Hero’s Downfall Report

68 – Biography – Beatrice Dandolo, The Lion in the Rose Garden

『(…) (1) Rich (2) small (3) countries. These are words that describe the Eastern Allies. Those three words contain the past, present, and future of the Allied Powers.

The geographical location of the Allied Powers is not very good. It is a peninsula that is blocked on the west by the empire and on the other three sides by the sea. Most of them are islands. How could a country like this amass so much wealth?

Through ocean trade.

The Eastern Allies have grown through trade between this large continent where their empire is located and another continent on the other side across the unknown sea. This is how wealth is explained.

Then this question follows. ‘Why doesn’t the Empire conquer the Eastern Allies or make them vassals?’ The answer can also be found in ‘rich.’

The Eastern Allied Powers are the Pope’s biggest supporters and supporters. Every city in the Allies has at least one branch of the Knights Templar. If you attack the Allied Powers, you are automatically attacking the Papal States as well.

What will the Pope get? He gets gold. The Allies ‘donate’ a huge amount of money to the Knights every year. The Pope earns a huge amount of operating funds for the Knights Templar, and the Eastern Allies gain safety.

That’s not all. Although the Vatican and the Southern Kingdom deny it, past Popes have been more closely related to the Eastern Allies than to the Southern Kingdom. Of the three popes, one is from the East, one has enormous influence, and the last is a product of election rigging in the Eastern Kingdoms.

In this situation, there is no reason for the Empire to invade the Eastern Allies, even going against the wishes of the Pope and the Vatican. No one would like it if His Majesty the Emperor were excommunicated.

Why do the Eastern Allies do this? It’s based on (2) being small.

There are good things about a small country, but there are also bad things. Military power is bound to be poor, which means it is difficult to block external enemies.

In a previous class, we learned that an empire’s standing army is an inconvenient system that requires not only manpower but also maintenance costs. The empire also had a very difficult standing army system, and it was meaningless for the Eastern Allies, which already had very small populations, to create a standing army.

Before establishing a honeymoon with the Pope, during the time when the Eastern Allies were divided, each country purchased mercenaries.

In theory, mercenaries are attractive. They are proven and skilled warriors, and they have good chemistry and unity. It can be deployed immediately without any additional training, and is economical because you only need to sign a contract when necessary.

From the country’s perspective, it is extremely efficient. So why doesn’t the empire buy a mercenary group? This is because the harmful effects of mercenary groups were revealed through the example of the Eastern Allies.

Before forming an alliance, they purchased mercenary groups to devour other countries. However, the mercenaries did not move that actively.

The reason is simple. From the mercenary perspective, the more eastern countries there were, the better.

There are not many places that buy mercenaries. Merchants from the time of the Great Crusade might not know this, but in a situation where there is a tacit truce and exchange like now, the only place for mercenaries to go is to the Eastern Allies.

But, attacking the other party’s Eastern Allied Powers? For the mercenary group, this was no different from eliminating customers with their own hands.

Recent research has revealed that there was collusion and smuggling between mercenary groups. After decoding the letter written in cipher, it was revealed that no transactions were to be accepted below a certain amount and that each party should be informed of the appropriate attack line and defense plan before the battle. Avoid unnecessary human casualties.

In this situation, it has become common for the battle trumpet to be blown and neither the offensive nor the defensive side doing anything, wasting time and supplies.

But the eastern countries were unable to protest against these evils. There was a precedent where, if the mercenary leader’s feelings were wrongly offended, the mercenary group would attack and devour the country as soon as the contract was concluded.

That country is Veneruccia.

Cesare Dandolo, the head of the Dandolo family and the leader of the Dandolo mercenaries, killed the king of Venerucia.

With his handsome appearance, charisma, fair handling of work, and excellent speech, he was well-received by Venerucian citizens, nobles, and merchants, and is said to have been well-liked within the mercenary group.

The last king of Venerutia was incompetent and jealous. The most powerful policy among them was the imposition of huge taxes on galley oars and sailboat sails.

Wealthy merchants with large ships were angry at this policy and went to visit Cesare Dandolo, who was in charge of the Venerusian defense line.

Cesare Dandolo assassinates the king as soon as the defense contract is over. It wasn’t an assassination, it was a public execution by putting him in the middle of a large square and beheading him.

The king’s last words were, ‘Save me! I will give you both Venercia and the throne of Venercia, just let you live!’

But Cesare Dandolo did not take either of them. ‘There is no king anymore,’ he officially declares. Instead, he declared, raising his blood-stained sword high to the cheering merchants and citizens. ‘You are the kings of Venerutia!’

From the moment he killed the king, Cesare Dandolo was no longer a mercenary leader. He should have been a politician. And he did it very expertly.

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He knew that if he ascended to the throne, he would also become a puppet in the hands of wealthy merchants, and that if he used mercenaries to confiscate their property or harm them, he would lose their trust.

So Cesare summoned the six guilds that run Venerucia. Construct. Mason. Shipping, etc… Each guild had its own role. These guilds kept each other in check and slandered each other, but at the same time maintained an ideal system in which they never wanted anyone to fail.

Cesare orders the six guilds to ‘choose your own leaders.’ The six guilds’ choice was Dandolo. None of the heads of the six guilds wanted to be leaders themselves, but he hated it even more when others became leaders. In addition, the compensation he would receive from the mercenary group that was still alive and well probably also played a part.

In this way, Cesare Dandolo becomes Doxe, the first elected leader for life. The six guilds develop into a 15-person committee. Each guild recommends two members to the committee, and each guild joins the committee with itself and the two people it recommended.

The Dandolo family conquers other eastern countries one by one. It was not conquered by force or force. Instead, he successfully succeeded in transplanting the Venerusian system by inciting the country’s powerful merchants.

And launched a large, loose federation of alliances. That was the birth of the Eastern Allies.

However, if things continue like this, it is certain that we will be attacked by the Empire or the Southern Kingdom. Cesare Dandolo suddenly resigns from his position and walks barefoot to the papal palace in the southern kingdom. He did it to atone for the sins he had committed.

The Pope willingly forgave his sins. Inspired by Cesare’s strong mind, they of course gave him the ‘Knights’, and the Dandolo family and the Eastern Allies ended up hiring the ‘Knights’ like mercenaries. All we had to do was keep one or two people.

From this time on, the uneasy coexistence between the Pope and the Eastern Allies continued. If the Eastern Allies did not do something, the Pope either removed the Knights or increased the number of soldiers dispatched. The Eastern Allies responded by plotting against the cardinals around the Pope.

You would be surprised if you knew how much the average cardinal term has decreased since Cesare Dandolo came to power, and how suddenly cardinals are accused of indelible sins ‘even by secular standards.’

The Eastern Allies, having concluded that they could not rely solely on the Pope, gradually began targeting the eastern part of the empire, i.E. Their own western part.

At first, they did not target the imperial territory, but the fiefdoms of nobles who had a bad relationship with the emperor. A small conflict soon develops into a local war. It was the decision of Nicolo Dandolo, who was Duce at the time.

It wasn’t that there was no basis. The empire was going through a great crusade. Against the pagans of the North and West.

Niccolò Dandolo’s intention was to quickly occupy the east and negotiate later, knowing that the empire’s power was weak, but as you know, the sudden rise of the Demon King put that in vain.

The Demon King’s birthplace was the wasteland of the northeastern region, and if the Eastern Allied Forces advanced further into the eastern part of the empire, they would be directly attacked by the Demon King.

In the end, the Demon King was overthrown by the struggles of the seven heroes. The empire was victorious.

Even though the gambler failed, Nicolo Dandolo wasn’t really shaken. Rather, the situation was not bad. All the mercenary groups in the east were completely disintegrated at that time.

The fact that they received a huge loan from the southern kingdom was also used as an advantage. They calculated that if the Empire invaded the Eastern Allies, the Southern Kingdom and the Pope would not be able to recover their loans, so they would never sit still.

In other words, military security was practically guaranteed. However, the internal conflict worsened. His political opponents immediately criticized Nicolo, asking how he was going to repay the enormous debt.

Nicolo Dandolo counters such claims quite flexibly. Until an unexpected political enemy, Beatrice Dandolo, his only daughter, appears.

She was young, confident, and smart, and was a woman with a temperament and boldness that was more than that of her father. Although she was young, she boasted such outstanding beauty that she was called the second coming of Cesare Dandolo.

It is said that she was called the Lion of the Rose Garden, a person with a charisma that not only charms people but also makes them submit just by looking at her. Since this is a story from an imperial envoy, you can believe it.

Beatrice Dandolo’s argument was close to innovation. Her claims shook the Eastern Allied political system to its foundations.

In summary, the idea was to distribute the power and duties of the Duce to ordinary citizens. This is how she develops what Cesare Dandolo said: “The king of Venerusia is the Venerusian people.”

‘Everyone in the Eastern Allies is a king. The king decides his own destiny. A man in the Eastern Allies must be able to decide his own destiny.’

Beatrice argued that she should give all United people the power to elect their leaders. Likewise, she makes the radical claim that everyone has the right to be elected leader.

She didn’t stop there. If everyone is a king, the king has a duty to protect what is his, so he proposed that all men and women receive military training.

‘They protect their property and rights with their own hands, without depending on anyone else’s hands. And politics ensures that.’

Then, of course, this question arises. ‘But even if you combine the number of people in the Eastern Allies, it is not enough compared to the imperial army. ‘How will we overcome this?’

She answered ‘cannon’.

I think many people don’t know about cannons. It is said to be an invention from a distant, foreign country in the East, capable of collapsing even the strongest castles and reversing the assaults of even the strongest knights.

It is said that its power is stronger than a hundred catapults combined, and its sound is louder than a thousand thunders combined.

Beatrice Dandolo proposed equipping her ship with a weapon called a ‘cannon’. The logic was that then, even if they could not attack the empire, they could always prevent an invasion.

Her cause received enormous support from new tycoons, young people, merchants sick of the Pope’s greed, and shipping and shipbuilding guilds.

However, the opposing guilds, namely the stonemasons guild, which supported her father Niccolò Dandolo and did not want other guilds to grow rapidly, and the merchants who already had great wealth, opposed her claims.

The father and daughter have become political enemies. The father was the representative of the existing order, and the daughter was the symbol of the new power.

The confrontation between the lion at dusk and the lioness with her back to the rising moon, however, ends in vain.

Just five years ago, Beatrice Dandolo was assassinated after getting caught up in a fight between street thugs, and Niccolò Dandolo jumped from the top of the Vene Lucia Castle after showing signs of delirium over his daughter’s death.

No one knows why Beatrice Dandolo died like that.

However, she liked meeting people, and the cause of her death was an argument between young people who wanted to attract her attention. However, for a woman who could have greatly changed the future of the Eastern Allied Powers, the ending feels empty.

As a result, the Eastern Allies are still in great political chaos (…)

– Part of lecture notes from Professor Anna Commodus’ ‘Introduction to Imperial History’ class, ‘Past, Present and Future of the Eastern Allies’, Imperial Capital Academy 』