Side Story. Happily Ever After

“Have a child.”

Mélisande looked up blankly. A woman with long, abundant reddish-gold hair hanging down like an unmarried ‘mademoiselle’ stood before her.

She seemed to have stopped by on her way to attend the founding festival ball, dressed impeccably without a single flaw. The red dress embroidered with Levizet’s proud lily pattern was splendid. Suddenly feeling shabby with her own white hair roughly twisted up without a single ornament, Mélisande lowered her eyes slightly.

“Alix, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

‘Alix’s’ lips twisted. She slammed a bottle down on the side table with a thud.

“It’s an aphrodisiac from Muhfer containing albizia.”

Mélisande just blinked her large eyes. Outside, the bell announcing the start of the founding festival ball was ringing. Mélisande had never attended a founding festival ball since her humiliating first attendance.

If anyone asked for a reason, she had planned to make the excuse that she was unwell, but no one ever invited her twice. As had always been the case, the absence of Marchioness Levizet was all too natural.

At the first ball, a woman who clearly didn’t look like a marchioness had been standing alone against the ballroom wall without a protector. Perhaps it was natural that ruffians who thought she was either a country bumpkin who had lost her partner or a courtesan began to pester her.

‘Miss, you’re quite pretty. What’s your name?’

‘Let go of me. I am the wife of Marquis Levizet.’

The ruffians clutched their stomachs and laughed.

‘Marchioness Levizet is over there, next to Her Majesty the empress. If you’re really Marchioness Levizet, then where is the Heart of Spring?’

‘She seems to have already lost her mind from drinking, so I should help her come to her senses.’

One of the men made a lewd gesture. Cheap, giggling laughter spread. Mélisande trembled and stepped back as the men approached as if they would carry her off at any moment. Strangely, as if someone was gripping her vocal cords and wouldn’t let go, no voice came out. She hoped someone would help her. But no one was looking in her direction.

Please, someone help me.

Something hard bumped into her back as she stepped backward. It was a wall. Mélisande despaired like a small rodent cornered.

‘Oh my, my dear new sister-in-law. How did you end up in such a state here?’

Snap. The sound of an ivory-handled fan striking a palm was heard. Beneath elaborately styled reddish-gold hair, mysterious green-gold eyes gleamed fiercely. The Levizet pattern embroidered in gold thread on her jade dress was vivid.

‘M-Mademoiselle Levizet?’

The men’s faces turned white.

They were scoundrels who bore the names of influential families and openly engaged in debauchery, taking pride in bothering humble women and boasting about their names at drinking parties. Therefore, no one would care if they simply bothered a country virgin. Would people pay attention just because dogs bark or hens lay eggs?

However, when a direct descendant of Levizet, a major figure even among central nobles, appeared in that picture, everything went awry from that moment. Already, people’s gazes were gathering on them.

‘S-sorry, madam!’

‘We didn’t know she was Mademoiselle’s family, we’re truly sorry!’

The men muttered something resembling apologies and fled as if their tails were on fire. As Mélisande stared blankly at their pathetic state, she heard a tsk- sound of tongue clicking.

Mélisande stared blankly at her sister-in-law, who had opened her fan to cover her mouth. Alix was a flawless noble lady. The very image Mélisande had wanted to become. An elegant lady with noble blue blood like those in fairy tales.

However, the moment she saw those eyes, Mélisande flinched as if pricked by a cold piece of ice. From those mysterious green-gold eyes, instead of the warm compassion usually considered a virtue of noble ladies, cold contempt dripped steadily.

‘Taking the marchioness position without even being qualified leads to such disgrace. At least conduct yourself like a noble.’

Though it was a whisper too quiet for others to hear, its meaning pierced clearly into Mélisande’s ears.

‘If you want to remain a country bumpkin’s daughter that badly, then live that way. While receiving exactly the treatment of a country bumpkin.’

A sense of defeat spread along her spine.

Though Alix soon disappeared with her close friend the princess, the gathered gazes didn’t easily disperse. Words passed from mouth to mouth, from gaze to gaze.

That person is Marchioness Levizet.

Was the marquis married?

Why doesn’t she come out in society?

Why doesn’t the marchioness stay in the Palace of Charity?

Why is she so shabbily dressed without a single piece of jewelry?

Why, why, why, why.

The questions mixed, divided, split, and merged to create a huge yellow cloud.

She can’t bear children.

Her face is pretty, but her personality is ugly.

She has more than three illegitimate children born before marriage.

She seduced the marquis with evil sorcery.

Like locusts carried by wind gnawing at ripe grain, the yellow cloud tore at Mélisande’s heart. She felt like she would suffocate in the invisible thick smoke. Mélisande suppressed the rising bile and staggered out of the Silver Hall. Though no one held her back, gazes persistently followed her until she disappeared at the end of the corridor.

After that day, Mélisande, who had been deeply hurt, never set foot in the ‘Silver Room’ where founding banquets were held.

So now, her sister-in-law standing before her, dressed incomparably elegantly and splendidly to attend the ball in the Silver Room, was a person from another world. Mélisande looked at Alix dejectedly.

“Listen well. This is the last favor I’ll bestow before I marry. Feed this to Antoine. And somehow have a child. If you have a child, he won’t be able to turn away from you anymore.”

“……I don’t really understand what you’re saying.”

Mélisande looked only at the floor and added quietly.

“I-I’m not being turned away from. I don’t need such sorcery……”

Hah. Alix made a scoffing sound as if incredulous, but Mélisande stubbornly continued.

“He made me, who had nothing, his official wife, and he hasn’t even had the common affairs with courtesans. I am his only love, even without such things.”

Alix ran her hand through her hair with irritation. That would mess up her carefully styled hair. As Mélisande thought this blankly, Alix turned around, opened the door, and shot back.

“Wake up. Stop living alone in a fairy tale. This court where you live is stark reality!”

Alix’s last words as she left became shattered glass fragments that painfully lodged in her heart. Mélisande shook her head, stood up, and threw the bottle Alix had left into the trash bin.

Alix was wrong.

Mélisande was the protagonist of a beautiful love story.

***

[Once upon a time, in a countryside, there lived a poor but kind girl.]

The youngest daughter of a poor provincial noble family with uselessly many children.

That was exactly Mélisande’s position. Though they said the family had been a regional prestigious family in their ancestors’ time, what remained to the Boden family after side branches split off and then split again within those branches was a barely existing baronet title and the tax rights to two bean-sized villages that could barely maintain the title of lord. What kind of noble lady’s authority could one wield being born as the fourth daughter in such a household?

Moreover, whether it was unfortunate or fortunate, all her siblings tenaciously clung to life despite the threats of countless diseases, severe cold, and crop failures. Baronet Boden’s territory was too small to be fairly divided among the four surviving siblings.

At least Mélisande, who had inherited only the good points of her ancestors in terms of appearance, had been quite noticeable since childhood, so her old nanny predicted the rosy possibility that she might marry into a good family if things went well.

The two older brothers bit at each other over who would inherit the territory. The eldest tried to push the second into a monastery, while the second competed by finding fault with the eldest and reporting everything to their father. They were so busy with this that they paid no attention to their sisters. And the sister above her, well.

Under imperial law, it was nearly impossible for daughters to inherit titles. This was why the custom of adopting sons or taking in son-in-laws existed. But what should daughters do when sons already existed to inherit the family?

If they had substantial dowries, they could marry into other good families and live as mistresses. However, the young ladies of country noble families with meager dowries and few suitable families nearby to serve as mistresses had to constantly compete with each other.

This was no exception even between sisters. When she entered her teens and Mélisande’s face began to bloom beautifully, her sister openly kept her in check. Though the sister had been learning how to manage a household early since their mother had passed away, she never breathed a word to Mélisande about such matters. Instead, she sent her out to play with commoner children.

Only when Mélisande heard her sister burst out in frustration that ‘not a single freckle appears on that face even after being in the sun all day’ did she realize her sister’s encouragement wasn’t pure goodwill. After that, even when her sister pushed her back, she rarely went outside the castle.

Her sister never accompanied Mélisande when she occasionally went to social events at other families. She used the outdated custom that had been popular decades ago, saying that younger daughters should refrain from social activities until the eldest daughter of the family married.

Left alone, Mélisande befriended books. Love poems by troubadours that her mother had enjoyed collecting when alive, love stories of brave princes and captive princesses intertwined like chains in fairy tales. Even in the crudely translated scripts by the great writer of Andrette, the love between great lovers and humble young ladies and princes who overcame adversity shone clearly.

Swimming in prose that uniformly praised the beauty of love and the happiness love brings, Mélisande began to imagine that such love would come to her someday. When her sister married and Mélisande became ‘Mademoiselle Boden’ and entered society. Mélisande stroked the spine of the book she held in her arms.

Sometimes she felt suddenly anxious. What if she remained trapped in this countryside and was forgotten by everyone? What if she aged as just a country spinster instead of a fairy tale protagonist and died that way? Each time, Mélisande repeated what her nanny had told her.

I am beautiful, and a wonderful man smitten with my beauty will fall in true love with me and take me to a grand mansion—