Phillip Beltrum 3rd

Phillip's father kept acting as a king even after becoming senile due to his old age, something that allowed Helmut Arbor to deceive him for giving him the complete control of the royal guard. After this Helmut began to fill the important post of the royal guards with the nobles of his faction, his sons and making more and more nobles a part of his own faction in exchange of an important rank inside the royal guard.

This was extremely troublesome for Phillip because Helmut was just about to become to more powerful than him and putting him in a position where he would have no more option than obeying his orders, when Reis ordered Flora's kidnapping Phillip took the chance for recovering the right to command the royal the guard from Helmut and expelling him from it at the same that he demoted Charles, regaining with this a part of the power that Helmut stole from the previous king.

During the next five years the Arbor faction kept working in earnest in order of recovering its old power, little by little they recovered power until the point where it was impossible for Phillip to stop them from imposing their politics if he didn't have the help from the Hugenot faction, the moment when Flora fell from the cliff because of Stewart was a specialty critical moment because at that time the nobility was divided about what to do in response to the recent strengthening of it's army that the Proxia empire made.

The Fontine's and Hugenot's factions wanted to take a conservative politic of keeping the current status quo with the Proxia empire while the Arbor faction wanted the Bertram kingdom to improve it's own army too. If that Stewart was the guilty of Flora's almost death have been made public the Hugenot faction would have lost a great part of its power and it would have been impossible to make them his allies for stopping the Arbor's faction militaristic politics, that's why Phillip joined immediately the plot for framing Rio and deemed him guilty of a royalty's attempted murder that same evening.

Two months before the hero summoning, after making a secret pact with Reis, the Arbor faction allowed the Proxia empire to occupy a part of Bertram's north region, Reis would give back those lands to them later but in exchange they must break the alliance with the Galarc kingdom, something that was stopping the Proxia empire from conquering more of the small kingdoms around it, the Arbor house took this chance for responsabilizing Phillip's and Hugenot's conservative politics of the defeat and took control again of Bertram's royal guard and national army.

With it's new power the Arbor faction accused the Hugenot's faction falsely of rebellion for purging them with that as an excuse and forcing them to run away to Rodania, at the same they put Phillip and the rest of the royal family in house arrest by force after driving away from Bertram's capital all the nobles loyal to them, now they rule the country instead of Phillip.

Personality
Phillip Beltrum looks at things through a realist perspective, however he is short-sighted. He was concerned about the Arbor faction and stripped power from them after his daughter's failed kidnapping, however he also allowed them to regain most of the power back in five years. He framed Rio for attempted regicide to protect Huguenot from political reprisals, but still lost his power in a matter of years from poor military planning.

Despite this 'by any means' approach to domestic politics, he is unwilling to risk aggression to a hostile neighbor in Proxia. This allowed for Proxia to coordinate with his rivals and usurp his throne and become the de facto rulers of Beltrum.

In all, Phillip is willing to sacrifice anything for stability, but is too short-sighted to make this an asset. His hypocritical policy and his Kingdom's treatment of people has pushed talent away, allowing for his bureaucracy to be filled with unqualified nepotism.

Trivia
In the Anime Adaptation Phillip Has a Beard