Chapter 465: The Devil’s Contract
Coups seldom solved a nation’s problems. In fact, they had a brutal tendency to tear a new hole into an already mortal wound, and then attempt to patch it with little more than gauze and prayer.
Most people didn’t realize just how hard it was to scrub liters of blood out of carpet, rugs, and tapestries—especially if one hoped to preserve the heritage they stained.
And for Manuel, who had returned to the country of his birth, the palace he was meant to rule in, this was a sobering reminder of the price which was paid for him to be sitting where he currently was.
He noticed, once again, the stubborn bloodstain near the leg of the throne — darker now. Maybe it had seeped deeper into the stone. An aftermath of violence he wished could have been avoided—and hadn’t even known about until the gilded weight of divine rule was placed upon his brow.
The military had overthrown the Republic of Portugal practically overnight. And they had done so because, despite remaining neutral during the great war, Iberia suffered from the consequences of France’s defeat.
Democracy was not designed to endure hardship, and this had proven woefully true for the fledgling republic, which had less than a decade’s foundation to stand upon before being forced to the precipice.
What was the alternative? Marxism was unappealing, as everywhere bolshevists had appeared they brought death and despair with them, and nationalistic alternatives seemed to favor the crown in this life, rather than the wheat and the fasces.
As a result, Manuel was brought back, in an attempt to restore the Kingdom of Portugal which had existed stably for nearly 800 years before a bunch of wealthy industrialists thought they could rule the country better through democratically elected proxies.
But the military? They understood that such idealism had done nothing but bleed Portugal dry, to the point it could no longer withstand the current crisis. So what did they do? Kill all who were responsible for its current state.
In a single night, the junta and its soldiers rounded up and summarily executed the capitalists, the elected politicians, and the unelected bureaucrats who had in some way been responsible for the revolution of 1910, as well as the assassination of King Carlos I two years prior.
Now Manuel sat on a bloodstained throne, preparing for his marriage to Archduchess Hedwig von Habsburg. During Bruno’s past life, he had married a Hohenzollern from the Swabian Cadet Branch, but the butterfly effect was strong in this world.
By orchestrating the restoration of the league of the Three Emperors in the early 1900s, Bruno had effectively made any attempt by the Germans to potentially curry favor with Portugal irrelevant and worthless.
In his past life, Swabian Hohenzollern had married Manuel, hoping he’d reclaim his throne and align with Berlin. However, in this life, such an idea wasn’t even an afterthought.