Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 602: A Throne in Exile

The veranda overlooked the bay.

Even from here, miles inland, the scent of sea salt and eucalyptus drifted through the summer air.

Parrots chirped in the trees beyond the whitewashed columns, and the gardens of the estate bloomed with tropical color, far from the gray stones of Paris, and farther still from the throne that might have been his.

Henri, Count of Paris, stood in a linen suit with his hands clasped behind his back, the breeze tugging gently at the edges of his cuffs.

Beside him sat his wife, Isabelle of Orléans-Braganza, her gloved hands folded in her lap, eyes shielded behind modest sunglasses.

Before them: a modest gathering of press, French, Brazilian, even a few Spanish correspondents.

Drawn not by politics, but by symbolism. For in a world unraveling, the words of forgotten kings had become relevant once more.

A microphone crackled.

Henri stepped forward.

He did not smile.

He spoke slowly, each syllable pronounced in the regal, clipped tone of France’s old court—long vanished, yet not forgotten.

“Today, I speak not as a claimant. Not as a nobleman. But as a son of France… and a man of civilization.”

A murmur ran through the crowd.

“We have all watched with mounting horror as Europe descends into a second era of madness. Not from necessity. Not from hunger. But from the ideologies of men who believe liberty must be imposed by fire, and that peace is forged only through the subjugation of tradition.”

His brow furrowed, voice darkening.

“Charles de Gaulle is no liberator. He is a tyrant, a Republican Napoleon who hides behind parliamentary facades while waging wars of ideology under the banner of virtue.”

He held up a copy of a dispatch: a now-infamous speech from de Gaulle’s Élysée conference three days prior, in which the French leader had declared his intent to “defend democracy wherever it is threatened.”

Henri let the paper crumple in his hand.

“Democracy is not a sword,” he said. “It is a garden. It grows where the soil permits. And if you sow it with bombs and bullets in a sovereign land, it will not bloom; it will rot.”

He turned his gaze directly to the reporters.

“Spain was not a failed state. It was not an anarchic expanse of tyranny crying for foreign salvation. It was a monarchy, recovering from instability, led by a sovereign king with the support of his people.”

He paused, and his voice dropped into a colder register.

“What Charles de Gaulle did was not merely a miscalculation. It was an affront to civilization itself. To supply arms to radicals. To encourage rebellion against order. To violate the borders of a sovereign crown under the guise of democratic salvation.”

Henri’s eyes narrowed.

“He spreads liberalism as if it were a gospel, but in truth it behaves like a virusl; a virus nearly as radical, and perhaps more insidious, than Bolshevism.”

Gasps rippled through the foreign press.

“Where the reds would burn a church, de Gaulle replaces it with a parliamentary committee. Where the radicals would guillotine a king, he discredits him with pamphlets and embargoes. He does not respect sovereignty, he envies it, because he was never born to it.”

Behind him, Isabelle lowered her glasses and gave a nod of support.

Henri drew himself up to his full height.

“Let it be known,” he said, “that France’s true sons do not stand with this man. We do not stand with the destruction of Christendom’s order, nor the erosion of the family, the altar, and the crown.”

His hand trembled slightly, but he did not waver.

“One day, the Republic will fall, as all revolutions do. And when it does, let it be remembered that there were still Frenchmen who stood for civilization. Who chose not chaos, but continuity.”

He stepped back from the podium.

No one applauded.

Not because they disagreed, but because the weight of what had been said hung too heavy in the humid air.

A monarch in exile had spoken, not with power, but with clarity.

And in a Europe where kings were rising again in Rome, in Madrid, in Berlin and Vienna, that clarity was more dangerous than any army.

—

Bruno sat back in his chair, with his fingers wrapped together in contemplation.

Henri had performed well, a bit too well in fact.

His words filled with righteous condemnation might have just provided his agents in France the ability to install agitators who would act in revolution the moment the war broke out.

Until now, the people of France had been weary of war, having lost nearly an entire generation during the Great War, and another in the civil war that followed.

But now… now those with a more traditional conscience and a weariness of the Republic’s endless wars, they might just be willing to rise up in support of their rightful monarch when the time came to do so.

And because of this, Bruno poured himself a glass of his port, swirling it in his cup as he took a sip.

“Well done, Henri… Well done….”

—

Bruno was not the only power that had witnessed Henri’s speech. In fact, every world leader around the globe had seen it.

Among the kings who were still crowned, they were quite pleased with Henri pointing out the hypocrisy of so-called democracies.

In fact, it fed into their own propaganda efforts to crack down on left-wing agitators within their own countries much as the German Reich had done under Bruno’s instruction during the Great War and the years that followed.

As for the Democratic governments that were inadvertently condemned in association with the French Republic.

They were far from pleased with Henri’s scathing remarks. With many coming out in the following days to perform damage control of some kind or another.

Either way, Spain had not directly escalated into the Second World War, but it had sure to set the stage for it.

In Bruno’s past life, the Second World War had been a clash between Fascism and Bolshevism.

With Bolshevism winning in the end, and infecting every democratic government that aided it in its victory.

But in this life, the Second World War would be waged between Tradition and the last festering wound that the Enlightenment had inflicted upon mankind: Liberalism.

Once and for all, Bruno would see to it that order prevailed, and failed ideals were left to the annals of history where they belonged.

Or he would bring the world down with him. From this point on, there was no possibility for peace, and the world’s leaders knew it.