Chapter 10
Katharina was no stranger to heathen traditions. In fact, she was rather well-educated on them, given her expertise in Celtic and Germanic culture.
Still, it was one thing to read about those things in a book, and another thing altogether to witness a teacher repeatedly commit blasphemy. At first, it had been rather droll, but now, Professor Nowak was not even trying to sugarcoat it anymore.
“When Karl the Great waged his, ahem, Holy War against the tribes east of the river Ader, he did not stop at simply culling the men. He massacred the women, and even the children, too,” he ranted. “Countless ancient rituals were forever lost. What few survivors remained were forced to adopt the Christian faith.”
He turned around dramatically, stopping his frantic drawing on the blackboard.
“Today, we call their ancestral lands the ‘northern countships’. They were, unsurprisingly, among the first to adopt protestantism when it emerged.”
Now he was going from blasphemy to what could easily be understood as ‘endorsement of rebellion against the Emperor’. ‘I need to come up with an excuse for why I’m here if anyone asks,’ she nervously thought. Colluding with pagan sympathizers would be a great way to lose favor and credibility in the western regions, something she really could not afford.
Still, leaving was not an option. The enraptured face of Prince Arnold, who sometimes even nodded in agreement with the professor, made it abundantly clear that this course would be an optimal venue to engage with him. Whether or not it was a performance did not matter, for once. He was clearly signaling his aversion to Western customs and values, a statement so severe that the excuse of ‘faking it’ would be worthless in the eyes of the Emperor.
Not that she was surprised. House Hohenfels was actively aiming to upset the status quo through elevation to a duchy, and thus, Imperial electorship. Which meant that it could potentially end the centuries-long supremacy of House Altendorf by supporting the houses Falkenstein or Greifenhain as the next Emperor.
Because of that, they would never manage to get the western duchies – Altengau, Sonnenfeld, and Schwarzwald – to back them. They had prospered under the Altendorf dynasty.