POV

The king of the Rostok empire.

"It looks like the Mainz are accepting our alliance. They still do not want to discuss the division of spoils but they did give us a hint that they don't want to restrict our expansion into the Karaman empire and furthermore want to take part in it." said Nikolay, the foreign minister of the Rostok empire.

"What do you think they want." I asked him.

"They might want some of the panubes plaines and land which borders them. There is no indication of them wanting Pompgrad and it looks like they want to give it up to us. We might be able to achieve the century long goal of getting out of our maritime blockade." said Nikolay in an excited voice.

The goal of the Rostok empire for the last 100 years was to take control of the economic, cultural and religious site of Pompgrad and get out of the maritime blockade and compete for naval hegemony with the Kildarians.

"What will be the reaction of the Kildrians."

"Your majesty, the Kildarians will oppose us and might even send troops to fight against us. They will not spare any efforts in aiding the Karaman empire as if they don't, they might have to fight a Ceylon defense empire."

Damn the Kildarians, they always want to oppose us. Don't they have other things to do. Well it dosen't matter if the Kildarians send troops to face us. Their army is garbage and they can't fight against us. The problem is their navy but the question is whether warships can come on land and obviously they can't. The only way Kildarians can oppose us if they can find a thug on the European continent who can oppose us.

"What about the Lombardians, will they oppose us."

"It seems like the Lombardians might try to oppose us and reinforce the Karaman empire to get out of their embarassing diplomatic situation and due to their hatred of us. We will try our best efforts to stop them from reinforcing the Karaman empire but we are not sure whether we can stop it."

I nodded and asked the minister of army whether they can fight against the coalition.

"We can definetly fight against the coalition due to our superiority in numbers. The only problem is the logistics and whether the finances can sustain it. If we can't get enough weapons, we can't fight the war."

I did have enough confidence in the army to win the war as even if we lose a lot of soldiers, we have an endless supply of people who can be sent to reinforce the frontline so the army probably won't be a problem. The problem is whether our finaces can sustain it.

"Can our finances sustain for the duration of the war."

"Our finances can sustain the war for only 6 months. After that we need to go into heavy debt or raise taxes on the people to sustain the consumption of supplies on the frontline." said the minister of finance.

"Can't you raise war taxes ahead of time and ask the nobles to pay for it ahead of time."

"Your majesty, the nobles don't trust us to use the money for war. They said that they will pay for it after the war has started." He said while looking embarassed.

Well, the Rostok empire has had a bad history of defauliting on debts and raising war taxes and not using it for war so it's not suprising that people don't trust us. We decided to borrow after the war had started from the Mainz kingdom as they have a lot of money. As we were discussing about what land we want from the Karaman empire, a messanger came and gave me a letter from the ambassador from the kingdom of Mainz. After I read it, I was quite shocked.

"Your majesty, what is in the letter." asked Nikolay, looking curious.

"It seems that the princess of the kingdom of Galicia has killed herself by jumping into a well. This has happend after she learnt of the fact that her parents had abandoned her. Atleast that's the offciail explanation."

The minister of foreign affairs nodded. I was quite confused where she found a well and how she jumped into it without anyone stopping it. It probably was planned but to show goodwill towards them, lets just pretend that this didn't happen.