Chapter 10.3

Crown Princess (Tentative) (3)

“Not at all. However, it seemed that Felianne was not able to think of it that way. I unfortunately had made her apologize to me again and again. And in the end, she left the imperial palace and put a distance between us. Her early death was also likely due to her being trapped and suffering between her sense of loyalty to me and her love for His Majesty. I truly did something bad to her.”

This regret was deeply engraved in Her Majesty’s heart, which made her treat Her Highness’s son all the more affectionately, and was probably related to why she was treating me, his wife, so kindly.

At this time, His Highness the current Crown Prince was on the brink of passing away, and Her Majesty spent all of her time tending to His Highness when she did not have any social events to attend. As such, she was extremely busy — her face was gaunt, and since she was exhausted all the time, she would wrap up her social events pretty quickly. I was supposed to support her by following up with the attendees after she wrapped up the events, but as you would expect, what could I do? I didn’t know how to talk about politics. Rather, the reality was that Her Majesty was supporting me, the one who was supposed to be supporting her. Thinking back, I truly felt regretful for Her Majesty since I wasn’t able to reduce her workload.

Socializing was difficult, but there was another important event in store for Cermiane and me. The Crown Prince Succession Ceremony. If and when the current Crown Prince passed away, it was necessary for Cermiane to quickly succeed the position. The reason was that it was better for the blank period of having no Crown Prince to be as short as possible. And this was because some from the imperial branch families were vying for the position of Crown Prince, so there were some opposing factions to Cermiane. Luckily, Their Majesties were strongly supporting Cermiane, and my brother, Marquis Caliente, was also fully backing Cermiane which meant there were also many other families supporting him as well, so the way things stood, it was expected that Cermiane would become the Crown Prince. However, if the blank period got drawn out giving opposing factions time to take action, no one would know how things would turn out. For that reason, they wanted Cermiane to immediately succeed the position of Crown Prince as soon as His Highness passed away.

Cermiane disliked this since it felt like he was just waiting for his brother to pass away, and it also wasn’t a fun time for me either, but every time we visited His Highness, his condition worsened. Recently, he was almost always in a comatose state, so we begrudgingly acknowledged the need for us to start preparing. Preparations included creating and tailoring our custom-made ceremonial outfits, confirming the procedure of the ceremony, and memorizing our pledge to the Almighty and His Majesty the Emperor. At the end of the ceremony, we apparently needed to show ourselves to the general public, and smile and wave. What kind of cringy things are they making me do?!

When it became night, it was time for the evening parties. For these, I needed to return to the detached palace once and change my outfit. Wearing the same dress was out of the question. Rather, since it was an evening party, they went all-out and dressed me up. Evening parties at the palace were basically a nightly occurrence. Though uncommon, there were times where the evening parties weren’t hosted by Their Majesties. It was an honor to reserve a hall at the imperial palace and host an evening party, so some high-ranking nobles would usually be reserving a hall and hosting their evening party. If you were unlucky, there would be times where multiple evening parties would be held at several halls, each hosted by nobles who were at odds with each other, so you would be indicating who you were supporting by attending a particular one, which was a headache to deal with.

Nobles would have an easier time gathering attendees if they hosted their soiree at the imperial palace, and it was cheaper than hosting it at their own residence. Moreover, it was beneficial for the imperial family too, because if the imperial family hosted evening parties every night, that would be a big strain on the imperial budget. Evening parties hosted by the imperial family were usually once a month. Everyone was required to attend these, but for the other soirees, if you were busy or if you didn’t like the host, it was apparently acceptable if you declined to attend. However, it was different for myself as I was in my debut period as the Crown Princess. It was expected that I would attend every single one.

Cermiane also attended the evening parties. He would also be dressed up and wait for me in the waiting room, but since he was so exhausted, he would sometimes be sleeping during these brief respites. However, since Cermiane was also in the beginnings of his Crown Prince campaign, he needed to sell his face to the nobles at these evening parties to garner more support and back his ascension to the Crown Prince position. As such, he couldn’t afford to not attend evening parties. Fortunately, since Her Highness Felianne ingrained etiquette and manners into Cermiane and since he had to attend some of these events during his time as a knight, he didn’t really suffer from not knowing how to carry himself. In the first place, men weren’t scrutinized as much as women were for their etiquette and manners. How unfair.

At these soirees, we were the center of attention, and the onslaught of greetings and questions was brutal. The questions weren’t just friendly questions, but also rude and nasty questions like “Are you really an imperial prince?” and “I’ve never heard about you from the previous Marquis Caliente; are you truly a lady from the Caliente family?” It would have been easy if I could just respond, “Shut up you idiot” and karate chop their heads, but I unfortunately cannot do that. We were expected to subtly express our displeasure, deny their allegations, and ultimately respond in such a way that draws out an apology from them. If possible, we needed to add in a little humor for a perfect response. Who in the world could pull off such a perfect response?!