Love Me Just Once (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 162

Masaran truly disliked the topic currently circulating in the recent council meetings.

As a defeated nation, Brinwell had to pay the war reparations demanded by Aglante, but the current treasury couldn’t possibly meet the Grand Duke’s requested amount.

Yet, if they refused to pay, another war was as certain as daylight.

Although Aglante wasn’t entirely free from the aftermath of conscription, their situation differed greatly from Brinwell’s. Despite the internal bloodshed, Aglante’s monarchy was now stronger than ever, as everyone who had opposed the current king had already been executed.

If it had been the previous Grand Duke, Masaran might have tried redirecting negotiations toward Tesendot or Egelbamot—Tesendot being the previous Grand Duke’s maternal family, and Egelbamot a long-standing ally.

However, the current Grand Duke had no maternal relatives tied by blood, nor did he particularly value alliances forged by preceding generations. Even the Egelbamot imperial family chose to form a coalition with him rather than try to restrain him—after all, the throne belonged to the living, and however diluted, the Sigrasil bloodline remained intact.

Masaran wasn’t oblivious to this situation, yet he simply couldn’t accept the reparations demanded by the Grand Duke. The kingdom’s finances were already strained, and paying such an enormous sum would inevitably require taxation far beyond what had been projected.

Raising taxes was absolutely one of the things he must not do right now—not out of some noble concern for the people’s hardships.

For reasons utterly unclear, Masaran was receiving the least public support of any national leader in history.

He didn’t expect the same trust his father enjoyed after fifty years on the throne, but surely, he deserved at least as much popularity as Hathor.

Yet the people seemed to favor the deceased Hathor over him. It appeared they cared little that Hathor had been the cause of their defeat—in fact, his death seemed to elevate him even further, casting him as a tragic hero who met an untimely end in his youth.

Masaran was convinced someone was deliberately stirring public opinion against him from the crowd, but lacked the crucial evidence.

Absence of evidence didn’t stop him from suspecting the culprit—it was undoubtedly Amarella, grieving for her late husband. Recently, their relationship had grown extremely strained. Even during Hathor’s lifetime, they’d never been close, but after his death, Amarella grew increasingly offended by everything Masaran said, leading to a complete rift.

Masaran intended to make her pay dearly for her scheming, but for now, he had no way to recover his plummeting popularity.

If taxes were raised in this climate, rebellion would erupt—as it had in the distant kingdom of Reden.

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