Sister-in-law of the Heroine of a Childcare Novel

The noisy room finally quieted down.

The guest, who had been dutifully playing cards and listening to music had left, saying she couldn’t stay any longer, and Adrian dismissed the servants as soon as they had tidied up the mess. Just then, he heard a cold voice.

“Why go to all that trouble for her?”

The woman’s face was impassive, as indifferent as a frost, even at this late hour, but Adrian read the concern in her words and smiled wryly.

“Mother.”

“She is a puppet that Queen Cleo has put a lot of work into. If you are caught tampering with her, you will be killed….”

“Mother used to lament that the people in the imperial palace were, in the end, just cowards.”

Intrigue within the Imperial Palace and a high-ranking noble family weren’t very dissimilar in their core. Of course, the Imperial court did recognize the right of succession to the throne to non-Empress’ children, so the scale of the struggle was different.

In the early days of their marriage, the Empress tried to understand the Emperor. She did try to change him, even trying to bend herself to his will, wondering if she was the one in the wrong. 

But perhaps the Empress, more than the Emperor, was the only one truly worthy of Imperial status. Even when she was alone, she kept her back straight, and when no one was listening, she spoke to herself in a dignified and unassuming manner.

But when Queen Cleo gave birth, the Emperor began to mock and belittle Marquis Integria, the Empress’s father. He cursed and sneered at him. The father whom the Empress had admired all her life was forced to bend the knee to the Emperor for what amounted to nothing.

If he stood up to the Emperor in vain, if the Empress were to be shunned and cast out of the household, unable to bear children, there would be no future for the Marquis of Integria.

After that, the Empress no longer had any feelings for her husband, and she vowed to raise her son to be a better man. She resolved to raise him to be different from her husband. Not to be trampled underfoot by such unscrupulous creatures. To teach him patience and to sharpen his claws so that he would not lose what he holds dear because petty quarrels wounded his pride. So that when he finally gets it all, he won’t take all the credit for it and trample on those below him.

The pride she couldn’t let go of for the Emperor, she would let it go for her son.

And she was willing to stain her hands, not with blood but with dishonor, to get there.

So, of course, it hadn’t been difficult to turn away a child who had been rejected by her own parents since birth. Even if it hadn’t been particularly pleasant.

“And yet,” he says, “you were saddened that I was becoming like them. You told me that hypocrisy was a luxury, but you couldn’t understand that I was only doing it for my own sake.”

Bystanding could sometimes become violence and hypocrisy. And it was not as if the Empress didn’t know this. She had already done all sorts of things in her silent feud with Queen Cleo. Innocent people had been taken advantage of and had to disappear.

Just…

“Mother, we can do this.”

Adrian squeezed his mother’s hand.

“Unlike Brian and Queen Cleo… You don’t have to sink that low, Mother. I know you’re trying to be careful to the very last detail for me, but it’s not like I was raised to be stupid enough to fall for this kind of danger.”

For the sake of her precious son, she wouldn’t let him have any weaknesses. To never give him a reason to fight. Adrian knew that better than anyone, and his heart sank as he watched Titania laugh and smile with eyes that seemed to be blazing with fire.

Pretending not to know. Pretending to know when she didn’t. Pretending to be a fool.

It was as if he was seeing himself in her. No matter how weak he showed himself, no matter how many times he asked for help, no one in the palace would listen.

But at least Adrian had the Empress. The two would do anything for each other.

But Titania had nothing of the sort. She had to hold herself as precariously as if she were walking a tightrope. She flirted with fools and laughed with those who would use and exploit her.

Watching her, he felt a pang of guilt, even though he could recognize the hypocrisy. So he reached out his hand to her, even though he knew it was ridiculous. 

Adrian pulled the Empress into a hug, her face complicated but incapable of saying anything to her son.

“…It will be all right, Mother, I think she’s smarter than we gave her credit for. Look at what she did today. She’s outdone all of our expectations, did you notice? She’s engaged to Duke Castraine’s son, after all… Maybe there’s some unforeseen benefit ahead of us?”

Of course, Adrian didn’t expect this empty statement to come true so soon afterward.

 

* * *

 

Good afternoon are uneventful afternoon, if you ask me!

It’s one of the few good things about being a spoiled brat; no one cares about my education. No one would blame me when I oversleep. Even the ‘original’ Titania slept like a log, claiming that ‘They say sleep helps women be beautiful, and I’m not going to get less than perfect skin!’

Usually, before marriage, young imperials share a palace with their biological mother. If they didn’t have a biological mother, they would either share a palace with the mother who raised them or live alone.

In other words, the Lilac Palace, which I visited yesterday, is also the palace where the Empress and Adrian live together. Since it’s the Empress’s residence, it’s naturally very large and grand, so if living in such a place, it wouldn’t feel like living with someone else. 

However, shortly after giving birth to Titania, Queen Elaine fell ill and became very weak, as for Titania she was so often ill that it was feared she would die before she turned ten. So, driven by legitimate concerns about how a sick woman could raise a sick child, I was sent to live in the Rose Palace.

The Empress and the First Queen argued with each other until they decided that ‘even if she is weak, she still has a mother, so it’s not fair for someone else to be in charge of her education’, and Titania’s status plummeted.

One of the few female professors at the academy, the only one in the empire, was sent as a tutor to teach me a few years of basic education and common knowledge, starting around the age of seven. But before the age of ten, I was too sickly to pay attention, and after the age of ten, she was no longer interested in teaching me anything.

She only came to teach me during academy vacations in the first place, so I guess it couldn’t be helped. I got some basic education as well as general knowledge, but that was it. After that, life was completely free.

In conclusion! I slept like a log and then went to the library.

“…It’s nothing special, even for an Imperial library.”

I came to the library, which Titania never thought to look into in her lifetime, to learn about that emoji magic sword that is probably crying something like ‘contractooooooor…‘ in the corner of my room right about now.

Nothing much came of it.

At best, I found one book that seemed to be a back-and-forth explanation of the names and origins of ancient weapons and weapons of divine power. I skimmed through it and saw the name ‘Gloriana’, so I took it just in case.

Still, since it was an imperial library, I wondered if I should use a loan confirmation or something, but since cleaning and management were done with magic and access was done with proof of Imperial blood, there was no librarian…

So I just took it with me.

The place was the Imperial Library, but was it okay to manage it like this? Really? However when I thought about it, if an Imperial family member borrows something from the Imperial Family Library, I wonder if anyone would dare to ask for it even if it was badly documented and not returned.

With a system like this, someone could take a book out and pretend like they never did, and no one will ever know. Which was good for me, because it gave me an excuse to scour the Empire’s history for weapons worthy of my dashing fiancé and show him my erudite side.

The Rose Palace was busy preparing for the renovations to the burned areas and other urgent matters. The only time they would be focused on me was when I would be meeting my fiancé.

In other words, they leave me alone as long as neither of us need each other.

Which is why I was whistling so loudly as I strolled through the renowned Imperial Labyrinth Garden near the library when… 

“…Vivi?!”

I was horrified to see the child falling into a black hole that had suddenly opened up in the center of the maze garden. Why was she here! The book didn’t say anything about this!

Without further thinking, I followed Vivi’s disappearing figure and jumped into the hole at full speed.