The Queen's Theater

Having successfully defused the diplomatic bomb presented by the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Art knew his work hardly started. He had taken care of the ambassador, he now had to take care of his wife. No grandest treaty in the world would help him, if his wife was an adversary. One, tear-stained letter from her to the Empress in Vienna, lamenting a cold husband, could wreck all his careful plots. He desired her to be something greater than a neutral, calmed being. He desired her to be an ally.

This was a negotiation he could not conduct in a grand gallery or a dusty study. This was a smaller stage, a different kind of theater. He found her later in the day in a private library, a jewel-box room filled with unread books, their leathery spines chosen as much for color as for title. It smelled in there of yellowed paper and vanilla. She sat in the window, a book open in her lap though unread, a hand lying lightly over the curve of belly.

She glanced up when he walked in, caution in her eyes. The frost between them had dissipated since the pregnancy announcement, yet it had not entirely gone away. She was proper, remained distant, a queen pretending.

He didn't come with books or state documents. He held in his hands a small, awkwardly bundled box tied with a simple blue ribbon. He felt a panic entirely new to him, a fluttery terror with absolutely nothing to do with national insolvency or politics. It was personal, and he was dreading being in over his head.

"I brought you something," he said, his voice kinder than he intended.

She looked at the box suspiciously, as if it could very well contain yet another budget report. "A gift?"

"I hope so," he replied, handing it to her.

Her long, narrow fingers loosened the ribbon and pulled up the cover. In it, cushioned in velvet, lay a locket. It wasn't a huge, diamond-covered thing of a monarch. It was excellently made but unadorned, in burnished gold. He had had it crafted for him in Paris, a man famous for his work, not his excess. It had been his design.

She raised it up. It sprang open with the press of a tiny clasp. In the interior, a stunningly realistic tiny portrait, worked in ivory, lay embedded. It was not a portrait of him, nor a standard cherub. It was a perfect, tender likeness, of her own mother, the Empress Maria Theresa.

Marie Antoinette inhaled sharply, a small, involuntary sound. She gazed at the tiny portrait, the cold formality fading. It was a highly personal, introverted action, an acknowledgement of the mother she missed, the home she had left behind. It had nothing to do with statecraft. It was a husband's present for his wife.

"It is beautiful," she whispered, tears sparkling in unshed eyes.

This was his chance. He could not miss it. He brought over a small stool and sat next to her, not as a king next to his queen, but as a man sitting next to a woman.

"Your Majesty... Antoinette," he began, the intimacy of employing her first name a breathtaking breach of form that halted them both. He drew in a breath. "I owe you an apology."

She looked at him, eyes wide with shock.

"I have been a bad husband," he said to her, the words sounding alien and true as he spoke them. "When I first... began this business, I felt in over my head. I only saw the numbers. I saw a kingdom PLC in debt, and I, being the man I am, I accounted for it. I went through this entire nation, this court, and... you... as line items in an accounting ledger. I saw a problem with numbers, and I tried to fix it with numbers."

He looked down at his hands, his eyes without words. "I could not see the people behind the figures. I could not see the woman, the wife, and the queen who was forced to live with my cold calculations. The way in which I accused you of squandering your allowance... it was brutal. It was unfeeling. This was my failing, not yours. For which, I am truly sorry."

He lifted his gaze, eyes locking with hers. He decided he'd risk it all for a moment of raw, paralyzing honesty.

"I fear, Antoinette," he said, his voice deep as a sigh. "I look through these books day after day and I see a future that frightens me. I see turmoil, chaos... revolution. I do all of this, not because I enjoy it, not because I'm a tyrant, but because I'm doing my best to forge a kingdom secure enough, stable enough, for our child to inherit. I'm doing my best to protect us. And in my passion for the threat, I have overlooked the very individual whom I hold above all else in all of this."

Marie Antoinette looked at him, mouth slightly aghast. For all the long years of proper, awkward marriage, she had never looked at this man. Gone was the stiff, gangly, socially awkward boy-king she had been married to. Gone, too, was the cold, foreign man fixated on accounting books. In his place stood a young man, a husband, strained with a weight she could hardly begin to imagine, and he was, for the first time, truly showing it.

She understood it for the very first time. His acts hadn't been a criticism of the way she lived; they had been a frightened defense against their future. His distance hadn't been unemotionality; it had been shielding himself from a fear he could barely speak. Her indignation, wounded pride, everything went away, a flood of opening, gentle empathy instead.

She touched him, covering his hand with her fingers lightly where he sat on his knee. It felt like an electric touch.

"Louis," she said, her voice low with emotion. "Why didn't you ever tell me? You carry all of this alone. I thought... I thought you just didn't care."

"That was my error," he confessed, flipping his hand over in order to grasp hers. "I'm not... I'm no good with this. But I wish I were. I could never do it on my own, Antoinette. I really need your help."

"You have my help," she breathed, clinging to his hand more firmly. "You've always had it. You only never asked."

In the stillness of the library, with the sunlight coming through the window, something crucial shifted between them. It wasn't a political union. It was the beginnings of a wedded life.

Relationship Status: Marie Antoinette +25% (STATUS: ALLY).

Later in the night, Art sat in his study, a profound feeling of calm settled over him for the first time. The threat from Austria had been removed. His bluff about culture was on the table. And he had found a true partner in his wife. For a fleeting moment, he allowed himself a glimmer of real hope, a suspicion that he very well might get away with it.

The scene was interrupted when his study door opened without a knock. Necker stumbled in, his face pale with alarm, his wig askew. He waved a sheet of parchment.

"Your Majesty," he panted, breathlessly. "A disaster. The trial of the Baron de Clugny... it began today. Vergennes... he has called his bluff."

Art got up immediately, his stomach tightening into a rigid knot. "What is it? What happened?"

"The Baron's defense," Necker declared, his hands trembling as he brought out the court transcript. "He doesn't deny the fraud. He's confessing to it all."

"Confessing? That's a victory!" exclaimed Art

"No!" cried Necker, his voice cracking. "You don't understand. He is testifying, he is admitting, under holy oath, that he received orders to exchange the funds. That he acted on the secret oral authority of a man well above him." Necker breathed in greedily. "He says he acted entirely on the very direct order of your deceased grandfather, King Louis XV."

The floor, it appeared, dropped out from under Art. Vergennes, in a brilliant, diabolical move, had reversed the direction of the trial. It wasn't merely a question of a greedy nobleman. It had evolved into an assault on the very legitimacy and honor of the Bourbon monarchy itself. No longer could the question be whether a baron was a thief, but could the King of France be a criminal.

The HUD sprang into action, warning through a deafening siren of danger.

NEW CRISIS DETECTED: Trial of the Century - The King's Honor.

Public Trust in Monarchy: -15% and FALLING RAPIDLY.