he had been at war for so long that it was almost foreign to slip into such fine clothes, trimmed with golden buttons and lace cuffs. he felt like an impostor to the title he carried, a broken man that was now told to act as a count and intermingle with the royals ─ for your country and the crown, his mother had murmured before sending him off but hadn’t he sacrificed enough for both those things ? he tried to upkeep a congenial persona, despite it all, though he drifted off to the comforts of his own thoughts more often than not, a little disgusted at how false each person was being, rubbing elbows with the enemies as though the war had not just ended a few months ago.
❝ oh yes, we sup on wine and cheese while half of the countryside and their crops still suffer from the pillaging of war. ❞ not that he cared for the french or their crops, but he also could care less for wine or brittany or those of high-born blood. ❝ of course, denmark has been spared such brutalities. ❞ neutral, neutral even though his sister was the russian tsarina. alexei could not understand the logic behind that and the wine that dulled his senses did little to churn at his sympathies.
STRAIGHT TO the point, then. hadrian was not one to be rash, and at first he acted if he had not heard the man, painstakingly dealing himself another card and taking a sip of his wine. he sat on it for a moment, so when he did speak, he was firm and unweathered. “a wondrous thing— crops also suffer if a majority of a small country’s working-age men die fighting a war on foreign soil, and then from disease and injury later when the whims of such foreign soil change.” he said, unruffled. the implication that of course alexei wouldn’t have to think of such things on a country-wide scale was gentle, albeit present. he’d say that he couldn’t justify sending innocent people to die for bad blood that had nothing to do with denmark, if he could, but he knew better than to waste trust on a bitter man.
HADRIAN SHUFFLED the cards in his hand, and leant back in his seat to wave a servant boy in for a snack. he’d had to answer this question several times over the course of his visit, and was becoming bored of the base assumptions and ignorance — war was humanity made ugly, and those who leapt into it easily like breathing were made ugly, and he had no desire to lose half his country to a stranger’s ugliness. “there would be little to destroy when one starves the working class to pay for the demands of an army -- weapons, correspondence, food, clothing, lodging, entertainment, wages, compensation, travel... but i believe it is your turn to play, my lord, and i am more fond of this game than the discussion of hypotheticals.”
