It is petty, such is the small deference between the two sides. To say I am taking the middle ground would be to imply that the Illuminati and the von Kastiliens are on opposite sides ideologically. I see no reason for that to be true, nor do I believe that the future of the Reich will be differ depending on the victor. The only difference that this war will make is on the means and rhetoric used.

Nor do I believe your claims of impotence up until now. Just this previous Diet Session your numbers included two Dukes and the Viceroy, all of you former Chancellors. You could have easily forced a vote on the abolition of Charter Clauses 3.9 and 3.10. You could have attempted to mold Section 5 to your liking. But you didn't even try, dispite the fact that you were a part of the most politically powerful group of Electors in existence.

Oh, I can work out the reasons just fine. None of you actually believe in this republic you're attempting to create, you're just using it as an after-the-fact rationalization to try and paint yourselves as a legitimate alternative to the von Kastiliens when in the reality is you finally been forced to step outside the shadows and defend your treason out in the open. To claim that you can't possible implement your agenda any other way is as rediculous as claiming that a society which has existed invisible to the public eye for decades while issuing secret orders to the Kaiser believes that accountability the people is of the outmost importance when ruling.

Edmund pauses to reread Diet transcripts.

My apologies. It seems I inadvertantly quoted young Hermann, who is indeed claiming such a thing.

Finally, you chide my for not offering my own alternative. Very well.

I believe that the Reich can exist as it is and as it was. We do not need the authoritarianism of the von Kastiliens nor the secrecy of the Illuminati to make it work. What we need are men who wish to honor the titles they have been given. Men who believe that the Reich must exist for an idea, without which we have no right to conqueor our foes. Men who believed that the Reich exists to unite the world as a free people in the body of Christ.

Jan von Hamburg. Elberhard Salier. Hans Salier. These were men who believed as I do. Though I did not know them well enough, I fell confident saying that Kaiser Henry, Conrad Salier, Sigismun der Stoltze, Sigismund von Mahren, Fredericus von Hamburg, and Otto von Kassel were men of the same mold. Of course, until recently I counted Matthias Steffen and Arnold Salier among their ranks as well, so perhaps I am not the best judge of character.