The House of Count Ludwig lived by draining the wealth of his affluent in-laws.
The Countess died during a difficult childbirth, and even the newborn daughter she left behind was not expected to survive.
Desperate, the Count devised a scheme. He brought home an illegitimate baby girl born just days earlier, intending to pass her off as his daughter and continue exploiting his wife’s family for money.
The real infant girl, destined to be discarded in the gutter, was abandoned in a church sewer by a maid.
One year later, an oracle proclaimed that the owner of the Bluebird—a child fated to become the Empress of the Kesiyan Empire—had been born in Count Ludwig’s household.
