A murky stream of dark gloom forced submission to a group of ministers below his feet.
"Are you telling me that annexation is the only way to avoid war?!"
The ministers looked at each other, but their faces showed the same disgust to their young prince. With a common understanding, their gazes locked onto a single man, the Duke of Ursan, the Minister of War.
"Your Majesty, it is the only way to protect the lives of our people and to avoid a slaughter from forces a thousand larger than our own."
"Then what happens to the people in this hall?"
The ministers inwardly laughed. 'Of course we get higher posts after your death, my King.', but they can't say that to his face.
This world has True Divine Rights where a King cannot be killed as long as 10% of the citizens recognize them as King.
The King may die of old age, but they can never die from poisons and assasinations as long as the Kingdom exists. They are therefore, in practice, immortal.
Once a King dies prematurely, their body is fully reconstituted at a random place inside the Kingdom's borders. What makes the King harder to kill is that they can kill themselves with just a thought, thus making it useless to trap them physically.
With the King's unlimited tries, it is just a matter of time until they slaughter their way back to their rightful place.
Therefore, even though the ministers had wanted for so long to exterminate the Royal Family, a single misstep made the youngest prince King, thus making it impossible to kill him.
"Are you seriously telling me to hand over the gold to avoid thief?"
"That's exactly it, Your Majesty. Better for a robber to get your wealth than for a robber to take both your wealth and life."
The Duke of Ursan snickers inwardly. 'In your case, Your Majesty, it will be both your wealth and life.'
The Duke of Munic, the Minister of Finance, speaks his piece.
"The Great King Arthur Wesver y Polia is known for his sage-like rule where every citizen in his Kingdom is a hundred times more wealthy than ours. He will never be a thief that will drain our citizens. Instead, he will bring prosperity to every citizen of Verion."
"Enough! Am I your King or is he your King?! This meeting is dismissed. We will meet again on the next half-moon."
The ministers gloated at him in spite. They know his days are numbered. It's only a matter of time before Polia's Army overwhelms the Verkan valley.
Chairs rattled as red robes fluttered with the ministers' gaits. A row of armored knights escorted them out of the Royal Hall.
The golden knight, at the King's right, bowed and asked,
"Your Majesty, can we not kill them all? If things go as they are, those traitors will personally open the gates to invite the Polia King to take your head."
Even though the King is immortal, this immortality is under the assumption that the King remains King. An invasion or coup d'etat usually happens in either one of two ways.
The first way is by forcing the King to surrender his crown by taking hostage the people they deem important. By slowly killing the royal family one by one, we are hoping that the King would give up the crown to protect their family.
The second way is by taking the castle and the throne room itself. If the invading King can occupy the very castle that represents the King's Kingship, the people may lose their faith to their King and thus strip them of their immortality.
The first way is often much harder to do than the second way. Kings often cling to their power as long as they can. The only real way to strip the King of his Kingship is to make the Kingdom's citizens lose their confidence for their King.
An invading King has ancient heritage that makes it easier for them to convince the people to give up their old King for the new one. That's also why coup d'etat commonly fails as they are not backed by the people.
"Patience Sir Layman, the nobles hold the Kingdom's military. I can't have the Royal Guards fighting the frontlines, can I? In fact, I am even more amazed by their loyalty."
"Loyalty? What loyalty flows in the blood of those traitors?! They are just serpents of deadly venom who desires your King's Right."
"Haha, that is indeed true, but remember that the only way for them to get the King's Right is if the King of Polia willingly break up Verion's land into pieces. Thus they will protect this land even more fervently than me; to give them leverage against the King of Polia."
"What do you mean, Your Majesty? I don't understand."
"Remember that each of my traitorous ministers want the limited immortality of the King's Right whether to save their asses from diseases or to avoid assasinations from their own followers. But for them to do so, they must create their own Kingdom. Thus their end game is not Annexation but Vassalage."
"So they want to be a vassal Kingdom serving the King of Polia, but why did they want annexation for His Majesty?"
"This is the only way to remove Verion's halo on the citizens. They can't just break Verion into pieces as there would inevitably be citizens that would not acknowledge the change. Thus they needed me to erase the concept of Verion itself willingly and the easiest way to do that is to have an established King absorb the new territory."
"I don't understand. Why is it easier to involve the King of Polia than to just rebel by themselves?"
"If we ignore their chances of success, they can technically do it; but they won't, since they don't trust each other.
There are two ways to establish a new Kingdom. Either it is with the current King's surrender or without.
If they rebel by themselves without making the King relinquish the crown and establish new Kingdoms, those Pseudo Kingdoms will never be Kingdoms as majority of the citizens might not acknowledge them as King.
Remember that you can only create a new Kingdom if a majority of your new citizens accept you as their King.
Thus this new Rebel King needs to expel all these loyal Verion citizens until they reach majority. Only after that can the citizens be invited back.
But suppose they manage to make the King relinquish the crown, they would still need to chose a leader to receive it as the crown is only one, but how can they be sure that an Immortal King would not just tear up the previous agreement.
Thus they needed an external party to handle that transition and to make sure that everyone of the traitorous ministers get a little piece of a small Kingdom.
But for an immortal King to be forced to abdicate, they either need to systematically kill the King's family or let a foreign King invade the current King."
"But the Royal Family are all dead."
"Precisely! That means their only leverage against me is gone."
"I'm confused. Why is the King of Polia still attacking if it is now almost impossible to make Your Majesty surrender? Besides, our people really hate the Kingdom of Polia and the Verion Family has been ruling on for centuries. So even if he takes your castle, the people might just ignore him."
"That's because he didn't know. The King of Polia can force the citizens to recognize him as the new King if I never surrender, but that would mean killing the population that he wants to take over. This is very costly and would paint him as an evil King. If he knows this, he would immediately cease his attacks and retreat. Thus it can only be the case that the King of Polia has no idea that the Royal Family was exterminated except me."
The knight by his right falls in silence. As a loyal knight of the late King, he supported the young prince as the new King without a thought. He thought at first that with the youngest prince, he can now avenge the late King and kill the traitors, but with the King of Polia at their doors threatening the young prince's life and the citizens, he realized that this isn't as simple as he first thought.
"Your Majesty, how did King Xerse died? It should have been impossible right? So why? Why did the King die?"
"He didn't die. He just slept forever."
"Your Majesty, this is not the time for jokes. Please answer me honestly. What did the previous Royal Guards do?"
"You might have never heard of the Pill of Eternal Sleep. It is only known among a few of the Royal Family, the Royal Guards, and upper nobles. Normally, a King cannot die as all lethal poisons are ineffective. But that doesn't mean a poison needs to be lethal to be effective."
The King pauses and looks around. The knight understood and asked all the other Royal Guards to leave.
"Please tell me, Your Majesty."
"Remember that a King can willingly kill themselves with a single thought and thus cannot be trapped. But if you can make them unconscious, then you can effectively trap them. By making the King sleep for an extended period of time, you can gain enough time to launch a coup and imprison everyone with royal blood. Once the King wakes up, you force them to abdicate if they want a peaceful death for their family."
"That's horrible. I'm sorry, Your Majesty."
"It's alright. It's already done. I am telling you this because you will be the one to kill me when I eventually fall for the Pill of Eternal Sleep. Can you take that responsibility?"
"Ah! I understand, Your Majesty. I'll do it."
"Nice. Just make sure to stab fast in the heart so I don't suffer too much. Continuing on, the ministers have committed a great miscalculation. They were not aware of a bastard son that is me. When the King woke up and found everyone in the official lineage hostage including some bastards, he was quick to realize that I am not one of them. So he surrenders the throne in my name. The King and the Royal Family dies, the ministers searched for me, I tried to usurp the throne, died, tried again, died, tried again and again, until I became king. Along the way, I gained loyal followers like you. Pretty easy, right?"
The knight smiles wryly. His loyalty is on the late King, but he can't deny that this new King deserves his current place. He has seen him rose up from a lowly shit-cleaner in the capital to the highest position in Verion.
"But Your Majesty, you could have killed all the ministers, but why didn't you? I still don't understand. Even with all that, isn't it better to just face the King of Polia by yourself?"
"That's because they are very competent traitors. As long as I remain King, it is in my best interest to have competent traitor ministers than new incompetent ones. The more they try to gain a new Kingdom for themselves, the better it will be for me.
Fighting by myself would just be letting many people die where I can't reach. Besides that, I am a new King and I still haven't got the nobles loyalty. I need more time before I can fully reorganize our Kingdom."