A happy early 4th to all my American readers, and a happy 4th to all those not yet subject to American empire. Soon™. Perhaps it's fitting that this chap has a bit of navel-gazing on bourgeois revolutions.

The shoreline was alive with activity when Nunnally and Kallen finally arrived. Lloyd had been characteristically arbitrary with the exact specifics of the launching, and early in the day for Nunnally was quite a different time than early in the day for Lloyd.

Perhaps fortunately, Lloyd's project was caught up in one of the many, many pre-launch issues that had plagued the project, so Nunnally hadn't missed much of anything… other than the ship's launching. It hadn't moved an inch under its own power, but it had been, through no small effort, brought out into the water, where Lloyd buzzed over it like a fly. He didn't actually notice the royal arrival until it was pointed out.

"Did it ever occur to you that her highness may have wished to christen the craft?" Croomy sighed, already knowing the answer.

"No." Lloyd replied.

"Lloyd, you're supposed to give royalty things like that-"

"All they need is the ship, no? They're paying me to make the ship."

"And maintain it."

"And to maintain it, yes," he acknowledged, overlooking all of the ship's delicate parts. "Should we have this governor recast?" He mused.

"Lloyd! The princess is right there."

"She is."

As Croomy attempted to draw blood from the stones, the crowds chattered, talking about the ship's alien shape and Lloyd's recent bouts of eccentricity. Nunnally had accepted the latter as much as she could, but the former?

"Describe it to me." Nunnally prompted.

Kallen looked at the ship, trying to compare it to the great sailing ships she had seen plying their trade in Nagasaki. "About as long as a warship- two hundred feet?- but of fairly shallow draft. The sides are sloped and made of metal, with a sort of tower amidships and a chimney near the stern."

She described a few more details as Lloyd was swiftly rowed over to the craft in a smaller boat, where he ran around like a madman for several minutes. Kallen watched with a small amount anxiety… if all they had managed to make was an expensive floating battery, it would have been a tremendous waste. Smoke rose from the chimney, a thick column of black, and the engine inside worked and worked away...

Kallen gasped, a smile spreading across her face. "Good god. It's moving."

Nunnally smiled. "Perhaps we should ask Lloyd if the craft has a name yet. If not… I like the sound of Julius Caesar, don't you think?"

It was a bit bellicose, rather purposefully. The aim, of course, was not to alienate their dear allies, the French… but to bring to mind a certain emperor who had nearly checked Britannia, all those centuries ago, with the implication that the newer Caesar would be far more capable of finishing the job.

Nunnally imagined that the ship's crew would have to learn her characteristics before they dared to sail against the might of Britannia, but not using it as a weapon now would just be foolish. Perhaps, in another time, the ironclad's inaugural journey would have been a more peaceful affair. Well, as peaceful as the very intentional flexing of a revolutionary new weapon of war could be. Here and now, the ship would obviously be of use in the Adriatic, and it could certainly have some use at the Strait of Gibraltar...

While it would be the height of folly to think of the ship as invincible, its utility was evident. With resupply- and warships to support it- in France, the white shores of Britannia were not completely out of reach. This was a weapon to surpass the legendary wooden wall, if handled well, navigated ably, and properly used. She could imagine it being lost rather easily if it only sailed alone, but with other ships accompanying it, using it as a hammer to break the typical line of battle?

It sent a flush of confidence through Nunnally, who certainly knew how dreadful the Britannian fleet was. The ship wouldn't necessarily need to stop up and down the coast for frequent coaling, but it would do something for the people's spirits, she thought. Another marvel, courtesy of the Italian government, a literal wall of iron between Italy and Britannia, a defense that would turn the peninsula into a fortress.

Across the northern coast of France, city watches were on high alert. There was, of course, the threat of a royalist resurgence, after Bonaparte's recent coup, but there was also a more pressing concern: the enemy across the channel, Britannia.

There was a French navy dotted along the country's Atlantic coast, but it wasn't a true rival to Britannia even before the problems caused by the ascension of Napoleon II. For a potential defense, you could find a smattering of coastal guns up and down the shoreline, but they were comparatively minor, considering that a decently sized fleet could carry guns enough to furnish an army and then some. The amount of resources that would go into a single warship would make a general flush; naval stores and wood from the colonies were paired with the marvelous industrial capacity of the Britannian homeland, her block-mills and foundries...

The greatest wooden ships had masts that stood taller and prouder than cathedrals- and it was as if an entire forest of them had sprung up outside Cherbourg overnight. Despite efforts by the garrison and the population of the town more generally, there was no stopping such an incredible blow.

Once, the first Napoleon had dreamt that Cherbourg would be a springboard to leap into the heart of Britain, but the situation was now quite reversed. The defensive guns, installed on the emperor's orders, had done some damage to those mighty ships, but had long since been spiked or seized by Britannian forces, turned against the city that had once guarded.

For what little it was worth, unloading an army off of ships took no small amount of time, and the Britannian forces weren't foolish enough to go traipsing into the French countryside piecemeal. The news spread far ahead of them, swift as a courser, while Britannia's own horse were devoted to scouting nearby if they had even been freed from the ships.

Even those lowly soldiers and sailors stuck unloading from the ship were struck by the circumstances, a seeming revival of the Duchy of Normandy as something more than just the Channel Islands. It was as if the martial glory of the Hundred Year's War and the righteous cause of battle against the French revolutionaries had been combined, lending a romance to everything, even the bloody skirmishes on the hills near La Hague.

Prince Pollux held court in a captured chateau on the outskirts of the city, plotting his march on Paris and the eventual follow-up in Italy. It was, he thought, a good thing to be ambitious, but in the short term that meant parsing reports from scouts and interrogated citizenry. The second Napoleon had just excused himself from his Rhenish distractions, and that was a lot more important than oddly persistent rumors about owls, of all things.

(A chouan, after all, was an owl.)

Thinking of the battles to come was certainly a more welcome thought than the lingering shadow of Schneizel in the back of his mind. His brother's power waxed greater and greater by the day, until he seemed almost as terrible a presence as father. The Emperor loomed over the court, august and unassailable, terrible when provoked…

Perhaps if he did well enough, he could ask for a station in far Quebec. Utilize his growing French skills far away from the royal court, where he wouldn't need to get involved. Or maybe not... He had heard that region was particularly contentious, and having to be rescued from your own subjects like Clovis would be a truly unfortunate look. For what little it was worth, his home on the Cape of Good Hope was far away from the court.

Napoleon's return from his Rhenish adventure was not marked by being arrested by a resurgent Bourbon army, so that was nice. The armies he had ordered to be levied were all fairly loyal to him, even if their exact level of skill was questionable. They could fire their muskets probably, but beyond that?

Good soldiers were, frankly, a ridiculous luxury… but he had quite a significant number of men under his command, even if they had probably emptied no small number of armories. (Making guns would always be good business, wouldn't it? More reliable than staking his fortunes on something as mercurial as a country.) Decent guns paired with men who were… workable, at least. They'd know how to hold them.

It wasn't a pleasant thing to imagine, his men going up against drilled British regulars; he supposed it was some small mercy that these weren't the battle hardened, bloodied colonial regiments. Britannia was pragmatic in those far-flung foreign lands, where a bad commander could prove devastating, but close to home, in a freshly composed army? Who knew what role politics played.

Of course, relying on your opponent's stupidity- through nepotism or any other means- was folly of the highest degree. Britannia hadn't gotten where they were by having an incompetent military. He would devote the main body of his forces to them… although he didn't quite know where they'd be. There was a significant range of the French coastline that they could reach with ease.

That was, of course, the obvious use for all the men gathered while he was away. An army for the Pyrenees, some reinforcements for the Rhineland, and a main force for the Britannians. It seemed a bit of a waste to plop an army down on the Pyrenees just to have them sit there, but he did not want a southerly invasion, not now. Although if anyone had a reason...

The Pyrenees to his south and the Rhine to his northeast… that was the dream, even if his current plans didn't involve a push to the banks. An ally worked, and if his investment in the Rhine grew into something great, that would be remarkable. He suspected integration wasn't a possibility.

(Bonaparte had considered, at times, the possibility of a pan-German state, in the same vein as the Italians. A cohesive state with united political ambitions? It would stand over central Europe as a goliath, even without Austria. The left bank would be an easy source of conflict if they didn't join of their own free will. But perhaps what that monster needed was an infusion of republicanism...)

On the subject of his smaller neighbors- and wild fancies- when the dust settled, would he be Prince of Andorra? It wasn't a title to rival France, that much was obvious, but there was a possibility he could take it. Unless, he supposed, they decided that they'd prefer the previous candidate.

Admittedly, the once proud Bourbon king of France sharing Andorra with the Bishop of Urgell sounded like quite the joke. He supposed there was the chance that it would be a threat to Bonaparte's succession- as much as he hated to mimic the same dynastic scheming his predecessor engaged in- so he couldn't just let it be, but the concept was amusing to think on.

Well, he said that, but he did not find his original exile to Corsica nearly so amusing. To be disempowered like that… to walk those sandy shores and know you had failed a legacy so much greater than you? Bonaparte had all of Corsica to lord over and had only one generation of rule to live up to, even if that generation saw the remaking of Europe. In contrast, having Andorra, or nothing at all, failing a dynasty that stretched back to before year one thousand?

He could almost understand the pain those dynasts felt. He wouldn't pretend they weren't attached to a system that was rotting on the inside, but failing a legacy…

What did Lelouch think of legacies, Bonaparte wondered. His veins flowed with the blood of a dynasty as storied as any in Europe, complemented by the blood of a woman as common as they came. With no offense intended towards Marianne, of course, just noting the contrast. (Well, he supposed Marianne's blood was storied in its own sense. She had just as many ancestors as the Emperor did, even if they weren't well-recorded or famed. Generations of fishermen and farmers…)

When the time came, Lamperouge chose to be Lamperouge, not vi Britannia. Still, it was royal blood that got him there, that gave him his window… well, attempting to blame everything a man was on one side of the family or the other was an exercise doomed to failure. To pretend you weren't both…

Perhaps that was a little rich of him. Bonaparte supposed he had family in Vienna, but something told him his welcome wouldn't be the most amicable. Maybe he'd receive a warm welcome if his destination was the Herzgruft… A Habsburg heart amid Habsburg hearts. Those hearts just so happened to be contained in urns, that was all.

There was a rapping at Bonaparte's door, disturbing the quiet of the room. As he rose, he just knew it wouldn't be good news.

It was in his best interest to not plunge too deep into Hungary. Hugging Croatia and Slovenia and preventing any crafty armies from circling around and cutting his supplies was the obvious thing to do… and that was rather the problem, wasn't it? It was the rational thing to do.

While the expected thing to do was inadvisable during war, there was also the minor matter of the unexpected things typically being rather stupid. A divorce from your supply lines would give you some options for a time…

Of course, there was the additional complication of being in a foreign country. If he really wished too, he could attempt to live off or the land or somehow attempt to provoke the Habsburgs to hasty action, but that could serve to alienate the Hungarians, making a grim situation worse. Sure, the presence of an army would always step on a few toes, but ruining livelihoods, leaving the people to starve? Not exactly a way to win them over, and a great way to destroy any ambivalence.

Some foods could be scavenged from the wilds to brace their supplies a little, but it wasn't exactly fine eating. Lelouch grit his teeth and suffered through the dandelion salads anyways. It wasn't much to go off of, especially considering that their current strategy was so dependent on maneuver.

Set baits. Refuse battle. Those weren't moves that would win a war… but they could get him into a better position, one he might be able to seize upon. That seizure, of course, would be the battle he spent so long dancing around, whether in a siege or on the field. Ideally, you wouldn't engage in the latter without being confident in your chances of winning; big battles were rare for good reason. You didn't usually walk in just to get yourself battered and go home.

Unfortunately, war wasn't ideal. Lelouch was painfully aware of how his army crept, how the columns lengthened in the long days, how the cannon trailed behind, creeping into camp last each night. How could an army feel like such a fragile thing?

A Danubian army also prowled the basin, hunting for Lamperouge under the command of the Duke of Teschen. Scouts and skirmishers went ahead, while heavy horse and grand artillery were pulled behind., going through territory that was, at least, fairly familiar. They did not lack for markets, at least, and in a pinch, citizens could be pressed into labor: digging, or the creation of fascines and such.

Perhaps the help was not quite as widespread as they had hoped, the prices high and the people surly, but it was, technically speaking, home. No small number of their soldiery hailed from the German, Bohemian, or Galician territories, but there were still some Hungarians. The peasantry were willing to talk, but most proved uniformed when it came to the Italians. Sure, there were rumors, of soldiers slinking around through the forests, of tricolors and cockades…

Worrying, but neither necessarily meant that the Italians were nearby. Dissidents or deserters from one of the routing armies could provide an easy explanation for both, one that seemed more plausible than the Italian moving his army around in nearly perfect and total stealth. Those other answers implied their own problems, but the Duke of Teschen suspected that the Italian had not plunged nearly as deep as the people had thought. At least not at the moment. However, the promise of his arrival seemed to hang over Carpathia as surely as the mountains did, looming and terrible.

While reports regarding Lamperouge and his location at the moment were a little hard to come by, some things were clear: he preferred the rifle over the musket- although his volume of fire did not seem to suffer nearly as much as it should have for it- and would gleefully take advantage of that on the defensive and offensive. Something of a tendency for bold strokes: the Italian campaign in the first place, and then his misadventures up and down Barbary.

Rumors of the exploding cannon trick had spread as well. It was a trick. Not necessarily a cheap trick- iron cannons were not kind to the budget- but a devious one, one that aimed at expectation. Of what you saw, what did he want you to see? What were you blind to?

Of course, that was just the nature of war. Deceit piled on top of deceit. Guesses could be made about what Lamperouge was to do, but without seeing from the man's own eyes, they simply could not be sure.

Or… eye, singular? While many rumors spread about the Italian's feats, his brushes with death in Barbary and his recent battles, one particularly consistent one was the single eye. Sure, there were the foolishly hopeful rumors that he had fallen ill and someone else was acting in his stead, but the single eye seemed more concrete, seemed to stick after other rumors vanished into the air.

A one-eyed Sicilian…? Why, it was almost as if Polyphemus- Odysseus' dread cyclops- had lumbered through the Dinaric Alps, great in power and hungry for blood. A herder of his back-country people, but certainly not a fool. If the Archduke was not careful, the Italian would play the part of the King of Ithaca.

(Jealous, jealous Polyphemus, who had desired Galatea so fiercely that he killed her lover in his fury, the flowing blood becoming a spring...)

The money plan wasn't working out quite as well as Euphemia had initially hoped. Well, in particular, the plan where they kicked around the prospect of loaning money from the people, considering that there were very plans that didn't involve money in some form or the other given her current circumstances. Sure, they had gotten some money, but there was a lot of logistics that had to go into it. It basically required the printing of a second sort of bill, it had to policed and counterfeiting had to be prevented...

It took a certain type of person to invest in such a way. In a grimmer sense, it was basically betting on the country succeeding, although you could attempt to give it a patriotic spin. Play your part, and that sort of thing. People with money to invest who also had a fairly strong belief in Italy as a nation… there was an audience there, but returns weren't as great as she had hoped.

Perhaps it was because the war felt, in some senses, far away? Well, sure, it was a lot worse in Lombardy and thereabouts, or near the skirmishes in the Tyrol, but it wasn't as if life came to a screeching halt because of war. People carried on.

If they won the war tomorrow, what would that mean for the average farmer in Umbria, really? They'd have the franchise, she supposed, but would they be less taxed? Probably not. There were debts to pay off, projects to invest in… there was an understanding that Lelouch would slacken the reins once the dust had settled, but who would that benefit the most? A revolution for Lelouch… and the burghers.

It would be a tremendous benefit for all those men who sat in the senate and who had clawed their way to the top of local assemblies. Perhaps she should arrange meetings with them?

Possibly, if she got enough of the rich and powerful in one room, letting them cook in their own peer pressure, they'd get some serious investment… but 'making' money in that way would require spending money, and she was self-aware enough to realize that throwing big parties was not exactly a stellar look at the moment. Lelouch had stressed that there were times for extravagance, but there were many more cases where austerity was the finer of the two.

(She would always have to tread more carefully. She had picked up the language as well as she could, even taken steps to mimic some of her sibling's accents, but she was still an alien. She could grow to love the people, definitely wanted the best for them… but reciprocity was not guaranteed.)

On the subject of winning over her subjects… there was always the matter of her friends in the Leonine. Euphemia supposed that she was still Anglican, and it could be argued she was quite high church, considering her current dealings with the Pope. Personally, she thought the priesthood of all believers a touch more compelling than ministerial priesthood, but what could she do?

Operating here meant working with the Catholic church, and their unique position meant dealing with the supreme pontiff as well. He was… well, he had an unshakable belief in the doctrine, but he was perhaps a touch liberal, for a theocrat.

That was probably because the Pope was a 'gentle suggestion' from the old (older?) French government, which did raise some interesting questions about how exactly the hand of God worked in the selection of his vicar on Earth on this particular occasion, but that didn't make him a poor candidate. He could quote one of the gospels from memory; in fact, he had known it, in its entirety, for longer than Euphemia had been alive. An interesting man, if nothing else.

Looking at the government budget and the amount of money set aside for the maintenance of the Leonine did awaken some sort of long-buried, ancestral reformer instinct, though. She understood keeping the church happy, but how much incense could one city need? It made her want to dissolve a monastery, or something. Of course, bad idea. Very bad idea, but it could grow frustrating at times.

Some things were just inaccessible to her. Like the Vatican Archives. The prospect of all that correspondence, the letters from across the whole breadth of Christendom… she knew there were other places she could look if she wished to read of missionaries in foreign land or anything of that sort, but there was a certain romance to those forbidden books.

And yes, they were, tragically, forbidden. Her status let her see more things than the average man on the street ever could, but some doors remained locked. Whatever she did have, she had to handle carefully, and not just because the texts were old. If rumors were to spread claiming that she had bullied His Holiness into opening the archives, sticking her nose into the business of the (much reduced) Papal state…

He was a sovereign too. Not of any mighty state, but of one that Italy had made an agreement with. If they couldn't even keep their word with the principality on their doorstep… not a great look. That said principality was ruled by the successor to the prince of the Apostles only made the matter more critical.

(At the very least, she couldn't be excommunicated for stealing books from some of the libraries if she wasn't Catholic. There was that.)

She wondered how the new ship was going. Holding down the fort in Rome had kept her from going to see the launch, but she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to see it. It was a warship, new and terrible. Its purpose, whether directly or through threats, was violence. Perhaps attempting to wash her hands off was futile, but she didn't want to revel in it.

There were many fates Euphemia didn't wish upon people, but having your ship torn apart by exploding shells, dying of splinters or shock or the sea? That seemed particularly miserable.

After a show of force in lovely Trieste (including a brief adventure with the ship's own official balloon) the Julius Caesar and its crew made to travel down the Adriatic, in order to make a true show of force. If it just so happened to win the Adriatic for Italy in the process, then that was a happy benefit.

Seeing the Danubian naval jack flying over a ship had the men nearly jumping for joy, ready to show the world their might. Any ship of the Danubian navy- which had been kneecapped for years by the French occupation of the Adriatic coast- faced a dreadful enemy. Of course, they might not have known that at first, what with the ship being such a departure from typical naval design…

The ironclad ship circled around, trying to exploit its turret as it got close. The captain of the Danubian ship tried something similar, only managing a shot with the chase gun on the ship's front. Unfortunately, when they realized that the ball had done little more than leave a dent in the ship's flanks, they were also in firing range.

For what it was worth, they made a good effort at trying to get away, but with an exploding shell half buried in their hull? Well, their ability to sail and fight was rather compromised when a gout of flame burst through the deck and sent the ship rocking with the weight of her cannon. (You do not want a cannon sliding around without restraints, at least if you liked your hull without new holes.)

They were in no state to resist the Italians, and were corralled- rather roughly- in the direction of an Italian port. The city guards were given a crew to keep an eye on, the ship would be scrapped or repaired. As fun as sinking it could have been, it was a warship, and they couldn't exactly start cranking out ironclads with speed now. The sailing ship was limping towards death, but there was no reason to kill it early, considering that their ranges weren't checked by coal supplies.

Flush with pride, the crew sailed out again. If they could do this to the Danubians, perhaps the shores of Albion were not completely beyond their reach? Leaving the bounds of the Mediterranean would take the ship far and would require victories in France to ensure they could get their coal but they were certainly willing to try. Before that, of course, they had to sail around the southern edge of Italy and towards Gibraltar.

This could be done fairly quickly, if you chose to. But… well, Ionia was basically on the way, wasn't it?

Frankly, it was a deliberate power play by the captain, a bit of saber-rattling just off the Turk's coast. How could he resist, with the heady thrill of guiding the great weapon of the modern age clouding his judgment? The great iron flanks of the ship gave the most tantalizing sense of invulnerability…

That and, if rumors were to be believed, some distant relation among the number of the Corfiot Italians- the captain was a Venetian born and bred, after all- had also swayed the captain's course, bringing him to that Grecian isle.

She was not really the most beautiful ship afloat- if that prize went to any steel ship, it would be the Italia, with all the graceful beauty of a traditional sailing craft- but there was an undeniable power in her, with the broad sides and the heavy plating. The stout turret did not have the same imposing presence as a forecastle or quarterdeck, but it had the solid, sturdy feeling of a tower, like a castle in the sea.

The ship's slow, almost leisurely lap around Corfu garnered no small amount of attention, farmers gaping from their fields and fisherman exchanging clumsy greetings with the crew of the Julius Caesar. Their pace would hopefully keep their arrival in port from being too much of an unpleasant surprise.

Some part of the captain couldn't help but wonder if they'd be able to take the small fortress which sat near the harbor, a vicious spur jutting into the sea. That was the bastion which had held against the Turks thrice… but would modern technology doom it?

An interesting question, but perhaps not one to be answered. No picking fights, not with potential friends. Their welcome was warm, and the captain was informed that he could, if he so pleased, spend time with the greats of Corfiot society, who obviously marveled at the ship.

The captain would extend an invitation to Lloyd Asplund, he supposed. The man was too well connected to truly ignore, even if he seemed quite happily divorced from all matters of politics barring whatever got him funding. Perhaps that woman, Croomy? She was keen, and had charm enough to make up for her… teacher's? Associate? Enough charm to help make up for her associate's lacking social graces.

Asplund was best tucked away somewhere unobtrusive while the real movers and shakers exchanged pleasantries. All the genius in the world wasn't worth a damned thing if you couldn't grease the right palms. Perhaps the good Lord saw fit to teach the scientist humility and reliance on his fellow man. Maybe he was romantically attracted to the idea of a steam-powered turbine. Not entirely important. He could work like a horse if it would improve his research, and that was more than good enough.

The Corfiots were quite excited at the prospect, of course. It took a fairly small amount of thinking to recognize the Julius Caesar for what it was and what it could be. He couldn't imagine where they'd find the money to fund a ship of similar size, but the gifts they sent showed interest. Nothing monumental, but food and supplies were always welcome, especially those that were fresh. The island's famed currants were another happy surprise.

In fact, he felt something of a craving for them and went to one such barrel. The seal was tight, but eventually, the foodstuff was liberated from its container. But there was… there was something buried amid the currants. Fishing it out revealed a sealed package, cylindrical and a little shorter than his arm. Cautiously, he unsealed it with a knife, pulling out a thin sheet of paper, carefully rolled and packed away.

Unfurling it revealed lovely, flowing calligraphy… containing information that certainly wasn't centered on currants of any sort. By the last remnants of daylight, he read the message, committing it to memory…

"Captain, captain!" A fist hammered on the door, and he snapped towards it. "Ships! Turkish ships! They say they're enforcing customs!"

His grip tightened around the paper, around the Corfiot letter. This… this complicated things.

Lamperouge was something of a polyglot. English and Italian, of course, but a dabbling of French (for keeping up with the choking French empire) and some Greek and Latin courtesy of a classical education. He spoke a rather formal, courtly style of English, although his Italian was rather colored by his common-borne mother and upbringing in Sicily. The turns of phrase he and his sister were fond of slowly infiltrated Italian dialects across the peninsula- understanding the Viceroy and eventual King was important and speaking like him was impressive.

Bonaparte, being raised in his father's court, had similar blessings. French, of course, and no small amount of Italian- although much of this came in the form of Corsican. He didn't quite sound like a native of Ajaccio, but he could manage. (Most descriptions of his Italian compare it to Tuscan- fair, considering that is the dialect closest to Corsican. He was rather dismayed to have not inherited his father's accent.) No English, courtesy of the enmity between his father and the Britannians, but significant skills with Latin, to bring to mind that storied history.

Euphemia displayed a strong understanding of Latin and Greek, and picked up Italian fairly quickly once she put her mind to it. Most sources describe her as xenophilic, such as stories describing her asking Kallen Stadtfeld about her home country. How much Japanese Euphemia ever picked up is unknown. Cornelia's knowledge was similar, strong in English and Latin, although with a noted tendency towards 'colonial' turns of phrase- probably from leading sepoys, or her more on-the-ground interaction with Britannia's more far-flung territories.

Despite this, they would have to rely on translators: Lelouch needed them in Barbary and Hungary, Bonaparte would need translation from German, and Euphemia...

My exact plans for the Currant affair have undergone some revisions as I wrote. Still, I believe we can all see how things are falling into place for it.

Anyways, I've kind of grown really fond of Napoleon II? It's said that his last words were, in essence: "My story is my birth and death. Between my cradle and my grave, there is a big zero." He died of tuberculosis at 21, and his heart and intestines still sit in Vienna, even if the rest is in Paris. I feel like I'm going to come back to him in some other fic. It's so damned tragic, enough to rival Napoleon passing, trapped by a sea of his mistakes and regrets, on St. Helena.

(Yes I know I'm doing the dumbass Romantic writer falling for Napoleon thing but gahhh I can't help it. I am poor-baby-fying Napoleon II.)

As for Euphemia's brief mention of libraries where stealing books would get you an excommunication: real thing. Not sure if the Vatican has it still, but there is a monastery in Lima, Peru where stealing from the library would get you excommunicated.

Sorry about the lateness, folks. I have a perennial tendency to write a good chunk of something before just leaving it there. Chapter title is German, literally "Polyphemus legend", referring to a tendency of giant blinding tales in folklore. The cyclops metaphor suddenly occurred to me suddenly and it worked out beautifully, I think. Get those pretentious chapter titles!