“Incidentally, the most popular of your retainers is Sir Poncho,” Hakuya said.
Poncho? Now there was a surprise.
“Not Ludwin, the handsome captain of the Royal Guard?”
“It’s true, Sir Ludwin is incredibly popular, but the House of Arcs is a great house, and the only people who can propose to him are of the nobility and the knightly class,” said Hakuya. “On that point, Sir Poncho is of low birth, and so even common mercantile families send marriage proposals to him. Furthermore, while Sir Ludwin feels out of reach, many women seem to think they could easily seduce Sir Poncho.”
“…He’s being taken lightly, huh.”
If the marriage proposals were piling up for Poncho, that meant he was popular, too. Though he was pudgy and rotund, he was also a gentle and considerate young man. More than that, his food was delicious. On top of that, he had led the country to a solution for its food crisis; and if you considered the way he was almost worshiped as a god of food in the Amidonia Region, there had to be a lot of women who would want to marry him.
Poncho was known for giving ground when pushed, which they had seen from his appearances on the broadcast programs. For any woman even slightly confident in her appearance, it might not have been unreasonable that they thought they could push past his defenses with sheer momentum. In point of fact, Poncho was not very good at fending off those sorts of advances.
Hmm… I was happy to hear that a good retainer like Poncho was a hit with the ladies, but I was hoping he would continue doing good work for me in future, so I didn’t want anyone too weird catching him.
“Have you taken countermeasures?” I asked.
“Yes. I have already asked Madam Serina to act as Sir Poncho’s assistant. She attends arranged marriage meetings with him, and drives off women who approach him purely out of personal ambition.”
Oh… No need to worry, then. If Serina was there as Poncho’s assistant, it would probably be fine.
There were some issues with Serina’s personality, but she was extremely graceful and beautiful. If she was at his side, the women who were only a little confident in their appearance, and who thought they could seduce him, would back down.
I had often asked her to serve as Poncho’s assistant before this, but Serina always said things like, “When I go to such efforts on a gentleman’s behalf, I hope he will get his act together a little more. I am working very hard, so please, treat me to a meal again sometime.”
Though she complained, and it was obvious she was only doing it because she wanted his food, she seemed to be proactive about looking after Poncho. Poncho loved both to eat and to cook, and Serina was hooked on the junk food from Earth that he and I were developing together.
Serina seemed unaware of it because she had let her sadistic tendency to bully cute girls get out of hand, but it felt like he had completely tamed her with food. He was a timid man you couldn’t leave alone, and she was a strong-willed woman who tended to meddle, so they got along well and… Wait, huh?
“Serina attends Poncho’s marriage meetings, right?” I asked.
“Yes. I hear that many women excuse themselves when they see what the woman standing next to him looks like.”
“Isn’t that like… Serina’s unconsciously ‘sheltering’ Poncho?”
“…”
…
We looked at one another, awkward looks on the faces of liege and vassal alike.
…Yeah, it was best we not get involved in this matter. It would be uncouth for us to butt in and say anything. For the moment, I decided to change the subject.
“Ahem… Anyway, I’ll bet it’s not just Ludwin and Poncho, is it? You must have a significant number of proposals coming your way, too, don’t you?”
Hakuya was handsome, and he was the closest of all the men close to me. I couldn’t imagine the ladies and nobles of the world would let him get away. When I brought it up, Hakuya got a look on his face like he had bitten into something unpleasant.
“I… have no intention of taking a wife just yet.”
“It’s not that you aren’t interested in women, though, right? Are you one of those guys who thinks marriage is too much of a hassle?”
“No,” said Hakuya. “I do intend to have a wife and children some day, but I want to find and choose a partner for myself. I wouldn’t want someone else to force a marriage on me.”
“…You’re saying that to me?” I asked.
For Liscia and me, our betrothal had been totally forced on us. Even with Aisha and Juna, they’d both initially approached me with other motives because of their positions; and when it came to Roroa, she had brought her whole country with her so that she could protect the people of the principality through marrying me. I hadn’t met a single one of them in an ordinary way.
When I pointed that out, Hakuya bowed his head to me, more flustered than I would have expected from him. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to speak ill of your betrothals, sire…”
“It’s fine. I mean, in my world, the majority of people thought the way that you do.”
In Japan, marriages were generally for love and with the consent of both parties.
In this world which hadn’t managed to throw off the feudal system, the higher their position in society, the less freedom people had in that regard. In particular, when it came to the marriages of the knights and nobles, their meaning as a bond between houses was majorly important. Like with Ludwin and Genia, or Hal and Kaede, there were cases where the houses were already associated with one another, but those were rare exceptions. In most cases, the higher up you went on the social ladder, the more the house’s expectations determined one’s marriage choices.
Though, that said, if someone had enough authority, like I did, it was an issue that could be dealt with. It had come up with my betrothal to Juna, but if we had arranged to have her adopted into a noble family, it would have been possible to adjust the status difference between us.
In Hakuya’s case, he was the Prime Minister of this country, so he could do something like that. So, in this case, it was an issue with Hakuya’s views on marriage.
Well, if there was one thing I could say, it was that no matter how it got started in the first place, love was love. My bond with Liscia and the others was so deep now that I couldn’t imagine parting with them.
“Hey, some loves have started in a relationship that was forced on people, you know?” I asked, speaking fondly of my own loved ones.
Hakuya looked taken aback, then smiled a little. “…I suppose you’re right. When I see you and your family, sire, I start to think that maybe it would be all right.”
“But for now, you still have no intention of marrying anyone?”
“I apologize.”
Hmm… Well, if he wanted to wait for his ideal woman to appear, I supposed that was an option. Maybe he had already met someone like that, and was engaged in a one-sided love right now.
“But as your king, let me say, you had better start training your heir in case the worst should happen,” I said. “I’m sure you’d like to be able to settle into an easy retirement nice and early, too, right?”
“That’s true. I think I’ll look for a good time to take on an apprentice.”
“Oh, I guess an apprentice works, too. Come to think of it, you’ve been teaching Tomoe, haven’t you?”
Tomoe was my little sister by adoption, and I loved her dearly. Recently she had been learning reading, writing, and arithmetic from Hakuya, and he was apparently teaching her this country’s history, too. I’d heard that she was an enthusiastic learner, and Hakuya was responding to her by becoming an enthusiastic instructor.