Notes.

Like the previous interlude, this one's writing style may be uneasy, but I promise you there are no mistakes. I write the interludes as if they were the thoughts from a character, and because of that, the narration is very irregular and frenetic. I hope you will have a good reading neverthless, and enjoy this small break between the second arc and the next !

And after that, I'm going back to my cave. I'll come back as soon as I can after writing my french Death Note chapter, probably at the end of january.


INTERLUDE. The Kingdom (Jeongjo)


"The most bitter and difficult job in the world, to my taste, it's do with dignity the King. "

(Michel de Montaigne, french philosopher, "Essays")


The crown is beautiful, but it's heavy, and it's lonely. Sometimes, when you think about it, late at night, lying in your bed elevated above all others, when your ministers have gone away, when your advisers have fled, when your servants have vanished to more intimate and secret horizons, you think long and hard about it, you look at the ceiling and you always conclude, invariably, that the crown is heavy it's heavy it weighs me it's so heavy it's so heavy.

It is beautiful, yet, golden, glittering, shining as if it were alive, it is full of colors and promises and hopes, as if it existed before you, and in a way it does, for crowns always exist independently of kings and queens, who are just heads and hair and brains lying underneath, flattened underneath, crushed beneath it and its mighty weight, and you know, oh you know now, that kings and queens wither and die endlessly, but the crown remains, eternal, almighty, and those who wear it are its servants as well as the rest of the world. No matter who you are, no matter what you are, no matter what others are. The crown lives on its own, exists on its own, breathes, devours, consumes, without distinction, without compassion, and you feel it more than ever on your skull, an enormous golden thing, an enormous cage with gleaming bars, which never stops swallowing (eating) and capturing those who decide to place it on their head.

At night, you try to sleep, you close your eyes and think, but the crown never leaves you alone, it lurks around you, tirelessly, untiringly, and it's like a carnivore waiting for the inattention of its prey to destroy it. You have seen other crowns, in other countries, worn by others, bigger, more imposing, more terrifying than yours. In the Qing, the emperor silently whimpers in pain every time he has to wear it, and regrets (they all always regret it, they all end up regretting it). With the years, you have understood that the suffering is tragically proportional to the size of the country ruled.

Few people know this, only those who are closest to power, those who see it every day, outside the ceremonies, rituals and traditions, those whose eyes are no longer on a monarch but on a man, born as his peers, thinking like them, reacting like them, and who is only different from them because of the thing on his head that makes him a reigning sovereign and not the last of the peasants.

You sometimes remember what your father used to say, that it is the crown that makes kings and not the kings that make the crown, and every time the image of your father enters your mind, you feel it slicing through it with the dexterity of a surgeon, ruthlessly, digging paths of loneliness and sorrow in your head and in your heart, and there are moments when you do everything not to think about your father (dear Father), when you wish your thoughts were taken away from you and your head was left empty, without opinions or ideas, but the crown is always there, and the crown reminds you of him constantly.

Sometimes you feel like taking it with you, grasping its now familiar shape, grasping its edges and then you think if I threw it out the window if I threw it out the window if I threw it out the window I would be rid of it rid of it in peace forever. Some days, the darkest days, those you will never be able to understand even if you want to with all your strength, because melancholy is like that, it s not to be understood, there is no point in looking for causes or reasons for it, it comes and goes as it pleases, and there are those days when, while walking in the gardens, you look at the flat surface of the lake that has been dug up there, with the beautiful pavilion where you liked to come and hide when you were a child (come and get me), and you are taken by the immoderate desire to let the crown (your crown) sink in there, for it has become so heavy and painful with time, and you haven't been wearing it for that long, you know it, because there are always people (jealous people) to remind you of these things, but it's been hunting you for years and you've had decades to know its weight and the horrors it drags around with it. You know what it wants and what it involves, you've seen it, in your grandfather, in your (father), in your mother, and it has nibbled them all piece by piece, patiently, biding its time, leaving only crumbs crumbs of us crumbs of the men of the kings of those who want it.

Your enemies say that you have always wanted the throne. Every time you enter the council hall, you feel their vulture eyes on you, and you guess, you see with your own eyes, those of the sun, those of the dragon (my son the kings are dragons transformed into men), those of the golden turtle that represents your royal seal, you see what gnaws at them, and you feel the powerful stench of greed and rivalry all around you, all the time. They don't even try to hide it these days. They show themselves as they are, stinking, secreting hatred and conspiracy, surrounding you with attention and respect when they bend their knees before you and then with slander and malice as soon as they stand.

Your grandfather used to tell you that a man on his knees is never the same as a man on his feet, and you think about it at night, when you are alone at last, free for a moment, at least you hope so, when in reality the crown circles around you with that same smell of swamp, sickness and death, the one produced by all those who curse you as soon as your gaze abandons them.

The dragon is one symbol, gold another (just symbols), and none of them will save you, just as they didn't save your (father) before you nor your ancestors nor any of those who proudly displayed them as you did, thinking that they guaranteed them immunity and protection. But now that you too are wearing the cloak and crown, you realize that kings are never safe, even less probably than the poor and common people, and then you are seized with terror when you understand that you will never again be able to sleep without fearing others and their obscurity.

The crown is the kingdom, and the kingdom is small, small compared to Qing, probably still small compared to Japan which has extended its territory beyond its own limits, and you aren't conquerors you will never be conquerors you will always be conquered land to be taken for those who build true empires, but a kingdom is still a kingdom and your father knew it and he (died). The kingdom is the throne room (your throne) with its blood red canopy, its summer foliage green and sparkling gold, its elaborate patterns, and you remember you loved this room before, that it was the symbol of a reassuring and stable power, that it was your father and your grandfather and your great-grandfather and all of your ancestors, even the less good, that it lived as the crown lives, but it wasn't the same, because rooms are not objects, objects are not rooms, and you can take an object with you while a room stays where it was built until you decide to tear it down.

Today your crown weighs you down and they are tearing down your hall and weakening your power on all sides, digging holes in the ground, destroying the walls, scraping off the gold, green and red, and the country screams "the dead have risen" and since then your throne and your crown have become grimaceous monstrosities that mock you, mock your powerlessness, just as they mocked your grandfather and your father before you. The only true power of kings is to succeed in advancing through the attacks and grudges gathered to keep the kingdom in balance. You know better than anyone that all power and orders come from your advisers. You are a pawn and they are pawns and you move awkwardly on a board that makes no sense and that none of you really control because each of you only owns a part of it. At night you think there is no power, just powers, and that some are more voracious than others.

Already the crown was fragile and heavy on your head and the dead pressed on it as if they wanted your neck to break. You lived the event from afar at first, protected by your grandfather (kept in the shadows), by your bodyguards, by an army of politicians with friendly looks and ogre smiles, and you were named the Gwishin champion when the repressions began, people said "see the Crown Prince, he loves them, he will help them ! " to serve interests that weren't yours, from one camp or another, making you sometimes a protector, sometimes an madman, blaming paternal influence (like his father he's crazy he's like his father).

The dead made your grandfather's throne tremble and they pressed on your crown and now they are all over the country everywhere like a disease that takes root in one part of the body and gradually spreads to all the organs and bones and the brain and devours you alive. They said that your father came back, and you didn't believe it, because he never came, and even if he tried, you know from the moment you saw him in that wooden cage that your monarch of a grandfather would never let him live, so you didn't say anything, you might have hoped for a time, but you never said anything, nor did you say anything when you were timidly told that your grandfather had killed all your ancestors who had awakened to take back their seat, without remembering the weight of the crown or the color of the blood in the throne room. Your grandfather's hands are red, and your father probably would have had them too, for you have them now, and they will be more and more red, for you are still young, and the crown is on your head, and it's always hungry.

The dead break beliefs and order and balance. Your grandfather ascended the throne strong and steady, and you ascended the throne when the ground threatened to collapse beneath your feet. You are expected to fix everything, but people keep forgetting that kings aren't made to fix problems, just to find new ones. Every time you decide on something, another chasm opens up somewhere, and no matter how hard you try to fill it, every day the earth trembles and a new abyss comes into the world, deepened by dissatisfaction, fear and misunderstanding. Your grandfather used to tell you that kings are the fathers of a kingdom, but today you regret your paternity more than ever, especially since you weren't expected to raise the child so early.

The throne should have gone to your father (Father, oh Father !). You wanted it, fantasized about it, because you were the son of a prince, a prince yourself, but princes are better at dreaming than ruling. Princes are better uncles than fathers, and this child is capricious, changing like the wind, tempestuous like the sea, unpredictable like fire, as crumbly as the earth. Every day now, you think of your father, and you miss him, and you feel lonely and small in a kingdom that is disintegrating under the impulse of an impossible, unnatural event, and your crown is false, your throne a ploy, and you know your enemies are waiting in the shadows, ministers, councillors, nobles, common people, Yeogogoedam, anti-Gwishin, pro-Gwishin, and sometimes you imagine that if your father had come back from the dead and had been left alive (dead) by the king, then everything would have been different.

Every day, when you walk the corridors of your palace, when you take your place on the throne, when you receive visitors, you look at your counselors, you look at your mentors, and you know they are all older than you, and that their pride and authority lies in this alleged power of age that you never feared until today. Now you feel surrounded by wolves, traitorous wolves, wolves who think of themselves and not of others, who don't care about the kingdom if their interest isn't there, and the Gwishins have destroyed the compass of interests, and every resurrection, every new wave of dead coming out of the earth and crawling on the soil of Joseon is another blow to the unity of the country.

Your grandfather knew it better than anyone else, because the crown was on his head, clinging to the skin of his skull, digging into his nerves. The others see it and want it and don't realize, not because they are unaware of the weight, but because they refuse to acknowledge it. Very early on, from the moment you were born, you were taught to carry that weight, they made you carry it in small doses, as a precaution, as they always did for princes, and then your father died (grandfather closed his eyes not to see, he didn't want to see, he ordered it and he didn't want to see), and everything turned towards you, looks, hopes, ambitions, anger, jealousy, power, responsibility, everything.

The gold makes your presence shimmer and sends back to you the image of a sovereign, but you find yourself looking like a child, and the impression is justified day after day, because you feel like a child, and you will probably always feel like the child, the one who has lost his father, the one who has to carry on alone, the one who wasn't given the choice, even if he knew it.

You regret not being a child anymore. When you close your eyes at night, you see faces from the past, and some of them are still there today, but they have changed, hardened, became ugly, disfigured by disagreements and misfortunes brought by power and favor. The protector of your childhood, Baek Dong Soo, is turned towards the past, trapped, imprisoned, and he will probably never move away from it again because he doesn't want to. On the other hand, Hong Guk Yeong fights, he fears the dead, and this fear oozes out of every pore of his being, and it makes him dangerous.

Already, after years of service, you can feel new things coming out of him, things that had been buried so deeply that even a dragon couldn't have seen them, and you wonder, because it's the main duty of kings, to question relentlessly the fidelity of their advisers. Trust no one, believe no one. The world will always want to destroy you. Always assume that they will want to harm you, and calculate everything, measure everything, always be one step ahead, always think about the worst, and you will never be disappointed. Your grandfather, on his deathbed, was an old man, not a king. Death takes away everything, even status. It doesn't care about power, it doesn't care about dignity, it doesn't care about politics. Death has always reigned, and its kingdom is eternal, while men's kingdoms will inevitably end up falling into dust.

On the morning of June 5, 1777, ten years after the first resurrection of the Gwishins, you get up, you are dressed, the crown is placed on your head, the Encyclopedia of the Dead, the second volume, the secret volume, is placed before your eyes. You leafed through it assiduously for days, while Hong Guk Yeong and the rest of your ministers were lost in discourses and insults. You have heard, amidst the incessant hubbub of news being brought to you daily, at all hours of the day, of a pocket of resistance being formed somewhere in the kingdom that would support the return to power of one of your ancestors who had come back to life, King Seongjong, the monarch of prosperity. In dark times, people tended to yearn for more successful times, and erected the rulers of those happy years as heroes.

You think you have no heir yet, you think you have been king only for a short time, you think about all this, and you know that such attributes won't work in your favor, despite all your good will, and the love that people had for you before your ascension to the throne and the discovery that you are a man like others, like your grandfather, like your father (the son of the madman), as overwhelmed as they are by the awakening of the dead and the complete inability of the living to explain it.

You think about it more than ever on June 5, 1777, on your faltering throne, with your heavy crown on your head. You look at your advisers, your ministers. Hong Guk Yeong, the old friend, looks sick, tired, old. You have read the second volume of the Encyclopedia of the Dead. You have seen your grandfather at work, you have seen the king at work. Be a king. Your ancestors, the ones who have remained dead, are staring at you on your throne. In Hanyang, the interrogations have started, calm and hesitant, but you know, because you have read, that you have to strike harder, otherwise the dead will crawl to your throne, tear you apart, and eat you alive.

- Deploy all our military forces over the whole kingdom, you say, in a strong voice, the same voice you used on the day you ascended the throne and said (I am the son of Crown Prince Sado). Establish a stricter interrogation procedure, send our soldiers and police to everyone, even the living. Order the widespread introduction of pain tests, and skin and eye observations. Make comparisons if necessary. Invent new ways. Track down Gwishin. Tell them they are ordered to join the army, and swear allegiance to me. They no longer have a choice.

The room is silent. Everyone is watching you, as if they were discovering you. You have always been moderate, pacifist. You have always been the prince. Today, you are the king. And the king commands :

- If they don't want to, kill them all.