Chapter 102 - A bit of geopolitics

Words : 1029 Updated : Oct 5th, 2025

Chapter 102: Chapter 102 - A bit of geopolitics I always loved geopolitics. And by always, I mean exactly that. One of my oldest memories is about watching the news on TV trying to understand one of those wars of the Middle East. I was about 4 years old at the time. So yes, I always loved it. I would dive deep into textbooks on history and geopolitics even for classes that were advanced for my age. That was the reason I became a Social Anthropologist, after all. I wanted to understand humanity, society, and all that makes us what we are. And one of the things I loved the most in geopolitics was, of course, to give my own opinion and say how people in positions of power should handle stuff. How ironic it is that I find myself in this position now. A princess in line for the crown of an important country. Third in line, okay, but still in line. And yet, I refuse it. I don’t want it. It isn’t like I don’t want power or don’t want to try to rights some wrongs... The crux of the problem lies in the Church, the slavery system, and the structural racism. There is so much going wrong in this world that I don’t think a queen of humans could ever fix. It isn’t a theocratic society, far from it, but the Church holds a lot of sway in how things should be and what the government should do. Our country is in a relatively safe position. It is the realm that is located further north and with quite some distance between our borders and the Dragon Mountains. The war against the dragonkin is happening mostly in the south and west of the continent, very far from our borders. That is the reason one could live here without even knowing that there is a huge war going on. The dragonkin launched a surprise attack a couple of years ago and gained a crucial advantage, taking big swathes of land. Humans fight using the Adventuring System to their advantage. All combat is approached using the skills available in the System. Dragonkin don’t have that System, which means that they don’t have access to those skills and are individually weaker, so they resort to cunning tactics and guerrilla warfare. The countries at the front of the war are the Calem Kingdom and the Castro Empire. Not unsurprisingly, they are the most fanatic countries when it comes to the goddess’ religion. The religion doesn’t have a proper name to distinguish it from others, because it’s basically the only religion allowed to exist in the human lands. So there are no ’other’ religions to distinguish it from. So, it’s The Religion and The Church, period. Or ’the goddess religion’ for people like me. The further away you get from the battlefront, the more secular the kingdoms tend to be. Until you arrive in the country furthest away from the front, Wesgoth. Which is the seat of the Pontifex. That is something I felt very weird about from the beginning. The official reason is because she lived in this city for some time. But there are two real reasons for it. First, safety. Being so far from the dragons’ lands, it’s harder for them to dispatch a mission to kill the Pontifex. I’m told that in the last hundred years at least two Pontifex were assassinated. The last one was thirty years ago, when they decided to move the Holy See to Wesgoth. The second reason is that they wanted to fight the increasing heresy that the Wesgoth royal family was committing. It seems that my ancestors were already on a path of collision with the church ages before my mother came to be. The other kingdoms of Essendia and Histria form, along with Castro, Calem, and Wesgoth, what is known as the ’Big Five,’ the most powerful human countries. There are several minor independent states, like the Free City of Siebentürme, the ever-neutral Heluveity, and several principalities and city-states. But the ’Big Five’ dominate the continent. So that puts me as a princess of not any country, but of one of the most powerful countries in this world. That’s too big of a responsibility for silly little me. Now I think that I’m starting to get the reason why Mom is so adamant about me going to school and ’learning about the world.’ She wants me to understand my own position within said world. Ugh, things were far easier in the Barren Wilds. No big plans, just kill monsters, make food, do chores, rinse, and repeat. In the Royal Academy I’ll be studying alongside some of the sons and daughters of the highest-ranking nobility of all those kingdoms. That’s because the Academy is not only the biggest on the continent, but it’s also the safest in these times of war. I’m not looking forward to meeting the spoiled brats of nobility. Just by imagining it, it makes me want to puke. I heard that some of the foreigner nobles don’t deal well with the fact that commoners are allowed in the Royal Academy at all and that bullying is rampant. For a commoner to manage to complete their studies there, they need to not only perform a lot better than the nobles but also put up with all the bullying. For seven years. I admire them, because I know that I wouldn’t manage to make it. Well, maybe I could try to befriend those commoners. They could make for better and more interesting friends than the noble brats. But I know that Mom will scold me if I isolate myself too much from nobility, so I’ll have to at least be social with them. The bare minimum. Well, in any case, I think that I’m well prepared for the written exams. I haven’t had many opportunities to read and write in Esperansy while in the Barrens, but I catch up to that kind of thing easily. And the math side is very basic, just the four basic operations. All in all, I’m going to pass with flying colors.

Chapter 102 - A bit of geopolitics

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