an extremely inappropriate pass at her.

She did that because her family wanted a lucrative mine that was on the other property. And even when the whole plot was revealed, because she was in favor with the king, nothing really happened to her... she lived up to a ripe old age and died quite peacefully surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

This type of example was not too rare either.

Thus when you put such venomous women in such a toxic environment... can you really expect anything good?

Most of the concubines quickly found it was far more effective to use their stipends not for food and other necessities but to invest them in bribes and favors to maids, guards and the palace staff.

Because if they could sabotage and bring down your rival through that, they had a good chance of earning the king’s favor and reaping multiple times the reward. A lot of the time, all the resources of that concubine might also get transferred to them.

This ruthless, cut throat culture over time led to the creation of an extremely complex, informal black market inside the palace, where all sorts of goods- food, drinks, jewelry, perfume, as well as banned substances such as weapons, poisons, contrabands were readily bought and sold.

Of course, it was information that was the most expensive item on the list- the higher the person it concerned, the greater the price tag.

And even when the authorities came to know about that, instead of doing anything about it, they instead accessed it for themselves- they found the utility this network provided to be simply too alluring to resist.

Thus almost every imperial concubine, minister, priest and noble lord would look for their own piece in this maze of puzzles. It was even said, if one wanted to keep themselves updated with what was going on in the palace, this was the place they needed to access- not the official court channels.

The consequences of such unfettered backdoor dealings over many decades was the ultimate weakening of the royal authority.

Various cracks began to show up in their authority as the nobles became increasingly frustrated over how there was no justice and that decisions were based on mere whims. Many had also lost their daughters in the battle between the concubines, and they started to find these women to be an extreme bane- a point fully shared by the clergy, as the male dominated order too hated seeing the unrestrained power of womenfolk.

All such tensions continued to simmer and bubble for many years, until one incident made the entire thing come to a full boil!

An ambitious concubine, previously in favor with the king, killed the current queen and crown prince out of blind jealousy, and she too did that in a gruesome way, stabbing the lady while her goons violated her, and mutilating the child right in front while he was still alive.

Now as shocking as this incident was, this alone should not have caused the whole tower of cards to come crashing down. There were cases of similar brutality, and sometimes the concubine would be punished for it, and sometimes, if she was well favored or if she had a particularly powerful family, she would, at best, get a slap on the wrist.

And indeed, this concubine had a very powerful family- only not her father was a Pasha, her elder sister was also the main wife of the most powerful Pasha of the time. On top of that, her nephew, whom she doted on, was on the verge of taking over his father’s empire.

So she thought she was in the clear.

And perhaps if it were in any other time, she would have indeed gotten away with it.

But that was a time of extreme turmoil and instability.

Particularly, sensing the royal family’s weakness, the nobles following the pagan belief of the lands were trying to rebel against the relatively new Ramuh faith. And although their success seemed slim, the king at the time was still willing to negotiate.

This man was one of the rare competent rulers among a whole line of wastes and keenly understood that his family was really a paper tiger- fighting the nobles at that point, unless he was able to defeat them swiftly and extremely decisively, would have laid bare all his weakness.

And the prudent man was not confident in his chances.

So, as the situation had not yet reached dire straits, he was unwilling to take such a huge risk.

Rather he sought a secret deal with the leader of the rebelling nobles- agreeing to various small religious concessions and, biggest of all, promising to marry the eldest daughter and making her son the crown prince.

Basically, he was trying to bribe the man and have him drop his demands.

And to the king’s credit, he indeed succeeded. Once he took his new queen, that nobleman kept his word and things for the royal family finally began to look better.

The only slight snag in the plan was that they could never publicize this- it had to be kept strictly confidential, as it was prudent to do.

Otherwise the rebelling nobles would be furious over how their cause had been sold for such a small price and merely the leading noble’s personal gains. Similarly the intractable temple priests would too vehemently disapprove of changing the meaning of a single letter of the text.

The king planned to slowly straighten all this out once things calmed down a bit.

One problem at a time- as they say.

It was too bad that the plan swiftly went out of the window as his concubines, unaware of all the inner workings, decided to take matters into their own hands. They were absolutely aghast at how an unknown, never before seen woman was showered with favor the likes of which they never got and blinded by pure rage, as well as fueled by the urgings of their own family....they did it.

And this murder sent shockwaves rippling throughout the entire power structure of Adhania like a magnitude 8 earthquake, toppling buildings and creating immeasurable fissures.

The lady’s father was understandably furious, viewing this as the royal family’s inability to protect his kin as utter incompetence and perhaps even an inside job. He no longer trusted the capital to keep a single word they made.

Hence he now called for a full fledged armed rebellion, raising his banner and openly gathering his army, intent on besieging Adhan.

While back in the capital, the king, upon seeing how cruelly his son was killed became absolutely blinded by sheer rage.

He not only had that concubine beheaded, but even implicated every single staff member related to her as well as many of her friends in her harem. It did not even matter their level of involvement; all were found guilty of conspiracy regardless.

In his case, the man acted more instinctively- this was his flesh and blood after all, how could he not avenge him?

But while the act could even be considered moral, it was not the best one.

As already iterated, that concubine was very well connected, as were her many friends. So this act also drew the ire of a large number of very powerful nobles, who were now much more interested in avenging their own kin rather than acknowledging justice.

They, alongside the pagan nobles also decided to rebel.

This ultimately led to a three way civil war, with the already weakened royal family and their noble coalition finally getting crushed after seven long years of brutal fighting.

In the waning days of the war, Adhan was besieged by the two armies from opposing sides, and after two long years of stalemate, the city was ultimately taken when a group of traitorous guards catapulted to the powerful noble side and secretly opened the gates at night. By that time, the entire city was starving and these men chose what was best for them and their families.

The rebel army thus surged through the city like a hungry locust, sacking the whole place for three days and three day, slaughtering nearly half the residents, including all the men of the royal family, including the king.

Soon in his place rose a new dynasty- headed by the nephew of that scheming concubine.

And due to contributions in that war, Ptolomy’s family rose also from a small unknown lord to a powerful Jamider (Earl).