Palace of Versailles, France.
Emperor's Office.
Early May 1837.
The morning light in Versailles came in clean and steady, passing through the tall windows and settling across the polished floor without interruption. Outside, the gardens remained as they always were, carefully arranged and unchanged, every line and path held in deliberate order. Inside the Emperor's office, that same sense of control remained, but the work on the table had grown.
There were more maps than before, more reports, and more lines connecting places that had once been treated as separate. What had been distant regions were now part of a single picture, one that was still forming but already moving.
Napoleon II stood over the table, one hand resting lightly against its edge as he read through the latest documents. China, Japan, and Joseon were all marked in front of him, no longer distant names, but positions within a wider system that had begun to shift.
