1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [163]
She was pouting a little, staring down at her shoes.
"Is there any other reason not to go, Kristina?"
The princess glanced at Caroline. The American woman made a little gesture with her head, a nod in Ulrik's direction. Combined with the rather stern expression on her face, Ulrik interpreted it to mean: Tell him. But you have to do it yourself. I can't do it for you.
Kristina looked back at Ulrik. "I don't know that I should. It doesn't seem right to me."
That was enough, Ulrik thought. To start, at least.
"It's certainly not right from a legal standpoint," he said firmly.
"I don't have to obey Uncle Axel?" There was a little lift in the girl's voice. Hope, you might call it, if you were the sort of person who saw oak trees in acorns.
Which Ulrik did, as it happened. He fancied himself something of a botanist.
"No, of course you don't have to obey him. To begin with, he's not your uncle. Secondly, no one has appointed him regent. He's simply the chancellor of Sweden. Someone whose opinion you should listen to, of course, but he has no authority over you."
Shrewd as always, Baldur played the devil's advocate. "Not yet. But he can summon the council and the riksdag and have himself declared regent."
Ulrik shrugged. "So? The riksdag's authority extends only to the kingdom of Sweden. Not to the United States of Europe, not to the Union of Kalmar. Never forget that Gustav II Adolf wears three crowns, not one."
He nodded at Kristina. "And so will she."
"Ah!" said Baldur, as if he has just been enlightened. "I hadn't thought of that. And the equivalent authority of the riksdag when it comes to the Union of Kalmar is . . . ?"
The Americans had a term for it that Ulrik had learned from Eddie Cochrane. Throwing soft pitches. Or was it softball pitches? Easy pitches?
Whatever it was called, Baldur did it superbly.
"Well, that's a very interesting question," said Ulrik. "The final structure of the Union of Kalmar hasn't been settled yet. A union council was created, but its authority remains unclear. There's certainly nothing in the laws established thus far to give the council the right to create a regent."
He cleared his throat. "To the contrary. The only hard and fast rule when it comes to determining the source of final authority in the Union—which was enshrined by law, right there at the Congress of Copenhagen—is that until such time as what they chose to call the ‘organic royal line' of the Union comes to the throne—"
He pointed a forefinger at Kristina; a thumb at himself. "That's us, and then our children, and so on. But until that time, the Congress clearly stipulated that the king of Sweden was the premier political figure in the Union, followed by—"
He cleared his throat again. "My father, Christian IV, the king of Denmark. So the authority to create a regent for the Union of Kalmar clearly lies with him, given that Gustav II Adolf is incapacitated. Not Axel Oxenstierna, who has no formal standing at all in the government of the Union."
Kristina was looking brighter by the moment. "What about the United States?"
"Aye, that's the question," said Baldur. "Isn't it?"
"Well, yes, I think so."
Kristina was standing very close to him, now. Ulrik reached out and took her little hands in his. "What you are faced with, my betrothed, is something that no child should have to deal with. But it happens. It has happened before, it will happen again. It's called a succession crisis."
Kristina looked up at Caroline. "Have you heard of that?"
At the time of the Ring of Fire, Caroline Platzer had had the same knowledge of history that most Americans had. Not too bad when it came to American history itself, allowing for big gaps of knowledge between the Revolution and the Civil War and the Civil War and the Great Depression. Abysmal when it came to everything else.
The Greeks invented democracy and were the smartest people who ever lived even if they couldn't