"If you can't lick them, join them," Trask said.
"If you can't lick them, lick their boots," the Count of Ravary put in.
"My son is a trifle bitter," Princess Bentrik said. "I must confess to a trace of bitterness, too."
"Well, that's the Representatives," Trask said. "What about the rest of the government?"
"With the splinter-party and Disloyalist support, they got a majority of seats in the Delegates. Most of them would have indignantly denied, a month before, having any connection with Makann, but a hundred out of a hundred and twenty are his supporters. Makann, of course, is Chancellor."
"And who is Prime Minister?" he asked. "Andray Dunnan?"
She looked slightly baffled for an instant then said, "Oh. No. The Prime Minister is Crown Prince Edvard. No; Baron Cragdale. That isn't a royal title, so by some kind of a fiction I can't pretend to understand he is not Prime Minister as a member of the Royal Family."
"If you can't ..." the boy started.
"Steven! I forbid you to say that about ... Baron Cragdale. He believes, very sincerely, that the election was an expression of the will of the people, and that it is his duty to bow to it."
He wished Otto Harkaman were there. He could probably name, without stopping for breath, a hundred great nations that went down into rubble because their rulers believed that they should bow instead of rule, and couldn't bring themselves to shed the blood of their people. Edvard would have been a fine and admirable man, as a little country baron. Where he was, he was a disaster.