causa latet, vis est notissima (The cause is hidden, but the result is well known)
There was still a great deal that needed to be done yet in order to prepare for the meeting of the nine provincial lords the next evening. Yuka busied herself in her office with her secretaries putting the final touches into place for the rest of that evening. Her ability to focus in completely on her work helped take her mind of that awkward and horribly embarrassing revelation to the man she'd been married in name to for the last several decades that he was the victim of a proxy marriage decided without his consent while he'd been sleeping.
:Truthfully, I thought he'd be mad,: she thought to herself. :Or at least a little embarrassed by it, or maybe irritated that we did it without asking him. But he just sort of... accepted it.:
He'd just sort of nodded in a way that said 'well that makes sense' and more or less moved on. Yuka wasn't sure what to think. In an ordinary encounter with a strange minister, Yuka would have thought that maybe he was planning how best to use the information against her later, but this was Taiki's king and he had said that Gyousou Saku was not like that.
:I think Taiki would say that he said nothing else in order to save me from further embarrassment,: Yuka thought with a small feeling of cautious optimism.
The maids in her room were giggling and tittering about something when she went in to prepare for bed. Yuka was a somewhat frequent visitor to the sleeping kings chamber, but only entirely because Taiki was a frequent visitor and that was the easiest (not to mention safest) place to find him.
:Those maids have this great tragic and romantic love story built up in their minds about how I'm supposedly such a faithful and loving wife, waiting patiently for the day my beloved will rise again,: Yuka thought with an internal snort of irony at the joke that probably only she thought was funny.
Truthfully, she didn't really have the heart to disabuse them of the notion and crush their romantic dreams. After all, much of her own authority as Royal Consort rested on her supposed faithful devotion to her husband, so it was a politically astute maneuver to allow that particular rumor to continue.
:Unlike in songs and romantic tales it is quite impossible to fall in love with a sleeping person,: Yuka thought. :One might as well try to fall in love with a doll. Feelings take interaction, or at least enough movement for admiration, in order to grow.:
Yuka's experience with the area of "love" was low-level, despite that she'd once had a boyfriend. She and Asano had been more like 'friends who really like each other' rather than passionate lovers. They'd tried kissing and had once even gone a little bit farther but there had been a basic incompatibility between them when it came to the way they approached loveplay. The part of the problem was that he had been too easy-going to put the moves on her, and too deferential when it came time to push things forward a bit. Yuka, for her part, had been so self-contained from all the bullying that she'd had a hard time letting anyone past her defenses and did require an initial push but to get her to open up and to reassure her that she was worthy of it. The easy-going Ikuya Asano did not have the courage or, oddly, the confidence to make the necessary pursuit.
:And then I was married just after I heard what happened to him,: she thought. :So it was easy to push people away and keep the necessary distance that an acting queen would require in order to build up a reputation that was above reproach.:
It had been lonely but she'd been so busy, and attempts to get at her by any means possible had been so frequent, it was probably better for her that she had decided that the ice-queen route was the best way to go. An assassin would surely have attempted to seduce her if it had been possible.
:Besides that,: she thought. :Politically speaking, it is impossible to maintain the fiction of a faithful and loyal consort only acting on behalf of her husband if I'm taking lovers left and right. My opponents would have surely discovered an affair and used it as a pretext to get me out of thier way. No, if I was going to play the royal consort, I knew when I signed on that I was going to have to be as above reproach a Queen Elizabeth.:
And aside of that, Yuka's parent's marriage had been destroyed by infidelity, so she was serious about marriage vows. As long as she remained bound by her oaths, whether they were one-sided, by proxy or whatever, she intended to honor them. The fact that it worked out better for her and her nature was a solitary one that naturally leaned to facing the world alone just made it easier.
:I'm just glad he decided not to make an issue of it,: Yuka thought as she settled into bed.