The Heir and the Ledger

Months passed, and the Versailles political winter solidified into a grinding war of attrition. Art's exclusion from court life became the norm, a daily ritual in subtle insult and pointed neglect. He retreated even farther into his work, finding a bleak consolation in the cold, hard exactitude of numbers. Necker's silent reforms were proceeding at a glacier's pace, bumped up against a wall of bureaucratic resistance and deliberate ineptitude every time. A request for documents from the Treasury would be "lost" for weeks. A royal edict on new accounting procedures would be presented with just enough discrepancies for it to be useless. It was death from a thousand paper cuts, and Art found himself falling behind.

Then, sometime in the autumn, rumors circulated that dissolved the political impasse and radically shifted the entire atmosphere in the court. It began as a rumor, a buzz among the ladies in waiting for the Queen, yet soon it went around as an indubitable fact, substantiated through the physicians in attendance.

Queen Marie Antoinette was pregnant.

The announcement came in Versailles like a spring thaw unseasonably timed. By now, a subject of apprehensive conjecture for nigh on a year, the Bourbon succession was secured. There would be an heir. For the first time in months, there was something for the court to rejoice in outside the politics of faction. All plotting and backstabbing were for the time being laid low in service to a shared, primal interest in seeing life keep.

Most profoundly, it introduced a change in mood between Art and Marie Antoinette. The chilly wall of formality between the two now had a fissure in it. They shared a common cause over something greater than budgets, politics, and her mother. They shared something to talk about, their child.

Their first real discussion happened in her personal garden in the Petit Trianon, a paradise of neatly maintained nature that felt a world away from the rigid formality of the main palace. It was cool, filled with end-of-season roses. It was awkward, a guarded dance for two strangers, joined in the only way possible through the most intimate of circumstances.

She appeared worn down by pregnancy. Her sharp, aggressive edges she had honed in their argument had weathered off, revealing a quieter, more introspective character. She wore a plain, billowing gown, and for the first time, Art could not see her as the Queen, political asset, expense, but as a young, expectant mother. His child's mother.

The thought struck him with a physical force. His child. It's something his accountant, 21st-century mind hadn't yet begun to calculate. It wasn't a footnote in history anymore. It was a person. His son. His daughter. Some foreign, unknown, yet extremely powerful urge for defense woke in him, something in no way related with the HUD, with the revolution, with his own survival. It was an emotion for someone else.

"The doctors insist I take a daily stroll," she whispered, looking out over a patchwork bed of roses. "They say it is good for the baby."

"That's... good," Art replied, his own words awkward. What do you say in a case like this? "Are you... well?"

"Tired," she said with a small smile. "And hungry for things I never wanted. Pickled herring and strawberries. Isn't that a strange thing?"

He smiled in return, a genuine, unforced smile. "I've been told that's normal."

They talked for nearly an hour. She told of wanting the child to inherit his father's serious mind but to share in love for music with her, or if it were a girl, it wouldn't be dispatched in an exotic court when she would be fourteen. He listened, making inelegant but honest comments. He felt in over his head, yet for the first time since opening his eyes in that lunatic asylum, he felt a spark of something real, a sense belonging with this woman who, through law and biology, was his wife. The HUD, monitoring their adversarial union, discreetly corrected in the back of his mind.

Relationship Status: Marie Antoinette -5% (STATUS: NEUTRAL).

The brief lull in tension was shattered a week later when a diplomaticCourier rode in from Vienna. In his hand he brought a letter from Empress Maria Theresa. It flowed on in affectionate effusions, a grandmother's pleasure in the prospective heir, with blessings and good wishes. Art read it, his mood thawing, a sense of familial love he found gratifying. Then he reached the final paragraph.

"And in celebration of this happiest event," the Empress had added charmingly, "and as a token of the indissoluble union between our two great houses, I must think you would find it an excellent time to secure our trade concessions in the Austrian Netherlands, which we have been negotiating, in a definite form. A small loan in assistance towards our current troubles with that annoying Prussian king would also come very gladly, and in very good time, as a token of our familial support."

Art's heart went cold. It was a piece in diplomatic blackmail, a demand for a massive political and financial concession made in the pink ribbons of a nursery present.

The next day, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau made the official presentation of the "request." It was a formality, he said, a dowry in reverse, a present from a grandfather to his eventual grandchild. Art sat in stunned silence. The "favorable trade concessions" would flood the French market with cheap Austrian goods, destroying the textile industries in the north. The "small loan" equaled five million livres. Five million livres which France positively didn't have, to be sent off to Austria in payment for their geo-political squabbling.

Art was stuck. He was being asked to stab his entire mission in the back, to return money he had worked so hard through his reforms to get back into a foreign kingdom. Saying no, however, would be a direct, public insult to his wife's powerful mother on the day she felt happiest. It would destroy the fragile détente he had only just achieved with Marie Antoinette and thrust their relations back into a deep freeze.

He returned to his study, the Empress's letter lying on his desk like a viper. It was a hellish choice, a clear dilemma designed by his enemies. He summoned the HUD, dreading what he would see.

Option A: Grant the Austrian Loan & Concessions.

Pros:

Relationship with Marie Antoinette: +15% (STATUS: WARM). She will see it as a beautiful gesture of love and respect for her family.

Diplomatic Relations - Austria: +30%. The alliance is secured and strengthened.

Cons:

Treasury: -5,000,000 livres.

Public Trust: -10%. (If/when it leaks that French gold is being sent to Austria.)

Necker Alliance: -20%. (He will see it as a complete betrayal of the reform project.)

Crown Fiscal Integrity: -25%.

Option B: Refuse the Austrian Loan & Concessions.

Pros:

Protects the Treasury from a catastrophic loss.

Crown Fiscal Integrity: +15%. Reinforces his public stance as a fiscally responsible reformer.

Necker Alliance: +10%.

Cons:

Relationship with Marie Antoinette: -30% (STATUS: FROZEN). She will perceive it as a profound and unforgivable insult to her mother, her country, and her child.

Diplomatic Relations - Austria: -50% (STATUS: HOSTILE). The alliance will be on the brink of collapse.

He glanced down at the illuminated text, his head pounding. The digits revealed the harsh realities. He could be a good reformer, a bad husband, a good husband, a disastrous monarch. What pleasures he had known in the garden a few days ago, the simple, earthly hope for his imminent child, were now a poor joke. His enemies had found the very thing in this life he was learning to hold dear above the profit-and-loss column, and were using it in hopes of destroying all he worked for. His position placed him in the gap between the ledger and the cradle, and he knew the price, whatever he chose, would be monumental.