\hypertarget{crowned}{%
\section{Crowned}\label{crowned}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``That slip of a girl from Rhenia is playing ruler, coming south
with her pretty little army. I'll have driven her out of Brus by winter,
then we can turn our attentions to real threats like the Princess of
Aisne.''}

-- Extract from the correspondence of Prince Dagobert of Lange, dated
four months before the fall of Lange
\end{quote}

Routine was something Cordelia embraced.

There were only so many hours in a day, to her regret, which made it
important to regiment them so she could get the most out of what she
had. Rising with dawn, she broke her fast with her closest advisors and
took measure of any difficulties they might have encountered. Afterwards
she walked the length of the fortress-city's ramparts, allowing the
brisk morning air to finish waking her as she paused to talk with
soldiers. It was important, particularly in Lycaonese lands, to have the
love of the army. The principality of Rhenia as she'd inherited it was
more an army with a land than a land with an army, every institution in
it shaped so that they could support country-wide mobilization at any
moment. It had been decades since the Chain of Hunger had crossed the
Three Rivers in numbers larger than a few hundreds, but her people had
long memories: there'd been a time where every spring had thousands of
hungry ratlings throwing themselves at the walls. Those days would come
again, she knew as every Hasenbach before her had known deep in their
bones. And when they did, her principality would be prepared.

For all that, in the two years since she'd become the Prince of Rhenia
she had attempted to broaden the horizons of her people. While Lycaonese
soldiers fought and died to keep the rest of Procer pristine, southern
princes feasted and grew rich while sneering at the coarseness of the
very soldiery saving them from the perils of the north. Their lands were
fertile, compared to the rocky northern fields, and the numbers of
southerners had been swelling for generations. Until recently, anyway.
Since the First Prince had died, the rest of the Principate had taken to
devouring itself with ugly zeal. The reforms Cordelia had dreamed of as
a child, of tying the Lycaonese principalities together through common
trade laws and the absence of borders, had been burnt up by the fires of
civil war. None of the northern rulers were interested in implementing
economic or diplomatic reforms when there might be an Alamans army at
their doorstep demanding submission any day. Clearly, any progress to be
made would have to wait until a First Prince of Princess was elected.

Or so Cordelia had thought when she was still a child of ten, her mother
serving as her regent after a ratling raid took her father's life.
Margaret Hasenbach, once Margaret Papenheim, had never been entirely
comfortable ruling the principality. She'd been a field commander for
her brother in Hannoven until her marriage and had always balked at
having to rule Rhenia when others did the fighting for her. Cordelia had
begun taking on responsibilities as seneschal of the keep by age twelve,
and by age thirteen effectively ran the fortress and its dependencies
while Margaret Ironhand rooted out the ratling nests infesting the
mountains. She'd died when Cordelia was fourteen, not by the blades of
her enemies but by the affliction known as the bloodless heart. Priests
could not heal what had been born weak: they could soothe the pains of
the children of the Heavens, but not reverse what the Gods Above had
wrought. Cordelia's uncle, the Prince of Hannoven, had served as her
regent for the last year before she came of age but he'd never presumed
to contradict her in anything.

Uncle Klaus, a childless widower who'd flatly refused to remarry after
the death of his deeply -loved wife, had always treated her more as a
daughter than a niece. He'd gone as far as naming her his heir
presumptive above any of the branch Papenheims, a decision that had
caused some unrest when made official. Even now he was in Rhenia as
often as Hannoven, the most trusted of all her councillors. She'd not
been shy in leveraging her uncle's fame as a military commander when
forging the four Lyaonese principalities into a single united front, one
that would give pause to any southern prince who would command the
allegiance of any single Lycaonese ruler by force of arms. In some ways
the reforms she'd sought as a youth had come to pass: in her
correspondence she now spoke not only for Rhenia and Hannoven but also
for Bremen and Neustria, an alliance the match of any of those setting
the rest of the Principate aflame. And yet the Alamans and Arlesite
rulers she wrote to insisted on treating her as an idiot child, to be
deceived into supporting them by honeyed words and empty promises.

Cordelia Hasenbach was nineteen and well-bred, so she did not throw
tantrums, but some of the letters she received made her wish she could
choke the southerners the same way her mother had famously done to a
ratling warlord. Correspondences, as it happened, was what occupied her
time for half a bell after touring the fortress walls. On this
particular morning she chose to read her missives in the squat hall
overlooking the training yard, allowing the sound of drilling recruits
to wash over her. A single cup of watered-down wine stood by the sheaths
of parchment covering her table, sparsely indulged in. Uncle Klaus was
`keeping her company' as she worked, which meant he was resting his
elbows on the balustrade, on his third skin of mead and regularly
heckling the recruits below. Decorum was rarely a skill Lycaonese rulers
prized, to her despair. Cordelia put down the letter she'd been reading
and reached for the wine, allowing herself a fuller sip than usual.

A shame she despised the sensation of being drunk. After that letter, it
felt almost warranted.

``Your father got that same look on his face, whenever people wanted him
to arbitrate farming disputes,'' Uncle Klaus said, laughter in his eyes.

The Prince of Rhenia put down her cup gingerly, touching her pristine
lips with a cloth as etiquette dictated when a highborn lady drank
spirits.

``Not an inapt metaphor, considering the pettiness of what was put to
ink,'' she admitted.

Klaus snorted, fingers coming up to put a semblance of order to his
salt-and-pepper beard. It was getting shaggy, Cordelia noted. She'd have
to arrange for a barber to attend him tonight, one that would not be
cowed by her uncle's ferocious scowling.

``You're still talking to those idiots down south?'' he said. ``I don't
know where you got that patience of yours from, because it's certainly
not your mother.''

``One of those southern princes is likely to rule Procer in the years to
come,'' Cordelia said. ``Cultivating a civil relationship before the
ascension can only be to our benefit.''

The older man chuckled, dropping down on the seat across from her and
bringing the skin of mead to his mouth to pull at it.

``And how \emph{is} that civility going?'' he asked.

Well-bred ladies did not scowl, Cordelia told herself. They were not,
however, above having a man's favourite fur coverlet disappeared and
replaced with a fancy velour one. She'd even see to it it was
embroidered in the Arlesite way, with fragments of courtly poetry and
scenes of duels fought for praise and honour.

``Cleves and Hainaut pledge neutrality in all fights to come,'' she
said. ``If they take any more losses they will no longer be able to
effectively watch over the Tomb.''

``They never should have sent men south,'' Uncle Klaus growled. ``Just
because the Dead King's being quiet doesn't mean he's not watching. They
have a \emph{duty}, like we do.''

Cordelia rather thought he uncle was doing those particular princes
injustice, but she did not comment. The principalities of Cleves and
Hainaut formed, with Rhenia and Hannoven, what should be considered
Procer's most vital line of defence. If the Kingdom of the Dead began
looking outwards again, they would be the ones charged with holding the
line until southern armies could be mustered. The fair-haired Prince of
Rhenia agreed with her uncle that above all those rulers should look to
seeing their walls fully manned, but these were ultimately Alamans
princes. They were more involved in the Ebb and the Flow than
northerners, bound by the intricate webs of alliance that spanned the
centre of the Principate. Neutrality from the onset would have been
difficult for them to maintain, with their cousins and nephews taking up
arms so close to their own borders.

``Those pledges are the only pleasant news this day has brought,''
Cordelia said. ``The rest is\ldots{} unpromising.''

``Aequitan and their allies got whipped all the way out of Creusens,''
Klaus frowned. ``That should knock them out of the war. With his back
secure, Lange will go after Aisne -- the winner of that tussle will get
the crown, by my reckoning.''

``Princess Aenor of Aequitan raised another army as of the last
fortnight,'' the fair-haired prince said. ``Levies armed with dwarven
weapons. They will resume their offensive as soon as they have gathered
in sufficient numbers.''

The Prince of Hannoven scowled.

``That's the third host she wrecked on the field,'' he said. ``Who'd be
fool enough to lend her the coin for a fourth?''

``The Pravus Bank,'' Cordelia replied quietly.

Fury flickered across the older man's face until he mastered it.

``You \emph{told} them it's Praesi gold, Cordelia,'' he hissed. ``This
flirts with godsdamned treason.''

It had taken her years, to ferret out that it was the Tower pouring gold
into the defeated princes of Procer. Years and the help of her cousin,
become the Augur by the grace of the Heavens. She'd related that truth
to every ruler in Procer within the month after she'd acquired solid
proof, to warn them from allowing the Dread Empress to continue fanning
the flames of civil war. To no avail. The still took loans, still raised
armies with them, and after near two decades of strife hatreds now ran
so deep princes would rather be up to their neck in Praesi debt rather
than allow their rivals to triumph. It was madness, the worst kind of
madness. The first fluctuating alliances had eventually turned into a
handful of steady blocs that bloodied each other on the field every
summer without ever coming closer to the crown, ruining the very
Principate they wanted to rule. Fields were going fallow, trade was
effectively dead and rulers spent peasants like coin. The sheer
disregard princes where showing to the men and women they were supposed
to rule disgusted her deeply.

``They will not listen, Uncle Klaus,'' she said tiredly. ``They do not
care anymore. Dagobert of Lange demands we raise our armies and support
his claim, or suffer brutal taxes under his reign. Constance of Aisne
offers to recognize me as overlord of all Lycaonese if I assault
Dagobert's back, as if this sort of splintering would not effectively
dismantle the Principate.''

``So let them mutilate each other,'' Klaus said. ``They don't
\emph{deserve} our help.''

Cordelia allowed herself to sigh. This kind of thinking, she knew, was
common among Lycaonese. Let the southerners kill each other, what did
the people of the mountains care for it? It would also be the death of
the greatest nation Calernia had ever seen. A brutal but swift civil war
would not have allowed for entire regions of the Principate to grow to
despise each other. This drawn-out farce, however? As of this moment,
Procer was effectively divided between four or five kingdoms that would
rather see their cities burn than allow one of the others to rule over
them. Another decade of this and it would be the end of the Principate.
The fracture lines were already visible and growing deeper by the year.

``We have a duty, Uncle,'' Cordelia said.

``To fucking Dagobert of Lange?'' Klaus laughed. ``I wouldn't toss the
bastard a copper if he was begging on the street. We owe that man
\emph{nothing}.''

``Think beyond our borders,'' the blonde woman said. ``Think of what it
\emph{means}, if Procer splinters.''

``It means we don't send coin south ever again to men who've never seen
the Grave,'' the Prince of Hannoven said coldly. ``It means green boys
who've never fought a ratling don't get to feast away spring while my
people die for their sake.''

``Levant will gobble up at least Orense,'' Cordelia assessed clinically.
``Likely Segovia as well. Tenerife will become either one of the Free
Cities or a dependency of Helike. The Dread Empire will take Bayeux and
Orne before a decade has passed.''

``And why is that our business?'' Klaus grunted.

``When the Dead King rouses his armies and crosses the lakes,'' Cordelia
said quietly, ``\emph{who stands with us}?''

She met her uncle's eyes.

``When the Chain of Hunger gathers the might for an invasion, who
bolsters our strength?'' she said.

``We've held them back since before there was a Principate,'' her uncle
replied.

``We turned them a way as a nation that spreads from here to Valencis,''
Cordelia said. ``That is why Procer exists, Uncle. Because Triumphant
slaughtered so many of us we had to band together as a nation or see
ourselves devoured by our neighbours.''

``So now you want us to bleed for some princeling in silk,'' Klaus said
bitterly. ``That's always the way, isn't it? The south makes a mess and
we foot the bill.''

There was a truth in that, and for all that Cordelia had eschewed many
of her people's customs she was not beyond feeling that bitterness
herself. Was she to entrust the fate of her people to a grasping idiot
like the Prince of Lange? To the Princess of Aequitan, who would rather
take Praesi gold than bow her head for the sake of the Principate?

``No,'' she said. ``Not this time.''

``Cordelia?'' her uncle said.

Cordelia Hasenbach felt serenity take hold of her, for the first time in
years. Her path was clear, finally. \emph{If no one else, then I.}

``Send messengers,'' she ordered. ``To every tower, every hold, every
fortress. We gather for war. Anyone we can afford to take from the
defences comes with us.''

The greying man frowned.

``And who do we fight for?''

``The First Prince of Procer,'' she said. ``Cordelia Hasenbach, first of
her name.''

Gods save them all, but she would salvage a nation out of this madness.
No matter the cost.
