Chapter 439: Twilight of the Bloodlines
Bruno had unintentionally climbed the social, political, and economic ladder of the German Reich within a period of twenty years. He was now sitting at a position that was damn near untouchable.
He wasn’t just a monarch in his own right, answering directly to the Kaiser, but he was a war hero who every political party worth a damn would literally kill just to have him publicly endorse them. His wealth? Few men in the history of mankind could come close to all that he had accomplished.
The public adored him, the sword and shield of the Reich, a man who no matter how high he grew, never forgot his duty to the people. And his wife had long since been referred to as the Angel of Berlin for the aid she gave to the wounded soldiers, homeless, orphans, and just the general downtrodden in life.
Truly within the borders of the fatherland, there was one type of citizen who despised Bruno, the ancient vampires who clung to their old power like it was their lifeline... One that was rapidly drying up.
Prussia had been among the first European states to adopt Meritocracy, and as a result the German Empire had inherited this mentality in military affairs to be sure. But Bruno had made it a precedent to everything in life.
Military, politics, business. If you couldn’t succeed by your own virtue as a man, then you didn’t deserve the prestige, respect, and wealth that came with it. The old aristocracy was now forced to kneel to the new Tyrolean Prince, one whose own daughters would be married to the future Kaiser and Tsar alike.
Meanwhile, they began to falter in relevance. And while this had been something put on the back pedal because of the war effort, as the years began to pass, and the scars of the Great War began to heal in a way that made it slip into history, more than memory. These ancient bloodlines began to realize that their fundamental way of life was not on a sacrificial altar.
Bruno had built a society that no longer needed them, nor respected them, at least by virtue of their heritage. Rather, it demanded they continuously perform in accordance with their position, and the expectations demanded of it.
This, to a privileged class of people who had been resting on the laurels of greater ancestors so far distant removed from the current generations, they might as well have been Antediluvian in origin. Meant that they did not wish to integrate into this world where nobility was once more tied to duty.
Their ancestors had paid their dues long ago to earn their noble status, so why then should they be expected to continue to pay such a price? And that was the fundamental flaw with nobility as an institution, or as it was prior to the changes Prussia was already working towards by the middle of the 19th century.