***This is a double update – chapter 20 was only put up a few hours ago, so make sure you read that first!***

The first few days at home were quiet.  Yeonhee reckoned the prince must have been extremely busy in Colombia, because bar a text she’d received round about the time she presumed his flight had touched down, she didn’t hear anything more from him.

This is Junmyeon’s happy face, the text read, followed by a picture of said bodyguard gaping in a very unflattering manner at his phone screen.  She assumed it was his reaction to the picture she’d drawn of him.

Thursday Yeonhee spent with Sehun, Sowon and Daehyun, attending the AGM of Republicans in Taderra as student representatives.  The main points of discussion both in the meeting and outside it were Antiroyo and the prince indefinitely postponing a general election.  Nothing concrete had yet been released to the news about the assassin, which a lot of the adults found worrying, but one or two who had government contacts said that among officials, it was currently common knowledge that it had been a radical sect of Antiroyo and that the intelligence community was investigating it further.  Daehyun had taken the opportunity to pipe up with the information that the student sects of Antiroyo were busy trying to recruit republicans to make their cause look more acceptable and less of a fringe organisation.  It had caused ripples of unease.

The opinion on the prince and the general election was divided more or less between separationists and non separationists.

“As far as that’s concerned, it’s actually not as constitutionally dubious as you might think,” Sehun told them over lunch as he tried to fit his mouth around a hoagie.  “He’s sort of stuck in a weird limbo at the moment because he doesn’t have the power and authority of his father and there isn’t a body that can recognise him as regent.  Since the king dissolved parliament without an election being called, it would actually be much more questionable if the prince did call an election.  Even if it wasn’t, I do think he’s made the right call in terms of trying to keep the country together.  Everything’s already polarised at the moment and we all know that it would be a majority Zenyu government and therefore highly partisan, but once people find out about the assassin there’ll be a massive Zenyu swing and we’ll likely get a government that is very harsh towards us, which would be much worse.”

“It would make splitting the country in two a much more viable option.”

“That would be extremely messy,” said Sehun.  “Not recommended.”

“Constitutionally,” Yeonhee asked, wondering whether she liked it or hated it in these situations that Sehun was a history and law student, “is there anybody who can actually call a general election?”

Sehun some mayonnaise off his fingers.

“I was looking into it,” he said as Sowon grimaced and passed him several napkins.  “And technically speaking, no.  Not unless the king dies or wakes up.  In the former case, power will go to the prince, and in the latter, obviously he retains it.  There is the precedent of the emergency dictator decree, but I’m not sure if that’s viable without parliament to ratify it.”

“And what is that?” Sowon asked.

“The eighth prime minister – so this is in the reign of our second monarch – was medically unfit to govern and clinically insane, and he and a small group of friends in power gave permission for a laboratory to experiment with clinically unapproved medicines.  Parliamentarians tried to gather enough votes to pass a motion of no confidence, but he pulled a three-line party whip in his favour and bribed sufficient numbers of his opponents to stand with him.  The king requested him to step down and dissolved parliament multiple times, but he kept standing again and getting re-elected because he was popular for pushing through the nationalised healthcare bill.  Eventually the king saw that he didn’t have a clear majority and so he asked for the emergency dictator motion to be drawn up.  He was popular enough for the motion to pass with a majority of three and it gave him absolute power for three months.  The public was very wary about it, though, and so literally all he did with that power was order an investigation of the prime minister, hang around long enough to make sure that enough evidence was put up to get him indicted, and once the man and his inner ring of cronies were jailed, he called another general election and stepped down again after a total of five weeks.”

“Do you see the prince trying that?” asked Daehyun curiously.

Sehun shook his head.  “Anybody with a brain can tell you’d need more than three months to heal the divisions in this country and it’s obvious he doesn’t have the popular support.    Even if he did somehow manage to get something like that passed, he’d probably end up having to extend it multiple times and that would panic the electorate.  We don’t want a dictator.”

Yeonhee found herself wondering if the prince had actually considered this route.

“Sehun,” said Sowon, “have you ever considered going into politics?”

The following day, Yeonhee went out with Mihae for coffee.  Her friend was eager for all and any news about the previous day, paying particular attention whenever Sehun was mentioned.  Yeonhee pretended to be oblivious and turned the conversation to Baekhyun’s band, asking what Mihae thought of the music and the boys in it.  Mihae didn’t really give any committal answers, though she did admit to being impressed that almost all the music the band performed was their own.

(“