human
Vincent:  He was looking at Chisha, who, after being skewered by Arakiya, had been right in the middle of the meeting of the cannonade with the power of one of the Four Great Spirits. He was being given heroic treatment but was badly wounded both inside and out. His odds of surviving were no better than a coin flip. He was a clever strategist, a devoted servant whom Vincent would be able to entrust with important positions in the future—and yet even he had been part of the plan, a way of selling the ploy to ensure that it would avoid detection and succeed. Nonetheless, Vincent was confident that it had been worth it. “I have much the same opinion of Lamia as she did of me and Prisca. The Rite has only just begun, but with this, I’ve eliminated my greatest rivals for the throne.”
gpt
Vincent:  From the perspectives of ambition and aptitude, and from the perspective of whether they had any likelihood of actually obtaining the throne, only Lamia and Prisca had been worth worrying about in Vincent’s opinion. Sadly for all the other siblings, not one of them was a match for Vincent. Although, there was one who—though still no threat for the throne—had taken Vincent by surprise in another way. “Imagine—apparently, I also misjudged my older brother Bartroi.”
human
Vincent:  Bartroi Fitz, who had departed this world shortly after the beginning of the Rite of Imperial Selection, pruned away by Lamia. He’d hated the idea of brothers and sisters killing one another and had sought to keep the death wrought by the Rite to an absolute minimum with a plan that surprised even Vincent. “Declining to participate in the Rite himself, he promised the submission of several other siblings in exchange for my guarantee of their territories and persons. A bold move, if nothing else.”
gpt
Vincent:  If it worked, the number of heads Vincent would have had to sever in order to achieve the throne would have been ten less. And if each of them had raised personal armies in contesting the succession, the loss of life would have been that much greater. The proposal was predicated on a worldview that ran counter to Vincent’s own avowedly more correct reading of the situation—that none of his brothers or sisters could be allowed to live. Broadly speaking, there had been two keys to his escape from Lamia’s encirclement. One had been Arakiya, capable of using the great spirit to neutralize the cannonade; the other was the double cross that Lamia had never anticipated—in other words, the siblings and their armies, whom Bartroi had secretly entrusted to Vincent. True, if they succeeded, he would essentially be honoring a contract with a dead man, but Vincent didn’t have it in him to simply consider the matter null and void. Reward must be no more forgone than punishment—that was one thing Vincent always bore in mind as a member of the Volakian Royal Family.