Published at 12th of August 2024 7:38 am

Chapter 113 Princess Elodie

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Princess Elsa’s exploits in the Eastern Kingdom was the next history summary Elmer’s narrow brown eyes found.

This one was a lot shorter than what had been penned down for Princess Aria, and that was understandable, since compared to how her elder sister had ended, Elsa had lived to tell her own tale. And in that regard, she had made sure speculations didn’t fly around, and as well kept the stories of her journey brief.

But still, her life in the Eastern Kingdom had not been of glitters.

She was a girl, only so far to sixteen years of age, and had been sent to a kingdom so vastly different from hers. A kingdom that blocked out the radiance of the sun, compared to hers where butterflies always danced on the petals of flowers, and warmth constantly poured down from the sky.

Living in such a place had tampered with her spirit so much that when she’d returned to her home she no longer relished in the beauty of the world as she had used to.

She’d abruptly converted from the beautiful rose flower she had been before the journey to a common hawthorn that pricked anyone who dared to get too close to her.

Though such a change had not been only because of the state of the kingdom she had been sent to.

No. It was far more than something as simple as that.

Princess Elsa had acted as an orphaned peasant when she’d arrived on the outskirts of the Eastern Kingdom. There she’d come across a pauper of a swineherd, particularly a balding dwarf of a man well past the age of peak manhood, who also had an aching back that prevented him from carrying out his duties as he’d used to.

But she did not approach the weak old man until after she’d studied him for a week—while surviving on the food and water she had taken on her journey, including sleeping on the branches of withered trees due to the lack of sunlight.

Elsa had noticed that the man had no family to cater for his needs, nor could he afford any worker to take on such a role, so she had brought him a deal:

“Take me in as your daughter, provide me a place to sleep, and I will take care of you and perform your meager chores”.

She also mentioned that she would consistently head into the major city of the kingdom daily, where the Castle of Crows stood, and bring back purchasers of his pigs for him. And for all these all he had to do was give her a place to sleep, and a fire to warm herself. She would take no payments, but would take food and water if offered.

The man, who went by the name: Rav, had not instantly made a decision. Though during his thinking he did not send the ragged looking Elsa back into the dark woods, and instead kindheartedly offered for her to sleep in his little rundown cottage.

Maybe he did so as a way to study her? Elsa didn’t know and didn’t care. All she wanted was to sleep on something that was not a tree branch for once.

It was not until five days of the young Princess of sixteen heading into the woods to find her own food had elapsed—her experience with joining her father’s hunting expeditions having been of major assistance with that—did Rav finally give in to her proposal.

He officially took her in as his daughter.

She began to tend to his pigs, his home, and even his being as promised. And whenever she ventured into the major city of the kingdom she tried her utmost best to gather as much information as she could on the layout of the kingdom’s walls and ramparts from the merchants she traded with; sometimes even from drunken guards whenever they’d had too much ale to drink at the taverns.

The information she sought never came without a lot of harassment; after all, she was a young and strikingly beautiful lady. Although, since she had long shed her skin of a princess, they never stayed too long before those involved were in pain or something similar below their waist.

Such actions earned her glowering stares from the merchants and guards involved. But, regardless, they did little to put a dent on her business exploits for Rav. In fact, on a certain day, it became a blessing in disguise. She’d found herself coming into contact with a rather peculiar person after sending her knee into the crotch of a merchant and escaping from his raging steam.

This peculiar person had been found in the Garden of Tears, a garden graced by countless arched branches of heart-shaped flowers bearing a tiny teardrop at the base of their blooms. Flowers which were known for their ability to survive without the sun, and furthermore known as ‘the bleeding heart’.

The garden was located to the left of the Castle of Crows, just outside the hidden postern gate which led to the royal sepulcher. In a nutshell, it was a location Elsa should have never stumbled upon.

But her feet had taken her there regardless, and the peculiar person she’d found within the Garden of Tears had been none other than the only child of the king of the southern kingdom, King Brumry Lancaster.

This conclusion she had come to because of the singular information of a feature that everyone who had ears to listen to gossip in the kingdom knew; it was an information stating that the twelve years of age Princess Elodie had fallen ill with the same illness which had plagued her mother. The ugly smallpox.

Finding a postern gate which led into the castle was a fascinating achievement for Elsa, but it did not fill her heart with as much joy as coming upon the Princess and only child of the king of the kingdom did. And furthermore, the little youngling had been alone.

Elsa came to a decision then and there. She knew she had to befriend the little princess.

And that she did by proceeding to approach Princess Elodie, taking advantage of the young princess’s evident loneliness from her plight to paint herself as the dirty peasant who had encountered a lot of illnesses and feared none.

Her words helped the little princess open up to her, and because of that she learnt that Elodie always sneaked out of the castle without her guards because she had a sinking feeling that they despised her and constantly guarded her in fear that they would one day contact what she had.

Being good with her mouth, Elsa talked the princess into believing that her thoughts were not true and she was just as loved as every other person. And she also promised her that she would keep visiting and being her friend until the royal physicians had finally found a cure to the illness that had killed her mother.

That had been the start of their friendship. A real one for one party, and a manipulative one for the other.

Every night—which was determined by when the stars appeared in the dark sky to join the silent moon—Elsa would pay Elodie a visit in the Garden of Tears, and they would play and have fun.

Slowly, but surely, she convinced Elodie to take her into the castle. And every time she ventured into it she studied its layout, mapping it down in a parchment whenever she arrived back at Rev’s cottage.

Growing familiar with each other by the day, Elodie began to feed Elsa with knowledge on the kingdom—the latter having taken on the pretense of being lacking in the knowledge department as she was a peasant.

And finally, this little education turned enormous when Elsa learnt about the breeding processes of the royal family. It was one that sickened her, but at the same time made her feel pity for Princess Elodie who believed that her illness was as some form of punishment for what her ancestors had been doing.

The young princess had not known of the gravity of her family’s traditions until she’d overheard the royal guards engaging in a sensitive discussion.

Her family—the royal family of the southern kingdom—engaged in inbreeding. A tradition passed down in her household where the king and queen were always siblings, and the children they had from their profane intercourse would be the next king and queen.

This was also further topped up by another rule that once a boy and a girl had been achieved as children, no other child should be brought into the world again.

If countless tries were required to bring forth a boy, then the eldest daughter should be the only one left alive. Any girl who came after her should be killed as soon as they were born, as only a boy was required. And once the birth of a boy has been achieved, the queen would have her womb closed so as to not get impregnated any longer. If the birth of a boy was not achieved before the queen died, or is unable to give birth anymore, then the king is required to take his daughter to bed; and this proved the same for the queen if it was the other way around.

Princess Elodie’s mother had turned ill and died a few days after she had been born, so she had already long readied herself to be bed by her own father as soon as she came of age. But then came her sickness.

Elodie had told Elsa that the tradition had been put in place in order to keep the blood of the Lancaster’s pure, and also to prevent an outbreak of war between siblings for the throne. But with the arrival of her sickness the end of her bloodline came into sight, unless the royal physicians’ concoctions somehow performed a miracle they couldn’t for her mother.

Her father, King Brumry, kept praying to the Heavens, to the Creator of all, but no answer ever came. And because of that he was slowly beginning to fall more and more into depression by the day.

He did not want to be the first to go against the Lancaster’s tradition and call upon the wrath of the spirits of his ancestors, so he tried his best to withhold himself from looking to any other woman for a child.

Because of the practice of the Lancaster family, the royal household never exceeded the total of four; and whenever it did, the amount would be culled immediately. This meant there were no distant relatives King Brumry could seek. There was no one besides his own sick daughter.

The narration of Elodie had filled Elsa with disgust so much that she’d found herself wanting to keep Elodie alive.

And that she tried to do on the day she arrived back in Aflorere after the Eastern Kingdom had been successfully conquered, taking with her the dumbfounded newly orphaned princess: Elodie, and, as well, her foster father: Rev, under the guise of ‘spoils of war’.

But even though she had pleaded with her father to spare the young princess’s life—if anything as a gift for her hard work—King Athelstan had not heeded, and therefore sentenced the illness ridden princess of the Eastern Kingdom to death, stating that it would ease her suffering and she would be better off in the embrace of the Creator of all.

Still, in the face of death, Princess Elodie had had a look of satisfaction. She’d finally found peace from all her sorrows on the block of a guillotine.

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