If he was already that old and things hadn't changed, then I'm willing to believe there wasn't anything he could do—and so perhaps his decision was a final dig at those who came before him, who set his empire on this path in the first place.

( a final FUCK YOU... though she knows better than most it's only a momentary bliss. he got to die afterwards, though. how nice for him. )

After all, things hardly turn out that way because of one person—I've found there's something in the way things are run... the foundations that, say, a city are built on, that factor more into stories like this. There's nothing you can grow in soil that's been poisoned for hundreds of years.

( so to speak. )