[ FF ] `` The weapon that won the war '' ( Feedback for every response . ) 400 words or less .

Might have gone a few words over the wordcount, should be pretty close though. I thought I'd go for a different take on the word weapon. 
 
 EDIT: Minor grammar correction. 
 
 *** 
 
 Hyani Warlord Archid III leaned back in his hardwood chair as he surveyed the battlefield before him. The battle was a foregone conclusion; the last brief conflict which marked the end of the war. Here the usurper ’ s last allies would be crushed and the Land of the Three Emperors would once again be ruled by a single house. As he watched the Royal Cavalry charge into the fraying left flank of his enemies Archid found himself wondering what history would make of this great conflict which had consumed the lives and energies of so many men. What would men say was the weapon which won the war? 
 
 The Royal Historians would no doubt dedicate the victory to the decisive leadership and grand strategy of the Radiant Emperor. Archid chuckled at the thought. The Radiant Emperor had commanded armies in name only. Anyone who had spent any time with the man would know that he had no temperament for anything but drinking and whoring. He was a good Emperor but only because he left the running of the country to better men. 
 
 So what then of the advisers? Would Zhang ’ s merciless suppression of the opposition qualify? Probably not. Historians rarely looked kindly on the operations of the secret police. Necessary perhaps but better brushed under the carpet than exalted. Could it be the technological innovations of the mad philosopher Freos? Certainly his strange hydrogen airships had commanded the skies and drastically simplified the process of scouting and issuing commands to units. Still, as revolutionary a weapon as these were at the beginning of the war by the end the usurper had copied the design and much of the edge had been lost. 
 
 No. None of these things were truly the weapon which won the war. Perhaps it is ironic that in this case the poets and bards would probably come closer than the historians and philosophers to explaining the victory of the Radiant Emperor. It was not airships, nor leaders, nor the secret police which unravelled the usurper ’ s plans and routed his armies. It was a woman. 
 
 Felintine the Fair, the youngest daughter of a travelling minstrel came upon the usurper as he rode through the Everglen. Like the boy he was he had fallen for her on the spot. For a man so desperate to curry prestige and favour to marry some nobody without so much as a fort to her name sealed his fate. 
 
 Archid smiled and raised his glass. “ To Felintine the Fair! May she live to see her husband hanged! ” 

