Over two days, there was an icy silence radiating around the Queen's apartments, freezing the entire Versailles court. Laughter and music that would seep into her apartments had ceased. The ladies of the bedchamber, when seen, scurried up the corridors with downcast eyes, their vibrant dresses resembling funeral attire in the oppressive silence. Art navigated through an intimidating palace that had become a battlefield of cold looks and turned shoulders. He was the King, but a pariah.
He and Marie Antoinette had not uttered a word to one another since the disagreement. He had sat through a formal dinner the previous evening in frozen, weaponized silence that was charged with more tension than any yelling match. Every courtier in the room had felt the cold, and sides were being formed. Art knew, without his HUD to tell him, that he was losing the battle for the court's affections.
On the third morning, the inevitable audience arrived. The Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, the Holy Roman Ambassador and the Empress Maria Theresa's personal representative, asked for a rush private audience. Art felt a knot develop in his stomach. This was the escalation that he had dreaded. Mercy-Argenteau was no average diplomat; he was the tutor, the confidant, the chief political handler of Marie Antoinette since the day that she'd become a French teenage bride. He was, in short, Austria's finger on the shoulder of the Queen of France.
Art ushered him into his study, the ledger fortress now no longer the war room, but the aftermath of a mistake. Mercy-Argenteau entered at his calm, deliberate pace, his face a perfect mask of kind concern. It was a superb piece of work. He was a concerned father figure, yet in his eyes the cold, calculating glow of the man whose fate hung in the scale of nations.
"Your Majesty," stated the Comte, effortlessly bowing. "You will need to excuse this visit. I come to visit with you now not as your ambassador, but as a passionate admirer of this court, and as a humbled servant for whom the happiness of our dear Queen comes first of all."
Every word was a well-crafted stone, laid as the foundation of the attack to come. Art remained silent, gesturing for him to continue.
"The Queen is... ill," stated Mercy-Argenteau, his voice weighed down by sorrow. "Her spirits are low. She experiences much distress. It is a dismal thing that a young woman should be so lonely, so misapprehended, in a foreign land." He paused, letting the insinuation stay. "Her mother, the Empress, lives on the letters that she receives from her dear daughter. It would be extremely... distraught... to learn that her daughter is being made to feel unwanted and dishonored in her home."
The subtext was about as subtle as a cannonball. The grand alliance between the mighty of Franco-Austria, the keystone of European stability that had put an end to generations of conflict, was constructed on the pillars of said royal union. The Queen's joy wasn't a domestic concern; it was a global security concern. Her outrage was a diplomatic upset ready to befall, and Mercy-Argenteau here came to present the bill.
Art, his mind still in accountant thinking, having unearthed a catastrophic overspend in the budget, was seized by a fit of indignation. He had unearthed a multi-million livre deficiency, and now was being rebuked about how his wife would take it. He tried to argue his corner through the only tools of reality that he wholly trusted: figures and fact.
"Comte," said Art, his tone formal in ways that he did not intend, "with all respect for Her Majesty's spirits, no price the kingdom does not possess can buy the happiness of the nation. We are looking into the abyss of financial bankruptcy. The Treasury has no money. We are borrowing at unsustainable levels simply to keep the government up and running. The reductions that I've made are not a punishment; they are a grave necessity."
Mercy-Argenteau sat with a face of polite tolerance, as at the story of a child telling of an imaginary dream. When Art finished, the ambassador granted him a small, sad smile.
"Your Majesty, I do not aim to understand the nuances of finances. That is the work of the bankers and the clerks," said the man, his tone condescending. "But I understand the bonds of alliance. I understand that the dignity of a Queen of France, a daughter of the Habsburg Empress, does not represent an itemized expense in the ledger. It represents the unconquerable friendship between our two great nations. One must not confuse the two."
Condescension infuriated his blood. Art's rage was increasing. He was going to tell the ambassador that his treasured alliance would mean very little when France would be in default on its loans and thrown into anarchy, but he kept his wits about him. Logic wasn't doing any good. The man wasn't there to debate economics. He was there to make a threat.
Art leaned back, closing his eyes for a second, and focused his mind, exploring the HUD. Run scenario: Do not take heed of the Ambassador warning. Keep the full thirty percent cut to the Queen's private allowance and freeze all household accounts.
The blue screen flashed to life in his mind, the words cold and unforgiving.
SCENARIO OUTCOME: NEGATIVE
Diplomatic Relations - Austria: -40% (STATUS: COLD WAR). Austrian troops may be mobilized on the border as a show of force.
Trade Agreement Negotiations (Austrian Netherlands): FAILED. Estimated loss of 4 million livres in annual revenue.
Court Stability: -20%. (Nobility, led by Vergennes, rally around the spurned Queen, isolating the King.)
NEW METRIC UNLOCKED: "International Prestige." Current Status: -15%. (Perceived as a weak king unable to control his own household, inviting foreign meddling.)
Art's blood froze. He had been looking at a chess board, but the HUD had just indicated that the game was three-dimensional. His struggle in his mind to keep France afloat had enormous geopolitics. He couldn't just cook the books in a vacuum. He had treated Marie Antoinette as a troublesome department manager who deserved to get his budget cut. He had not realized that she was what she was in the game: an Austrian strategic asset, the flesh-and-blood linchpin of the most important alliance that France had. And now, in his anxiety, he had blundered clumsily.
He sat up, the fury draining out of him, the cold rationality of a CEO whose favorite foreign contract will be forfeit due to an internal spat. He had to yield, yet not completely rescind his decree. To do that would make him seem soft and changeable, a boy-king cowed by his wife's handlers. He had to find a way to give Mercy-Argenteau the win while maintaining his own preeminence. He would need to learn how to speak their language.
"Comte," Art said, his tone softening, adopting the conciliatory, kingly tone. "Your words... have given me pause. Maybe my decree, issued in the depths of extreme budgetary panic, was... impetuous in its tone." He caught a flash of triumph in the ambassador's eyes and knew that he was going in the right direction. "It was not my wish to hold Her Majesty up for revenge. The Queen is the center of all of France, and she radiates because we all radiate in reflected light."
He paused, choosing his next words with greatest delicacy, weaving a new narrative. "What we want here is to create an atmosphere of vast sacrifice, a new era of austerity that must begin at the very highest level. The thirty percent cutback is an objective for the whole Royal Household. There will be a tightening of the belt for everybody, from my own hunting allowance to the expenses of the state banquets. Her Majesty, of course, being the First Lady of the French State, will not be a victim of the cutbacks. She will be the leader. She will be the greatest possible example of all the people in the kingdom, demonstrating to the world that the French Crown has every respect for thrift as well as for ceremony."
It was a brilliant reversal. He hadn't rescinded the order, but completely redrafted it. It wasn't a private rebuke anymore; it was a nationwide crusade, of which the Queen was the inspirational chief.
Mercy-Argenteau was smart enough to recognize the trick for what it was—a word of consolation in vague terms. Art had handed him something to take back to the Queen (and to Vienna) as a victory, while simultaneously reinforcing his own reform agenda.
He bowed, his face once again one of respectful warmth. "A very kingly and wise solution, Your Majesty. I must say, if presented in that way, the Queen will accept her key place in the future of the kingdom."
He came out of the study, the victor of the meeting. Art was left with a splitting headache and the bitter aftertaste of his first important political compromise. He had saved the Austrian alliance, all right, but at the cost of bending. He stared out at the perfect, well-manicured gardens and knew, with queasy stomach, that filling the books would be the easy work. Fighting the treacherous, senseless world of human pride and politics was the heavy lifting.