Chapter 62: Auto-Hunting Emperor

“Your Majesty, then shall we arrange the new Grand Duke’s investiture ceremony so that it is held first in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace, followed by the investiture in St. George Hall?”

“Mm, do that. Passing through the church would carry more symbolic weight than simply handling everything in St. George Hall.”

“Understood. Then as for the number of guests….”

“A coronation-sized affair would be excessive. Wouldn’t the scale of an ordinary court ball be enough? Let us have around 300 to 500 people for the ceremony itself, and around 1,000 for the ball.”

With Mikhail, Witte, and Yakov all off in Manchuria, Nicholas II’s administrative capacity had effectively evaporated.

But Mikhail had laid out a very thorough plan to make sure Nicholas II could not do anything stupid while he was away.

He had assigned him tasks that Nicholas II was perfectly capable of handling, that would do no great harm to the state even if he made a mistake, and that would still consume an enormous amount of his time.

Strictly speaking, Russia had no such thing as an investiture ceremony for a Grand Duke.

That was because a Grand Duke was not made. He was born one.

Under the Statute on the Imperial Family of the Russian Empire, only the Emperor’s sons and brothers could become Grand Dukes.

After 1886, beginning with the Emperor’s great-grandsons, descendants received the title of Prince of the Blood Imperial rather than Grand Duke, making the rank of Grand Duke a title that symbolized the noblest blood in the Russian Empire.

Past emperors had occasionally granted the title of Prince of the Blood Imperial to their illegitimate children, but even then, the matter was generally handled by imperial edict rather than through some grand ceremony.

After all, loudly announcing that an illegitimate child was being accepted as a member of the imperial house did little for its dignity.

“Your Majesty, then how shall we arrange the protocol for Her Majesty the Empress and Her Majesty the Dowager Empress?”

“Ah, I have already given that some thought. Give the Dowager Empress precedence, but have the Empress personally present my imperial edict to Misha.”

“A truly masterful arrangement, worthy of Your Majesty.”

The protocol officer’s admiration was not mere flattery.

The Dowager Empress would be given the place of greater honor, preserving her standing in society, while the Empress would receive the honor of personally handing the imperial edict to Mikhail.

It was a masterstroke that could settle the tension between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in a single move.

Of course, Nicholas II himself had not spoken after making any such grand calculation.

He had simply been trying to keep both his mother and his wife happy so that neither would feel slighted.

“Then we can proceed with that as planned… More importantly, how is the ceremonial attire Misha will wear coming along?”

“We have assigned the finest tailor to the task. The fitting should be completed soon.”

“Good, very good. I only hope it suits the boy.”

These days, the Emperor had become so absorbed in preparations for the investiture ceremony that he scarcely knew how the days were passing.

There were mountains of troublesome matters, from measures against the crop failure to the development of Manchuria, yet almost none of them actually required the Emperor’s personal attention.

Witte and Mikhail had drawn up detailed schedules covering the next two or three months before they left.

All Nicholas had to do was flip through the piles of documents Misha had left behind and stamp his approval on the major decisions.

Of course, government work always produced unexpected complications, but Nicholas II had a brilliant way of avoiding those as well.

He simply dumped every minor detail onto his capable officials, invoked the unbeatable excuse that he was too busy preparing the investiture ceremony, and washed his hands of the matter.

“Your Majesty, a proposal has come up from the Ministry of Agriculture….”

“Ah, handle that yourselves. My head is spinning with preparations for the investiture ceremony right now.”

Though it was an excuse, it was not entirely a lie.

Between managing the subtle tension between the Dowager Empress and the Empress, sorting through which families to invite, and arranging protocol for foreign ministers, even ten bodies would not have been enough.

But then one unexpected variable appeared.

The Emperor began bragging about his son every time he met someone.

“Our Misha, you see, understands the British movements as clearly as if they were laid out in the palm of his hand. He saw through those crafty British intentions at once.”

“Ah, yes….”

Even during an audience with the French Minister Bompard, the Emperor’s mouth never stopped moving.

“Can you believe an eleven-year-old wrote something like this? I am simply proud that the boy is my son.”

“Indeed… it is remarkable, Your Majesty.”

Bompard offered the appropriate responses while his thoughts grew increasingly tangled.

The Emperor’s repertoire was exactly the same when he met the British Minister Nicolson.

Delighted at the chance to boast about his child, the Emperor went on endlessly about how clever Misha was and how mature he was for his age.

As far as Nicholas II himself was concerned, he simply wanted to make up for all the years he had been unable to brag openly about the son he had kept hidden.

Naturally, however, everyone watching the spectacle could only interpret it in a completely different way.

The fact that he was holding an unprecedented investiture ceremony at all was the first shock.

The fact that he was granting not some ordinary princely title, but the rank of Grand Duke, raised a second wave of suspicion.

And with the Emperor broadcasting how capable his son was to anyone who would listen whenever he got the chance, who could possibly take all of this at face value?

Then, in the midst of all this, even the Dowager Empress, who had kept her distance for some time, personally came to see the Emperor.

“Niki, how could you hide something this important from your own mother without saying a single word? Did you distrust me that much?”

“I’m sorry, Mother. It was such a grave matter that I couldn’t speak of it carelessly.”

The Emperor, who was forever being put in his place by his mother whenever she got the chance, lowered his head beneath the Dowager Empress’s reproach, yet still managed to add one more thing.

“But Mother, once you meet Misha yourself, you’ll change your mind. Do you know how brilliant that boy is? Be it French or reading the political situation, there’s practically nothing he can’t do.”

“There you go again. Do you have any idea how widely the palace is buzzing with stories that you boast about your son to everyone you meet?”

“But it’s true. What am I supposed to do? That one boy is far more useful than all the old men on the State Council put together.”

The Dowager Empress could hardly believe her son had become this much of a doting fool.

Yet there was one point that nagged at her too much to simply dismiss.

“And Mother, you know what Sunny is like.”

“…What about the Empress?”

“Could you ever have imagined our Sunny doting on an illegitimate son as if he were her own child? Just how extraordinary and lovable must the boy be for Sunny to favor him this much?”

This time, even the Dowager Empress was forced into silence.

When she thought about it, he truly had a point.

That loathsome daughter-in-law of hers, who looked down on Russian society as decadent and acted as though she alone were pure.

Of all people, that woman ought to have thrown the biggest fit over the immorality of his illegitimate birth, yet instead she protected Misha as though he were her own son.

“Well… considering how far the Empress has gone for him.”

“Exactly.”

“He certainly does not seem to be an ordinary child.”

Before she realized it, the Dowager Empress found herself nodding.

Just how remarkable could the boy be for both her son and daughter-in-law to have become so thoroughly enamored of him?

The Dowager Empress resolved to meet her young grandson face-to-face as soon as he returned.

***

Grand Duke Seversky.

The impending creation of this new Grand Duke set gossip-starved Petersburg ablaze, and the excitement showed no sign of dying down.

“Even His Majesty Alexander II’s illegitimate children received no more than a single document, did they?”

“Quite right. All they received was the name Yurievsky.”

“And yet this child is to become not merely a prince, but a Grand Duke. On top of that, they are even holding such an elaborate investiture ceremony. There is something decidedly unusual about this.”

The reactions of the noblewomen ran along a rather different line.

Ladies with daughters or granddaughters close to Mikhail’s age were beside themselves trying to find some way to establish a connection with him.

But the nobles who actually held power viewed the matter through entirely different eyes.

The Nobles’ Committee had spent days locked in fierce debate, trying to divine the Emperor’s true intentions.

Then Minister Durnovo cautiously raised one possibility.

“I say this only because everyone here can be trusted… Surely none of you are unaware of the stories circulating at court concerning the health of His Imperial Highness the Tsesarevich.”

A heavy silence settled over the room.

The subject was so extraordinarily sensitive that no one dared speak of it openly, but men of the stature gathered here naturally knew every rumor leaking from the palace.

“I hear that whenever His Imperial Highness the Tsesarevich so much as bumps into something or takes a minor fall, Her Majesty the Empress’s attendants turn white with fear and make an enormous fuss.”

“I have heard the same.”

“That is far too much alarm to explain merely by saying he is their only son. Anyone can see that this must be a health problem.”

And it was not difficult to guess what sort of illness could make them turn that pale over even the smallest wound.

“Hemoph….”

“That is enough. It is a sensitive matter, so let us not name it directly.”

“In any event, there can be no doubt that His Majesty’s current actions are anything but ordinary.”

Durnovo slowly swept his gaze around the gathering and lowered his voice.

“So if we connect his reason for granting the rank of Grand Duke with the Tsesarevich’s health… one conclusion becomes possible.”

Everyone held their breath and watched Durnovo’s lips.

“If, and I emphasize if, something were to happen to the Tsesarevich because of his health, and he were to die without issue, what then? His Majesty’s legitimate line would end there.”

“Then the succession would pass to His Majesty’s younger brother….”

“Precisely. But do you truly believe His Majesty, who seems obsessed with seizing all of Russia in his hands and bending it to his will, would simply stand by and allow that?”

Unease began to flicker in their eyes.

Perhaps once, but not now. Of that, they could be certain.

There was no conceivable way that power-starved Tsar would willingly hand his younger brother the symbol of absolute authority, the power to command all of Russia.

“Surely… you are not saying that granting Mikhail the rank of Grand Duke is itself the insurance policy?”

Durnovo slowly nodded.

“To put it plainly, it would hardly be the first time someone tried to force a right of succession into the hands of an illegitimate son who possessed none.”

European tradition held that an illegitimate son could not inherit the throne, but there were always men who tried to ignore tradition and break it.

And such men tended to be people with immense authority and power at their disposal.

“Louis XIV of France is the perfect example. Did he not go so far as to change the law so that his illegitimate sons could inherit the throne if the legitimate royal line died out?”

“But… did that not ultimately fail?”

“Yes. The moment he died, the Parlement of Paris nullified the entire arrangement. A similar attempt was made in England, and that failed as well.”

Someone interjected with a sigh of relief.

“You see? There may have been attempts, but there is no history of anyone succeeding. And surely His Majesty, who is so wise and meticulous….”

Perhaps because everyone was still unaccustomed to hearing such adjectives applied to Nicholas II, an awkward silence briefly filled the room.

“Ahem. In any case, surely His Majesty would not undertake something so reckless.”

“Would he not?”

Nicholas II certainly would not simply charge ahead blindly like Louis XIV.

A man who had lived in concealment for 9 years with such iron discipline would surely prepare his plans with even greater thoroughness, with even more chilling precision.

“There are, in fact, successful examples. There have certainly been men who acted with the army at their backs and ultimately seized the throne.”

“If he truly attempted such a thing, do you think we nobles would simply stand by and allow it?”

“And if you did not stand by, precisely what would you do?”

When Durnovo turned the question back on him, the nobleman who had angrily joined the conversation fell silent.

Because there was very little they could actually do.

“Think about it. His Majesty has already used the Okhrana to spread a surveillance net everywhere. And by the time such an event actually occurred, would that illegitimate Grand Duke not have the Okhrana completely under his control, while the development of the Far East had made the imperial household finances independent enough to answer to no one?”

As they began to seriously consider that possibility, the nobles’ faces gradually went pale.

If the army, intelligence, and the purse strings all fell into the Emperor’s hands, the nobility would have almost no cards left to play.

“Then His Majesty… could he truly have foreseen all of this before setting these events in motion?”

Once the worst possibility they could imagine had been spoken aloud, chills ran down their spines.

The more one thought about it, the more horrifying the picture became.

The appearance of an illegitimate son, the rank of Grand Duke, the Viceroyalty of the Far East, control of the Okhrana, the revenues of Manchuria.

What if all of these pieces were being fitted into place, one by one, according to a single vast blueprint?

“We cannot simply watch this happen. The moment His Majesty crosses the line, we must inform even foreign powers of what is happening.”

The hard-liners raised their voices.

No royal house in Europe would tolerate the imperial throne passing to an illegitimate son, so perhaps they could rally the opinion of foreign royal houses behind them.

But a rebuttal came immediately.

“That again? Have you already forgotten what happened last time?”

It had only been a short while since their covert operation abroad had been uncovered by the Okhrana, with the agents carrying it out dragged away one after another.

“Do you really think His Majesty began this without anticipating a reaction like ours? The moment we move, a report will reach His Majesty’s ears.”

“Are you saying we should simply do nothing and watch?”

“I am saying we should wait for the proper moment. If we act rashly now, we will only have our arms and legs cut off again.”

The fierce debate showed no sign of reaching a conclusion.

There were those who wanted to bring in foreign powers and settle everything the moment the Emperor crossed the line.

And there were those who could not bring themselves to say it aloud, but were quietly calculating whether, given that the Emperor seemed one step ahead no matter how they looked at it, perhaps it was time to change sides.

As their arms and legs continued to be cut away and every lawful means of resistance was blocked off, noble society quietly began to split into two camps.

Those who submitted, and those who resisted.

And once every legal method of struggle had disappeared, only extreme measures would remain for the anti-Tsarist faction.

Nicholas II’s habit of dumping his work on others was steadily driving the nobles into a corner in a place no one had expected.

The moment of catastrophe was drawing closer with every passing hour.

~~~

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