After Serenus finished his dealings with the as-yet-underage Duke of Masovia, he continued his journey to Kraków, the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, with the vast amount of intelligence he had gathered.
At this time, the young Chief Secretary was unaware that while he was on official duty in another country, a significant event, one he would have personally witnessed and recorded, had occurred back in Bosporus.
A few more days passed, roughly in mid-September, and Manuel was overwhelmed with a matter of extreme importance to him, the Gavras Family, and indeed, the entire Bosporus: his second child was about to be born.
After his wife, Barbara, showed reactions similar to those before Justiana's birth, he immediately rushed to her room to personally care for her and invited Saracen and Greek physicians to diagnose her.
According to their rough estimates, her due date was indeed approaching.
Therefore, to ensure the safety of both his wife and child, Manuel, after a brief consideration, decided to put aside his routine official duties, entrusting them temporarily to his specialized bureaucrats.
At the same time, he arranged for these professional physicians to take turns attending to his wife, and specifically instructed the maids who always served her to cooperate with the physicians' orders.
Even with such meticulous care, Barbara gave birth smoothly in less than a day.
To be precise, it was in the middle of the night.
He, who had been half-asleep in the room, was suddenly startled awake, and then physicians and midwives urgently entered the room to assist Barbara with the delivery.
At this point, he, following medieval customs, temporarily left the room to await the conclusion of the process.
This waiting only ended by daylight.
Since Manuel had not slept at all during this period, by the time he finally saw his second child, his complexion was so abnormal that the physicians advised him to catch up on sleep as soon as possible.
Regarding the physicians' advice, Caesar humbly expressed his acceptance.
However, before that, he still wanted to personally see his child and give him/her a suitable name.
"Holy Father bless, it's a boy," Barbara, weakened by childbirth, smiled happily at her husband's words, gesturing for the midwife to hand their second child to Manuel.
"A boy," Manuel felt exceptionally happy as he gently held the infant before him, who was curiously looking at his father with dark brown pupils, just as he had felt years ago when little Justiana was born.
For a moment, as a Tauris Goth, he wanted to name his son Theodoric (Θευδέριχος), like the Ostrogothic king who once ruled Italy.
But due to cultural considerations, he ultimately abandoned the idea of directly giving his son that name.
"Theodore (Θεόδωρος), how about that?" After a while, he decided to name his son this, a name whose pronunciation in Gothic was similar to Theodoric.
"That pronunciation feels a bit…" Barbara, who was somewhat familiar with syllable pronunciation, immediately understood the deeper meaning behind her husband's choice of name. "Aren't you afraid that one day this child will be nicknamed 'Theodoric' by the citizens?"
"That's not so bad," Manuel replied playfully.
"So why not Theodosius (Θεοδόσιος)?"
"It's the 15th century; not many people are named Theodosius anymore."
"But didn't you give our eldest daughter, the princess, an even more obscure name?"
"Don't mind those details…"
After playfully bickering with his wife, he was able to confirm that her physical condition was now safe and sound.
Even so, Manuel still waited for the physicians to confirm that she would indeed recover very quickly before returning to his small office to continue handling the Autocratic State's affairs.
However, compared to the previous blandness, he was now beaming with joy while working today.
The next morning, Caesar Manuel specifically had his wife bring their eldest son and eldest daughter to attend a large court assembly, and in front of the nobles and bureaucrats of Bosporus, he announced that his son, Theodore, would henceforth be the legitimate heir of the Bosphorus Despotate, the Crown Prince of the Autocratic State.
The noble bureaucrats all expressed their congratulations, many genuinely celebrating their monarch's ability to produce an heir at such a young age.
And not just that.
That month, Caesar also specially hosted a banquet, inviting the high-ranking officials of the Autocratic State and some foreign dignitaries in the evening to celebrate the occasion.
His father, Alexius, who was already enjoying his later years in his old home in Bangkok Pu, even drunkenly clapped his good son on the shoulder when his son humbly demurred, laughing as he spoke his true feelings:
"Let's look at the Palaiologos in the distance.
We Gavras are at least performing better than the Palaiologos Caesars in Constantinople, aren't we? Saint Mary is watching over us."
Prince Alexius's meaning was clear; he was naturally referring to the current situation where the Emperor of Constantinople, John VIII, and his most hopeful successor, Moria Despotate Constantine Dragaš, had yet to produce any offspring.
"You say less," Zoe, Manuel's mother and Prince Alexius's wife, was so angry at her husband's drunken words that she couldn't catch her breath. "Don't think that just because you've abdicated, there are no more restraints, and then blabber uncontrollably, okay!?
Saint Mary, what if someone with ill intentions uses this for gossip?
You may not be the monarch, but your son still is; consider him a little!?"
Faced with this situation and his father's drunken words, Manuel could only give an awkward laugh and change the subject. "Ah haha, let's not discuss this for now…"
While Bosporus celebrated the birth of an heir, the war between the neighboring Ottoman and Karaman once again saw a reversal of fortunes.
After experiencing the embarrassment of his logistics being destroyed by the Turkmen tribes, Murad II spent considerable effort to rebuild and maintain his supply lines.
During this time, he even transferred part of the Rumelia Legion from across the Dardanelles Strait to severely punish these unruly nomads.
His actions quickly paid off.
Although the entire Hamid region had been lost previously, and even Eskisehir was threatened, the Ottoman army, with its logistics restored, regained its previous combat advantage.
In just half a month, the Karaman and Mamluk allied forces were forced to abandon their offensive on Eskisehir and instead focused on defending their existing occupied territories.
To reclaim Hamid, Murad decided to launch a rather large-scale offensive against Karaman.
By this point, the scale of this war was already so significant that it was difficult for other countries to ignore, and this intelligence would even, in the near future, reach a hegemon in Central Asia, Iran, bringing this war to an unexpected conclusion.