“It’s only because of hard work that people can catch these lucky breaks. Besides, humans are impatient. It’s harder to sit back and wait to gain status and honor than pushing to get it yourself. However, ultimately, whether you actually obtain those things is all up to luck. If you try to force the things you can’t control, you’ll just tire yourself out. What you should focus on are the things you can control like your grades and your own strengths.”
“The idea of working hard while trying not to care about if I succeed or not is something that never occurred to me.”
“Lady Francess, it’s difficult to gain status but it’s fun to try and improve yourself. I believe it’s very enjoyable to work one day at a time to achieve your ideal self. My very precious friend taught me this, and I’ve only recently begun to feel how right she was. Your entire world will change with a little bit of a different attitude.”
“That may be true...” Lady Francess said, considering Ana’s words.
“Lady Francess, if you wanted to be queen so badly, there must have been something you wished to accomplish, right? Though we can’t make you queen, we can at least try to put into policy what you wanted. Please share what you’d hoped to do and I’ll try to see if we can accomplish it,” I said.
“I’d like it to be possible for women to inherit status as well. I want women to be able to gain status without having to rely on men to grant it to them.”
“Understood. I’ll do my best to make sure that there are more women leaders in households and politics.”
Though having women lead noble families or even the royal family wasn’t outlawed, it was very much accepted that they never took these positions. It wasn’t impossible to change, but since it wasn’t a law, it would take time to change the country’s traditions.
“Heh heh...”
Lady Francess suddenly began laughing in a hollow voice, and she continued for some time, but neither Ana nor I could figure out why.
“To be honest, the desire to make it so that women could inherit status only came after my engagement was called off. I was so angry that someone’s hard work could easily be nullified due to the whims of a man. Prior to that, I’d undergone my training to become queen, so I had more palatable wishes prepared, but now that I really think about it, there’s nothing...absolutely nothing that I’d wished for back then. I feel so stupid that I can’t help but laugh at myself.”
I shouldn’t have asked this after all. Ana had told me that prior to Lady Francess losing her engagement, she’d talked a lot about wanting to become queen and doing something when she achieved that goal. The future she spoke about was idealistic and made everyone at the school feel that she truly was the Gold Rose. That was why I’d thought Lady Francess had something meaningful she’d wanted to accomplish.
“Though I may have looked the part due to my education, I’ve finally realized that in actuality, I was empty inside. It only makes sense that the gods wouldn’t favor a woman like me... Thank you very much. I now finally realize where I went wrong.”
“Lady Francess...I’m not very interested in how you failed or where you fell short. However, I’m very curious to see how you stand back up.”
“You’re truly a kind individual, Lady Anastasia...” Lady Francess said, her soft eyes trained on Ana.
Those of House Lillard were scheduled to be executed, and soon their house would be no more. However, there was a chance for Lady Francess alone to survive. It was because the former crown prince had asked for her to be spared.
When they’d still been engaged, Lady Francess had warned him extensively that Lady Mariott might be a flower operative, but he didn’t heed her words at all and only let himself become further intoxicated. However, since then, he learned that Lady Francess had been right all along. That was why he wanted to apologize to her. The prison she was being kept in was part of the same palace where he was staying now.
After speaking with her, he realized it was his fault that she’d ended up like this. As a way to atone for his sins, he requested her life be spared. Though it was possible for our family to stay her execution, she’d declined the offer.
Even if she was pardoned, she’d still lose her status as a noble and be marked with a criminal record. From there, there were only two paths she could take. She could live in exile and work somewhere like the red-light district, or she could live under another noble’s protection. In her case, there were quite a few noble houses that would have happily taken her in if House Lillard weren’t being destroyed, so that was the path she would have taken if circumstances were different.
However, the reality was that without a house, there was no merit to anyone taking in a criminal and treating her well. If they did decide to take her in, they’d most likely treat her like a sex slave, and even if they didn’t, there would still be rumors. Talk would spread even faster given her beauty and her reputation as the Gold Rose.
She couldn’t allow herself to not only have the dishonor of being a criminal but of being a sex slave as well. Nobles valued their pride over all else. Even if she was able to avoid execution, her entire reputation would be poisoned.
Everything Ana was saying now was to give Lady Francess the will to live on and not choose suicide, and Lady Francess called Ana kind because she understood that.
It would have been one thing if we’d just taken some of the territories that House Lillard possessed, but they’d tried to kill both me and Ana. Since their objective had been the demise of our household, we were well within our rights to kill every last one of them, and as one of the orchestrators, she deserved to die as well. I especially couldn’t forgive her for trying to kill Ana.
But Ana didn’t think like that. She said the only reason our families fought was because of political strife, and that it was only because she’d been born in that house that things had turned out this way.
To Ana’s mind, Lady Francess’s desire to become queen from a young age had only been because the idea had been impressed on her from those around her. Truth be told, that might have been the case. Despite it not having come from her own desire, she’d wanted to achieve it, which was only natural given the environment she grew up in.
Ana could relate to her in the sense that as the only child of a duke—and a girl as well—she’d also had to live with the burden they placed on her of what they wanted her to grow up to be. The pain of living for the sake of one’s house was something she understood well. That was why Ana didn’t want to dole out any punishment beyond destroying their house. She was happy that she had an excuse to not execute Lady Francess thanks to the former crown prince’s request.
“I suppose...I’ll think a little about living as a criminal.”
Relief appeared on Ana’s face. This seemed to be a step forward from when Lady Francess declared without a shadow of a doubt that she refused to live with the shame. What Ana wanted was by far the most important thing to me, so I also felt relieved that we could grant Ana’s wish.