"I will see to it immediately, however if you will, we can prepare and present his majesty's clothing to save you the time" the man said
"You are free to do so" Nicholas replied before immediately turning around and mechanically walking back into the toilet
As soon as he got back into the toilet, he immediately turned on the tap and washed his face a couple of times as though it were a dream. Looking at himself in the mirror, it was awfully clear that he was in this forever. He was so cliche as to delude himself into believing that this was a dream.
There were vivid dreams but even in them, things weren't as immersive as they were now. He could feel the water, he could feel his heart beating rapidly in his chest. If this were a dream then he had probably been asleep all his life.
Understanding that he was now being awaited, Nicholas immediately jumped into the massive bathtub. Looking around, he realised he wasn't really used to any of the things here and had no idea how some of them even worked or were used for.
"Your Majesty, wouldn't you wait for the maids to draw you a bath first?" the man's voice suddenly echoed through the bathroom door
Hearing his question, Nicholas immediately facepalmed but still quietly wore his clothes back as he stared at the mirror. Looking at it, a thought suddenly came to mind… All these could be some absurd reality show like the Truman Show.
Yes the logistics, funding, manpower and dedication required to pull off a Truman show of any scale was naturally immense, in fact he would say absurd but then again if they could rent a castle, it was fairly obvious that the producers of the show would be stinking rich to support the absurd costs.
"Hello, can i get a new toothbrush" Nicholas said as he peeped out of the bathroom door
"At once, your majesty" the man, who Nicholas had come to believe was the steward replied as he turned around and whispered some things into the ears of one of the maids in the room
"Would you also like them to draw a bath for you when you are done" The steward asked
"Of course, I'll be right out soon" He replied before closing the door.
Less than 30 minutes later, a new toothbrush was delivered but unlike what he expected, it was made from animal hair and the handle was bone. Toothpaste seemed to exist as well but it wasn't what he expected. Without any further hesitations or delays, he immediately began to brush his teeth. He felt like he should cut his jaw and burn it, just for the taste alone.
After he came out, the maids went in and a few minutes or so passed by before they returned, the bath was ready so he immediately jumped in to take his bath. It was what he expected from some royal bath but for some reason, the water was cold though it wasn't really something to complain about.
After the bath, he left the bathroom to meet a now empty room, the maids and the Steward had left and he could see a set of clothes sitting on the bed so he immediately went to put them on.
It felt weird having to put on another man's underwear but thankfully it seemed they had prepared a new set of underwear for him to put on. As he stood in the mirror after putting on the clothes.
Nicholas found them oddly fitting but at the same time, he also felt that it was a bit weird. If he was king or Emperor then why was he dressed in a military uniform and above all, why did the uniform look this European when the language he was hearing sounded a bit too much like Russian.
Waving it off, Nicholas finally stepped out of the room and immediately was met with a wave of cold air that he didn't expect. It was as though the inside of the room and the passageway were in a totally different world altogether.
"Health onto his Imperial Majesty" a loud voice suddenly proclaimed as Nicholas saw half of the people in the passageway suddenly salute him
Looking to the side, he could see the maids and other servants bow deeply, the only ones who remained standing were the guards who were standing just directly by his door. It would seem that they were the ones that were in charge of his security
"... At ease" Nicholas replied after some thought. He didn't exactly know the response to give to such a salute
As though to confirm that he was wrong, the entire group just stood staring at him awkwardly but he merely nodded and continued walking as though he knew what he was doing. He walked slowly allowing the steward to overtake him a bit while also using the time to admire the palace.
The ceiling stood high above the ground, gold was plastered everywhere they possibly could as though the infrastructure itself wasn't enough to showcase their power. The Guard wore colorful and bright clothing as though to make them impossible to miss.
The wall stood white and pearly as though they could never be blemished, it was very easy to figure out the level of wealth his family had. However the more Nicholas saw the displays of wealth, the more his heart sank.
He had written this plot multiple times, the Imperial Family was rich but the state was as poor as dirt. Even in the off chance that the state was rich as well, such displays of wealth were generally frowned upon by the people. After what seemed like an hour of walking, they were finally in front of a large door, a guard who seemed to be of African descent, was standing before the door in a different uniform from the rest.
Entering the room, Nicholas found it to be surprisingly modest… well compared to everything he had seen so far. It was a fairly large room but one much more simply decorated and one that told its purpose from just looking at it, it was a study.
"Forgive my intrusion, your Imperial Majesty but the Empress Dowager requests your presence at the Anchikov palace for breakfast, her Imperial Majesty also requests that you have breakfast at the Alexander palace if possible or would you like to have it here?" the Steward said
A simple question nearly threw him off his feet, for some reason he hadn't thought about the fact that he may now have a wife and as it seems, he had a living mother as well.
The entire premise of his current actions was to do his best to imitate his predecessor as best as he could but how does one fool their own mother or even wife?. Turning to look at the Steward again, as he quickly gathered his thoughts again.
"I'll have it here, you can schedule lunch with my mother and dinner with the Empress" Nicholas replied
"As you wish, your Imperial Majesty" the man said with a slight bow
"Also, the appointments with the ministers begins by ten o'clock in the morning, their reports are already on your desk" the man said with his head still down
"I see, thank you… I may come to rely on you a bit more this week and also try and send in for the physician" Nicholas said
At the moment, he needed every excuse he could get to normalize the fact that he knew nothing about this place. As soon as the door was closed, he immediately began to look around the study a bit more frantically.
He had no idea what he was looking for but he hoped there would be something that could help him make sense of the life he was about to lead. The Study was modest but also made it very clear that it belonged to an Emperor.
The maps on the wall on the other hand reinforced that as he stood staring at one of the biggest physical maps he had ever seen. It showcased an empire that, if he was matching it to the modern world, stretching all the way from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific, from the black Sea to the well deep into central Asia.
The map he was looking at was one that if juxtaposed with a modern map, many countries would be missing. Ukraine, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan etc… were all missing.
The map classified everything under one name, the Russian Empire. In one night he had gone from a random writer to becoming an Emperor to what was possibly the largest contiguous empire in the entire world. Modern Russia was already big enough, now he was ruler of its ancestor and that was even bigger than expected.
"Wait, did Russia ever even have Imperial History?" Nicholas whispered to himself
He was Russian by birth but he had spent most of his life in Nigeria and even served with the Nigerian Military so he had no idea about its history. To him, the nation on the map might as well be fantasy. He wanted to be happy that he was ruling a huge empire but at the same he could also feel the pressure the more he stared at it.
The bigger the landmass, the bigger the responsibility to care for it. He had barely even begun to impersonate his predecessor properly and now he had to manage such a huge empire without letting it collapse. He had been on multiple peacekeeping missions with the UN to know that over stretching was a real thing in government that most politicians and rulers don't or refuse to recognise.
Staring at the large map, Nicholas didn't know what to say or what to even feel, as a man, he felt some sense of pride that he was now in charge of such a large empire but as a writer, he could feel the immense responsibility that came with that. He had written and imagined such plots multiple times that even as he stared at the map, his mind raced through every possible plot that could happen.
Looking around him now, the overtly decorated palace became even more of a burden than he had expected. As he had said initially, when the Imperial Family was living in such luxury, it was almost a certainty that the people were poor.
The more luxurious an environment is, the more isolated from the world, its inhabitants were and at the moment, he had a very strong feeling that the theory applied to him which also meant that at a certain point, he could be facing a revolution or a coup of some kind.
"Just transmigrated and my neck is already on the line" Nicholas said as he chuckled
[A/N: The person he calls a steward isn't one… his role is one of a steward but he is not a steward]