Story:

In the war camp outside Kyoto city gate, evening came gold through the gaps in the campaign curtains.

Nobunaga was examining the camp with his two wives, the three of them sharing a brazier's warmth, the smells of war-horses and sandalwood smoke braiding together in the cooling air.

Euphy, still a foreigner to Yamato's tangled politics, tipped her head toward her sister. "Kicho-nee... why is the Ashikaga Shogunate this weak? And why would the Miyoshi want to tear it down at all?"

Kicho hugged her sister's arm against her and answered in that beautiful voice, unhurried, as if telling a fireside story.

"The Shogunate has grown weak with every daimyo's rise, Euphy. Each of us carved our own power while the Ashikaga's swords rusted in their sheaths. In the end, they lost the one thing that made them rulers—when men stopped needing them, their symbolic value simply withered away. A throne that cannot command is only an expensive chair."

"The Tenno I respect," Nobunaga said, plucking a piece of dried persimmon from the tray without opening his eyes.

"Heaven's descendant, the pillar of the realm. But this administration—" he flicked two fingers, as if brushing a crumb from the map spread between them, "—useless. Respect I give to the divine. To the incompetent, I give nothing."

Kicho smiled at her dama-sama and continued, her voice dropping into something more shadowed.

"And there is a deeper rot. The Black Rose crisis destroyed what little influence the Shogun had left. The evil presence spread across Yamato—and the Shogunate did nothing. Not one edict. Not one soldier. When the people begged for deliverance, Kyoto stayed silent. And the Miyoshi..."

Her fingers tightened faintly, "the Miyoshi are believed to have surrendered to the Black Rose invasion. Secretly submitted to the demonic rule. I believe this coup is their masters' design—stir Kyoto into chaos, plunge the political situation into deeper confusion, and chaos is exactly the soil the Black Rose's further invasion wants to grow in."