Certainly! Here's a fully rewritten version of Chapter XXVII: Sharp Sword, expanded and enriched in tone and detail to match the style of the previous chapter you liked:
Chapter XXVII: A Sharp Sword in a Velvet Scabbard
Joseph leaned back in his chair with a dry chuckle, murmuring to himself, "If this whole Crown Prince business doesn't work out, perhaps I'll open a bank of my own."
It was a quip more rooted in frustration than jest. The financial reports sprawled across his desk had taken a toll on his shoulders and spirits alike. With a long sigh, he set the stack aside and turned to a more insidious beast: the rejected tax bill.
Bound in a crisp folio, the bill ran over thirty densely packed pages. Line after line, clause after clause—it was a bureaucratic swamp, tangled in jargon and deliberate convolution. Even with the advantages of a modern education and a future-born perspective, Joseph had to read each section twice before fully parsing its meaning. For the average citizen—or even the lesser nobility—it might as well have been written in Sanskrit.
And worse still, the bill reeked of cowardice. Its drafters, clearly anticipating noble resistance, had inserted token clauses meant to curry favor with the aristocracy—levies on taverns and small merchants, extra duties on guild goods—all at the expense of the very people the bill purported to aid.
Joseph's frown deepened. The core of the bill—its intention to finally strip the nobility of their land tax exemptions and introduce freer grain trade and interregional commerce—was sound, even admirable. But by smearing it with petty burdens on the commoners, the drafters had blunted its edge. It had become a strange chimera, a mix of principle and pandering, sugar laced with arsenic. Naturally, the nobles had seized on the unpopular points and stirred the people against it.
A tragic irony: a law designed to constrain the nobles was being sunk by the very people it was meant to protect.
"This is not a sword," Joseph muttered to himself. "It's a wooden spoon."
He dipped his quill into the inkwell and, with swift and certain strokes, began to slash. Gone were the petty clauses taxing village inns. Struck were the absurd levies on cobblers and small artisans. Struck too were the tariffs that hampered internal trade, a relic of feudal provincialism that had long outlived its purpose.
By the time he set his pen down, what remained was lean and lethal. A law clear in its language, firm in its intent, and unapologetically royalist in character.
No more velvet gloves. The Crown would lead—and the nobles would pay their dues.
He reviewed it twice more, every word weighed like gold, before deciding it was done. Tomorrow he would hand it off to be redrafted in formal script.
He glanced out the window. The sky outside was streaked with lavender and gold—the dusk of another long day. With a sigh, he tucked the annotated bill into his drawer and rose to stretch.
He had resolved, on principle, not to inflict overtime on his staff unless absolutely necessary. "Do unto others…" he reminded himself, rolling out his stiff shoulders.
Just as he was preparing to leave the office, Eman approached, a maid following discreetly behind. "Your Highness," he said with a bow, "Her Majesty Queen Mary is holding a game in the Mars Hall. She invites you to join."
Joseph blinked, then smiled inwardly. His mother had always enjoyed these soirées, and gambling was a perfectly acceptable pastime in Versailles—one even encouraged by Louis XIV himself as a means of softening tensions and binding the court through leisure.
He nodded, "Very well. I'll attend."
Returning briefly to his quarters, Joseph changed into a midnight-blue coat embroidered subtly with silver thread, paired with an ivory waistcoat and dove-gray breeches. Not gaudy, but fitting for the company of courtiers.
By the time he arrived outside the Mars Hall, lively music and laughter could already be heard echoing from within. Two footmen swung open the towering double doors, and Joseph stepped into a hall gleaming with chandeliers and humming with merriment.
Queen Mary sat beneath a gilded portrait of Louis XIV, flushed with victory and clearly in high spirits. "Darling!" she called cheerfully. "At last! You've come!"
Joseph approached and offered a bow. "Mother, I hear you've been enjoying a streak of fortune."
"Eleven rounds in a row!" she said with glee, fanning herself as she laughed. "Come, come—relax a little. You've been buried under ledgers and laws all day."
Courtiers and ministers gathered nearby rose to pay their respects. And among them, the noble young ladies were particularly attentive, their eyes bright, their gowns shimmering with every turn. The Crown Prince was the new star of Versailles, after all.
Before Joseph could so much as catch his breath, Count Mono, powdered and perfumed as always, trotted over beaming. "Your Highness, you've come at just the right moment. We're one player short—come complete the table!"
At this, a young baron quickly excused himself, vanishing with all the grace of a man who understood the pecking order.
Joseph was ushered to a seat beneath a painting of the god Mars, and before long, cards were dealt and servants brought refreshments. The game was a form of brelan, not unlike the modern "Fight the Landlord," where the highest card was the King and the lowest was the Ace.
As he looked over his hand, Joseph could not help glancing at the glittering heap of gold écus and silver livres on the table. So much wealth changing hands over a few cards, while France was buried beneath a mountain of debt.
He smiled to himself, bitterly. "Perhaps a revolution wouldn't be such a surprise after all."
Distracted by his thoughts—and admittedly not very talented at card games—he lost three rounds in quick succession, dropping a total of twelve écus. Not a massive sum, but enough to draw sympathetic glances from the young ladies watching nearby.
Several sprang into action.
One whispered into her father's ear with the intensity of a battlefield strategist. Another pretended to inquire after her brother's hand but managed to twist his arm just enough to change his mind about his next move.
Versailles traditions technically forbade intentionally losing at cards, but tonight, that rule seemed to vanish. One by one, the ministers and nobles began folding too early, playing with suspiciously poor judgment.
Joseph's "luck" turned. He won a hand with nothing higher than a Jack. Another with three mismatched cards. Gold écus began to pile up at his elbow.
He smiled but said nothing. In Versailles, even card games were political theater.
It was not until a passing clock chimed half-past eleven that he realized how late it had grown. He rose, bowed to the table, and bid his companions goodnight.
As he exited the hall, Eman caught up, whispering with barely concealed excitement, "Your Highness, you've won a total of 156 écus."
Joseph did a quick mental conversion—nearly a thousand livres.
"Not bad for an evening of poor strategy," he said dryly, but the humor faded quickly. The state debt loomed in his mind again—two billion livres. At this pace, he'd need five centuries and a dozen lucky stars to break even.
No, personal profit would never be enough. He needed to shift the foundations of France itself. And that meant steam power. Mass production. Infrastructure. Finance reform. The Industrial Revolution—decades ahead of schedule.
As he wandered down a dim corridor lost in thought, his stomach gave a loud, disgruntled growl.
He paused, then chuckled. "So much for winning. I forgot to eat supper."
Looking up, he noticed a corridor leading to the royal kitchens. The warm light from within suggested someone was still on duty.
Well, no point in waiting for food to be brought all the way to his rooms. Tonight, the Crown Prince would dine like a humble night scholar—fresh from a card table, with revolution on his mind.
He turned his steps toward the kitchen, the quiet tap of his boots echoing like a prelude to something far greater than supper.