Chapter 8 – The Bloody Duke (1)

Although his eyebrows shot up in surprise, he answered calmly. “You do understand that it is a very odd question to ask?”

Amethyst nodded. Froy may think it a frivolous question, but to her, it was of utmost importance; her life and future depended on his answer.

“Normally when women turn eighteen, they celebrate a coming-of-age ceremony and decide on their partnerships. However, within the empire, marriage is a free choice. There is no law mandating you to get married.”

She felt the heavy burden of her impending doom slowly lift off her heart. However, there was another thing she needed clarified.

“Then…in the empire, how are women ranked?”

Observing the Lohikin couple, she had hypothesized that men and women had equal rights, but she couldn’t be sure if this applied only to the Lohikin household.

Based on the books she had read before from world history, literature, novels, the women had always fewer rights as compared to men. This world seemed to be a mix of the modern and medieval and if it wasn’t anything different from the world she knew, she imagined she was bound to be restricted.

To her it was imperative that she have as much information as she possibly could to differentiate the things she could and should not do and act accordingly.

“Hmm…that’s too broad. Do you have an example?”

‘Oh. The answer must be very complicated.’

Amethyst thought hard about what to say next; how to adequately articulate what she wanted to know from Froy.

The life of a woman, as she was familiar with, was meant to live as someone else’s slave.

The world may be changing rapidly and granting women their dues, but the majority of women like her, who were neither assertive nor talented with nothing to call their own, implicitly belonged to their father if they were not married, then to their husband when they were, and to their children, once they became parents; not realizing what they want and living a life of silent submission.

Exactly like me.

“Are women allowed to travel alone, or…go overseas for higher studies, or open their own businesses, or are they restricted in their workplace? How do men react to women?”

“You…are asking really odd questions, are you aware?”

“Yes.”

She was well-aware of just how absurd these questions might sound to him, but the answers to these were absolutely vital to her.

‘Since my youth, I have lived my whole life on terms dictated by my father until I was married; I wasn’t able to freely go on a graduation trip with my friends because he didn’t allow it. If I ever didn’t abide by the curfew set by him, the rage of a fiery dragon was unleashed in the house.’

‘Nothing changed even after I got married. The role simply was passed on from my father to my husband; it was his approval I sought to meet friends, or even to visit my own parents.’

‘It was never “I’m going to my parents” but always “Can I go visit my parents?”’

‘Looking back now, I wonder why it was that way.’

And the moment she became a mother, her children became the centre of her universe, she pushed her wants and needs aside to cater to them, willingly accepting this fate.

‘When did I ever live for myself?’

She was lost in the thoughts of her past life, a tear on the verge of dropping onto her cheek, when Froy’s voice broke her reverie.

“The Sehar empire is under the law of the Emperor. And anyone, regardless of their status or rank is able to get a job, start their own business and travel overseas to study or for leisure. But of course, there are exceptions.”

“Exceptions?”

Amethyst’s body tensed up at the mention of an exception.

‘Was he perhaps referring to a married woman?’

“Except slaves. But since your lady is not a slave, you are free to do whatever you wish.”

‘In my world, married woman and slaves were synonyms. I hope that’s not the case here…’

“Oh! Slaves?”

“Yes. Slaves are those who are owned by others. As such, without their owner’s approval they are not allowed to travel or have their own job or start a business. Hmm, but slavery has been abolished, so now the only remaining are the government official slaves.”

‘Thank god!’

“I see.”

“Even though they are slaves and are not allowed complete freedom, they are not treated poorly. They are paid for their fair labor. If they want to go for a holiday, they only need to ask their owners.”

“Oh…I see.”

Is this what they call modern slavery? Well, that was exactly what my life was like not too long ago.

Maybe because their belief was in a goddess or because their ruler was a female, at least they didn’t seem to treat women poorly here. To be more accurate, it seemed that this place was neither a patriarchal society nor a matriarchal society.

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“I want to know more in detail about the empire’s royal and noble families.”

“The current empire is ruled by her Majesty Belice. Below are two royal families, one of which is the Duke of Skad, the only kinship of the present Emperor.”

T/N: The emperor here is a female.

The Sehar Empire has a hierarchy of social standing, ranking from the emperor, the two royal families, aristocrats, wizards, knights, commoners, free people, down to the slaves.

The Skads and Rodens were long-established families that supplemented the emperor ever since the Sehar Empire’s beginning. Among them, the Skad family was the most prestigious family that was most similar in power and authority to the emperor. In fact, the 23rd Duke of Skad was the only blood relative and the younger brother of the reigning emperor—his name was Alexcent Frostin du Skad.