Sovereign

"Coward! Her Majesty is the definition of cowardice! Today, the Queen made a speech in Parliament calling for support for the revised Economic Stimulus Bill. A few words from a Parliament MP, the whorish leader of the conservatives herself, Duchess Flandere of Oldrach, and she was left speechless. How pitiful! Are we men supposed to cry for her now? Lucky her, her little goon - Countess Jacqueline Weiss, saved her from her stupidity and defended her pitiful attempt of a bill to 'save us' from our financial woes. Still, it is clear to all of us, the Queen is no defender of men's rights, she is but a spineless fool! And a reminder that the ORP and its members are but traitors for siding with them!"

- The Front Newspaper

---

An unmistakable coldness and madness. Men and their violent tendencies. Demons that merely killed innocents? Or innocents turned to demons?

"How does it feel, Your Majesty?"

Amelie turned around on her bed.

"Am I a monster? Do I look like a monster? I have no magic, yet look at the blood on my hands. Isn't it beautiful?"

Almost as if he reveled in blood, and it disgusted her. But for men who saw nothing but coldness - blood, death, chaos, and the flames of war, it was a beautiful sight. The Great War, bloody as it was, made men feel. They were lower, yet, they could burn the world down with them.

Why?

"Because I'm not a woman. I'm a man. Violent, bloodthirsty, savage. Isn't that what I am?"

Savage, perverts, barbaric, scum. To the eyes of the world, that was what most men were.

Liar, you're a human, just like me!

"Is that so, Miss Human? But do you think a human would do this?"

She looked at him. He looked…almost like a rat. An inhuman excuse for a man, like those images of battered penal battalions during the war. The kind of men, considered below human by the Kingdom, sent to flush hostile trenches contaminated by gas. Not a lot of them returned.

He wore an outdated, bloodied gas mask, with a green, dirty lens that seemed to stare at her, uncaringly.

A torn uniform. A sickly thin body. A flamethrower in hand…and a hand that dragged a dead corpse...charred. She flinched in disgust.

"They don't, don't they? To slaughter innocent poor women like that...oh, but humans. They can slaughter magicless men."

Not all of us...not all of us thought of you men that way.

"Is that so? Does that matter to the tens of millions of dead? Oh, they must be so grateful, that so many women saw them human. Shame...they're dead."

He laughed as he stepped forward.

"How does it feel? When the tables have turned? When those you regarded below you, could now suddenly do this to your kind?"

And…and behind him. The streets were burning. There was gas. There were civilians dying. Women…women, shot, shot in mass graves by firing squad, or hanged.

Hanged for using magic…there was a sign that was hung on her neck.

"You preach for equality, yet you and every woman hold an unequal power over us? How is that fair? You women get to play like some goddesses - WHILE WE ROT AND BURN?"

I used my wand. That was what was written on the sign… He…no, they, she reminded herself, as she noticed the NRF patch on his shoulder. They hanged her for that?!

"So many of my brothers cried for their mothers as they died. That was the only time we men would dare cry - yet none of you listened. Why then should we listen to your cries?!"

He aimed his flamethrower at the hanged woman and squeezed the trigger in glee. She was on fire as he laughed. Almost as if he was purging a witch.

"SOON, MAGIC WILL BE CLEANSED!"

Amelie screamed in terror.

She rose from her bed, as the sun rose, soaked in cold sweat.

…

She poked her cereal with her fork unenthusiastically. The morning reports didn't look good. The General Strike still hadn't ended, and the Orlish economy was still in freefall. Already, a quarter of the failing corporations in the Rebenslof Group had closed down, and millions of men were now unemployed in the streets.

All the while Jacqueline and Walter were still jockeying for support for the revised bill that they had drafted. The Parliament, still controlled by the UOP, was now split in half, as the conservatives vehemently rejected it, while the liberals voted for it.

The Archduchess was already making speeches on behalf of the court, threatening to split.

I hope my decisions were right.

No, it wasn't, in so many ways. She almost wanted to cry yesterday after her blunder in Parliament. Oh, she turned herself into a laughingstock.

Damn you, Flandere.

The only sliver of good news was that the ORP propagandists turned a 180 on her, and started painting her as some sort of an "enlightened liberal monarch."

She shuffled the documents on her desk instead, as she opted to place her bowl of cereal to the side. It wasn't like she had much appetite to eat yet. So she decided to simply do her job.

She filtered the new series of reports today in order of importance. One by one she read them, as she skipped some of the more unsightly ones.

But she came upon one report, from the Ministry of the Interior.

Update on the Red Street Massacre situation? Red Street Massacre?

Her eyes widened as she read it.

…

"Another goddamned scandal. Or crisis. Wait what do you even call this? A cluster fudge?" Well said as he groaned, while Michael muttered something along the lines of, "This is bad for the stock market." Though, most ignored him.

She gathered her allies and formed them into a secret advisory council. It was a part of the finished agreement in Meintz Hotel. After all, they were now her new political arm to manage the crisis Orland faced, and thus they would need to meet and organize almost every day at the Palace.

And so they did.

She called them - the Meintz Crisis Group, because she was bad at names. And they were all here today.

"I can't believe it either," Jacqueline said. "456 dead? And 14 Royal Guard Knights in that figure too? What the hell is wrong with those NRF militiamen?"

"War veterans." General Albrecht answered boredly. He didn't seem the least bit disturbed by it. "Shooting crowds is business as usual for us."

Jacqueline narrowed her eyes. "General, these are human lives we are talking about."

He chuckled, amused at her offended tone. "Come on, I'm just saying. When you've shot a thousand faceless men charging at you in the muddy trenches, suddenly, human lives don't seem to matter anymore."

What a fucked up view on life, General, Amelie thought as she subtly exhaled in disgust.

Jacqueline sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "This is why you men have an awful reputation."

"Can't do nothing about it. For some reason, our minds are just fucked this way."

Amelie placed down the document.

"Still, I don't understand. Why? Why would they do something like this? It doesn't help men's cause."

For many seconds, no one had an answer. Until Walter sighed and spoke, reluctantly.

"I've read their profiles. Those guys were part of a penal battalion during the war. Also, they were kicked out of their homes at an early age." He looked at the Queen. "I don't know what awful lives these men had, but they're quite common. And they're the most susceptible to NRF propaganda."

A chuckle came from William. Usually, he stood behind her with the rest of the Royal Guards during meetings, but now, he was finally seated.

"That is if they don't blow their brains first. Or hang themselves. Or die of a drug overdose."

"That too."

Suicide? Well, Amelie did notice that men had a high suicide rate…for centuries now. So much so that she just realized that even she felt that it was just a part of men's behavior.

High? That's an understatement. Wasn't it 20 times worse before the war compared to women's suicide rates? Goddess…I remember Father. Even he…even he blew his brains off. He never spoke to me.

"These kinds of people make up…probably a good quarter of men across the world. Losers, druggies, criminals, the unemployed, the list goes on…it's why the rates of poverty, suicide, drug use, domestic terrorism, and crime are so high for men. And our governments had always turned a blind eye to it." Walter continued. He took a deep breath. "That's how it always was."

"Still that does not justify it." Jacqueline countered. "Suffering does not justify the act of inflicting pain upon others."

"True, but do you think these men care? The world never gave two shits about them."

She…well, she deflated at that.

Amelie on the other hand, was just silent. That…sounded kinda depressing. Well, it was awful, really awful, she added, as she ran out of adjectives to describe it. Why did they ignore all of those problems?

"Why? How could we…how could our society ignore all of that? Surely, we women would be badly affected by such crime rates."

"Because you women could afford to," Plock replied. "You women have magic and are thus untouchable by these problems. A criminal tries to raid your house? No worries, just slice him in half with magic."

He smiled darkly. "Problem, solved."

Amelie spoke cautiously. "What about…you? Men? Don't tell me you all just collectively accepted it."

"We didn't, but we are good at shutting up about it. Ever since our childhoods, we've been conditioned to stay tough, bottle up, and shut up. So we did that. We zipped our mouths. Worked hard, lived hard, studied hard, everything, to be a worthy man for the goddesses that graced the world. And if you fail - you did it to yourself. And since we men are notoriously bad at finding support, and let's be honest, no one likes a failed man, the result is inevitable. He's a reject from then on."

That's…not how life should be lived.

He continued. "And when you fail, you can rot with the rest of the useless masses of men. Work your ass to death each day, and go home to your shabby little room, alone. These domestic terrorists? They're the unlucky ones that reached that stage, and now they want a quick, and violent way out."

Marie tried to smile a bit.

"Ehehe, that does sound kinda awful. Hey, Walter, you seem to be speaking from experience, huh?"

"You have no idea." Was his only quick reply.

The room fell silent. But Walter continued.

"And then the Great War happened. A chance for so many men with no future to prove themselves! Turned out it just confirmed the fact that we're all disposable."

Amelie looked down. All that…then, that madness. Even now the death toll was still being counted. The Orlish death toll rose to 10 million men dead, from the previous 9 million figure. Many men were still dying from their injuries, especially injuries caused by brutal chemical warfare. Some estimated that out of the 30 million young men that served, the death toll would rise to 14 or 16 million in the next 5 years.

Out of that 30 million, 28 million were aged 18-21 too. Already, many now dubbed their generation, as the "Dead Generation", as they sent practically all of them to the war, and left half of them dead or crippled.

To go through that…then through the hell of the Great War. She understood... It would drive anyone to madness.

Now, even when they were back home, they lost every prospect of a decent life as the economy collapsed around them, and society decided that they should weather it alone... What else did the future even have for them? Literally and metaphorically, this generation of men was dead. A rotting corpse.

"We like to bottle up as I've said. It's difficult to understand, but, at some point, a man can only take so much before the kettle blows open. And then, it's a question of whether they blow their brains out, or they blow other people's brains out. And there you have it, that's how extremists and the Front are born. That's why they did it."

And we turned a blind eye to it. A crisis of insanity, that brewed for centuries.

"Yeah, that sounds pretty awful…" Marie said in the background, but this time, it was actually a bit more somber.

"I'm sorry…" Was all Amelie could utter on the other hand.

"Your Majesty, your apologies are not needed. You never sat on this throne for hundreds of years to be the cause of this." Walter replied, and she fell silent once more.

But…I was the Princess…

"Yeah, he's right," Rudolph added. "We can blame a lot for this. But not you. No reasonable man would blame you for this, except for those NRF nutjobs. All that matters now is that we solve this."

She nodded, and so did everyone else, as they deliberated how they would handle this crisis.

Clearly, the NRF had to be handled carefully, she noted.

…

The plan was in. She stepped on the podium, as the cameras flashed. The press conference had begun.

"It is…with grave news that I announce that 456 innocent men and women…" She made sure to add the innocent part for men.

"-Died in the massacre, perpetrated by members of the NRF." And she made sure not to use the term 'Civil Defense Militia' as its ORP members might feel attacked.

"We already arrested the 32 men who committed this act of terrorism. Justice for the dead will be served. I also want to use this moment to bring light into a problem."

She paused for the cameras.

"That being the increasing extremism and radicalization amongst men. I call upon everyone, not to use this as a weapon to demonize men, but instead, as a reminder, that they are our fellow human beings, that we have failed - and pushed to extreme acts. And that this is a symptom of our failed system, that must be rectified and will be rectified. This, of course, does not absolve them of their crime…"

She paused, she planned this part too. She needed to show the men of Orland that she understood them. It wouldn't help much, but every message could pull someone at the edge, back to sanity.

She could now imagine the outrage from the nobility, conservatives, and female supremacists once she uttered this.

"...but I take part of the responsibility for this event. I apologize."

The cameras flashed.

…

"How was it, was it alright?" She asked Albert, as the two walked away from the room where the press conference was conducted.

"You just made yourself look weak, in front of the conservatives, I mean."

"Doesn't matter, the liberals and the moderates should be cheering for me." She followed him, as she let off a small smile. "It should also send a good message to many young men."

Albert stopped and turned to look at her. She seemed way too optimistic about the possible effects of her message.

"I'm not sure about that, but…" He still didn't smile. "I sure hope it does."

"...Yeah. It would be a bummer if it was for nothing."

"Well, at least now you've learned how to take advantage of a crisis."

Certainly, that was what the Meintz Crisis…or whatever name she gave that group, told her. That it was an opportunity to be seized, that could be used both to gain public support and attack the NRF and the conservatives, all in one fell swoop.

Still, she crossed her arms. It still seemed like a dirty tactic for her.

"Come on, I didn't enjoy it."

"I know. It's not that bad though, it's just politics."

She didn't uncross her arms. His eyes looked even more bored.

"Go take dinner, you look tired."

That seemed to work.

Yeah, she once again forgot to eat, she thought. It was already becoming routine at this point. Missed meals due to the crisis and overwork. It slowly took a toll on her health.

I miss the feeling of being Royalty. I feel like a government bureaucrat…wait, I forgot. This is an opportunity too.

"Fine…I'll go." She looked at his eyes. "But, you're coming with me."

"What?"

"You, me, and Alice need to talk."

"You know, you two could have a nice dinner alo-"

"She wants to see you, Albert."

"But I-"

"Are you really going to prioritize that ship over our family? Please, Albert. Please?"

He looked hesitant, but he nodded.

"Alright…I'll go see that brat."

Inside, she smiled. Finally, their stubborn older brother had relented. Outside, she frowned. He called her a brat. Naturally, she would weaponize his mistake.

As for Albert, it was late for him to realize his mistake.

"You know, she already learned wind vortex at school. She's becoming really good at her repertoire of spells."

He paled and immediately retracted his statement.

"I mean, Alice. Please don't tell her. Um, please, come on. Amelie, I mean, Your Majesty, please it was a joke, I-"

She placed her gloved hand on her mouth to cover it in response.

And…

Amelie, for once, laughed.