A Charitable Impulse

In the new world, hidden behind the curtains of a four-poster bed, Lily frowned and re-read the story from the beginning. She absolutely didn't begrudge the rather hefty expense of buying it from the system store. In these 'modern reader thrust into a book' scenarios, the original story was worth its weight in gold. But there was something odd.

The fantasy historical setting was about what you'd expect a westerner to make up about ancient China. All of the good bits, with the bad bits polished away. Despite supposedly having no magical elements, it vastly overstated the role of personal combat within battle and included many medicinal myths as if they were true. But it was a common enough example of the genre.

The hero, Ash, returned from his mother's homeland at the head of an army, to take back the imperial throne that had been stolen from him as a child. The homeland was significantly smaller and poorer than the empire, but he nevertheless achieved his goals through a series of clever strategies, an unreasonably perfect ability to predict his opponents, and some very convenient self-sabotage by the empire. The wish-fulfilment and co-incidences were also common.

The primary villainess (her own role) was the false-emperor's mother, who schemed from behind the scenes and came to a bad end. On the face of it, the head office had come through on their side of the bargain. It was a good role. The villainess was not stupidly self-destructive and selfish. In fact, it could even be said that her only significant flaw was her partiality for her son. She'd failed, but she'd acted for the good of the empire as she'd seen it. It would in theory be a character she would be happy to play without subversion.

But…

"This is not a valid setup," she said. "This is a male-lead story. I am a romance villainess, not a military villainess."

"It's correct," replied the kitten. "The genre is based on the expected action of the migrator, not on the genre of the original story. It has been judged that she will want to explore the romance aspect."

"The migrator isn't the lead? Which character is she taking the identity of?" she asked.

The primary love interest was a 'female general' serving alongside the male lead Ash. It was a job very much in name only. She never actually did anything but praise the male lead and provide two sons for him in the epilogue. The secondary love interest was the male lead's half-niece who the male lead married to secure the throne. Considering how close that relationship was, the author had thankfully made that role just as much 'in name only' as the female general's rank, but that gave her even less purpose.

"Primrose."

"Who?" asked Lily.

"The hero's mother," clarified the kitten.

"You have to be kidding me," said Lily. "Not even a love interest of the main character."

"The hero's mother is the woman with the most word-count in the story," pointed out the kitten.

Well, that was true. Despite already being conveniently dead by the start, she had at least appeared in various flashbacks and stories as the hero uncovered the past during the invasion. That was more character exploration than all the love interests received combined.

"What's the starting point now, then?" asked Lily. It couldn't be within the story itself, seeing as Primrose wasn't even alive at that point.

"As Primrose departs from home to the palace."

Huh. That did make it more of a stereotypical romance story. If the female lead prevented her own assassination, it would remove the entire motivation for Ash's plot. The military aspect might not happen at all. All right, she would let the genre go. She wasn't entirely sure head office wasn't deliberately playing games, but it was just plausible enough.

"Implement the usual body improvement package and activate birth control," ordered Lily.

"The plot—"

"Do you expect me to work together with the female lead in murdering my own children? Activate birth control. Consider this my first assistance to her. I'm pre-emptively going to prevent the major rival to her son."

The system reluctantly complied.

Lily considered Primrose's plotline in particular. FL was the beloved only daughter of an independent nation off the south coast, Viridis Island. After some disputes over trade and piracy, she had been sent to wed the emperor as part-hostage, part-bribe. She had stayed in contact with her family with help of a beloved nanny. On one trip, the nanny had been murdered and during the investigation, some personal letters and small gifts had been exaggerated into treasonous spying and theft. The emperor, despite being deeply in love with his beautiful foreign concubine, had been forced to pretend to set her aside while still visiting her secretly. In one of those secret visits, an assassin had appeared. FL had blocked the first blow with her own body, forcing the assassin to make a less careful second blow against the emperor before fleeing. It only delayed the death of the emperor by a few hours, but that was enough time for him to summon his top advisors and appoint their joint son as his legal heir and next rightful emperor. The minute the emperor had died, however, those advisors had denounced the FL for luring the emperor to his death. They had come to arrest the son, who had to be smuggled out by her faithful servants back to her homeland.

If Lily was cast in the role of the mother herself, there would be several suspicious points to exploit. Who had been behind those first accusations of treason? How had the assassin known where they were? Why was there a conveniently prepared route to smuggle out her son? In a story, those things could be waved away. In a full, complete world based on that story, they must have some explanation – perhaps innocent, perhaps not. Information that could matter a great deal. Lily was willing to bet the female lead would do nothing meaningful with that extra knowledge, however.

Modern readers had a different set of extra knowledge that they preferred to exploit.

"Does she have access to system store?" asked Lily.

"No, but she has assisted memory," said the kitten, "with access to all her host memories."

"She'll be able to recall details of the book and anything in the character's backstory, then. What about details of the modern world?"

"That too," said the kitten, "but only to the information she was exposed to it before the migration."

"So, if she's seen an educational video, then she'll be able to remember how an internal combustion works, but if she's never seen a mechanical loom, she's out of luck?"

"Yes."

"Alright," said Lily. "I want to buy everything my character has ever found out or been taught about the socio-political landscape. Flag up anything to do with imports from Viridis Island, anything to do with any new world crops, and any anachronistic industrial processing or automation."

Information that a character already theoretically knew was always cheap, and she needed to fix this information in place. If not, any detail not explicitly mentioned could warp based purely on the insert character's expectation of how the world should work. Lily could never decide whether she herself was warping reality herself with her enquiries or there was some default information, but she knew the importance of getting in first.

"Do you want this information to help the female lead behind the scenes?" asked the kitten suspiciously.

"My primary job is still to be a villainess," said Lily innocently. "I am to provide sufficient obstacles so that the main character deserves her victory. I need to give her things to fight against."

The kitten did not look convinced, but it had no choice but to proceed with her request.

It was as Lily had hoped. The world, mostly by the author failing to explore the concept at all, kept things reasonably historical in those matters. Only one sole random mention of a tomato had led to it accidentally escaping South and Central America – perhaps in this world, it had floated over. Everything else stayed firmly where and when it was.

"The Emperor approaches!" came a loud cry from outside.

Lily did not scramble out. She had played the game before and knew the rules. Instead, she allowed a servant to place shoes on her feet and assist her to stand while two more placed a gaudy scarlet and gold over-robe on her and tied everything off. One final adjustment of her hair, and she was ready.

The Emperor walked in and sat down without even appearing to notice her. "The hostage from Viridis Island is being sent to us. Please prepare rooms for her."

If that was all he wanted to tell her, then he would have simply sent a message.

"Certainly," said Lily. "How much consequence does Your Most Exaltedness wish to give her?"

"I see no reason to alienate the girl," said the emperor. "She will be living with us for a long time."

The emperor's tone clearly indicated he wanted her to talk him out of it. The trade dispute had come perilously close to being a tie, and Lily judged that the emperor wanted the Viridians to be perfectly clear he was doing them a favour and not the other way around. Lily didn't mind playing the bad guy, but she wasn't going to waste an opportunity.

"This one has a thought, if Your Most Exaltedness would care to hear it?" she asked carefully.

"Speak," ordered the emperor.

"This one was thinking of starting a charitable movement over the plight of workers in debt bondage in our neighbours. In some places this has become effective slavery, and we are colluding with it when we purchase the products made from that horrendous practice."

The emperor frowned for a few seconds before his expression cleared. "The sugar imports."

"This one doubt we will achieve any significant result," – the Viridians wouldn't get too upset about losing revenue – "People will simply hide their purchases rather than show it off. But sometimes the symbolic gesture is valuable too," – but they would be reminded about the power of the empire.

"That is indeed a noble cause. You have my permission," said the emperor as if he was being generous.

"We will have to forgo the sugar sculptures at feasts," Lily reminded him, in case he turned around later once he had to sacrifice anything himself.

Sugar sculptures were classic conspicuous consumption. While they were genuinely artistic, they really existed o show off the host's wealth in buying the sugar and manpower in crafting the sculptures. It was said that to create the grand structures in the emperor's coronation feast, the palace had bought all the sugar available in the entire country. It did make her wonder just how poor Viridian Island really was.

He waved that away magnanimously. "I do not have a sweet tooth anyway."

In a much better mood, the emperor bounced to his feet and departed with no further concern for Lily.

Once Lily was alone again, the kitten asked suspiciously, "Why did you make things better for Primrose? You're supposed to be setting up an antagonistic relationship."

"Don't worry," said Lily. "I'll make sure she knows that this sugar ban was intentionally done to make trouble for her. Have some faith in me."

"I don't," grumbled the kitten. "Not one bit."

Lily had no intention of violating the rules this time. But she had only sworn to help the female lead succeed in her schemes. She had not sworn to help the female lead come up with intelligent schemes. Lily had learnt to make her own entertainment, and she rather thought that this was going to be fun.