Laird Truth had been granted a pardon, at the price of serving the Flame Kingdom for the rest of his life and offering up all the knowledge he had learned and information he possessed.
Liszt had no interest in his magical knowledge, but the information he held—especially information concerning the Kushan Empire—was well worth investigating.
The founding date of the Kushan Empire could no longer be reliably verified. It was said to have originated from a kingdom two thousand years ago, which joined with three neighboring kingdoms through marriage alliances and other means to form the Kushan Federal Empire. Over the following two thousand years, the royal families of the four kingdoms gradually merged, until only one imperial family remained.
The imperial family differed somewhat from those of kingdoms and duchies.
The main difference was that the emperor's descendants had to be granted fiefs. Aside from the eldest legitimate son, who would inherit the throne of the Great Emperor, all other children would receive noble titles, change their surnames, and establish their own families. Only if the eldest legitimate son died young would those children have a chance to enter the imperial palace and become the new Great Emperor, though such chances were slim.
Every generation of Great Emperors received the finest resources and training, and their reigns were very long. They often adopted generational-skipping succession, passing the throne to their grandsons.
Should a grandson die young, the son could step forward and raise a new grandson.
The current Great Emperor had directly inherited the throne from his own grandfather and already had grandsons of his own, so the imperial bloodline would not be cut off. Jupiter the Great himself was a Dark Dragon Knight, his son was also a Dragon Knight, and his grandson was being trained to become