Chapter 525

Janina Schweitzer faced the detached expression of the Crown Prince, who stared back at her without the slightest sign of agitation or tension. So far, she had found the Crown Prince’s conduct overall not unimpressive. She had witnessed a level of political composure she had never expected to see from a seventeen-year-old. The Crown Prince had opened carefully and remained firmly in the middle, leaning toward neither side. But that alone was not enough.

There were two matters she wanted addressed.

Without giving the Crown Prince a chance to answer, Janina Schweitzer spoke.

“First, tell us why you brought generals of the Royal Army to this meeting. Given that this is a confidential negotiation, I see no reason for them to be here. Unless there is a proper justification, we can only regard their presence as an attempt to intimidate the Catacombs leadership.”

Although the Crown Prince himself was an officer of field-grade rank, he had brought generals with him. If he had merely intended to flaunt his own position, he would not have needed to bring generals along. Moreover, the generals were not looking at the Catacombs leadership in the ordinary manner, as though they might have cognitive distortion magic placed on their eyes. That was a common security measure. But whether their presence was an attempt at intimidation was something that had to be addressed. Even if the possibility was remote, it had to be.

Janina Schweitzer also knew that she herself had used language inappropriate for the occasion. ‘Tell us’ was, in this setting, a demand for an explanation. But it was also an expression of political intent. The Crown Prince neither accepted nor rejected her words, nor did he appear flustered. He remained composed.

Yet for all his composure, he did not answer either.

“What is the next question?”

Rather than hastily defending himself, the Crown Prince wanted to hear the next question first. Janina Schweitzer neither praised nor criticized his calm response, and continued without hesitation.

“You said that you are proposing cooperation in order to fully carry out all the proper duties and responsibilities that the people have a right to expect their state to fulfill, but which have gone unfulfilled. It sounds excellent. How do you intend to put those words into practice?”

The others who had attended as part of the Catacombs leadership began to stir at Schweitzer’s words. They were tense before the enormous power of the Royal Family. They feared that Catacombs might suffer losses or fall out of the Royal Family’s favor.

Yes, that was the problem. Did Sir Marian Baum understand this? Did the Crown Prince understand it? The members of the Catacombs leadership were bowing their heads before the Royal Family, treating its benevolence as a blessing. They were afraid that the Royal Family’s favor might be withdrawn. Yet, as Sir Marian Baum had said, it was hardly desirable to hesitate to negotiate or to use their technology for their own independence merely to prevent such a display of weakness. A weak spirit was, above all, a matter of how one trained in times of peace. Chairman Janina Schweitzer already knew that as well, and more importantly, once she made a decision, she did not back down. Having come here, it was Chairman Janina Schweitzer’s way to do everything she could, right here and now, to advance the Catacombs.

Unlike the other members of the leadership, who were stirring uneasily, Chairman Antje Dracher did not even look at Chairman Janina Schweitzer. But if Schweitzer became any more discourteous, Dracher would warn her. Maintaining proper courtesy between one leadership and another was itself part of the Catacombs’ dignity.

Janina Schweitzer understood everything and chose only one course. She looked at the Crown Prince with an expressionless face.

“First, I understand that even the best course of action can never be an absolute solution, and that under complex and competing interests, it is difficult for there to be any policy that is an absolute good or an absolute positive. In other words, whatever answer I give, there is no answer that will satisfy everyone.”

Absolute affirmation could exist, on the other hand, when there was a single interest or objective. She was not speaking of moral relativism in that sense. Janina Schweitzer decoded every hidden intention and every political signal behind each word that came from the young Crown Prince.

The Crown Prince raised a hand and gestured toward Janina Schweitzer.

“You said your name was Chairman Schweitzer. As a leader of the Catacombs, do you understand this?”

If Janina Schweitzer could have smiled at that moment, she would have. She realized that this audacious seventeen-year-old Crown Prince was not nearly as easy to move as she had expected. In response to Janina Schweitzer’s bluntness, the Crown Prince had given her no less of an opening to slip away.

Janina Schweitzer answered seriously, feeling a faint amusement she could not quite explain even to herself.

“Yes.”

“I cannot say that I will amend the Constitution immediately.”

The Crown Prince answered without hesitation. Chairman Dracher and Chairman Schweitzer did not so much as flinch.

“Although the current political system takes the form of a constitutional monarchy, elements of absolutism and autocracy remain. With the Prussian government effectively aligned with the Imperial government, Bavaria cannot dissolve either house of the Imperial legislature, call new elections, or increase Bavaria’s seats in the Federal Council. To boast that I will accomplish something beyond what is realistically possible in the near future would be excessive propaganda meant to win immediate goodwill, and an attempt to mislead, rather than a promise. Therefore, I cannot promise that I will immediately amend the Constitution to protect natural rights at the Imperial level, beyond Bavaria itself.”

As the Crown Prince continued, Chairman Schweitzer raised her hand and spoke.

“I know that will be impossible until Bavaria gains hegemony.”

I know. Then what comes next? That was what she meant.

Janina Schweitzer was ready to see whether the Crown Prince had understood what she really meant. She studied him with sharp eyes.

The Crown Prince spoke without the slightest disturbance, as though he were expressing something he had thought through a thousand times.

“I will do everything in my power to make Bavaria prosperous, and by prosperity, I mean advancing the happiness of the many, not the private interests of the few. However, in that process, I will not permit any infringement upon the fundamental rights of a minority that is not necessary for national security or the public welfare.”

Mechanical.

That was Chairman Schweitzer’s assessment. With that, the Crown Prince fell silent. As everyone remained suspended in an unresolved tension, he waited a moment before speaking again.

“I can answer in this textbook manner, and ultimately, this is not the answer you want. What you are asking is how power can be meaningfully checked, and how this promise can be meaningfully guaranteed. If negotiations between the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Catacombs are concluded, we will enter into a treaty with the Catacombs leadership here. We are willing to make substantial compromises, and that is also an ethical obligation. Accordingly, the Kingdom of Bavaria will include various demands in the treaty with the Catacombs. His Majesty the King will ratify it immediately, before the Great Pleroma Elimination Operation begins today, and it will enter into force before the end of today.”

“…….”

“However, this still would not be a complete answer. I know that history has seen governments turn treaties made between states, or between a state and a smaller collective, into nothing more than scraps of paper through their own whims, and that this has destroyed the trust of those who came after. So although I have said that the treaty would be ratified and enter into force today, I know that this alone cannot give you certainty. That is the failure of past European governments that abandoned the most powerful means they had of proving their sincerity.”

Janina Schweitzer was surprised inwardly. This was exactly the textbook answer.

Decades of experience as a politician who had led organizations both large and small told Schweitzer as much. To persuade the Catacombs beyond a mere treaty, one would have to go further and make a risky move. For example, We will appoint Catacombs representatives to the Bavarian government. Such a proposal could easily be seen as an attempt to infringe upon the Catacombs’ sovereignty, and there would genuinely be such a risk. Conversely, if that were not the intention, they could not rule out the possibility that a Catacombs representative appointed to the government might harbor ill intentions, putting Bavaria’s very survival at risk. In other words, such a step might be possible later, but it was premature at a stage when trust had yet to be established.

Would the Crown Prince, who had seemed so cautious, really attempt a choice that would be bad for both sides?

The Crown Prince spoke.

“Chairman Schweitzer, you asked why I brought officers of the Royal Army with me to this meeting.”

He had changed the subject. Janina Schweitzer found something refreshingly unpredictable about the Crown Prince’s way of speaking, but she also thought his choice rather audacious. Used poorly, this method could lead to the worst possible outcome, allowing him to avoid answering any question at all.

“Yes.”

“First, although in the Catacombs’ decision-making under representative democracy, only the will of the two chairpersons is directly reflected in practice, I assume that you nevertheless brought the entire leadership because a collective decision requires the sounder judgment that comes from having more people involved. On the same basis, those who make decisions for the Kingdom bring experts with them.”

Janina Schweitzer raised an eyebrow. She calmly suppressed the corners of her mouth as they threatened to curl upward.

It was a counterattack by indirection.

In truth, the dignity and security a leader was expected to maintain came first in terms of importance, and his own words came last; experts were needed because he needed their counsel.

The Crown Prince had made it clear that the Catacombs had no right to question decisions made by the Royal Family within the bounds of its own reasonable authority. Whether the Crown Prince himself held any goodwill toward the Catacombs or not, he would not tolerate rudeness.

He wasn’t a fool.

Janina Schweitzer thought so.

Even if he had been an elected leader rather than royalty, or a prime minister of lesser rank, Schweitzer’s bluntness would still have been a diplomatic discourtesy. Since she had deliberately attacked him despite knowing that it was rude, Schweitzer felt no sting from his response.

First, she realized that he was calculating his every move. Second, she could infer from his response that even if the Catacombs were to infiltrate the Bavarian Royal Family, they were unlikely to gain any real hold over it. More precisely, even the stone she had thrown had failed to create so much as a ripple. If the Catacombs intended to go beyond making the Kingdom of Bavaria a foothold and actually swallow it whole, the process would not be easy. It would be far simpler to conquer some other minor state by force. In her experience, politicians like this appeared willing to tolerate a great deal, but at the same time, they had clear internal boundaries they would never allow anyone to cross. A power equal to or weaker than the Catacombs might be swallowed despite displaying such an attitude. Bavaria, however, was a great power. It was not such an opponent.

Chairman Dracher seemed to have reached the same conclusion. Chairman Schweitzer remained expressionless as she waited for what came next.

First. Then what?

“Second, it is because they are qualified to participate in Bavaria’s formal negotiating table. This is a strategic meeting under an emergency situation approaching the level of wartime. When receiving the leader of a polity that may become an ally, it is only right to show them the appropriate courtesy.”

At first glance, it sounded obvious. After all, he was the one who had requested the negotiations in the first place.

But it was not obvious at all.

The moment Chairman Schweitzer understood what he meant, she felt a faint current run along the back of her neck. The Crown Prince spoke firmly.

“Chairman Schweitzer, have you ever seen the leaders who took part in the Trachenberg Plan sit down for negotiations without any courtesy or ceremony? I have not.”

The Trachenberg Plan—the military plan of the Sixth Coalition against France that dealt Napoleon a crushing defeat. Monarchs and generals from across Europe, including Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Sweden, joined forces to stop Napoleon as he ran rampant. This was what Crown Prince Leonard Wittelsbach meant by a ‘formal negotiating table.’ No one could fail to understand the many implications behind the comparison.

“We will devise the Trachenberg Plan together.”

The Crown Prince said it with a faint smile. There was something about that smile that drew people in. He continued.

“But let us rewrite the Congress of Vienna.”

Chairman Schweitzer ended it there.

She already had her answer.

The reason the Crown Prince had not chosen a closer and more nationally appropriate example—the German alliances during the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War—was simple. To do so would have been tantamount to openly declaring that Bavaria intended to occupy the same position Prussia did today. Given how Prussia had seized hegemony over the Empire after its successive victories in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, and how its rule had ultimately shaped the circumstances that had brought them together here today, it would hardly have been wise to invoke those wars simply on the grounds that they had united the German people.

Rewrite the Congress of Vienna. The Crown Prince understood exactly what he was saying. The Congress of Vienna, led by Austrian Prime Minister Metternich to settle the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars following the Trachenberg Plan, had brought about a reaction against liberalism. Bavaria was therefore saying that once it broke Prussia’s influence, represented by Napoleon, it would rewrite what came afterward.

With that, Chairman Janina Schweitzer perfectly understood what the Crown Prince had concealed beneath his words. She had heard that he was only seventeen. Unexpected.

This startlingly young blue blood was not a disappointing opponent in the eyes of Janina Schweitzer, who was approaching sixty. Quite the opposite. He was someone worth contending with.

The Crown Prince understood that the situation he was confronting was a momentous advance that would leave its mark on European history. Rather than forcing himself to find a metaphor that fit perfectly, he had instead earned her trust by refusing to do so. In other words, by not bringing up an alliance between minor states with an unpleasant aftertaste, he was declaring that Bavaria and the Catacombs were communities that each possessed real power of their own, much like the great European powers that had joined hands to stop Napoleon. At the same time, he was proposing that they rewrite a reactionary congress that some might judge disappointing precisely because of the limitations of its age.

His words were neither excessive nor lacking to the point of being pathetic.

Janina Schweitzer had spent a long time as a politician within the Catacombs, and she saw no reason why she should not measure herself against a Crown Prince who had not even reached twenty. If anything, she was certain there would be plenty about him that would fail to satisfy her seasoned eye.

Hereditary rulers are one of two kinds. Either they are taught, with painful clarity, that their duties are so immense that even sacrificing their entire lives would not be enough, and they race toward good governance with a constant sense of crisis no less acute than that of an elected ruler—or they live as ordinarily as they were born, like the governed, who were never burdened with such obligations.

Most ‘crown princes’ are the latter.

Those ordinary persons grow into rulers and go on to ruin their states through poor governance. The latter were also what brought down Rome, when it had been functioning perfectly well. If rulers like the Five Good Emperors¹ had been the majority, there would have been no need for the term ‘Five Good Emperors’ in the first place.

Janina Schweitzer was a republican, but long before that, she was a Catacombs liberation activist. As far as the liberation of the Catacombs was concerned, what happened to everything else was none of her concern. If necessary, she would even lead the rest to ruin if that was what it took to free the Catacombs. But despite the uncompromising stance and extremism she advocated, she knew one thing. It was impossible for the Catacombs to achieve lasting, complete happiness by leading everything else to ruin.

The Catacombs might seize power by embracing war and taking advantage of a time of upheaval, but in the process, Janina Schweitzer herself could be regarded as a figure like Robespierre and executed. If it ended there, that would be fortunate enough. But the same course could inflict harm on others, and an enormous backlash that no one could foresee might follow.

The moderates spoke many things that were right, things whose ultimate aims were similar to those of the radicals and that could genuinely make one nod in agreement. An individual listening to such a speech could understand those ‘right things’ correctly and put them to good use. But a crowd was fundamentally different from an individual, different in its very nature, and those right words could weaken its spirit of struggle and its will to win what it sought. Yet crowds could also rush toward what was truly right even as they repeated the gravest mistakes. That was the two-sided nature of the crowd’s explosive power—though, of course, a crowd always unleashed that power because it believed itself to be right.

For the Catacombs to direct that explosive power and seize its opportunity in time, then turn that victory into institutions, the spirit of the Catacombs could not be allowed to weaken.

That was why Janina Schweitzer, having considered all of this, freely used language that could sound extreme in order to strengthen the Catacombs’ spirit, which was always at risk of being weakened by moderation. She therefore understood the position each side held, and she understood how reality moved.

It was the insight to see through everything, in contrast to the condemnable hard-line stance she herself maintained, that had raised Janina Schweitzer to the highest position in the Catacombs. She could wield insight and conviction in two different ways, depending on what was needed. That was Janina Schweitzer’s experience and skill as a politician.

That was why she could hold the Five Good Emperors of Rome in as high regard as she did the presidents who had led the United States as a republic toward good government. And now, she could see what kind of ruler the young Crown Prince before her might become.

More importantly, she could see what kind of figure that Crown Prince would become for the Catacombs. She could see how he might lead this operation and what kind of ripples he might send through Europe.

Schweitzer’s sharp eyes bored into the Crown Prince’s deep-set gaze.

“Trachenberg Plan, then.”

The Crown Prince had answered two questions at once. In other words, he had already asked himself how he could convince them. He had turned this meeting into a gathering of powerful sovereigns who had joined hands to defeat Napoleon, and he had tried to show with his own eyes that he truly regarded it as such, rather than merely saying so.

With that shared perspective and visual political language, it had worked. The real substance would come next, since this had been a test of his attitude, but they had already seen through the surface into what lay beneath it.

Janina Schweitzer now looked at the Wittelsbach young enough to be her grandchild as a politician in his own right.

This politician was worthy of being treated as their equal.

Leonard Wittelsbach’s inherited position as Crown Prince did not make him the equal of the Catacombs leadership. Rather, it demanded that he possess the qualifications to earn, after the fact, the respect and authority unjustly bestowed upon him by that inherited and unnatural position. Only his awareness and his ability to correct that very awareness without humiliating himself could make him someone worthy of being treated as an equal.

By clearing, without difficulty, the lofty standard demanded of someone who had never had to face such scrutiny in his entire life, Leonard Wittelsbach had earned the right to become a temporary companion of the Catacombs.

Translator Note

1. The Five Good Emperors were Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, who ruled the Roman Empire in succession from 96 to 180 CE. ↩︎