In some ways, Count Flaud’s suicide was predictable. Whatever the result was, he wasn’t like the other nobles who could attempt to slide out of the whole fiasco by proclaiming his ignorance; after all, there was clear evidence that he had joined hands with the Bellids. He would have been under suspicion anyway, since he was the one most heavily involved in framing the Steelwalls as Bellid collaborators, but the concrete evidence that had come up from this war had sealed his fate. Not just as a noble, but in this world where the Karuwimans had a deep influence, the fact that he was a Bellid collaborator wasn’t acceptable anywhere. People wouldn’t allow his very existence.

Resistance would have also been difficult. A large portion of his army was killed, and those who survived questioned their loyalty to the Count when his connection to the Bellids was revealed. Furthermore, the royals and other nobles were turning a blind eye to him. As his family’s arch-nemesis, the Steelwalls, and their army marched to capture him, any fool would have been able to predict that his only...