Chapter 84: “Biased Reporting!”
It was too late last night to talk to my father. I thought about asking him after this morning’s training, but there’s not much time after training every morning, so I gave up. I told my father I wanted to talk to him about the Lingerburgs when I got back from the academy and headed back to the academy.
I know you won’t always be able to go straight home after school today, but you should tell my father I need to talk to him. It’s polite to make an appointment before you go, whether you’re father or daughter. However, you still don’t know what time he’ll be home and what time you’ll be able to talk to him, so you need to let him know that as well. In the worst case, it might be after dinner.
When I arrived at the rickety school, I went into an empty classroom. After a while, a few students started to arrive at school, but the usual group of five wasn’t next. I think I saw them smiling at me when they finally arrived, but I don’t care because it happens all the time.
I know I’m supposed to not care, but something’s not right today. It’s not just the five of us. It’s like all the other students, boys and girls, are looking in my direction and whispering to each other.
Oh, there you are.
“Lady Helene?”
Helene, a beautiful, ladylike girl, was talking to me today. The only time Helene talks to me is when I’m being tangled up with the gang of five. But today she talked to me even though I wasn’t involved with the gang of five. What’s going on?
You shouldn’t be sitting here. Look at the board on the front door.
“What? Huh?”
There’s a big bulletin board at the entrance to the academy. When I walked by this morning, it didn’t look any different…
Then I see five guys grinning at me. I see. Apparently these five were late today because they were doing something on the board. It’s probably nothing worthwhile anyway, but I can’t just leave them alone now that Helene’s told me so personally. I went to the bulletin board at the entrance even though I knew it would be a hassle this morning.
******
When I arrived near the board, there was a crowd of people. I tried to avoid the crowd and looked at the board from a little distance.
“…. I see.”
There’s a wall newspaper on the wall. It said [Carruthers’ frontier countess puts on her power and bows to knights on her knees].
We don’t get down on our knees in this country, by the way. I’m just using the word “kneeling” as a translation. The closest thing to the word is “kowtow”. But the nuance of the word is that they made him get down on his knees in a humiliating way.
In this country a knight’s salute is reserved for his lord, the king. And the salute is not an apology but the highest form of respect.
I interpreted it as making him get down on his knees to apologize to a girl who was not his lord and not to honor him.
I’ll look over the contents. It says that yesterday after school the Countess of Carruthers took advantage of her royal connections (I guess she wanted to say that she was married to Her Highness Ludwig but she didn’t want to call me his bride) and made the knights of the Kingsguard get down on their knees and apologize. It is written that he made the knights of the Kingsguard get down on their knees and apologise.
This probably refers to the incident with Claudia yesterday. I can hear people around me saying things like [I saw him take the knight to the back of the school building yesterday] or [I saw him bowing to her from a distance].
Claudia approached me and took me to the back of the school building, to the front porch where a crowd of students were waiting for their carriage home. There are a lot of people who saw what happened. I was taken, not that I took Claudia, but such is the nature of people’s hazy memories and misguided assumptions.
I made sure that no one was around close enough to hear us so that they wouldn’t hear what we were saying, but if they were sneaking peeks from far away, I wouldn’t have been able to notice them. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone had followed Claudia and me to the back of the school building.
And that’s where Claudia apologized to me. I didn’t tell her to bow, but I can’t imagine how it must have looked to those of you who were watching from too far away to hear a word.
She might be seen as an arrogant daughter who used her status as Her Imperial Highness Prince Ludwig’s wedded wife to force him to apologize to the knights of the Kingsguard.
You may not have thought so yesterday, but if you read this wall newspaper, you will think so. This kind of biased reporting and manipulation of impressions is the same now and in the past, in this country and on earth.
For example, let’s say that in modern Japan, Mr. A was snatched by a purse-snatcher B. Then, Mr. C noticed the commotion and seized the purse-snatcher who was trying to run away. Mr. C noticed the commotion and caught the purse-snatcher in the act of running away. From the police’s point of view, Mr. C is a good person who cooperated with the police in apprehending the criminal.
But if only scenes of Mr. C struggling, punching and holding B down are shown on TV, and if it is repeatedly shown on TV that Mr. C is a violent person who commits violence, people who don’t know anything will assume that Mr. C is a violent person.
It doesn’t matter how it happened or why it happened. It doesn’t matter why you did it. If you are given only fragmentary information and told in words or text that this is so, you will think that it is so. You would think that you would not be deceived so easily, wouldn’t you? In reality, such things are common on the modern earth. The reality is that there are many people who are easily deceived even if they think they are not deceived.
We easily believe in them just because they are from a major newspaper or TV station, or because we have been reading or watching them for many years. That’s human nature. And Mr. C is an individual, and if you ask him which he believes, his personal complaint or the major media, most of the people easily believe in the major media.
You may not think so, but there will be many cases where you are taken in by such things without even being aware of it.
What about here, on the other hand… This wall newspaper was probably written and pasted by the five men, though they don’t say who wrote it. No, I don’t think they wrote it, though, do you? They must’ve had someone else write it. I don’t know if it was one of the other students or one of the housemates. But I think we all know it was them.
Those five are from one of the top families in the academy. They’ve got a lot of friends here. They’re probably in the mainstream. I’m of a lower rank than them and in the central political circles I’m considered a frontier count… a barbarian wielding weapons in the countryside.
They may be admired for their military prowess and territory, but the aristocrats steeped in the glamorous society of the center probably despise them as rustics.
Which of their claims would you trust more? I don’t even think about it. Even if someone understood that the Five’s wall newspaper was a lie or an exaggeration, no one would stand with me. After all, to say so would make enemies of the Five.
It’s not a question of who’s right, the mainstream of central politics or the country savages, but which side is better for you and which side is better for you. And that’s why those of us who think the Wall Street Journal is wrong don’t have a voice.
Hey, that…
They’re gonna put us on our knees, too.
Let’s go.
Students notice me and leave the wall newspaper in droves. It’s very simple. Those who believe what they read and condemn me. Those who decide it’s in their best interest to side with the five of us, regardless of whether or not they’re right. Those who try to keep their distance because they don’t want to get involved. But one thing is clear… no one is on my side.
Well… The wall newspaper’s not wrong about what it says. The clippings themselves are true. I met Claudia at the door yesterday, and I went to the back of the school building, and she bowed to me and apologized. That in itself is not a lie.
I can’t argue why Claudia apologized to me yesterday. Claudia still acts like a man named Claudio. He’s the same age as Ludwig and has been Ludwig’s bodyguard on his way to and from school since last year.
The students at the academy know about the knights of the Kingsguard who have been Ludwig’s bodyguards for the last year. If I wanted to justify myself, I’d definitely have to ask why Claudia had bowed and apologized.
I can’t tell them the truth if they ask. That would mean I’d be telling a lot of people things about Claudia that would be deeply intimate to me.
I don’t know if it makes a difference if Claudia has some kind of gender identity disorder, or if she just likes women even though she is a woman. One thing I do know for sure is that Claudia likes women even though she is a woman, and she has a history of being troubled by it.
That’s why Claudia lived her life hiding it, even trying to make herself into a man because of her contradictions about liking women. I can’t go around telling people about such a big deal. I’m gonna have to keep my mouth shut on this one.
Are you sure this is true?
Lady Helene…
Helene came from the classroom as I was pondering what to do next. That question is very troubling. It’s hard to answer because I was just thinking about what I was going to do.
“Some of the content of this wall newspaper is intentionally perverted and misdirected, although it may appear that way from an objective point of view. Some of it may seem so objectively, but the content of this wall newspaper is intentionally perverted and misdirected, and not all of it is true.”
The fact is, Claudia came to me, went to the back of the school building, and bowed down. There are plenty of witnesses, so there’s no fooling them. But most of what’s written in the light of this article is a mixture of bias and perversion. Or rather, the five of them are deliberately leading us to believe that.
“I don’t understand. If you don’t, why don’t you just say so?”
And why am I being interrogated by Helene like this? I may be number one in our grade, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re both just students on equal footing. It’s unacceptable for one of us to interrogate the other when we’ve done nothing wrong.
“This knight and I have known each other personally for some time. We’ve had our differences in the past, and I came to King’s Landing to see him again after a long absence, and he apologized for that. But I did not demand an apology or take him to the back of the schoolhouse. This knight came to me of his own accord and called me and apologized.”
I cut him off and stared at Helene. Helene was looking straight at me, too.
“So you’re saying this article is true?”
“So you’re saying it’s not true. The article says that I used my power to summon the knight and make him apologize. In fact, the knight is an old friend of mine, and he came to me to apologize for his past. But I felt I was the one who had done wrong and I apologized to the knight. So it was settled between us. It is not what is described in this article.”
No matter how much I try to explain, you don’t understand. Either they don’t want to understand. Or maybe you do, but you don’t understand. Or are you just trying to get me to say something I shouldn’t?
“What was this thing you apologized for?”
“That is a personal matter that concerns this knight and I cannot discuss it with you.”
“You… “You… you’re the one who’s asking me to believe you…”
Helene shakes her head at my words. But when did I ever ask you to listen to me? When did I ask you to believe me? I never said that.
“You don’t have to listen to me or believe me. I am simply stating the plain facts. Those who believe only one side of the story without understanding it, and those who keep their mouths shut even though they think it’s not right, have their own principles and ideas. So I am not going to say anything to them. If you want to think so, why don’t you think so?”
Helene looked at me seriously as I said this.
