“Seems there’s no mistaking that Her Royal Highness left through the city gate before continuing onto the highway, but...” Sir Eisendarque started hesitantly.
“Right, but this is kinda,” I replied, trailing off.
We were able to confirm that she’d passed through the gate on her way to Brigandia, which meant that we were now absolutely sure that Sylvario had intended on honoring the terms of the treaty. That was all well and good, but...
“Her Royal Highness’s luggage. There wouldn’t have been enough for a noblewoman going on a short trip, much less a princess marrying into another country...”
“It was just as the attendants and gate guards said: she left with only one coachman and one maid. That’s it. Did the royal family want Her Royal Highness Princess Sonia to run into an ‘unforeseen accident’?” I asked.
Stay calm. Just stay calm, I told myself. If I didn’t, I knew that the venom in my words would show how angry I was.
But this was awful. Sent off with hardly anything but the clothes on her back. No escort. And what’s more, these orders—which more or less sentenced her to die in a ditch somewhere on the way to Brigandia—were signed by the queen.
Sir Eisendarque’s face, a warped mix of rage and disappointment, was only a natural response to the results of our investigation. He hadn’t been directly involved with Her Royal Highness’s marriage to Brigandia. But even so, he must have felt as if he was also at fault, and was angry at himself for not knowing how the Royal Guard were abusing their power.
“With this evidence, it’s clear that Her Royal Highness intended on fulfilling the terms of the treaty, but I cannot help but wonder if the rest of your royal family felt the same. I find that this matter cannot be resolved without further investigation.”
“Yes, and I will do everything in my power to assist you. Please, investigate all you like. And if I were to threaten that without their compliance it may be decided that Sylvario didn’t hold up their end of the agreement, then it would make working behind the scenes inside the palace easier. I could even use the opportunity to do a bit of ‘spring cleaning,’” Sir Eisendarque replied, a great smile on his face.
One impressive enough to even give me the chills.
Once more, I felt a strong desire to spar with him, even just once, but that would have to wait until we’d finished cleaning up this mess.
Finding Princess Sonia came first.
We first gathered a mixed squad of Brigandian and Sylvarian knights, led by Gale, to search the highways. This time they were given further details on the appearance of Princess Sonia, her coachman, her maid, and their carriage. Before they left, I tacked on a little warning. Because of how she’d been sent off, if things didn’t go well, Sylvario ran the risk of appearing to purposefully fail to uphold their end of the bargain, thus signaling a restart to the war. The squad’s morale was now higher than ever.
Once I’d seen them off, Sylvario’s knight commander helped me look into Princess Sonia’s living situation. And I wished I never had.
I mean, I knew in my head that it was good for Her Royal Highness’s honor for us to look into it, but my heart just wouldn’t listen.
“Is this really how your nation treats their princesses...?”
“No, this is completely unacceptable,” rebutted Sir Eisendarque.
Princess Sonia had been treated horribly.
She was an unplanned child of the king’s concubine, the youngest child of a family already plentiful, with three sons and three daughters.
It might’ve been because she wouldn’t have much responsibility in the future that they treated her as an afterthought. Maybe, in the beginning, she’d just been mistreated a little bit. But before anyone realized it, no one cared about her, neither family nor servants.
For instance, somewhere along the way, she’d stopped being fed the same meals as her family. Not only that, but the quality of her meals had decreased to the point that she was being fed almost the same thing as the servants.
A young girl, who was supposed to be a princess, alone in her bedroom eating a servant’s meal—how did that make her feel?
And her mistreatment wasn’t just physical. Her assigned tutors neglected their duties. As long as they bullshitted their reports, they wouldn’t get in trouble, and wouldn’t suffer any losses in their pay. In these circumstances, there would of course be some people who would gradually start neglecting their charge. They may have been hired specifically for those reasons.
Witnessing Her Royal Highness’s mistreatment by others gave the servants permission to start neglecting her as well. Not a single person faulted them for it. Not her father, the king, nor the concubine who’d birthed her.
In all honesty, I might’ve just been constructing a fantasy of what happened all by myself. But I couldn’t understand. I didn’t want to understand.
Apparently, Her Royal Highness’s mother was much more invested in whether her son the second prince would become king or not, and as a result held no interest in her politically irrelevant daughter.
The immense bullshit of the situation made me want to scream. They might have been royalty, but I couldn’t understand how parents could treat their child like that.
Even I was thinking like that, despite being single and childless, but the married-with-kids Sir Eisendarque’s face was bright red, veins looking like they were about to burst right out. I couldn’t help but wish that he had been in a position where he interacted directly with the princess.
Seeing how their parents treated Her Royal Highness, Princess Sonia’s elder brothers and sisters obviously got the wrong idea too. Being royalty apparently didn’t change a damn thing about how cruel kids could be once they realized they could bully someone else and wouldn’t be punished for it. And it seemed that the third princess, who’d been born from the queen and was closest in age to Her Royal Highness, treated her the worst due to Her Royal Highness being born from a concubine.
If Her Royal Highness had been stupid enough to not realize her position, then things might have been better. But alas, she did—she was the very opposite of stupid.
“Her Royal Highness was a truly wise lady. Even though her tutors barely educated her, she would study on her own to learn the material,” said one of Princess Sonia’s few maids, tears welling up as she spoke. It seemed that while most of the servants half-assed their jobs, the few maids Her Royal Highness had were wholeheartedly committed to serving her. According to the maid, Princess Sonia was a princess worthy of that devotion.
“Even though Her Royal Highness was in such a difficult situation herself, she was always gentle and kind, even to us. Her caring smile never faltered.”
Those words shook me to my core. At that moment, something like respect welled up within me for Princess Sonia.
Some folks could be kind while comfortable themselves, though there were others who were rotten bastards regardless. Rare were the people who could be kind while in the depths of misfortune. Yet even as a child, Her Royal Highness had been kind. I wondered how purehearted someone would have to be to act like that, but as our investigations continued, I began to understand.
The more we heard, the more we learned what a gentle and kind princess Her Royal Highness was, never without a smile. Yes, always smiling, despite never being able to grin from the bottom of her heart.
My chest hurt at the realization. It still hurts. Had she ever been truly happy? Had she ever actually enjoyed herself? My mind was crammed with all these unanswerable questions.
It was true that as a princess, she existed to serve the nation. As a noble, I did too, but it was obvious that a member of the royal family would be expected to do much more.
But this just wasn’t right. There was absolutely no way this could be right.
She’d given up. Completely given up on her own happiness. It was why she smiled for others while never for herself—she simply couldn’t.
I cried once I figured that out. Why? Why should such a young lady be forced to live such a life? But my question would never be answered. After all, no one had the answer.
If an outsider like me felt this just hearing about what she went through, how much must Princess Sonia have despaired? No one knew, even her own maids.
But I couldn’t just despair.
“Sometimes, Her Royal Highness would leave the palace and come back with flowers and herbs to make her own perfume. This is one of the bottles she left.”
The maid pointed towards a bottle that was incredibly simple, as far as perfume bottles went.
Being unable to buy dresses or jewels, Princess Sonia had comforted herself with homemade perfume. But the queen and third princess hadn’t even allowed her to bring more than a bottle or two of that with her. Were these people even human?
How Princess Sonia had felt, passing through the gate after years of mistreatment, I would never know. The bright, fresh scent of her perfume, jarring in such a stifling atmosphere, made me hopelessly sad.