FYI this is not eddeted and the Whole thing is up on patron so if you get into it hop over there and read the whole thing. This was just a cool idea I really liked so play it out in my head till i made a whole novel on it. any how I really hope you like it and if you do please check out the rest of my works here on webtoons and on patreon.

Failing Kings 

With my birth came the down fall of the kingdom, I wasn’t just the the disappointment they were hoping against, I was something unexpected… and to them tragic. 

 I was the first born child of the rightful king and queen of Keyat. They had struggled to have an hair so when the queen died with my birth  wicked rumors spread that I was not an heir, I was cursed or maybe a monster. This lead the kingdoms people losing confidence seeing all as ill omens. Seeking a quick fix with a new queen was wed and bred producing a real son/ heir. My half brother Brit was born with in the year. 

All of this because on birth the physicians declared that I was deformed and would never be able to continue the line. It was believed the faster me and the bad tidings my birth were removed from court the fast the country could move on. so I was snuck away to the north cost to quietly disappear and live as a useless cast out princess so no challenge for the throne could ever be made. As a girl child who couldn’t ever produce a  heir the threat was securely dealt with. 

I was raised by an older well meaning distant connection, James and Martha of Grayfeild, with no children of their own in a small village were our biggest social opportunity was church. the Grayfeild manner library was the only real way to pas time and as unfortunately their older values meant I was raise strictly and formally female. I always watched the men go hunt play games and acutely enjoy life. I was told of my position early and raised to its standard of education, decorum and discipline. I was also told that if I ever confessed my origin I would immediately be imprisoned for life for my lack of loyalty to the crown. It was also reinforced that no one would believe me that I was a lost princess and no one would back me up so if i made it know. so I knew to keep my mouth shut! I watched, read and did my upmost to be the very picture of Marthas ever higher ideal of the standers of a lady.

 As other ladies came of age I noticed clothing became exadruated pointing out the sexes more acutely and the rules of the sex tightened up and to me made fools of everyone. My few church girlfriends became single minded in their focus on finding a good husband. Somehow their was just an understanding that I was not fit for marriage, none of the adults questioned it but their were lots of whispers of me being an out of wedlock child of someone important but us girls didn’t know the full story till much later. We were so removed and isolated from the world we didn’t know the trouble happening in our kingdom it just wasn’t discussed with girls. However when young women started having trouble finding husbands the war crept into our lives. when we asked why we were at war we were hushed and told “questioning the young king was bad for the health.”  after a time veterans came home with dark rumors of the capital and how pointless it all was. 

Our quiet village was disturbed one day when the Royals paraded though our village on way to some Halliday. I went with one of my best friends/governess Daisy we lined up in our best dresses and watch as my real family rolled though. My half  brother Brit was a distinctly bitter looking young man with none of my hight or grace he even spat the fruit he was chewing out the carriage on to the people that had come out to see him. his manor locked into me a certain unsettling displeasure for the relation. It was like he didn’t even see the good people that worked to keep our community and home running.

Our community. I had been blind to it all till Daisy the smartest  young lady I knew had shown me how their estate ran, her father was vary old and her mother never had an education so she worked with her cousin to keep the place running. he was the heir to the estate but he too was off to war so Daisy did more and more. On the days I got to spend with her, I saw how every part of the village was part of keeping an estate running smoothly. The laborers that harvested the wheat, the miller that ground it, to the baker and the deliver boy. The foresters that kept seasoned wood for our fires and fueled the ovens for the food everyone eat. The farmers, the smiths, the fishermen and the hockers everyone in this town had a place.  

I knew from some of the other Ladies in our group it was not normal to like ones brothers but this first sighting had really stayed with me and the whole crowd went ghost quiet not knowing how to take the insult. The carriage rolled on and out of town and the crowed faded away as dark cloud spread over the village.

 It was like that royal parade had brought the plague of despair from the capital and it never properly left. More and more young men disappeared slowly replaced by hobbled sunken eyed men missing more of themselves then limbs. The girls I had grown up with started marring off to what was left of the gentry, often poor matches of necessity that we freely mourned over with them. I though life could not be more wretched until Daisy’s cousin fell on the battlefield so she was forced to marry a foreigner so she could provide for her sisters with out selling the estate outright. It was such a dark day to lose the only true friend of my soul to a land neither of us knew much of.