01. A Prelude to Romantic Destiny

[Cursed be the jealousy that tears apart innocent lovers!

In answer to your demands that I explain the rumors of my love for the daughter of House Ordo, I stand here to declare the truth.

Yes. I love Rosemaria Ordo.

I love Rosemaria Ordo with every fiber of my being.

I worship her fervently as my earthly goddess.

I confess now what I have long kept silent: the moment I first laid eyes on her, half my soul was torn away and taken captive, leaving me a cripple.

Can a man with only half a soul live whole? Every moment I spent apart from her drove me into an inexplicable thirst and torment.

But I have been reborn complete. Through her boundless grace, I became one with her, and the missing half of my soul returned to me.

Yes. We became lovers. No longer must I conceal the fierce devotion I hold for the one who has claimed dominion over my heart.

Even the prophet Jibril declared that love, under no circumstance, becomes a sin. For true love is gentle and humble, harming nothing, and instead becomes a light that illuminates the world.

My love is no different.

My love redeemed me from the sinner I was. It guided a restless life, spent wandering the continent like a starving, ragged beast seeking only the next opponent to duel, into peace.

More than that, it gave me the thread to unravel the long and bitter war waged between our two houses.

This is the love I hold, innocent as it is. I serve a love that tears through grim darkness and radiates a healing light.

Then why must this love be condemned?

I ask my own house.

I ask her house as well.

‘Why do you love each other instead of fighting!’

Is this accusation from Ordo truly just?

‘A fierce love will bring a fierce ruin!’

Is this warning from my own house perhaps, at its core, nothing more than base envy directed at two happy lovers?

I declare here, without reservation:

If anyone wishes to stop my love, step forward with honor and challenge me to a duel.

If anyone desires it, kill me and put my passion to rest!

But I trust you know better than anyone that I have never once fled from a duel, nor ever suffered defeat.

I will not relinquish her so long as breath remains in my body.

On the contrary, in order to keep that breath, I will live on, longing for her and her alone.

Only if God passes judgment that this love is more wicked than war will I bow my head in humility and accept my punishment.

But if the god of justice turns, swift as a summer storm, and raises the hands of the wicked……

Then, as fire and gunpowder meet in a kiss, I will share one final kiss with her and dissolve into flame, falling asleep in glorious rapture.

— At the height of summer, AE.1205, at Cromatz Square.

Words spoken by Sir J in response to rumors of his passionate affair with Rosemaria Ordo.]

❀❀❀

AE.1205, April.

It was an age of abundance.

Ever since the Hailion Empire’s victory over neighboring nations a century prior, the land had stood as a realm of peace and prosperity, and so it remained to this day.

Most citizens had no cause to worry about putting food on the table. Their daily occupation was hunting for amusements to fill their well-fed, uneventful lives.

Two entertainments had lately taken the nobility by storm. One was the spectator sport of men wagering their lives in combat. The other was the romantic comedy, depicting the pure love between two souls.

A war game that destroys life.

And love, which creates it.

Two themes that seemed, at first glance, to contradict each other held the public in equal thrall, drawing fervent cheers from citizens who had cast off the asceticism imposed by the last age of war and were now crying out for a new romanticism.

Knights who had lost their battlefields now sought to elevate their honor through duels, while nobles indulged freely in love affairs, even open adultery.

The people of this age were more fervently captivated by blind dueling than ever before, and more fervently captivated by blind love than ever before.

[Extra! Prince Julius, Holy Knight, is ardently courting Rosemaria Ordo, a goddess made flesh……!]

It followed, then, that the question of ‘with whom will Rosemaria Ordo, goddess of a brawling house, fall in love?’ was, without question, the most delectable subject to set gossips salivating.

Of course, she was not the only woman whose beauty invited comparisons to a goddess.

Nor was she the only woman to have mastered the full range of refined accomplishments: song, dance, painting, poetry, mathematics, and more.

Even the feat of receiving a knighthood as a woman was not, historically, hers alone.

Yet she was the only woman to possess every one of these achievements and talents in a single person.

“Is it really true that Miss Rosemaria has never once been in a relationship her whole life?”

“Oh, come now, surely not!”

“But then why has there never been a single witnessed romance, let alone a marriage?”

“It’s obviously because House Ordo is in such a sorry state that the men are too embarrassed to let it be known.”

“Oh, come now, even so, surely not!”

The world spoke with one voice: the reason Rosemaria Ordo, a woman of extraordinary beauty and refinement, had reached the age of twenty without securing a marriage was entirely due to House Ordo itself, which had earned the distinction of being the first among the three greatest causes of Emperor Escalus VII’s hair loss.

She was the daughter of Ordo, the worst disgrace of a house in the Empire.

House Ordo was the lordly family governing the fertile domain of Melos. Once among the ten great vassal houses, granted their knightly title by the very first emperor of Hailion.

Yet they had conducted themselves in a manner utterly unbefitting of a distinguished house. Violence, destruction of property, defamation, indecency, and other charges too shameful for any noble to hold their head up over were attached to the Ordo name day after day without fail.

Was it not the foremost duty of any noble to hold honor above all else!

No noble in their right mind would send a marriage proposal to a house like Ordo.

“My Rose is finally getting married!”

Yet, as it turned out, among the countless suitors who had come and gone, one had at last appeared who satisfied the exacting standards of the proud Lady of Ordo.

“My Rose, the most beautiful girl in the world, is getting married! This isn’t a dream, is it, Vivi?”

Anne Ordo and her devoted maid Vivi clasped hands and spun in circles around the room.

“Of course it’s real, my lady! Miss Rose absolutely deserves the finest husband!”

“She does! Our Rose, who dances as lightly as flower petals and sings as sweetly as rain falling on a desert!”

“She does! Our young miss, noble and clever as a bluebird!”

“Quite right! My Rose, who takes perfectly after me!”

“……Pardon? Miss Rose takes after the lord, doesn’t she?”

“In any case, our Rose has found a match worthy of her! Ho ho ho!”

Even Anne, laughing like a woman gone mad with joy, was not entirely without awareness of how thoroughly her house’s standing had been demolished.

That was precisely why she had endured watching her daughter receive proposals from one worthless scoundrel after another, biting her tongue instead of slapping them across the face.

But in the end, this day had come.

“A prince, of all people……”

Anne dabbed the tears gathered like dewdrops at the corners of her eyes and broke into a radiant smile.

“My son-in-law is going to be a prince, highborn and handsome and rich!”

“Congratulations, my lady, truly!”

“Thank you, Vivi! Can you imagine how sick with envy the Camelots will be when they hear? They can’t even get their precious eldest son married off!”

“Oh, serves them right!”

“……I never said I was getting married. No formal proposal has even been made.”

Rose, the very subject of the rosy scandal, sat listening to the two women’s giddy laughter and exhaled a quiet sigh.

“Please refrain from careless remarks. It would be a grave discourtesy to His Highness and to the imperial family.”

Rose checked her reflection in the mirror as Vivi finished her makeup, and faintly furrowed her carefully shaped brows.

The blush seems a bit heavy……

“Regardless, His Highness Prince Julius may present you with a proposal ring today, Miss. You must look your very best.”