The sun’s rays lengthened incrementally but unaccompanied by any perceptible increase in temperature as the frigid year gingerly advanced to a spring in name only. Showing no indications of relinquishing its hold over the land, Winter herself had become an unbridled, tendrilling growth: sinking roots in death-hushed copses, in groaning masonry, in ash gray cloud-choked skies.

In men.

As if in hopes of staving off the unprecedented chill, men kindled the baleful coal of enmity in their hearts, and one could think Gaulyria herself conscious of the cold: her hands composed of the upper and lower classes, events repeatedly brought them together in a ceaseless, fiery friction, one that fed a conflagration which would burn down the ages long after the weather of the year had been long forgotten.

January had elapsed, and the greater part of February too in fruitless deliberations as the delegates of the General Estates sought to reach an understanding with Gaulyria’s sovereign. Seeing no progress, the people made no attempt to clip the wings of a rumor that soon flew from the capital to the outermost backwaters of the kingdom; to wit, that all along Rudolf XIII hadn’t meant a word of his vow to entertain the proposals of the commons. This was, the conviction began to crystalize, nothing but a ploy to buy time, a last ditch effort to save his absolute hold on power by giving his fellow monarchs the opportunity to consolidate their armies and march across the border to put down the insurgents.

The would-be reformers were, as Zephyrin knew, far from mistaken in this belief, and had good reason to fear the intervention of foreign armies. Well known to be on good terms with his sister-in-law, Duke Efflam dy Ponthul had taken advantage of the brief lull in hostilities to abscond from the King’s Isle, after which he was suspected to have ridden hard for Elysia in the hopes of petitioning on behalf of the besieged royals before Éthèrius V.

But Éthèrius would not march, content to let Gaulyria decide her own fate. That she would do on February 25th, the day of the Renunciation.

On February 25th, with the representatives of the General Estates in session but at an impasse, Count Caradog d’Aurellis declared that, for the good of the nation, he was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice as a highborn lord. Before the astonished deputies and delegates, the king’s brother consented to channel his mana far past the point of exhaustion.

Prior to undertaking that paradigm-shifting act, the royal affirmed in a clear voice: “The shattering of one’s core is a small price to pay to break cleanly from an iniquitous past. The chrysohaemic inheritance bequeathed by Gaulyria’s illustrious founder served its purpose: now the hour has come for the nation to be recentered around the admirable doctrine of equality of blood.”

It was then that Count Euxenus dy Massalie, a member of the Baras Constituency who had controversially thrown in his lot with the Third Estate, rose up and hailed the count in the warmest of terms, before urging the assembled notables in the most eloquent terms to dare imitate his example.

What followed that act of heroic self-abnegation was an effervescent outpouring hitherto unobserved in the privileged class of a nation in the history of Orbe, and very well in all recorded history. With only few exceptions, the noble delegates began enthusiastically channeling to the brink of collapse, wildly applauding each of their own as his mana failed and his ability to cast magic was compromised beyond repair.

Then were formally repealed the so-called Haematological Privileges, enshrined in the oldest legal acts of the kingdom. The General Estates appropriated for themselves this prerogative on the grounds that it was willed by the people; and, as such, could but be willed by the king, who necessarily had the people’s best interests at heart.

With the exception of one backward individual, the principle party concerned by the day’s events. Willfully blind or defiant in the face of his changed circumstances, the embattled monarch stunned the participants by his non-cooperation. Rudolf XIII flatly refused to recognize the acts of the session, much less to emulate his brother the count and the heads of the Great Houses. He deemed it a great act of clemency on his part to even tolerate and forbear from punishing the nobles who betrayed their heritage and sacred obligations to Goddess and King by extinguishing their own magical abilities by no authority than their own.

It was all he could do, Rudolf XIII was heard to exclaim to his ministers, to be lenient with the fallen nobles and refrain from adding to their stilling the ignominy of degradation; but to heap disgrace upon disgrace and request him to follow them in rejecting the heritage of Emperor Kaul? That, he could not, would never do. Still sequestered on the King’s Isle, Rudolf XIII furiously wrote to the representatives that the acts of the session, convened in his absence, were utterly null and void.

The hope-kindled flame of the would-be reformers immediately fell, doused by cold reality.

But there were those who remained one step ahead of the king. Anticipating his resistance, Cardinal Tenéval urged the increasingly anti-monarchical representatives to abandon the hamstrung Convention in favor of a new legislative body, fully invested with the authority requisite to inaugurate the sweeping changes needed to redress the nation. This body, he argued, “Must have as its head Messieurs the Representatives of the Third Estate, for as the spokesmen of the people, it is their collective voice which must be heeded: a country whose people are mutes is no country worth speaking of, and certainly none to which I can honor myself to belong.”

On March 3rd, the nationalist clergy of the First Estate, bestilled nobles of the Second, and politicians and lawyers of the Third excluded their absolutist counterparts to vote on this proposal. The results were unanimous: the General Estates were dissolved, and from their ashes arose the National Congress. An inverted simulacrum of its predecessor, the National Congress was heavily weighted in favor of the commons, with but scant representation for the nobility and clergy.

Though the traditional terminology of Estates was retained, this continuation was nominal and conspicuously made no provisions for the king’s direct intervention. Ignoring Rudolf XIII’s penned protestations, no sooner had the baseblood delegates and conciliatory nobles ascended to the summits of effective power that they began debating in earnest how to safeguard their newly acquired gains.

Hotly debated by the Congress were several acts, including a proposal that all bluebloods in the kingdom be stilled, under pain of death, to guarantee immunity from future usurpations by a disproportionately powerful elite. The requisition of magical artifacts for their destruction or sale abroad was also considered, and strongly urged by Isidore-Selene d’Atrebati, a lawyer whose rhetoric garnered him a fair share of enemies that was nevertheless exceeded by his supporters.

What form the governance of the new Gaulyria would adopt, what course she would take remained hazy. Many were receptive to the idea of a constitutional monarchy; others dreamed of a Federation, uniting Gaulyria’s provinces under a freer, more tolerant regime. Whatever their desires, the majority agreed with d’Atrebati that, at any rate, Rudolf XIII could not be permitted to remain on the throne to impede the rejuvenation of the nation.

All opinions were solicited: the floor open to all, including the assembly’s more radical elements. Amédea dy Réz of the nascent Exsanguinarian faction was heard, as was Loàn Noÿ, known for his impassioned addresses on behalf of the property rights-hating foulards rouges—even a few eccentrics in favor of increased rights for women, incredibly, were permitted to air out grievances and plead their causes. However, they were little heeded and the debate revolved instead around questions of national security.

Well aware of its tenuous position and the intense scrutiny of Gaulyria’s neighbors, the Congress—still unrecognized by the continent—did not request the king’s permission to pass a flurry of measures aimed at raising and equipping a standing army. In answer to the call to arms, provincial recruits flooded the capital to form the Volunteers. The eagerness of untried youth took the place of the frenzied desperation of the oppressed, and even as the riotous mobs continued to mill around the King’s Isle, the numbers of rebels diminished daily in favor of the Volunteers, who showed themselves pliable to the training offered by the nobles who had defected from the king’s side.

On April 7th, the fledging National Congress decided that action needed to be taken before the monarchs of Orbe leagued against their government to relieve the king and reestablish him securely on his throne. Rudolf XIII could not be allowed to remain at relative liberty on the King’s Isle.

The representatives had much to fear: Seaxland was contesting the colonies, Aonia beginning to nibble at the neglected southeastern provinces, Fleurian expeditions skirting the northern borders; there were whispers of insurrection in Aléria; the religious fanatics of Keltia were up in arms over this challenge to the king’s divine authority…

And Elysia watched all this with relish. She bided her time, but to strike all the more truly.

Gaulyria, the Congress knew, would soon find herself at war.