Chapter 576: By Throne and Blood
The late afternoon sun cast long shafts of amber light across the polished marble floor.
Dust motes drifted lazily in the still air, disturbed only by the shuffle of boots and the rustle of crisp paper.
King Victor Emmanuel III stood at the head of a broad table strewn with staff maps and intelligence briefs.
His uniform was immaculate, the light catching on his array of medals; tokens of old wars from a bygone era.
But his eyes were tired, darker than even the heavy circles beneath them.
Around him clustered his senior staff: Marshal Badoglio with his sharp-boned hawk’s face, the stooped Chief of the General Staff who toyed nervously with a pen, and the Minister of War who kept dabbing sweat from his upper lip despite the cool palace air.
A junior aide read from a typed dispatch, voice tight.
"Confirmed reports out of Barcelona: the anarchists have executed another bishop; French agitators suspected among the ringleaders. Catalonia has become... well, sire, the word used by our attaché was festering."
A grim silence. The King’s thin mouth tightened. He stepped forward, hands braced on the edge of the table.
"Festering, yes. Like the arrondissements of Paris after their armies came home broken and bitter, their ministries hollowed by syndicates. How many dukes did they string up on lampposts in Bordeaux? How many chateaus turned to communes? That was a plague born of defeat."
His gaze flicked around the circle, pinning each man in turn.
"Spain is no mere neighbor; it is the mirror of Italy’s future should we lack the spine to act. Alfonso’s weakness becomes our own. His collapse means refugees by the hundreds of thousands over our border, and the French funding new committees in Liguria by winter."