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THE king teetered on the edge of life and death for some time, but not long after affixing his seal to a document pronouncing his son as the next king and establishing an alliance with Ferrier, the king succumbed to his blood loss.
Prince Alphonse, who had been driven away to the backcountry, was immediately summoned to the royal castle and enthroned as king, per the prior king’s last will and testament. When the prince heard about the situation, he remained humble, insisting that he was still out of his depth in ruling the kingdom, and asked for King Edouard of Ferrier’s assistance.
Ferrier had originally intended to partially rule over Saleilles in name only through the alliance, but King Edouard was so impressed with King Alphonse’s response that he reduced the reparations inflicted from Saleilles’s breach of treaty to a lower amount than they had originally planned.
Moreover, at the recommendation of everyone around him, King Alphonse exiled Princess Hermine from the royal family and ordered her to live as a commoner. The princess had brutally rebelled against this order, but now that her true character had been exposed, there was no one with any authority who would support her.
There were rumors that the former princess Hermine had thereafter thrown herself into the ocean in grief over the hideous four long scars on her face, but no one knew for certain. It was certain, however, that after the ascension of the new king, no one saw the former princess or the man expelled from a certain viscount’s family in the royal capital ever again.
And so, the heart of Saleilles governance consisted of the new king, the new prime minister (a young man who used to live with Alphonse in the backcountry), and the old knight commander, who had miraculously recovered from his grave injuries. With this, the Kingdom of Saleilles prospered and its people continued to cherish the beautiful, traditional culture they once took pride in.
The friendship between King Alphonse and King Edouard grew stronger, and one day their children were joined in a happy political marriage, erasing any lingering tensions that existed between the two kingdoms…but that is a story for another day.