Oh my, now she was steaming like a boiling teapot, words tumbling from her lips at a breakneck speed. Then, with a dramatic whirl, she turned on her heel and, bam! She slammed the door shut behind her. Loud footsteps echoed as she stomped away.
I couldn’t help but marvel. How did she manage not to bite her tongue speaking so quickly? I felt pride as her sister.
Creeeak.
The door swung open on its own.
Ah. It had broken.
“Is that how a lady should act?” I marveled.
I found myself momentarily stunned before realizing that perhaps she and I simply had very different definitions of the term lady.
“My fiancé, hmm?” I chuckled to myself, my thoughts drifting to the engagements of my previous lives and this one.
In this life, I, Laviange Robur, was the second-born and eldest daughter of House Robur, one of the Four Great Ducal Houses of the Kingdom of Rovenia. I would be turning seventeen this year.
The aforementioned second prince, Joshua Rovenia—Shua, as my dear foster sister so fondly called him—was the same age as my brother. Our engagement had been arranged when he was twelve, and I was ten.
And the villainess my stepsister had just invoked—Beljeanne Yevina Rovenia—had been the infamous first princess of this kingdom. In general, only members of the royal family were granted a blessed name as a middle name. But, as a fool had once attempted to use it for a curse, these were no longer publicly revealed due to superstition.
Beljeanne had been the illegitimate half sister of the previous king, born to a commoner who had only been elevated to concubinage after she conceived the princess. She was infamous in this kingdom as a talentless, magicless, insufferable wretch.
I felt a certain kinship with that description.
Her fiancé had been none other than Soviesch Robur, my grandfather in this life. And yet, the two had never wed.
During his time as a student at the Royal Academy, Soviesch had fallen in love with Sharona, the daughter of an impoverished count. When she learned of this, the princess was consumed by jealousy. She tried to sacrifice her romantic rival to summon a demon, nearly dooming the entire kingdom in the process.
The one who had put a stop to the villainess had been none other than her own half brother, the crown prince. Unlike her, his lineage was impeccable. His mother hailed from House Asche, one of the Four Great Ducal Houses, and his noble blood was beyond reproach. They said he stood against her with unwavering justice, sacrificing both his own heart and his immense magical power to cast the greatest spell of the century and vanquish the demon-possessed princess in a decisive blow.
A righteous hero slaying the wicked villainess. It was still a tale beloved by playwrights and minstrels alike. But from here the story took a turn that was not told in the grand theater performances, though the truth was well-known by all in this kingdom.
The shining prince who had once vanquished both the infamous villainess and her demon was left a shadow of his former self. His spirit was weakened, his heart broken. He lost his ability to wield magic, reduced to nothing more than simple household spells. The king, father to both the princess and the crown prince, had hastily abdicated the throne to his son under the guise of taking responsibility, retreating into a life of seclusion—though in truth, it was in name only.
With only one heir remaining and the crown prince revered as the kingdom’s self-sacrificing savior, tarnishing his name was out of the question. Even if he had lost all his power and was unfit to rule, the only option was to place him on the throne in name, if nothing else. To ensure stability, he was swiftly wed to brides from House Bereed and House Nilty, the final two of the Four Great Ducal Houses. They wasted no time in producing several heirs.
Meanwhile, House Robur acknowledged Soviesch’s love, allowing him to marry Sharona, the noblewoman who had nearly been sacrificed in the villainess’s madness. Their marriage was swiftly followed by his succession to the title of duke.
The fated lovers, having found true love and wed, repaid their debt to the crown prince by standing alongside the noble houses of his two consorts in supporting the royal house, ensuring the smooth succession of the crown prince to the throne. These two noble houses also underwent a transition of leadership once the younger generation had matured after the princess’s passing.
Out of respect for the prince’s noble sacrifice, both the nobility and the common folk accepted his decline in silence. And in exchange, they made certain that the villainess was remembered as the true villain of the tale. The lower a person’s standing in society, the more viciously they clung to this narrative.
“Ah, yes, House Asche,” I murmured.
Because the crown prince’s mother was a member of House Asche, no further ties had been formed between them and the royal family, due to concerns over consanguinity. Furthermore, the head of that noble house had been swiftly replaced following the princess’s death.
Although the princess had been born to a concubine, the queen felt herself responsible, being one of the people who had raised her, and between that and with the anguish of witnessing the ruin of her only heir, the crown prince, she chose to withdraw from public life early. Seeing herself as a sinner, she spent the remainder of her life secluded in the remote palace within the castle grounds where the princess and her mother, the concubine, had once lived.
And so, a new generation of nobility—my grandparents’ generation—rose to power. For years, they’d supported the Crown with unwavering loyalty, waiting for the day when the next king, the one who currently sat on the throne, would come of age.
At the tender age of nineteen, the new king ascended, and both his father and grandfather withdrew into seclusion. A few years later, almost as if they had been waiting to see if their roles had truly been fulfilled, they passed away.
“What a splendid tale,” I said, letting out a refined laugh. “Truly, reality is stranger than fiction.”
But the truth? The truth had been entirely different. And I could prove it. The villainess—the infamous wretch whose name was still reviled to this day—had been none other than me. Beljeanne Yevina Rovenia had been my own name in a past life.
It no longer mattered, however. Because in the life that followed, I had found peace.
Yes, between my life as Beljeanne and my current life as Laviange, I had lived yet another life: a life that had lasted eighty-six years.
At the end of that first life, after enduring countless betrayals and a tragic fate, my final wish had been simple—to be reborn into a quiet, gentle world. And so, just before death claimed me, I entrusted my soul to one of the sacred beasts I had once contracted, putting my soul at the mercy of the Wheel and allowing myself to be reincarnated.
Then I had been reborn in a different world. It was something I could never have predicted. A country known as Japan on the planet called Earth.
I came to remember my past life around the time I had my first memories. In that world, science and technology had advanced so far that, rather than feeling inconvenienced by the lack of magic, I was stunned by how effortlessly convenient everything was.
Now, that sense of shock felt like a distant, nostalgic memory.
My parents gave me a normal amount of love, and I grew up carefree, smoothly moving through life as a JS, JC, JK, and JD, fully enjoying my student years. Of course, those are abbreviations for joshi shougakusei (elementary school girl), joshi chuugakusei (middle school girl), joshi koukousei (high school girl), and joshi daigakusei (university girl). I just felt like using them again after so long!
When I graduated, I entered the workforce as most did. I reveled in the freedom of life, a noble of my own making, until, at thirty-two, I simply picked out a guy who seemed compatible through a matchmaking app and got married. Maybe because I had spent my past life in a world where political marriages had been the norm, I never really looked for a sweep-me-off-my-feet type of love. Instead, I focused purely on compatibility and arranged my own strategic marriage. A self-orchestrated political union, if you will.
A touch dull, perhaps? But my choice had not been a poor one. My married life passed without any great drama, and by the time I reached thirty-seven, I had given birth to a daughter and twin sons. A quiet, ordinary life, yet not without its own joys.
Life went on, as life tends to do. There were ups and downs, but looking back, it was surprisingly peaceful. In the end, I outlived my husband by a few years and passed away at eighty-six, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. A perfectly ordinary life, right in line with the average lifespan.
Thinking about it now, that whole existence felt almost like an intermission between my past and my present. A chance to heal. A chance to know what it was like to be loved; to give love freely, without fear. A simple life, unremarkable but happy. After enduring countless wounds in that short life as a broken and embittered princess, my soul had completely healed.
“But, you know, the old lady in me has some thoughts,” I mused. “Of all the ways to return, did I really have to be reborn here? It’s bad enough coming back to this world that calls my past self a notorious villainess in the first place, but did I have to be born here right in the middle of the families of the ones who shoved all the blame onto me? And as the granddaughter of my ex-fiancé, no less...? Oh dear, I’m talking to myself.”