Fornulus' coronation was a grand affair that lasted the entire day; another uncomfortable day in the same dim chamber with the same staring throng. The Chamber of Phobious was used for coronations and funerals of Doukars: their reigns were circles that ended where they had begun. Nikolonium had never attended a coronation before. His grandmother had died before he was born, so his father's coronation was something he'd only heard about. Fornulus must have attended it, and perhaps Theodorian and Cordelian too, although those two would have been too young at the time to remember it now.

Unlike the funeral they didn't get any thrones to sit in and had to stand the whole time in their heavy formal robes. Nik eyed Fornulus' lighter robes enviously. Fornulus was in a simple linen robe, in his family’s dark green, over which he would put on the official purple and gold robes of the sovereign later in the ceremony. Of course, those robes would be the heaviest of all, and Fornulus would have to wear them many times in the future.

He shuffled ever so slightly to ease his aching feet. Nik was looking forward to the feast that would be held once the sun had gone down, mostly just to be able to sit down.

The Patrianous of Dardano, the leader of the faith, was coming to the end of his part of the formal ritual. Fornulus kneeled before him, the last time he would kneel before anyone. The two of them stood in the shaft of noon sunlight which streamed in through the oculus of the massive dome above them, an island of light in the sea of darkness around them. They were on top of the great porphyry seal which marked the center of the chamber; the triangular sigil of the empire, which represented both a D and a spear head, was carved into the seal.

The rest of the royals were spread out in a loose semi-circle behind Fornulus, facing the church leader. They were arranged in birth order, from right to left, leaving Nik just about in the middle. Behind them were the various luminaries of the capital, the highest ranked and most significant standing the nearest to them and the center of action, the least important standing at the back, unable to see anything.

The severe throne of Doukar the Great sat directly behind the priest, the Stone of Doukar. Over the course of the last month or so a huge team of slaves had to drag it out of this chamber, drag in the royal sarcophagus for the funeral, then drag that back out and the throne back in. Fortunately for them it would now remain here until the end of Fornulus’s reign. The Stone was out of place with the rest of the luxurious chamber. Art fashioned from porphyry, gold, ivory, marble, granite, and carved wood covered nearly every surface in the chamber. The Stone, in contrast, was nothing more than a plain block of rough stone with a seat cut into it, thus the name. The seat was just a hollowed-out indentation. It had no legs, and wasn't even polished, except on the seat where generations of Doukars had sat and polished it with their own bodies.

Over the centuries there was talk of Doukars replacing the throne or adding to it to make it look more dignified – or at least add some cushions to the thing – but the Stone had come to have a lot of significance to the empire. Provincial patros loved to come and see it when visiting the capital, and in the end, the royals always ended up leaving it unaltered. There weren't many artifacts that could genuinely be traced back to Doukar the Great.

More than that, the unadorned Stone represented modesty and prudence, a willingness to sacrifice luxury for sake of the people. The empire had lost sight of that, as the elites became greedy and self-indulgent. Nik knew Fornulus' reign was his chance: Fornulus was weak willed, and needed somebody to guide him, somebody who had the best interests of the people at heart. The people groaned under the yokes of famine, taxation, slavery, and war. Every day noumens died pointlessly cruel deaths at the hands of some soldier or patros who was simply in a bad mood. An empire that didn't care for its people could not survive for long. An empire was its people.

After another hour or more Fornulus at last stood at the end of the ceremony, crowned with the Supreme Crown. It was a strange looking thing, an attempt to forge an amalgam of the various Thirty Crowns of the thirty kingdoms Doukar the Great and his immediate successors had conquered. The result was a bizarre hodgepodge of different styles and even materials. Doukars wore it only on the most formal occasions, otherwise opting for whichever of the Thirty Crowns struck their fancy. The crowd dutifully applauded at the sight of their new ruler, as slaves draped Fornulus in the purple and gold robes of supreme power.

Nikolonium glanced sideways at his older siblings, lined up to his right. If he wanted to lead the empire into true glory, the glory of moral virtue, he knew he must push some of them aside. If Cordelian were to take control of the empire, only further decadence, selfishness, and corruption awaited them. Nik had to save Dardanos from its own worst impulses. He had to save the people.

Meronion watched as her elder brother slowly made his way up the small podium to the Stone of Doukar, stomping ungracefully in his robes and crown. Once at the Stone, he turned and almost collapsed into it. Meronion quickly smoothed away the tiniest of scowls at his lack of decorum. Her hip was aching more by the minute, but still she stood spear straight, conscious of watching audience behind her. Fornulus lacked discipline, and that was a problem. Discipline was strength of will and Fornulus was a weak man.

The character of the empire's founder, Doukar the Great, his statue towering over them, was apparent in his choice of throne, an unadorned block of granite. He had been a man who couldn't care less for luxury, but only for strength, real strength bought at the point of a spear and a bronze will that never bent. Strength was what the empire needed now, with the old enemies at the gates once more. It was clear Fornulus would not be providing it. While this was a tragedy, she was not concerned: she could provide strength. It wouldn't be the first time the Milem had led the way for a weak and ineffectual Doukar.

The empire was the greatest power in the world and consequently had the greatest enemies in the world. The Lorgorin savages, the Circiniad fanatics, and the shifty Monars, all wanted what they had, and she wouldn't trust the outwardly friendly Bithians any further than she could throw them either. The empire needed to be vigilant against the barbarians on her borders. One slip, and their life would go up in flames, this pretty palace burnt down around them as fire worshipping scum danced around it in religious rapture.

Meronion would convince Fornulus of this, and if not, she would push him out of her way. If she left it to her siblings the empire would wallow in luxury, religion, poetry, and all other sorts of nonsense. Meronion had to claw back the empire's old power, by strengthening the military, and by instilling good, honest, traditional values back into the hearts and minds of the young. The empire had to be retaught the martial values that had made it great in the first place. You didn't win an empire with kindness, you won it by killing and enslaving your enemies, and ruthlessly driving out any weakness of your own.

Once she had brought Fornulus to heel and dealt with the barbarians nipping at their heels, she would purge the empire of the fleas riding on it. The patros and noumens alike would relearn their old fear of royalty. She would do this because no one else would. If her siblings got in the way, she would trample them out of the way. She had to do it, because she had to save the empire.

Cordelian didn't bother to listen as Fornulus began his first ever speech as Doukar. He'd written it, so he already knew what it said. Cordelian only had a few vague memories of the last coronation, his father’s, and he’d been too young to fully appreciate what he was watching. This time he was fully aware. This was not the first coronation he had attended, and it wouldn't be the last either, he'd make sure of it. Of course, he looked outwardly worshipful and devoted to his elder brother, who he noticed glanced at him looking for reassurance. Pathetic.

He needed to bend Fornulus to his will, before getting rid of him permanently. Fornulus would be a disaster with the crowns, too weak and dull-witted to navigate the complexities of modern statesmanship, so he'd use Fornulus to pave the way for his own ascension. By the time he was done the patros would be begging him to take over, and he would graciously, but oh so reluctantly, accept for the good of the empire. Euphastolon thought Cordelian desired power for his own sake, and while he wasn't wrong, Cordelian also truly believed he would make a better Doukar than his elder brother. Their father had always thought so too, frequently berating Fornulus for not being more like Cordelian and Meronion. That had always given Cordelian tremendous satisfaction and was the only thing he missed about his father.

He glanced quickly at Meronion, who looked displeased. This was her usual disposition, so it wouldn't be worth reading too much into it. Meronion was a relic of a bygone era, someone who didn't understand how the world worked now. When she looked at the Stone, she probably saw a representation of Doukar's character as a proud warrior who had no time for luxury or other fancy "nonsense". What he saw was a representation of Doukar's character too: an illiterate barbarian whose idea of a throne was an unrelieved hunk of stone.

Meronion believed that since Doukar had founded the empire on the point of a spear it could keep going that way. But of the so-called "thirty kingdoms" Doukar had conquered, more than half of them had been little more than collections of tribal savages, who used flint to tip their spears, not even having discovered metallurgy. Most of the Thirty Crowns in the royal treasury were forgeries created over the following centuries, because many of the people Doukar had conquered had no crowns, or no idea of what a king even was. Of course Doukar, with his bronze-armed and organized armies, had rampaged through lands held by stone chipping, cave-dwellers. He had had the overwhelming advantage of being centuries ahead of them. The man had conquered no more than a dozen actual kingdoms with coherent militaries. In those kingdoms with actual power, he’d used resentment against Gisean dominance to turn them against Gisean and do a lot of his fighting for him. Often, Doukar had done little more than swoop into an already exhausted and spent kingdom and threaten them with his fresh troops into swearing fealty to him. It hadn’t been the glorious conquest that Meronion dreamed of.

The feat couldn't be replicated today. The reason the borders of the empire had stayed largely unchanged in almost four hundred years was simply that it wasn't feasible for the empire to grow any larger than it already was. The near impenetrable forests in the north, the mountains in the east, and the deserts in the south, all formed formidable barriers. On all sides powerful neighbors surrounded the empire, ones the empire couldn't defeat without great cost, and without any clear benefit for doing so. Back in the second century the empire had wasted nearly fifty years and an enormous quantity of gold and troops trying to expand the empire into Monar territory, and today had not a single extra mile of land to show for it. That lesson had been learned well.

Strength of arms wasn't going to defuse the Circiniad or Lorgorin threats. The empire needed strength of wits, gold and diplomacy, not spears. Pit the different petty fiefdoms of the Circiniads and tribes of the Lorgorin against each other, make them waste their strength in civil wars which could only benefit the empire. Sell them goods their people needed, make them dependent on what the empire produced, and get them under your thumb. Meronion failed to understand that you could conquer a people with trade and culture just as much as with spears, and usually more permanently. Deepen the alliances with Monar and Bithia to keep the Eastern and Southern borders secure. Keep the empire strong by making sure its leading subjects who raised the armies and taxes, the patros, were strong. This meant enriching them, supporting them, befriending them, soothing their hurts and grudges. Tedious and annoying, yes, but profitable.

For this job, Cordelian was ideally suited, not Fornulus, not Meronion, not any of the others. He could do it, he would do it, because he had to save the civilized world.