It took a month for things to start to feel normal. Or rather, real. If I had been older, I could have acclimated to the change faster, but I was barely sixteen and I had the biggest country of Khaffat under my control. As faulty as Aaliyah-al-Ydaz had been, she had instilled me with a sense of duty to the nation. There was a pride a ruler should have in making their nation work and thrive. And it is not like I did not already have most things at my disposal when I was a princess. Being the Sultanah meant that there was no one above me, just that.
Beyond daily audiences, keeping the frontier well-kept, and fucking all day, there was nothing else much to do.
Oh, you know exactly what I mean. I needed to reap to stay on top. The moment the year ended, I would be the target of my siblings, even if they had promised to surrender their claims for the throne. There was a loophole to the Law of Recent Succession and Stability and that is that if there were no rightful heirs in case of the unexpected passing of the ruler, any sultanzade that had surrendered their claims could have them reinstated. Only once had that clause been summoned, but it existed. So, in other words, I had to have a child before the end of the year.
It is a painful thing to tell a sixteen-year-old girl that she has to get pregnant, but I was a utilitarian woman and I still am. And it was not like I was a virgin, not by any close amount, I was a sultanzade, and I was well aware of this possibility since I was cognizant. One of the foulest things of my early reign was the pilgrimage of our dear religion of Sulnaya. Pilgrims were encouraged to come to Asina and try to bed the Heavenly Descendant, but it made me sick how much people came to try to mate with me.
After talking about it with some scribes, it seemed like there had been more pilgrims in the last month than in the previous two years. I was gathering more people than Aaliyah-al-Ydaz. Mind you, I had not the beauty, the vitality, or the technique of my woman.
Yes, you guessed correctly, and you are more than right for making that expression. They came to me because I was young.
There are many deviants in this world, and when they are told that they have the chance to bed a youthful woman who is also their monarch, they go berserk. But you are wrong in one aspect, it was not only men, but women also. Humanity is full of degenerates, and it does not discriminate between genders. I almost outright abolished Sulnaya here and there, but everyone heavily encouraged me against it. There could be consequences to abolishing the state religion, especially when in the case of Sulnaya it was hard to draw the line between culture and religion.
I did not accept many of the pilgrims, mainly because they disgusted me to the core. They could be a source of vitality, yes, but the number of reaping targets was never an issue. A thousand babies were born in Asina each year alone, and I could barely reap them myself once they came of age. And I inevitably would, as now I aged far slower than most.
Talking about vitality, having a second stance did seem to change my reaping amount a bit. Normally, cultivators can only reap once or twice a day, or it would be more accurate to say that with difficulty they can only reap twice a day unless they are female cultivators on their cycle. But that second stance gave me a bit of a push, and now when I was on my cycle, I could reap thrice a day. Unfortunately for me, I soon was out of my cycle, and it became clear that I was pregnant.
Do not make that face, commonfolk families could have some daughter impregnated by fourteen during our time, especially in rural areas. You and I just did not live that because we were in a higher strata than them.
But even then, I was not without my fortune. Whilst it made no change, I could now reap twice a day without pushing my body to its limits. You may have never reaped, and I will not ask you how you have obtained your vitality for I know you will not reveal your secrets, but it is really exhausting reaping a person past the first time of the day.
The fact that my mother could do it tence a day is a fact that still amazes me to this day. I still do not know if it was a mental fortitude or a physical factor.
She reaped you tence in a single night? Of course, she did. Nince-damned monster.
Where was I?
Right, thank you.
I only became impregnated this fast because I was always on the charm stance during sex. It made no sense wielding any other as the charm stance just made sex more enjoyable even if it had become a chore for me. When I was a sultanzade I considered the exchange of sex for power simply a net positive – and it was – as I could have fun and gain power, but now that I was the Sultanah… it became dull. I could partially understand Aaliyah-al-Ydaz for seeking greater pleasures if only after a month sex became this dull when it becomes part of your job. But I vowed to be better than her. To not cross the same lines.
During these early months, I sent my most martial-centric siblings to the frontier skirmishes. We were still at war, after all. As most emirs had died during this early confrontation, I sent the youngest sultanzade to take the place of imperial scribes and gave the positions of emir to the ones on the frontlines. The message was clear: "Don't stage a military uprising, and you will become the ruler of your own land."
Quite tiresome months, let me tell you. We were instructed to be rulers at any point in our lives, and Rani did teach me personally the art of statecraft and diplomacy that whole previous year, but I still had some teachers, scribes, and counselors advise me and teach me. It was a bit degrading, but I accepted with my head held high. I already told you that pride got people killed, and even if I was hotheaded myself, I wanted to be better than Aaliyah-al-Ydaz in every aspect. And whilst being a better mother would be trivial, that djinnish whore was one of the most competent rulers the world had seen.
It would not be wrong to say that hate and spite alone made me a better ruler.
Yes, ha-ha. They can be quite potent motivators, even our driving forces. If there is something you and I share, it is that ceaseless spite. But we are diverging from the narration.
The war became stagnant, and maybe you do not know this as you only lived in times of peace, but wars could last a long time. I would say the median time for a war was half a decade, though there are extreme cases on both sides like lasting a few months only or two whole decades. I was not ready yet to ride into battle with my swollen belly, but that did not mean there were no gains on the battlefront. Loyatan cohesion was not as strong as we originally thought, so the war of conquest became more of a diplomatic game, much to Rani's enjoyment. City-states specifically kept surrendering under my banner if we kept taxation to minuscule levels for the next decade. Considering this was a war for legitimacy, prestige, and morale; taxation and economic gains were of secondary importance, so we kept accepting their proposals of subjugation without needing to shed a drop of blood on either side.
The rumors of my campaign of total conquest had reached all the corners of the Loyatan Coalition, as you can see. We were technically at war with all of them already thanks to the assassins, so at the utmost minimal threat of violence, they bent the knee. They simply substituted weak alliances for a strong overlord, and considering the republican systems of some of the city-states, they were even eager to accept if it meant keeping their local traditions. A thing they might not be able to do if they were ever to be conquered by their neighbors.
Even if I was in no condition to join the war, it disappointed me greatly. Not only was Rani doing significantly more than me, which was problematic as she might be a coward but also a snake, and I feared that she might try to seize power. That did end up not happening as the fighting spirit of Ydaz kept growing with each conquest, be it bloody or not. This was a factor neither Rani nor I had predicted, but people really liked hearing about how our borders were growing. This created a vicious cycle where more people voluntarily joined the army eager to prove themselves, strengthening our military, and therefore intimidating more of the Loyatan microstates with our greater numbers.
And exactly because the army was this big and I made myself its head, Rani didn't gain much political leverage. Yes, most of the conquests were thanks to her, but she did so much of a great job that she ended up sabotaging herself by making my source of power even stronger and more zealous.
Ah, I cannot help but love the unpredictability of politics.
Even then, vassalage was not the best way of expansion. After nine months, we had only put a tenth of Loyata under my command. But that was enough. Around that time I had my first daughter, Aisha. By then I was already seventeen, but I had never loved more the agility stance in my life as it made giving birth almost trivial. Still hurt like the nine hells, but there were no complications whatsoever.
I had heard many mothers saying how beautiful their babes were when they were born by that point in my life, but at that moment when the midwife gave me my daughter on my arms, I could not help how she was ugly as a dweller.
What? Babies are not cute, screw the first woman that said that. And they do not need to be cute to be loved. I wanted to be different than my mother, and I would not torture my child the same way she did with us. My Aisha, born with beautiful red eyes, would know of the love I did not get.
And no, of course I did not know her father. I had fucked two dozen men around the time I got pregnant, and even if there was only one of them with red eyes, they had long left the palace. Only mothers can enjoy the riches of giving birth to sultanzade, men were useless in that aspect. They planted a seed and went away, forgetting it existed, not bothering to water it like a mother would.
I felt a strange peace that could only be described as maternal as I gave my teat to little Aisha for the first time. Aaliyah-al-Ydaz had apparently never fed her children, she was always too occupied to do so. I set out to feed every single one of them, even if I had an army of wet nurses to do so.
But now that I was no longer pregnant, I could finally go to the frontlines and put an end to this conquest and Loyata once and for all.
Ah, the absolute hideousness of a monarchy based in blood (both sense of the word). I guess these developments aren't surprise to anyone considering it's a somewhat historically accurate depiction of dinasties, just combined with the crassness of Nurture.
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