The Emperor's ministers had reached the end of their patience.
In their culture, a person was considered an adult upon turning sixteen. Highborn daughters were routinely married off at that age, provided that their monthly courses had started by then. It was also the age when youths who had no powerful families to back them up would begin being sent off to the battlefield.
Men and women alike, once they were old enough to reproduce, they were also considered old enough to die—the former, by an enemy's sword; the latter, in childbed.
And so, the first prince's continuing uselessness despite already being seventeen was turning into a big problem. Setting aside how he still hadn't been declared the Crown Prince, he should have taken at least one official wife by now.
More than a few of
