WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈
Chapter 101: The Purple Bloodline
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The Palace of Thessalonica.
Once the residence of the empire's co-ruler, it had been worn down by time. Its paint had peeled away, and cracks ran across the marble floor. Yet tonight, those old scars were hidden beneath the heat of victory.
The banquet hall was full of noise and warmth.
Roast lamb seasoned with garlic and oregano.
Warm spiced wine, rich with honey and cinnamon.
The inviting scent of freshly baked white bread.
Golden candlelight flickered beneath the vast domed ceiling.
At the head of the table that occupied the center of the hall sat the night's two central figures.
On one side was Andronikos, Despot of Thessalonica.
Opposite him sat Jan Žižka, Bohemia's god of war.
Andronikos was still covered in bandages. Fresh linen had been wrapped layer upon layer over the flesh eaten away by leprosy, but it could not conceal the smell of pus seeping through the gaps.
Yet the eyes visible between those bandages shone with the liveliness of an excited child.
Seated at the head of the table, Andronikos picked up the silver bottle before him with his bandaged hand.
“Your cup is empty, General. Allow me to refill it.”
“...”
Žižka paused.
A member of the imperial family was pouring him wine himself.
It was as though a prince of the Eastern Roman Empire were attending to a Hussite soldier called a heretic.
Despot. Despotes.
This title did not simply mean a provincial lord.
It was a unique Eastern Roman office granted only to the emperor's immediate family, and only to those of the highest rank among them.
The son of Manuel II, Emperor of the Romans, a man who bore the sacred imperial bloodline, was offering to pour wine personally for a mere mercenary captain, and a heretic excommunicated by the Western Church at that.
But there was no calculation in Andronikos's eyes. Only sincerity.
“Please do not refuse, General. This is not politics.”
Trickle, trickle.
Wine flowed into the silver cup. The rich ruby liquid gave off the fragrance of honey and cinnamon.
“Throughout all the years I have lived in this city, I have never seen the citizens shouting atop those walls look as they do today.”
The cup was full.
With trembling hands, Andronikos offered it to Žižka.
“The joy of being alive. The certainty that we will open our eyes tomorrow morning. You and your men have given those things back to us. What use is the dignity of an imperial prince before the fact that you saved this city?”
Žižka silently looked down at the cup.
His old, scar-covered face shimmered upon the rippling red liquid.
He had spent his entire life on battlefields.
He was more comfortable with a dented tin cup shared among soldiers than a noble's splendid tableware, more accustomed to chewing bread at a makeshift table spread with bloodstained maps than at one covered in silk.
But he was not an uncouth man.
He was not arrogant enough to disregard the heartfelt gratitude of someone who had returned from the brink of death. It did not matter that the person was an imperial prince.
“...I thank Your Highness for this kindness.”
Žižka lowered his head stiffly.
He raised the cup and drained half of it in one go.
Gulp. Gulp.
His Adam's apple bobbed.
Žižka wiped the red drops of wine from his beard with the back of his hand.
It was a rough gesture, far removed from the refined etiquette of the Eastern Roman court, but Andronikos instead felt a subtle sense of relief at the sight.
Compared to the eunuchs and nobles of Constantinople who hid poison behind false smiles, the bluntness of this rough old general was far more trustworthy.
Chatter, chatter.
As the mood at the head table grew warmer, a different scene unfolded at the long tables below.
Bohemian artillerymen sat mixed among Eastern Roman defenders.
There were no interpreters between them, and few could speak the common tongue of Latin.
Czech and Greek.
Two languages with no point of contact stood between them.
But before alcohol and meat, grammar was a trivial problem.
“This! Try this! It’s delicious! It’ll knock you dead!”
Ondřej tore into a piece of lamb soaked in olive oil with a hearty shout. He thumped the shoulder of the Eastern Roman soldier beside him and gave a thumbs-up.
The Greek soldier returned the gesture.
“Kalo! Nai, nai! Poly kalo!”
Whether that meant it was good, delicious, or that Ondřej was unbearably loud, only God knew. At least the soldier's expression was bright.
Though they did not understand a single word each other said, the two grinned and clinked their cups together.
Meanwhile, at one corner of the table, a man was continuously scribbling something onto paper.
Oswald von Wolkenstein.
Leaving his untouched wine beside him, he moved his pen like a madman.
‘Bohemian cannons sweep away the heathens, while a prince of the Orthodox Church pours wine for a heretic general. The Pope would faint if he learned of this! No, I should make sure he learns of it myself! Oh... poetic inspiration! No, a reporter’s inspiration! It never stops coming!’
After briefly watching the noisy scene in the banquet hall, Andronikos turned his gaze back to Žižka.
As he refilled the general's empty cup, he carefully raised the question he had wanted to ask for some time.
“By the way, General.”
“Hm?”
“What kind of man is the King of Bohemia?”
Žižka stopped before bringing the cup to his lips.
His one eye narrowed as it pierced Andronikos.
“What kind of man, you say.”
“Yes. Every rumor coming from the West is extreme. The papacy calls him the incarnation of the Antichrist. The lords of Germany say he is a sorcerer who uses the devil's arts... Yet among the peasants of Bohemia, I hear stories that he is a prophet sent by God.”
Andronikos shifted in his seat.
His bandaged hand on the table trembled faintly.
“I am not curious about propaganda or slander. Are you not his sword, General? Surely the one who wages war at his side every day knows the king best.”
Žižka remained silent for a moment instead of answering.
He stared at the dark red wine rippling in his cup, as if Ulrich's face might appear within it.
After a long while, the old general's reply was unexpected.
“Our king... does not like war.”
“What?”
Andronikos's eyes widened.
The man responsible for creating the weapon that had turned the Aegean Sea into an inferno and sent the Ottoman fleet to the bottom. That terrifying, overwhelming monster of steel disliked war?
“It may sound strange, but it is the truth.”
Žižka stroked his beard as he continued.
“His Majesty has an extraordinary talent for melting iron and making Gunpowder, but whenever it comes to killing people with those weapons, his face tightens. At first, I suspected weakness. What soldier could trust and follow a ruler who hesitates at the sight of blood on the battlefield?”
Žižka's scarred lips curled upward.
“But with time, I realized it. He is not weak. He counts every death.”
“He counts them?”
“Warriors like us count corpses as our achievements, but His Majesty does not forget that every one of those numbers is someone's father and son. That is why he is more frightening.”
Žižka raised his cup and emptied it in one swallow.
“A man who knows the weight of death, when he resolves to kill in order to live... Do you know how sharp and ruthless the blade that emerges after that hesitation can be? To save people, His Majesty devises the most efficient and terrible ways to kill the enemy.”
Andronikos leaned deeply against his chair.
A tyrant driven by simple conquest or madness would have been easier to understand.
But a ruler who became most brutal in order to save people?
“He is an extraordinary man...”
“I do not know about extraordinary, but he is certainly peculiar. No ruler in the world can be quite like him.”
Žižka chuckled softly. There was an unexpected warmth in his rough voice.
“One day he is making cannons, the next he is making soap... Then he says he will build schools for commoners' children, and suddenly he makes something called a newspaper to distribute writings mocking an emperor. He is truly an impossible king to predict.”
He turned the empty cup in his hand.
“But one thing is certain. At the center of all those eccentricities, there are always the people. Whether they are nobles, commoners, or even heathens.”
Andronikos rested his chin on his hand and fell into thought.
A king who thought of people first.
And a king armed with steel and Gunpowder to uphold that conviction.
He was the kind of ruler one would never find at the court of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Even his father, Manuel II, was an emperor capable of making the cold decision to abandon a son's domain or a city if it served the greater cause of the empire's survival.
‘But did that coldness save the empire?’
No.
The empire had continued to shrink, and the emperor's decisions had always come close to choosing the lesser evil.
What had saved this city was not coldness, but that strange iron tube spitting fire upon the sea. And the one who had made it was the young King of Bohemia, who counted each human life.
“...”
He remembered the letter from his father that had arrived yesterday.
Manuel II, Emperor of Constantinople, gave thanks to Heaven that Thessalonica had remained safe and sincerely rejoiced at his son's survival.
At the same time, however, he strongly questioned whether the present reality of preserving their lives through the military strength of heretics was fitting for the empire's dignity.
Andronikos could not agree with those words.
A Slavic kingdom of heretics?
An impious ruler excommunicated by the papacy?
What did any of that matter?
When the knights of the West had fallen to their knees before the Ottomans at Nicopolis, the steel cannon of Bohemia had reduced the Sultan's fleet to dust upon the Aegean Sea.
Was it not already clear where hope should be placed?
“General, may I ask you one more thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“His Majesty the King of Bohemia... Is he married?”
Clack!
The sound of Žižka setting down his cup rang unusually loudly.
The old general's gaze changed strangely. He seemed to have understood Andronikos's intentions at once.
“He is still unmarried.”
“Unmarried...!”
Color came to Andronikos's face.
The swollen skin around his eyes, ruined by leprosy, seemed to regain life.
“Then he is not engaged either...?”
“Not as far as I know. The royal houses of the West avoid him because they call him a heretic, and His Majesty is always so busy.”
“Oh...!”
Andronikos could not hide the smile spreading across his face.
‘This is an opportunity.’
It was like a lifeline of salvation sent down by the Archangel Michael.
A marriage alliance.
The most traditional and reliable diplomatic means passed down from ancient Rome.
If a marriage were arranged between the King of Bohemia and the Eastern Roman imperial family, it would cause a geopolitical earthquake that shook all of Europe.
Bohemia would rise from a heretic kingdom of the West to a state married into the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire would raise a diplomatic shield against attacks from the papacy, and Bohemian cannons would cross the Balkans against Ottoman invasions.
A perfect bargain.
At least in theory.
‘But...’
The prince quickly reviewed the family tree of his house, the Palaiologos imperial dynasty.
The children born to his father Manuel II and his mother Helena.
The eldest, John.
The second, Theodore.
The third, himself.
The fourth, Constantine.
The fifth, Demetrios.
The sixth, Thomas.
All men.
‘There is no imperial princess born in the Purple Chamber.’
Deep within Constantinople's Great Palace stood a special birthing chamber whose walls and floor were decorated with purple porphyry.
The Purple Chamber, called the Porphyra.
In the Eastern Roman Empire, the children of a legitimate heir to the throne had to be born in that room. Only then could they receive the title Porphyrogenita, meaning one born in the Purple Chamber, and prove the legitimacy of the empire.
The weight of this title in marriage diplomacy was immense.
When a Western king or Eastern sultan sought a marriage alliance with the Byzantine imperial family, this was the first condition the other side considered.
‘Is the other party a Porphyrogenita?’
An imperial princess born in the Purple Chamber.
It was the highest diplomatic gift, an offer to share blood imbued with the legitimacy of the empire.
But Manuel II now had six sons and not a single daughter.
‘But... if there is none, then one can be made.’
It was not as though there were no women of imperial blood at all.
The first person who came to mind was his half-sister, Zampia Palaiologina.
She was his father's illegitimate daughter, but she had received the Palaiologos name. By blood, she was the closest.
But... she was a widow.
She had married Mustafa, the Sultan's uncle and a rebel claimant, only to be widowed when he was beheaded.
‘Remarriage is not a grave flaw in a union between royal houses, but send a widow to a young, promising king? A woman who had been the wife of a heathen rebel? The King of Bohemia might take it as an insult.’
Then another alternative was needed.
A daughter from a family that was not imperial, but wielded influence equal to the imperial family.
A name passed through Andronikos's mind.
‘Anna. Anna Notaras.’
The thirteen-year-old daughter of Grand Duke Loukas Notaras, the empire's second-in-command and true power behind the throne.
She would do. The Notaras family was as wealthy and powerful as the imperial house. Moreover, Loukas Notaras was one of the emperor's closest confidants.
‘What if Father issued an imperial decree and adopted her as his daughter?’
If she received the Patriarch's blessing at Hagia Sophia, and the emperor himself draped a purple cloak over her shoulders and declared, “My beloved daughter.”
From that moment, she would become a princess of Rome. Though not by blood, she could legally enjoy the full status of a Porphyrogenita.
Andronikos's eyes gleamed.
‘The King of Bohemia is young. And he is ambitious. What he needs is not a few gold coins or a piece of land.’
He needed overwhelming authority that would erase the stigma of heresy.
The title of an imperial princess of Rome would give him wings. Ulrich von Sternberg would no longer be recorded in history as a heretic king from the frontier, but as the son-in-law of the Roman imperial family and the defender of the Christian world.
“General.”
Andronikos leaned forward.
“I... wish to prepare a gift for His Majesty the King of Bohemia.”
“A gift?”
“Yes. The noblest and most beautiful gift the empire can offer, in repayment for saving this city.”
Žižka silently stared into Andronikos's eyes.
The old general saw the desire and calculation in the prince's gaze, along with his desperate will to survive. Then he smiled faintly and raised his cup.
“Whatever gift Your Highness prepares, our king will gladly receive it. But...”
Žižka added meaningfully.
“Only if that gift contains Your Highness's righteous heart.”
“Of course. You are right.”
Their cups met in the air.
A clear metallic ring echoed through the banquet hall.
“Tonight... truly is a beautiful night.”
Beyond the window came the sound of waves upon the Aegean Sea.
Until yesterday, those waves had sung of death.
Tonight, they sounded like a hymn of blessing.
Footnotes:
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