It was probably because I had given them a clue about my private conversation with Raymon. I continued to feign anger and stomped my foot, stepping on the shattered remains of the teacup that littered the floor.
Ow, cut. Ouch!
But I was Princess Titania, someone who would always stub her toes wearing new shoes that didn’t fit. I was supposed to be furious, and I couldn’t let a small cut dampen my anger…
“Raymon said this is too shabby, this is unfit for the Imperial Palace, this, this, this!”
Oops!
Sorry pretty roses! I grabbed a handful of roses from the wall and tore them apart in a fit of rage. I rampaged through the drawing room, stomping on the flowers.
“You mocked me, you ridiculed me, this is all your fault!”
“Oh my… Did Lord Raymon really do that?”
Mary’s eyes changed subtly. Sara exchanged a glance with her, then sidled over. There was a hint of the now-familiar contempt and mockery in their eyes. I kept my mouth shut at that point, acting as if I’d been offended.
“Don’t be like that, Princess Titania. It’s bad for you to be so angry. Why don’t you sit down, have a cup of sweet cocoa, and tell me what happened to upset you?”
Mary coaxed me with a sweet voice. She usually didn’t give me sweets, saying that I should take care of my appearance. Funny how, at a time like this, she would gladly offer me some.
How is it that there is no one saying to me, ‘You must uphold the dignity of the Imperial Family, you must not take out your anger on people and things, and you must improve your character’.
Of course, it was entirely likely that a maid saying such a thing would only be scolded by the First Queen. They had been instructed to deliberately incite Titania’s temper. To make her into a stubborn child who was still having a temper tantrum and craving sweets, so I rolled my eyes and watched Sarah slink away as if to say enough is enough.
Then.
“The First Queen, Her Highness Cleo Den Atry Hamastion, is here.”
Natalie, who I had not realized wasn’t here, appeared with an uninvited guest.
I was awestruck. Wow, I expected it, but she sure was fast. The final boss… Or, if not exactly the final boss, at least the one in between the middle and final boss.
“Princess.”
A smiling woman walked briskly towards us, she looked very young and was outwardly beautiful. There was a distinct mole near her cat-like right eye that must have been deliberately drawn. Her dress, made of many layers of sheer white silk, showed off her skin. Her swept-back blue hair was adorned with a shining orange diamond headpiece, nicknamed ‘Ocean of Stars’ and given to her by the emperor.
It was an ostentatious outfit in more ways than one.
The ‘Ocean of Stars’ was the jewelry that had been passed down to the Empress for generations, but the Emperor gave it to the First Queen, which had caused quite a stir.
“I heard you were very ill, what should we do about this….”
She sized me up, flashing me a pitying look, but her eyes were sharp.
The Empire was monogamous by law. Mistresses from noble families were not given legal status. The Emperor, however, was the only one allowed to have concubines. Of course, the number was limited. Three queen consorts and two concubines.
Queen consorts must be of high enough status to be accepted into royalty, while commoners or those of lesser nobility were only accepted as concubines. Even if you gave birth to an Imperial Son, it must be the child of an Empress or Queen to be treated as a human being.
Still, the emperors didn’t always fill their palaces with five consorts. It was rare for them to fill it with three consorts. However, the fact that the current emperor, who was a lecherous man, had only two concubines was due to the resourcefulness of this woman.
“I am at peace with your favor,” as I said this, I turned my head and pouted, as though I were still angry and upset.
“My, my. What could have happened to our dear princess to make her so ruffled?”
The Queen laughed and stroked my cheek as if she were witnessing a cute cat’s tantrum. Her mesmerizing scent wafted past my nose, and the touch of her soft fingers was so affectionate that a child who didn’t know any better might have been fooled.
She had originally intended to kill me as soon as she could carry a daughter in her own womb, but miscarriage after miscarriage after giving birth to the First Prince, Brian, left her barren. She left me alive and chose to take advantage of me, instead. If I hadn’t known all of the facts, I might have been a little harsher on her.
No one who was not the Empress would dare to speak down to the Emperor’s children, even if they were the Empress’s children. They must address each other with respect. Yet, no one could speak ill of the First Queen Cleo. Who would admonish the Emperor’s favorite consort to be more respectful to a mere mortal?
“But, Your Highness, what if Raymon thinks I’m ugly now?”
I looked up at her with a look that made it seem like I wanted to cry, as if I was throwing a tantrum in front of the only adult who had ever been kind to me.
She blinked her catlike eyes and gestured behind her, silently dismissing the maids.
The First Queen, Cleo, treated Titania as if she were a pet. She showered Titania with sweet words and meaningless gifts without actually caring for her in the slightest. And the child, who couldn’t even get a crumb of attention from the adults around her, leaned on her.
I didn’t even realize that my teeth were rotting and my hands and feet were crumbling from the sweet, nutritionless, fake attention. Gaslighting me with things like, ‘I’m the only one who loves you when your own mother doesn’t.’
And now, I shuddered at the touch of the Queen’s hand on my arm as she pretended to embrace me. She, after all, was the one who was directly involved in Titania’s destruction.
Pretending to love her like a daughter, making her listen to her every word. Yet, as soon as Vivi, the adopted daughter of the Duke of Castraine, appeared, she abandoned Titania. To explore the possibility of a new engagement.
This was nothing new. Queen Cleo was the one who cleaned up after the women the lustful emperor had touched, after all.
Despite being the firstborn, Prince Brian was less legitimate than his empress-born brother, Adrian. And if yet another boy was to be born from a woman the emperor had touched, it could be even more disadvantageous if he rose to fame.
So she arranged for women of low status but good looks to be offered to the Emperor, and when his interest waned, she had them killed off like rats and mice. The Emperor knew, of course, but pretended not to. It was much easier for him to tolerate a consort who enjoyed herself in moderation and cleaned up after him than to increase the number of women in his court.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because…”
Despite her careful ‘training’ of Titania, the truth was that she was no longer a useful tool to her. Rather, the situation was centered on using Titania to explore and peek into the state of Duke Castraine, or rather, Lord Raymon.
So whether Titania had a meltdown or not, whether she destroyed the place or not, whether she lived or died, was none of her concern.
But the point of coming here was…
“…I told him that if you love someone, if you really love them, it doesn’t matter what they look like. There’s always blood, dirt, and broken people on the battlefield……. So I thought Lord Raymon would say that, maybe, I’m pretty even when I’m sick,” I purposely muffled my voice and avoided eye contact.
Cleo’s eyes grew sly.
…Titania, who should have sent for a priest to heal her and dress up perfectly.
I suppose it’s because I had done something ‘strange’ by showing up sick and injured to a meeting with my fiancé. Cleo was a shrewd woman. She could pick up on things, at least when it came to the people she had chosen as her pawns.
However, when she saw a young princess staring down at the floor, her cheeks flushed red with frustration and dejection, I could feel her eyes change to a look meaning something like, ‘So that’s what it was.’
Suddenly, it became a laughable situation. She didn’t come to visit me when they told her a child finally regained consciousness after a near-death experience. But she’d come to me in person to pry into the details of my private conversation with Lord Raymon?
It was too damned easy to see how clueless young Titania really had been.
“Your Highness,” Queen Cleo’s voice took on a more manipulative quality. She reached out and tucked a lock of hair past my ear in an affectionate gesture, her tone one of concern. “You know it can’t be helped. You’re a beautiful princess, more beautiful than anyone he’d ever seen, so of course, Lord Raymon won’t dare to approach you.”
Up until this point, Queen Cleo had been framing Raymon’s dislike of me as ‘He doesn’t dare make a move on a noble Imperial Princess, so he deliberately acts like he doesn’t like her’…
What kind of otherworldly logic is this?
