***
The circumstances that led me to grow up outside the Empire until the age of twelve were quite complicated.
My father was very ill. As a result, despite being the crown prince, he was unable to ascend to the throne for a long time.
Aside from my mother, who was the crown princess, my father also had a mistress named Anna.
Normally, only the emperor could have an empress, but Anna was eager to become part of the royal family, persistently pleading with my father.
“Hugo is already four years old. He deserves to be treated as a proper imperial descendant.”
My father dug up an old precedent from hundreds of years ago and gave Anna the title of bigung (royal concubine), allowing her to reside in the imperial palace.
Mother was furious about this.
She was so enraged that she chased after Father, who had gone out of the palace to deliver the news to Anna himself, and slapped him hard.
And then… my father collapsed and died.
In the end, my mother became a criminal, accused of killing the crown prince.
The emperor, who had lost his only son, was devastated.
However, as emperor, he still had to give the next order.
“I declare the first grandson, Edwin, the new crown prince.”
At that time, Edwin, who was eight years old, was the eldest son of my mother and father. Being a legitimate descendant, there was no dispute about his appointment.
After that, the emperor made this decision regarding my mother:
“Since it wasn’t intentional murder, I won’t have her executed, but she will be exiled permanently to the northern territories, beyond the Empire’s borders. However, since she was the crown princess, I will provide her with a large mansion and a noble family to serve as her escort.”
But the north was a land left unclaimed due to barbarian tribes and monsters.
Naturally, no noble family wanted to go there.
Even my mother’s family, the Count of Rubel, had already fallen into ruin.
The emperor, after much consideration, was offered a clever suggestion.
“Your Majesty, the north is rich in resources, and mercenaries frequently pass through there on missions from the merchant guilds.”
“Mercenaries?”
“There’s one man among them called the ‘Mercenary King.’ Perhaps you could grant him a title and send him along.”
And so, the “Mercenary King,” Arthur Barklith, was suddenly granted a barony and a mansion in the northern lands.
As with all mercenaries stationed near the borders, Arthur had a small amount of barbarian blood in him.
Because of this, the nobles mocked him, saying, “A barbarian received a title for a murderer.”
Even though Arthur fought the barbarians on behalf of the Empire, they still sneered.
In any case, my mother was sent north under the protection of the Barklith family.
But after arriving in the north, my mother discovered she was pregnant.
To make matters worse, she contracted a local disease.
Since she was pregnant, she couldn’t take proper medicine, and by the time I was born in the north, her health had severely declined.
Originally, the emperor had planned to bring me back to the palace right after my birth.
“Send the princess to the palace immediately upon birth. She has committed no crime and has no reason to remain in the north.”
But my bedridden mother made one final request to my grandfather.
“Please allow me to raise the princess until my dying day. I don’t have much time left anyway.”
The emperor, after some thought, decided that separating a newborn from her mother would be too cruel and granted the request.
He thought, after all, that it would be a matter of less than a year.
Instead, he promised to spare no expense in supporting the baby.
However… my mother lingered in bed, living for twelve more years, always on the brink of death.
And so, I ended up staying in the north until I was twelve, growing close to Arthur Barklith’s son, Kayan Barklith.
He was two years older than me, and we got along well.
“Why do you always call me ‘princess’? It’s so uncomfortable… Just call me Iv, okay?”
In the vast, uncivilized north, where there were no people from the capital and no noble lifestyle to speak of, among mercenaries who barely knew about noble etiquette…
“Kay, where are you going?”
“I’m heading over the hill. If I gather something useful, the kitchen will appreciate it.”
“Ah, I want to come too! But shouldn’t we bring a bigger bag? We’ll need something to carry a monster’s corpse.”
“I was thinking of gathering herbs, not monster heads…”
The emperor often said, “The princess is welcome to come to the palace anytime,” but I kept refusing, saying I preferred the north.
Mother, too, begged, “My end is near,” extending our time there, day by day.
During that time, in the wilderness overrun with barbarians and monsters, we spent our days running wild.
We learned swordsmanship, how to wield auras, and hunted small monsters together.
“Iv, what are you doing with that monster?”
“Oh, it hurt my horse, so I’m playing a prank on it!”
“…It doesn’t look like a prank, more like you’re just beating it up.”
Kayan and I both enjoyed playing around with swords.
“Why are you so happy, Iv?”
“I had a dream last night about sparring with you. I was so good at other techniques besides the thrusts we practiced that I beat you easily. Just thinking about it makes me laugh.”
“What were you so good at?”
“Horizontal slashes, vertical slashes, bisecting, slamming, hitting, cutting…”
“…Was I even alive in that dream?”
We were always together, constantly hunting monsters for fun. Even when one of us got upset, a light punch to mix our auras playfully would soon smooth things over.
Occasionally, my older brother would come to visit with an entourage of people, and only then would Kayan address me as “Princess.”
Even that was part of the joke for us.
Then, when my mother passed away when I was twelve, I finally had to go to the imperial palace.
There was no longer any reason to stay in the north.
Thus, my life as a wild, untamed girl of the north came to an end, and everything changed forever.
***
Before coming to the imperial palace, every time my brother visited us in the north to see my mother and me, he would worry, saying, “I wonder if our Ivnoa will be able to manage in the palace, which is like a battlefield…”
I would quietly listen to his concerns and then run straight to Kayan to relay the message.
“The palace is a place where you have to hide your emotions and twist your words to be considered refined. My brother said that if you get emotional, you lose, and the one who keeps smiling until the end is the winner.”
Kayan would always respond seriously.
“Then you’ll do great in the palace, Iv. That’s exactly your specialty—disarming people with your endlessly positive way of speaking until they have nothing left to say.”
“Wow, you’re so honest. You’re really amazing. As expected of my best friend. From now on, I should take after your honesty and say, ‘At least pretend to be concerned!’”
“See? You’re already great at it. You don’t need to worry at all.”
Kayan had known this for a long time, but I spent my whole previous life pretending not to.
‘Surviving in the palace… that was something I was actually really good at…’
But I never had a chance to use that skill, staying quiet the whole time.
In any case, after I stabbed Hugo in the stomach without hesitation, he screamed like the world was ending.
“AAAAAAHHHH! AAAAGHHHH!”
Eventually, his mother, Anna, the concubine, came rushing over.
I was dragged in front of my grandfather—the emperor—because he was the only one who could punish a princess.
‘Good, everything’s going according to plan.’
…
I fixed my Ko-fi finally..
Honestly, I was quite sad because no one supported me until now on ko-fi, but I found out that’s the problem was with my PayPal…
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