War was cruel.
For the first time, Doran of Hilla Town truly understood what those words he had read in books meant.
Born in Hilla Town, Doran Ayr loved learning. Not long after graduating from the National University in the Minicia Kingdom and returning home, he had become a renowned scholar and poet in the Kingdom of Bagnia at just thirty years old.
When the kingdom was overthrown and the country was to become a republic, Doran was overjoyed.
Doran had carefully studied the republican system proposed by the Revolutionary Party. He believed it would bring freedom and equality, ending the nobility's monopoly on power.
Doran had celebrated the change in his poetry, believing it was historically inevitable, a symbol of the people's awakening. A republic would allow knowledge and wisdom to benefit everyone, rather than remain confined to the aristocracy.
He eagerly awaited the arrival of a new era, one of greater fairness and freedom.
Yet Doran did not understand that, most of the time, freedom was much like something offered for free.
The revolution erupted suddenly and violently. The old king was driven out in an instant, and the anticipated civil war never broke out, further convincing Doran of the superiority of the republican system.
But what happened afterward left Doran feeling that something was wrong.
First, Mr. Kara, the instigator of the revolution and leader of the Revolutionary Party, suddenly died of an illness. Someone Doran had never heard of took his place and became Speaker.
Then, through the parliamentary elections, the division of voting districts, the emergence of parliamentary candidates, and everything else that followed, Doran gradually realized that the kingdom's old nobles were returning to power under a new guise, becoming the Republic's legitimate rulers.
Soon, people stepped forward and launched massive demonstrations in Votradnoi,