Tommy walked out of his tent giddily.
His tent, along with the other leaders’, are situated at the centre of their encampment.
When he came out, everyone noticed immediately and swarmed over with questions.
Inside the tent, they can all hear Tommy’s parents still excitedly discussing something.
“Aw, Tommy, I’m so happy for you!” the girls that had been stalking the progress jumped out and cheered.
“Was it really tear jerking?” one of them asked.
“I never thought I’ll cry because of you Tommy!” Alan said with red eyes, but not forgetting to grind his knuckle on Tommy’s head.
Even so, everyone can see that he is truly happy for his brother.
Jim decided it was the perfect time to kick Tommy’s shin, “Dumbass you did it!”
His own eyes are tearing up, so he kept looking upwards, hoping it will somehow drain away.
Edward patted Tommy on his back quietly. A wide grin on his face.
The archer did think about his own broken family. His parents and siblings that were slain and never to see them again, but he suppressed it down.
Every cultivator has his own trial of the heart demon.
At this moment, he only wanted to celebrate with Tommy.
Seeing Tommy unresponsive, the others quickly calmed down.
Someone asked, “How did things go? They couldn’t help us?”
Besides a reunion, Tommy had told them that he wanted to get the resources for Snowdrifts.
“Even if they said no, don’t be depressed. We can think of another way!”
“Yes, you just came home, you should be happily getting spoiled by your mom and dad right now!”
Saying so, they wanted to push Tommy back into the tent.
Their actions finally pulled him out of his stupor a little.
“M… married,” Tommy said stupidly.
“What?”
“I’m getting married.”
“WHAT?”
“My mom and dad want me to marry the princess. Their heir presumptive.”
The busy construction around them fell silent all at once like a practiced orchestra.
Everyone looked over. These large men and hardened warriors had all been secretly listening in.
After all, Tommy is their commander, a position won from his two promotion trials and that makes him their rightful lord.
The promotion trial is tradition, sacred and deep-rooted in the hearts of all the northerners. It allows the Great Khan to absorb all the clans into the Frosthral Feudal State, it also allows Tommy of the Shakyamuni clan to rule them.
In other words, for these northerners, no matter which lord the warriors follows and whatever dispute they fight over, it will always be an internal affair and cannot be considered traitorous.
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Now, if Tommy is to marry the heir presumptive, the crown princess of Logres, it is news that concerns all of them.
“I have to go dress up,” Tommy weakly said, his voice sounded like a mosquito’s.
Suddenly, all his friends around him burst into laughter.
Jim smacked Tommy on the back, “Impressive! You might be the first one to find a wife.”
Alan who was tearing up a while ago, only found his eyes even moister than before, except this time it was from laughter.
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
“We should prepare gifts!”
At this time, Snow’s face already turned bleak. Although the two of them had not confirmed anything, they had been together for a while now.
In Saint Empire, while they do not have laws preventing a man to have multiple wives or concubines, monogamy is more popular with the people.
The reason is legendary, an epic love story between their Emperor and Saint Empire’s only queen that everyone – man or woman, young or old – wanted to experience themselves.
In this love story, there was not any up and downs that made it into a thrilling tale, only a simple companionship and a quiet but unwavering relationship.
For a love to last, it is not burning passion that keep it together, but love like a deep tranquil lake that can weather through stormy days and never dry up on years of drought.
It is this kind of love that made Emperor Galahad to search for life extending treasured pills and spirit fruits throughout Gaia, not caring for the costs to acquire them.
There was an unripen longevity peach passed down from the age of myths in an ancient sect that could help increase a thousand years of life span for a cultivator.
To exchange for this item, Galahad spent a fortune and had to stay three years in the ancient sect to teach all his cultivation knowledge to the sect disciples.
The queen who consumed the fruit along with other life extending items only lived to two hundred, but till death she looked as beautiful as she was in her teens. This everlasting youth caused a huge age gap between her first child, the Merchant Prince, and her last, the little princess Relestia.
As a regular person, most of the medical properties of the life extending treasures she consumed were lost, but she enjoyed more than four times the life span of non-cultivators.
One can guess just how much love Emperor Galahad had for her. Even a decade passed, he never set his eyes on another woman, only transferred all his love onto Relestia.
In fact, the emperor prepared her to inherit his empire. Her intelligence and ability is one factor, but Galahad will not deny that the princess looking like a younger version of his late wife was the key reason.
Most empires only have emperors and queens, few would elect an empress because the family name only pass down males and not females.
But Galahad changed it so that the woman will carry the family name even after marriage. As for the tradition to take the husband’s family name, well, it is just a matter of adding one more word to the name.
Therefore, should Relestia marry Kairos one day, her name would become Relestia Vestimore Astroire.
This way she can become the empress while upholding traditions.
Besides keeping to culture, there is a more practical reason why empresses were normally shunned. Women can only bore children once every nine months, and each time they rarely carry more than one babe in their womb.
For this matter, most empires encourage men to take up multiple wives and concubines and the emperor will set an example with three thousand concubines.
In a way, it will give off a signal that the more successful a man is, the more women he would have. If such sentiments are properly received, the empire can continue to sustain.
Dismissing the fact that warring states faces higher child mortality due to lesser resource allotment and other factors, if an empire wants to replenish their soldiers or dream of any kind of expansion, restricting birth rates is suicidal.
That far from the issues of morality, it is because of survival that no empire dared to lay down the laws of monogamy.
On Gaia, the nations that practices monogamy or matriarchal society are the minority. As for the countries with monogamy society or matriarchal rule, few are truly due to morality, religion, or faith. Most are forced to adopt such practices due to food or resource shortage and cannot support a larger population.
In fact, with Saint Empire’s ideal conditions, they want to encourage more to take up second and third wives or half a dozen concubines.
Unfortunately, normal resources are plentiful, but cultivation resource is something that every country will never have enough of.
Therefore, those that have children will only receive a pitiful amount of stipend. Only higher cultivation ranks will bring rewards home.
This way, even if Emperor Galahad never take up another queen to set an example for his fellows nor openly encourage polygamy, just the promise of land and nobility will improve the birth rates.
Snow, who is also dreaming of having a love like the emperor and his queen, stared daggers into Tommy.
An ice cold feeling wash over him and snapped him awake.
Tommy quickly found Snow in the crowd looking disappointed at him.
“S… Snow… Let me explain…”
“Uh oh,” someone said a little too loudly.