Chapter 57 Little Jeanne

Upon arriving in Dadu, the group was warmly received by the Purple Tent Khanate. Moved by Jeanne’s plight, Queen Consort Ma kept the young girl by her side, personally looking after her. Afterward, Huang Zicheng returned to France to report back to Zhu Yunwen, while Qi Tai remained in Dadu to rest.

Heroine Jeanne declined the monetary rewards offered by the Queen Consort and the Purple Tent Khanate, accepting only some weapons and rations before bidding farewell. She mentioned she would drop by to check on the young girl whenever she had time. True to her word, she frequently slipped in and out of Dadu to visit little Jeanne.

However, her comings and goings were far too casual. When Queen Consort Ma’s residence underwent renovations, the Empress invited the family to stay temporarily in the palace, and yet Heroine Jeanne still showed up uninvited to visit the little girl.

This made the Keshiks lose a great deal of face. Olafsson scolded his men repeatedly, stepped up security measures, and revised the patrol schedules. Still, Heroine Jeanne managed to sneak in from time to time and stroll out swaggeringly afterward, driving him to distraction.

Of course, this could not entirely be blamed on him; the security of the Purple Tent Khanate had always had its inherent flaws.

In earlier years, the Purple Tent Khanate possessed no concept of palace security or a formal Keshik establishment. The Khans and nobles were military commanders themselves, and all defensive measures were designed for battlefield reconnaissance and skirmishes.

For a long time, the security philosophy of the Purple Tent Khanate consisted of concentrating elite forces to intercept and swiftly eliminate enemy decapitation squads. Naturally, the ideal scenario was to deny the enemy any chance of decapitation by launching preemptive attacks to suppress them. Consequently, the style of the Khanate’s imperial guards had always been offensive.

For other occasions, their preparations were comparatively inadequate. When it came to narrow, single-person infiltration-style assassins, palace security had long relied on the Khan hacking it out with the assassin in hand-to-hand combat.

During the reign of the third Khan, Alexios VII Mergen, an unexpected tragedy occurred. Dissatisfied tribal chieftains plotted to assassinate the Khan. That evening, Alexios had been entertaining guests, consumed considerable alcohol, and could barely walk steady. Confronted by a sudden, violent strike from an assassin, he failed to defend himself in time. Although the guards reacted and killed the assailant, the Khan could not be saved.

This incident triggered a chain reaction. Eventually, the ruling Dowager Empress Helena, finding the situation intolerable, carried out a massive overhaul of the imperial guards, finally making their functions somewhat normalized.

However, this restored imperial guard was established single-handedly by the Dowager Empress and thus answered solely to her. Later, during the coup launched by John VIII Tota against the Dowager Empress, the imperial guards stood with her, resulting in the coup's failure. As the Dowager Empress subsequently lost power, this guard inevitably lost trust and was promptly disbanded.

After overthrowing the Dowager Empress, Basil III Elege restructured the imperial guards, forming the modern Keshiks. At that time, the Purple Tent Khanate had established close ties with Novgorod and was actively intervening in the politics of the North Sea; thus, the tradition of Nordic mercenaries was revived.

The recruits for the Nordic Guard were primarily Norwegians who detested Danish rule and sought support from the Purple Tent Khanate, alongside a few Scots and northern Rus'. Through this, the imperial guard managed to break free from the influence of the Greek empresses.

As for the remaining components of the Keshiks, they consisted mainly of logistical personnel and holders of honorary titles, upon whom no practical military effectiveness could be relied.

Yet, this iteration of the Keshiks was at least stronger in security than its predecessors—now, the Khan and his guards would hack it out with the assassin together. Therefore, the challenges posed by Heroine Jeanne gave Olafsson, who had previously felt that defenses were more than adequate, a massive headache.

Fortunately, once little Jeanne and her family moved away, Heroine Jeanne stopped coming, allowing him to finally breathe a sigh of relief.

As little Jeanne grew a little older, it was time for her to receive an education. Dadu was hardly short of enlightenment teachers, but the learned scholars were mostly preoccupied with vital affairs and had limited time; truly profound masters of the classics were indeed scarce.

Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng were also too busy to tutor her continuously. Moreover, possessing exceptionally high standards, they looked down upon ordinary tutors, plunging them into a temporary dilemma.

Previously, little Jeanne, along with several other young girls, had received their introductory education under their adoptive mother, Madame Huang. However, Madame Huang insisted that she could not teach higher-level content herself; to truly master the subjects, one had to study diligently at a proper school. With everyone harboring doubts and unable to reach a decision, Qi Tai and Queen Consort Ma went to consult Zhu Yunwen.

Having endured a series of setbacks, Zhu Yunwen had grown more open-minded. He replied that, finding themselves in a foreign land, extraordinary circumstances called for flexible measures, and they need not be overly rigid about such conventions.

There were no ideal conditions to be particular about here, nor were the local nobles trustworthy. Thus, even he had to lower his pride and start by winning the support of commoners, peddlers, and hawkers in his bid to restore the grand enterprise. Under such conditions, how could one be overly demanding of their children?

Zhu Yunwen reflected that after years of wandering, he realized many things were entirely different from what he had previously imagined, and he had to learn everything from scratch. The Analects of Laozi and Confucius stated: "When I was young, I was of humble station, and therefore I acquired many skills in mean matters. Are gentlemen possessed of many skills? No, they are not." This showed that even Confucius, during his days of poverty, had learned numerous miscellaneous skills, yet this in no way diminished his greatness. On the contrary, a gentleman could never have too many skills; they would always prove useful.

Therefore, he demanded that Zhu Jeanne also attend school, studying not only the classics but ideally anything useful as well. This would spare her from experiencing his current predicament: when a skill was needed, realizing she knew far too little and lacked sufficient capability, leaving her to fret in vain.

Upon receiving this letter, Qi Tai and the others felt their heads spin.

Zhu Yunwen had completely inverted the meaning of the passage. According to Master Zhu's commentary, the sentence meant that Confucius excelled in many skills not because he was a sage, but because his impoverished childhood had forced him out of necessity. Those miscellaneous skills were not meant for leading people, and a gentleman had no need to pursue a multitude of petty skills. This was the exact opposite of what Zhu Yunwen claimed about learning broadly.

Of course, everyone had long since grown numb to Zhu Yunwen's habitual misquotation and misinterpretation of texts. Besides, his words were not entirely unreasonable. Viewed broadly, in their current environment, one indeed had to learn a few miscellaneous subjects.

Obeying the instructions, the people remaining in Dadu sent Zhu Jeanne to school, dressing her in long robes and trousers just like a male student, to study at the Huang family's academy.

There were no military generals in Zhu Yunwen’s faction, but martial arts and military strategy could not be neglected either. Zhu Yunwen had given special instructions that both of his children must learn martial arts. Above all, they had to be able to beat Li Jinglong in the future, avenging their father.

Consequently, the group invited Li Xuanying’s father, Li Huawen, to teach her saber techniques on foot and lance techniques on horseback. To everyone's astonishment, little Jeanne possessed an uncanny talent in this domain, performing quite brilliantly compared to her fellow apprentices. Li Huawen praised her endlessly and began cultivating her as a primary focus. Naturally, for Li Xuanying, this meant gaining yet another "child of a family friend," increasing his current pressure manifold.

Zhu Yunwen also believed that living in Europe required certain other indispensable skills. For instance, he observed that the Church possessed a remarkably strong presence here. The scholastic level of the Roman Curia was said to be the highest in the Western world, but the Eastern Constantinople was no lower than Rome, if not higher. Since these texts served as Europe's Four Books and Five Classics, learning them was mandatory. Living right here in Constantinople, they had a geographical advantage and should seek out the local archbishop to study under him properly.

As it happened, the Grand Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Grand Lama Wang, was also well-acquainted with them. Although harboring some reservations, everyone followed Zhu Yunwen's orders and arranged for little Jeanne to study theology under Grand Lama Wang.

Grand Lama Wang quickly recognized little Jeanne’s talent, declaring that the girl picked up everything rapidly. In no time at all, she had mastered theological arts from him such as summoning flying paper talismans in mid-air and conjuring smoke with bare hands. Had she not been a Princess, he would have liked to cultivate her further and break precedent by appointing her to a clerical office, making her the first female patriarch in Church history.

Guo Kang also interacted with little Jeanne frequently, and to his knowledge, these remarks were likely neither polite flattery nor exaggeration. In these respects, little Jeanne was even more striking than her older brother.