"The Holy City does not support such a right. Nor does the King..."
Morgan fell silent for a moment before speaking softly.
In truth, after enduring twelve dynastic wars, Britannia had reorganized its knightly and noble classes, indirectly changing many of its old abuses.
Among the principles upheld by the Knights of the Round Table was respect for chaste women.
As a result, the "right of the first night," an outdated and barbaric custom, was no longer accepted by most of the present-day knightly class or nobility.
However, the practice was closely tied to a lord's authority within his own fiefdom, making it impossible to eradicate completely.
When free subjects encountered such a situation, they would often marry in secret or flee to another territory to prevent the lord from claiming the wife's virginity.
Grooms who did not dare resist could negotiate with the lord before the wedding and pay to buy back the right of the first night.
Provided the lord was willing to sell it, especially if the bride was not particularly attractive or he was no longer capable of exercising the right himself, he would often prefer to turn it into a special tax rather than claim it in person.
To prevent their subjects from fleeing, and because of Camelot's presence and the stance of the Knights of the Round Table, even lords with sordid intentions had to show some restraint. They did not dare take matters too far.
Unfortunately, slaves had no such recourse.
Even if the couple accused their lord of this act, no existing law in Britannia could be used to punish him.
At most, he would receive a few words of moral condemnation.
So even if the two reached Camelot, they would still have to keep their heads down and remain hidden.
"Then why not simply suggest that the King of Knights abolish the custom?"
Mari rested her cheek on one hand and asked curiously.
"It would be useless..."
Morgan shook her head slightly, her expression calm.
"The King's duty is only to ensure Britannia's survival and keep as many people alive as possible."
"The right of the first night is not an established law. It is merely a custom that has become accepted practice. To preserve Britannia's stability, the monarchy cannot interfere too forcefully with how individual lords govern and make decisions within their own territories."
"She would never overturn the existing order lightly for the sake of one or two people's grievances..."
Morgan understood her younger sister all too well.
Ever since she took up that spear, Artoria, or rather, the King of Knights, could no longer be described as a "person" in the ordinary sense.
It would be more fitting to call her a "Divine Spirit."
That assessment was not without reason. Her army could easily replenish the cavalry units it had just lost, and it suffered almost no casualties while crushing the invading barbarian forces. As it swept across the battlefield, even fortresses built specifically to defend against King Arthur were effortlessly demolished by the Enforcement Knights.
The enemies of the Round Table had indeed fallen apart after she joined the war. Across twelve dynastic wars, she had never once been defeated.
Yet countless people had sacrificed their lives to produce those victories.
Likewise, whenever that King personally acted in battle, the result was a world-shattering catastrophe. Tens of thousands vanished beneath that spiraling pillar of light.
Every decision she made was measured in blood-soaked numbers.
To conceal the movements of her army, she had ordered the massacre of foreign villages. To enforce military discipline, she had executed entire groups of deserters. To unify the Southern Frontier, she had stained her hands with the blood of rebellious lords and their subjects.
A considerable number of the dead had even been innocent.
For example, she might drain one village of its resources before a war to prepare her army, then destroy an enemy tribe before it could ravage her territory, thereby saving ten other villages. That was certainly an achievement worthy of praise.
But supplying the army inevitably meant stripping the local village bare. The people left behind without food had effectively been abandoned to die.
Even so, she remained faithful to the oath she had sworn. A king could not rule while burdened by human emotion.
Because of that, not even the Knights of the Round Table closest to her had ever seen her display sorrow or the slightest trace of emotional disturbance.
She could raise her sword and wipe out an entire village, then sit at her desk moments later and handle every matter in the kingdom, great or small, with near-perfect competence and without the slightest hesitation or wavering.
That made the Knights of the Round Table both revere and fear their sovereign.
In a sense, the King of Knights had long since sealed away her emotions. To both her enemies and the people of her own kingdom, she had become a symbol of fairness and selflessness, a rational machine that governed the realm.
She had endured the bloodiest wars and witnessed the most wretched tragedies with her own eyes.
Compared with all that, what significance could the humiliation and separation caused by an archaic custom like the right of the first night possibly hold?
Measured against the stability of the various lords and the survival of Britannia itself, it was not worth mentioning.
"A trivial matter? I don't see it that way. If this old custom is abused, it can become a powerful weapon for provoking conflict between the classes. If it continues, sooner or later, more and more people will rise against their lords' oppression, and Britannia will fall into unrest."
Samael smiled faintly, his deep gaze fixed on the firelight as he spoke with quiet implication.
"Even those who once dared not speak will eventually direct their anger toward the King of Knights as time passes and their resentment accumulates."
In fact, a little more than seven hundred years later, a fierce struggle over the "right of the first night" would break out on this very land.
In the future, Edward I, the fifth King of England from the Plantagenet dynasty, also known as "Edward Longshanks" and the "Hammer of the Scots," would conquer the Celts of Scotland.
"It appears the time has come to revive one of our ancient traditions... the right of the first night!"
Edward declared that the English possessed the right of the first night over Scotland's commoners.
The "right of the first night." What a marvelous phrase. Such a system could trample the dignity of the conquered to the greatest possible extent, secure the support of the lords beneath him, and greatly accelerate the absorption of a foreign people's bloodline. It was a brilliant strategy that accomplished three goals at once.
Once the right of the first night had been successfully imposed on a people and the spirit of its men had been crushed, that people's destruction would become only a matter of time.
This long-legged monarch intended to drive the Scots to extinction, crushing the Celts and swallowing them whole into the Anglo-Saxon system.
The reality, however, was that a young Scotsman named William Wallace witnessed his betrothed being abducted, violated, and killed by English soldiers. Enraged, he rose in rebellion.
The Celts conquered by England rallied to his cause and launched a sweeping resistance against the English colonizers.
In the end, although Wallace was defeated and killed, his successor, Robert Bruce, led the Kingdom of Scotland in repelling the Kingdom of England's invasion and securing national independence.
Samael remembered the story so clearly because, during his school days in his previous life, his English teacher had shown the entire class a film about it called Braveheart.
There was no doubt that tolerating such a vile custom, insignificant though it might seem to those in power, was one of the easiest ways to accumulate public resentment and undermine the foundations of a nation.
The renowned Italian political thinker Niccolò Machiavelli once wrote in [The Prince], "One must either treat the people generously or destroy them completely. Minor grievances breed resentment, while overwhelming force leaves them too frightened to resist."
Put simply, when dealing with the people, one should either treat them with genuine benevolence, without leaving them endless reasons for resentment, or be so ruthlessly thorough that no one dares speak out against them.
Allowing minor grievances like these to fester was the surest way to invite disorder.
That was precisely why the King of Knights, despite accomplishing so many great deeds and saving Britannia from destruction, ultimately saw the Round Table collapse and the people rise in rebellion.