Royal Coup d'État - Chapter 49

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 49
Sangseon passed through Danbong Gate at Changdeokgung Palace without a glance. Beyond the limousine window, she could see reporters wielding cameras pressing forward and security guards barely holding them back.
They’d been waiting persistently for her all along, and would surely follow her to Gyeongheegung Palace when she left. By evening, everyone in the world would be talking about the same thing.
That Prince Uigu’s only rival was the Princess of Cheongyang.
That at last the Emperor’s hand had been revealed, and the Princess of Cheongyang—silent all these years—had finally stepped forward.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sangseon opened the car door and stepped onto the ground. As she bent her head to gather her skirts, a shadow fell before her.
It was one of the young attendants from the royal chambers.
“My apologies. His Majesty is not receiving audiences at this time.”
He bowed respectfully, his hands clasped.
Sangseon’s frown deepened as she turned back. She noticed the court lady assigned to Deokyudang, who had come with her in the limousine.
“Lady Ju. Didn’t you submit a request for an audience with His Majesty?”
“Indeed I did, ma’am.”
Ah.
Sangseon turned slowly. Her round, gleaming eyes began to grow cold and hard.
Her gaze traveled from the attendant’s crown to his toes.
A frame slightly taller than hers, a body so lean the bones showed through. Yet even as he maintained his courtesy, his pupils kept wavering.
Sangseon gauged the attendant’s age. Perhaps only in his thirties. A time when Palace Officials under the Palace Administration Bureau were most anxious about their futures.
It would be smarter to tie his fortune to the new power than to an Emperor who might pass away at any moment, he must have reasoned.
“Where are Sangseon and Court Lady Jejo? Why are you the one greeting me?”
She spoke in a lowered, cutting tone.
“They are currently attending to their duties…….”
“Lady Ju.”
Sangseon didn’t wait for the attendant’s answer and called the court lady. She hurried over to Sangseon’s side.
“What penalty applies to one who presumes to be Emperor?”
“Such a person is prosecuted for Imperial Slander Crime, and if they belong to the Palace Administration Bureau, they are punished according to the Palace Administration Law.”
Sangseon folded her arms and stared at the attendant. His confident, rigid posture began to crumble bit by bit.
“Where are Sangseon and Court Lady Jejo?”
“That is…….”
“I’ve been courteous, and you think this is a game.”
Her voice cut like a blade. The attendant flinched sharply and took a step back—Sangseon no longer looked so easy to dismiss.
“Lady Ju. Go fetch the security guards. We must restore proper order in the imperial household today.”
“M-ma’am, that’s not it. His Majesty has been so exhausted lately that I merely mentioned it would be better to avoid the audience! How could you misunderstand?”
“Misunderstand?”
Sangseon let out a bitter laugh, tilting her head. On top of her already foul mood, everything was becoming a nuisance.
Just then, an elderly Sangseon came rushing over the attendant’s shoulder, breathless. Why did people have to make things so difficult when she’d spot them so easily anyway?
“Sigh…….”
Sangseon sighed and walked past the attendant. She felt his eyes, head bowed, trailing after her. Perhaps he was relieved that this would be let slide.
But she had no intention of letting it slide. If she was to become the master of this place one day, this was something she must do.
“Lady Ju, report this attendant to the Censorate. Tell them I will gladly appear to testify if needed.”
Not that it mattered if the Censorate was Prince Uigu’s domain.
She’d simply lodge complaint after complaint until they were forced to move. Now there was no need to bow and scrape for fear of Prince Uigu, no reason to hold back.
With a rare, refreshing smile, Sangseon moved forward.
* * *
“Your Majesty. The Princess of Cheongyang has arrived.”
Sangseon announced it at the entrance to Heejungdang. She was still breathing heavily, not yet recovered from her rush.
The attendant had acted in her place while she prepared to greet Sangseon after hearing the audience request. The discipline in the royal chambers had truly fallen to pieces.
Sangseon’s smile faded as she entered Heejungdang. The Emperor, wearing angular glasses and seated at a large desk, acknowledged her presence.
“So you’ve come.”
“Your Majesty. How have you been?”
The Emperor nodded vaguely.
Though they’d only been apart a few days, he looked even more drained. No wonder the palace staff grew careless and overstepped—they’d forgotten to fear him. She swallowed an unladylike sigh of exasperation, which only darkened her expression further.
“What brings you here?”
“So much, that’s the problem.”
Sangseon reluctantly broached the subject.
It wasn’t what she’d meant to say first, but the events before entering Heejungdang came out instead.
As the Emperor listened with a serious face, his expression gradually grew brighter.
“Good. You handled it well.”
“They are your subjects, Your Majesty. I apologize.”
“Right now, the imperial household needs someone like you who isn’t afraid to speak up. If anyone tries to overstep your authority in the future, discipline and punish them as you see fit.”
The Emperor spoke with unwavering firmness.
There was good reason why those who belonged to the Palace Administration Bureau were called “Palace Officials” rather than ordinary civil servants. The world inside the palace walls and the world outside were entirely different realms. Palace officials even had their own separate code of law, distinct from all other civil servants.
No matter how the Emperor aged, no matter that the Crown Prince had died, the Imperial Household had to remain unshaken. To ignore that fundamental principle was unforgivable under any circumstance.
Sangseon felt a weight lift from her shoulders at his words. It was the moment her beliefs—carefully cultivated over all these years—were proven right.
‘The world crumbles one moment and stands firm the next.’
Sangseon swallowed her sigh and lifted her head straight. Now it was time to raise the real matter.
The Emperor’s gaze, which had always felt gentle before, made her slightly uneasy. The realization that he, too, was complicit in creating Prince Uijeong’s perfect family twisted her stomach like something gone wrong.
Sangseon’s lower lashes trembled faintly. Finding the right words to begin with took longer than she expected.
“Grandfather. Does my father have another child besides me?”
Yes—with this matter, directness was the answer. There was no way to dress it in prettier language. And frankly, she hadn’t the will to try today.
And the Emperor seemed to accept this approach. The smile that had lingered at his lips vanished without a trace.
“…How did you learn of it?”
“Grandfather. There can’t be anything left that I don’t know.”
He was a man she had loved all her life and still respected deeply, but disappointment was inescapable in the face of such a bland reply.
How much longer had he planned to hide it? Did it please him to deceive her? Words she couldn’t quite speak circled around her throat.
“I had planned to tell you only once you secured your position beyond doubt. But now that word has reached even your ears, the day the world knows of it cannot be far away.”
The Emperor continued as if in ordinary conversation, his tone perfectly calm.
“Everyone worth knowing already knew the Prince was involved in a love affair. Only the identity of his partner remained hidden.”
“You’re saying you switched that partner for my mother?”
“It was a situation where revealing connection to a woman linked with forces seeking to overthrow the state would endanger the Imperial Household itself. Your mother happened to be a relative of my maternal clan, she was well-known, and the Household needed her assistance in those days.”
Under the arrangement orchestrated by the Emperor, with your father’s tacit consent and your mother’s acquiescence, the people lived their whole lives deceived. And so did their daughter, Sangseon.
She could not call it right, this elaborate theatrical romance that played out century after century. Yet what would Sangseon have done had she been Emperor? She, too, would have chosen differently, perhaps, but still in the direction of protecting the Imperial Household.
What’s more, that your father continued to see that woman in secret even after marriage and fathered a child with her—that was surely beyond the scope of the Emperor’s original plan.
Sangseon exhaled a short breath.
“The greatest problem is that Prince Uigu knows of this matter.”
“…I don’t mean to overestimate my son, but I confess I’ve lost track of when he began to dream.”
The Emperor paused briefly before removing his glasses as he spoke.
“It was he who discovered that the youngest still yearned for his love even after marriage, and he boldly went to find her and brought them together.”
Sangseon couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh.
Now she understood the fear that had gripped her father so deeply. It made perfect sense—he was cowering before Prince Uigu because he had already been played upon his board, trapped in that inescapable pattern of submission.
“That’s why I never intended to use Prince Uijeong. That boy already holds a grave weakness over the second prince.”
The Emperor’s forthright answer only tangled Sangseon’s thoughts further.
“If Prince Uigu and my father are both unusable, then how do you intend to employ me?”
At her question, the Emperor smiled with profound meaning.
“I have already arranged a path for you to safely become Emperor.”
“Grandfather.”
“But I cannot escape feeling sorry toward you. As Emperor, as a father—I harbored only the will to protect my child, yet I orchestrated great designs. You must have been wounded by those designs, and so this old man’s heart grows heavy.”
The Emperor’s voice, meant to comfort Sangseon, sounded more weary than ever before.
Yet Sangseon could not bring herself to offer false comfort about this matter—saying she was fine, that she felt nothing, that she could forgive. Not even before the man she most respected in the world could she hide her disappointment.
Cast adrift in confusion, Sangseon barely clung to her senses.
She held on—barely, with all her strength—so that she would not crumble as Prince Uigu wished, so that her father’s weaknesses would not shackle her own feet.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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