The Demon Court

Court of the Demon King

The Demon Court is the sovereign court of demonkind under Magnus, the Demon King named in Volume I’s account of the Demon War. Magnus is said to have ruled for more than six centuries, an extraordinary span even among demons, whose long lives allow political resentment and memory to endure. The court is the authority behind the demon side of the postwar order.

Authority after the war

The Treaty of Hope assigns Eterna to demon territory on the human side of the Gate, but it also demands that the Tower’s guardian remain neutral. When Shun Sato intervenes in Hikari’s succession war, the consequences are said to be imposed by Magnus. Human rulers fear that the Demon King may favour his own kin, but none dare challenge him or restart the war.

Relationship to the Tower

For a month after the Hikari intervention, the gates of the Tower remain closed and no human is allowed to meet the lord. The episode makes the Demon Court a presence even where no courtier appears: it is the power that establishes the limits of what the Tower’s guardian may do and the source of uncertainty whenever those limits are crossed.

The court in Volume II

The published story has now put faces to the authority. Chapter 19 gives the first direct depiction of Magnus enthroned, and Chapter 20 names Akiyama Magnus — Commander of the Royal Knights, Golden Prince of all demons, and Heir to the Demon throne — as he leads fifteen knights toward a portal opening beneath the Tower.

The court is therefore no longer only the offstage source of consequence it was in Volume I. It has a standing armed order, an heir who commands it, and a route into the Tower that does not pass any human border. Shun Sato's own assessment of what the court's sovereign will do with his breach of neutrality is that Magnus will use it as a pretext to reignite the war.

What the approaching company has been sent to do is not disclosed at this boundary.

The arrest and the capital

Chapter 21 shows who set the arrest in motion. Akiyama Magnus tells Shun that the nobles feared he might retaliate and so sent someone he would never harm. Shun is taken through the portal to the Frontier, which the chapter names the largest city in the Demon Realm and the new capital of the Demon Continent, and imprisoned beneath the Demon Castle to await an audience with Magnus.

The capital's public is shown to be divided about him. As he is led down its main road, some fear for their protection now that he has fallen, some call his fate deserved and name him an abomination, some speculate about who might become the next Lord of the Tower, and some protest that he suffered and sacrificed everything for them.