CHAPTER 02
The crystal glass fell to the floor and shattered.
Julia, who had been absentmindedly holding her quill, the physician who had asked the question in an attempt to lighten the mood, and even Endymion, who had abruptly risen from his chair, all flinched.
Julia was startled by her husband, who had raised his voice for the first time since ascending the throne. She stared at Endymion with her lips slightly parted, and just then, he turned his head and looked back at her.
Their eyes naturally met.
His blue eyes were filled with embarrassment and confusion. But just as Julia was about to say something, Endymion turned away and spoke in a cold voice.
“No.”
“Pardon?”
Apparently feeling no pity for the flustered physician, Endymion clenched both fists and spoke through gritted teeth. When Julia glanced at him, she saw that both his cheeks and the tips of his ears had turned bright red. He seemed thoroughly angry.
“I said I’ve never had such a reaction while thinking about the Queen.”
The physician was so flustered by his fierce denial that she did not know what to do.
“I apologize, Your Majesty! I-I only meant that the two of you have such a good relationship! I never intended to tease or embarrass Your Majesty!”
Realizing that she had offended the king, the physician hurried to smooth things over. Then, instead of the king who was growling like a wild beast, she turned to the mild-mannered queen for help.
“I only meant that it is a perfectly normal physical phenomenon for young people in the prime of their youth. Women experience it as well! Ah, Your Majesty the Queen, you’ve experienced it too, haven’t you? When you think about His Majesty!”
“Hmm… I don’t think so. Mion is just like a friend to me. I’ve never felt anything like that toward a man before.”
Julia answered absentmindedly, tilting her head.
After all, the husband she had been with since the age of seven felt more like family and a friend than a man.
Sixteen-year-old Julia was quiet and well-mannered, but she was still rather inexperienced when it came to social situations. Having been taught that honesty was the most important virtue, the young queen unintentionally made the physician turn deathly pale.
“…I see.”
Julia belatedly turned her head.
Mion was looking down at her with an unreadable expression. Then he abruptly left after saying only one thing.
“How strange. I have felt that way about a woman before.”
Bang!
And so, the lesson ended.
After that, they began receiving their sex education separately.
There was a brief risk that rumors of discord between the young royal couple might spread, but fortunately, the matter was handled smoothly. Julia warned the physician to keep quiet, and the physician, who knew she had made a mistake, kept her promise faithfully.
Moreover, that very night, Endymion apologized for hurting her feelings, and Julia graciously accepted his apology. The two then lay down together in bed and spent a peaceful night as they always did.
“I said I’ve never had such a reaction while thinking about the Queen.”
“I have felt that way about a woman before.”
Hmm. So there was a woman he liked. I had no idea.
She quietly gazed at her sleeping husband’s flower-like face.
No wonder I thought his tone had been unusually stiff. Well, I suppose being misunderstood like that could put anyone in a bad mood.
Even though they were husband and wife, it was bound to be awkward for them to receive sex education together when they were practically like siblings. They had both married at seven, and each other had been the first person of the opposite sex they had ever known, which made things even more awkward.
Julia had simply treated the lessons as studying, but she had often noticed that Endymion seemed reluctant to attend them.
She had assumed that sitting through the lessons with a girl made him uncomfortable. But apparently, the real reason was that there was another woman he liked.
After all, the lessons were specifically intended for married couples, so their purpose was fairly obvious.
Well, in romance novels, the male leads are always touching the women they like whenever they get the chance.
There were even aristocratic couples who had children at very young ages. Some were younger than sixteen.
Sixteen was hardly an age when someone knew nothing about such matters. Especially when they had even received formal education about it. Yet Endymion had never once even attempted to kiss Julia.
If he had thought of me as a woman, he would have made a move by now. We sleep in the same bed every night, after all.
Julia giggled as she imagined her husband in the role of the male protagonist from one of those novels with a red sticker on the cover that she had begged a maid to let her read.
The thought of kissing Endymion didn’t make her heart race at all. If anything, she felt like she would burst out laughing from sheer awkwardness.
Curious, Julia showed Endymion the book the next day and told him to imagine her as the heroine.
Seeing Endymion freeze stiffly and press a hand against his forehead was enough to convince her.
Endymion did not think of her as a woman.
That intense memory from when she was sixteen became firmly lodged in Julia’s mind like an unquestionable fact. Even now, at nineteen, with her coming-of-age ceremony approaching and the responsibility of producing an heir looming before her, she still remembered it vividly.
…Of course, the fact that Endymion’s hands messed up his blankets rather embarrassingly every night was his own little secret.
So, the reason for all this commotion actually went back to the previous day.
More precisely, it began at teatime before lunch.
Julia received a message from the Grand Duchess Milady, asking her to join her for lunch for the first time in quite a while.
“Mother? All right. Tell her I’ll be there shortly.”
Milady was Endymion’s mother. After her husband, the former king, died, she became the former queen and moved to a separate royal residence after receiving the title of Grand Duchess.
In Semele, there was a tradition that after the king’s death, if his son succeeded him, the former queen was granted the hereditary title of Grand Duchess and lived separately from the royal family.
This was intended to prevent the former queen from using her blood relationship as an excuse to challenge the new king’s authority.
Fortunately, Milady’s residence was quite large and far enough from the royal palace that they rarely crossed paths. And unlike the mothers-in-law in novels, she was not the type to crave power or interfere in politics.
If anything, she was a rather open-minded mother-in-law who enjoyed spending time with handsome attendants.
Her straightforward personality had been evident twelve years ago when she welcomed Julia, who had practically been sent away as a bride, and treated her like her own daughter.
Semele was a powerful empire located in the heart of the continent, while Julia’s homeland, Ametrine, was a small kingdom on the frontier.
The crown prince of a nation with an ancient history, vast territory, flourishing trade, and enormous wealth.
The princess of a rural agricultural kingdom that survived primarily by exporting crops.
There seemed to be absolutely nothing connecting the two.
But when Julia was five years old, a severe famine suddenly struck the continent.
No matter how much money a country made through trade, there was no nation that could remain unaffected when its crops were failing disastrously.
Semele and several other countries, thrown into crisis, desperately searched for the cause.
Strangely, however, Julia’s country, Ametrine, was an exception.
Ametrine, which was so small and humble that other nations had dismissed it as insignificant, experienced a bumper harvest.
The grains grew plumper than ever, and the fruits became even sweeter.
Unintentionally, Ametrine’s agricultural exports became an enormous success.
Julia’s father innocently rejoiced, calling it a stroke of luck.
But his happiness did not last long.
Several countries seeking the cause of the famine received divine revelations, and a rumor began spreading among them.
The only daughter of Ametrine’s king is loved by the gods.
It was said that thanks to the princess, Ametrine alone had escaped the disaster of the great famine.
When this news reached other desperate nations clinging to any hope they could find, chaos erupted almost immediately.
“A marriage proposal?! My daughter is only five years old!”
“What does her age matter? Please, don’t worry. If you give us the princess as a bride, our king will bestow an abundance of gold and treasures upon you.”
“Our king will even give you territory ten times the size of Ametrine!”
Envoys came pouring in, all demanding that Julia be given to them as a bride, turning the palace into complete chaos.
Ametrine’s king repeatedly refused, insisting that his daughter had been raised precious to him without a mother.
But the great powers began fighting among themselves over who would claim the princess.
Many even resorted to military threats in an attempt to pressure Ametrine.
Fortunately, Ametrine managed to hold out for two years by using its agricultural trade as leverage. But the king was gradually being pushed into a corner.
As pressure from across the continent continued, the princess rumored to be loved by the gods eventually became a source of trouble, resented even by her own people.
“Daddy, I’ll just get married.”
In the end, Julia, feeling guilty over something that was not even her fault, decided to sacrifice herself.
Her soft-hearted father cried and protested desperately, but without marrying off his young daughter, the kingdom was on the verge of complete ruin.
The king set one condition: the princess herself would choose her husband.
He managed to obtain promises from everyone involved that no one would object to her decision.
“I’ll choose the Crown Prince of Semele.”
“Why—why Semele of all places? Sweetheart, it’s far too far from our kingdom. What about the neighboring kingdom of Tailgrand?”
“What if Ametrine gets put in danger again because I marry someone from a weak country?”
“Sniff… My thoughtful little girl…”
Until the very day Julia left, she comforted her father as he wept bitterly, apologizing over and over again. She could only smile awkwardly.
He was actually the youngest one.
There were countless grown kings shameless enough to seek marriage with a seven-year-old princess.
Most of them were greedy middle-aged men who wanted to abandon their existing wives and obtain the Chosen One beloved by the gods.
Only the strongest nation on the continent, Semele, had sent a portrait of its young royal family member.
Fifty-two. Forty-seven. Thirty-nine…
Among all those impossibly old men, there was one shining seven-year-old boy her own age.
Julia had round violet eyes, pale golden hair, and the gentle appearance of a puppy.
The Crown Prince of Semele was her complete opposite: sharp blue eyes, dark black hair, and the prickly appearance of a cat.
He looked like he might have a frightening personality, but the fact that he was her age already earned him her approval.
Of course, he was handsome, too.
It wasn’t as though she was particularly shallow.
But choosing a beautiful young boy with a face like a sculpture from among a crowd of balding middle-aged men was a universal truth that even the gods would surely approve of.
And so Julia chose Endymion.
They held the wedding immediately afterward.
Amazingly, the very year Julia became Crown Princess, Semele experienced an unprecedented bumper harvest.
It was almost as though fate itself were playing a joke.
Gradually, the continent recovered from the famine and quickly returned to peace.
From then on, it became an undeniable fact that Julia, the princess of Ametrine and Crown Princess of Semele, was favored by the gods.
Yet at the same time, Julia felt as though she were some kind of trophy.
Not Endymion’s partner, but a trophy that served to make Semele’s greatness shine even brighter.
After all, Endymion had been considered an ideal husband by prominent royal families and nobles since he was an infant.
As the crown prince of the strongest nation on the continent, perhaps that was only natural.
Julia had heard that shortly before she chose Endymion, discussions had already been underway for him to become engaged to the daughter of a ducal family from another royal nation.
It was supposedly an engagement in name only. The duke’s daughter had apparently been so lovesick that the marriage was practically considered settled.
But the moment Julia chose Endymion, all of that disappeared.
Julia, who had broken up such a prestigious match to become Crown Princess, was a glittering trophy, not a perfect wife.
She had the honor of being beloved by the gods, but she had no powerful family behind her to strengthen her husband’s position.
Fortunately, Endymion’s father often said that Semele was overwhelmingly powerful, so it did not matter if his daughter-in-law came from a weak family.
He was quite fond of the quiet and innocent Julia, and whenever he met foreign kings, he would proudly boast endlessly about having gained the beloved of the gods as his daughter-in-law.
Milady, who had become queen consort after the death of the king’s first wife, was much the same.
She had once been an ordinary concubine before becoming queen after giving birth to Endymion. Perhaps because of that, she never looked down on Julia despite her being a princess from a powerless kingdom.
Even though Julia had absolutely no political influence with which to strengthen the Crown Prince, Milady never criticized her as an ordinary mother-in-law might have.
Instead, she welcomed the timid seven-year-old Julia without hesitation.
She freely praised and scolded her, raising her as though she were her own daughter.
Thanks to her, Julia was able to grow into a cheerful, innocent young woman and live a fairly happy life.
Yet there was another reason why Julia, despite growing up loved and wanting for nothing, considered herself a trophy.
There was a certain complicated circumstance that was difficult to explain.
In other words, the reason had nothing to do with her father-in-law, mother-in-law, or husband.
“Julia, you’re here?”
“Yes, Mother. Have you been well?”
Julia smiled as she entered the beautiful Grand Duchess’s palace garden, which was filled with flowers.
