Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 565

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 17.
The Princess and the Detective (17)
Part 2
1. The Princess’s Mistaken Assumption
Four years later.
At nineteen, Charlotte remained no Grand Duchess. Nor had she returned to Etoile. Bernard, the Grand Duke’s heir, had neither returned nor been discovered as a corpse.
Charlotte, who had returned to the Palace at fifteen under Etoile’s escort, requested a private audience with the Grand Duke. After speaking with his daughter alone, the Grand Duke changed his mind—he would hold Bernard’s funeral, but postpone Charlotte’s investiture as Grand Duchess. That private audience lasted three full hours, yet both father and daughter proved so reticent that scarcely two words of substance escaped to the outside world.
“Please grant me until I turn twenty. After that, I shall accept the position of Grand Duchess as you command.”
People assumed Charlotte had made this request because she found the responsibilities of Grand Duchess burdensome. The Grand Duke remained in vigorous health, so succession lay distant; with only one child, there was no competition to speak of, so perhaps the question of whether she held the title mattered little. Yet not everyone thought so.
The courtiers of Orlanne held this view of the world: “No future, however certain it appears, is assured until it comes to pass.” Such thinking sometimes manifested as a cynical perspective—that capricious fate could reshape the future at will—and sometimes as a tenacious conviction that even the most hopeless endeavor need not be abandoned prematurely. Those who believed that persistent pressure upon the smallest weakness could accomplish anything thought nothing of weaving conspiracies that spanned decades.
Yet they all avoided open conflict. Full-scale warfare exposed one’s strength to the gathered spectators, and in that exposure, weaknesses were revealed. And among those spectators, there was always someone concealing a real blade. Thus Orlanne Court maintained an outward peace. All were masters at preserving that surface tranquility.
After Bernard, the Grand Duke’s heir, was declared dead, Charlotte appeared but once at the New Year’s celebration. On the day when silver coins and sweets were scattered to the crowds gathered beneath the Palace Terrace, Charlotte appeared not in her usual dress, but in Etoile’s ceremonial uniform—minus the insignia. At her waist hung the heavy saber Bernard had left behind. The Princess’s appearance naturally provoked tremendous whispers.
“Perhaps… she wished to honor the memory of the Grand Duke’s heir?”
“I wonder. It seems to me the Princess still yearns for Etoile.”
Valery de Allemand, Commander of Etoile, came from the Count’s House, but upon becoming Commander, he had followed Etoile’s tradition of ceding his title to his younger brother and severing ties with his family. In other words, Etoile prided itself on remaining unaligned with any noble faction. The Princess, too, had no connection to any faction and seemed to lean toward none, so the nobility’s response split into two camps.
Some sought to cultivate friendship with the Princess, while others speculated whether, since she had not been invested as Grand Duchess, the succession was truly settled. The Grand Duke had only Charlotte as a child, but he had two younger brothers, and they had children, and the late Grand Duke’s sister had left descendants. None of them surpassed Charlotte in the line of succession, yet there was reason enough to fuel such speculation.
It was because of Charlotte’s mother, Delphine.
Delphine was a deeply uncomfortable presence at Orlanne Court. Her origins were the problem. Though of noble birth, she possessed neither wealth nor territory, nor any significant relatives. She was said to be a distant branch of Count Oderne, whose line had ended roughly a century prior, but having been born and raised in the foreign land of Anomarad, she apparently did not even know she was the last descendant of her house until she returned to Orlanne. Given such circumstances, rumors naturally attached themselves—that the Grand Duke had falsified her bloodline to make her Grand Duchess. Yet no one dared speak such things before the Grand Duke himself.
The Grand Duke seemed to embody perfectly the survival methods of Orlanne Court, revealing almost nothing of his inner thoughts even in daily life. Consequently, the nobility feared him. Unable to discern his character or intentions, they floundered whenever events unfolded. For the courtiers of Orlanne, who preferred careful observation and long-term planning, no confusion was more terrifying.
Delphine, raised abroad, knew little of Orlanne’s customs. She did not seem to regard herself particularly as Orlanne blood. She was merely twenty when she became Grand Duchess. The Grand Duke was thirty-two then, and it had been exactly four years since Marguerite, the previous Grand Duchess who had borne Bernard, had died.
Marguerite came from an impeccable house, and her death was attributed to chronic illness, yet rumors circulated differently in whispers—that she had been murdered in the machinations of court intrigue. As for who had done it, stories varied wildly. Some said the Grand Duchess had despised the Grand Duke’s youngest brother, Albert, and Albert, sensing a threat, had acted. Others claimed Count Natangsong, the Grand Duke’s cousin, had secretly taken revenge against Marquis Sanlis, the Grand Duchess’s father, with whom he was at enmity. The reason they had become enemies, it was said, was that in their youth they had quarreled over a woman…
As opinions divided over who might make a suitable new Grand Duchess and who absolutely would not, the Grand Duke suddenly forbade any further discussion of a new Grand Duchess. He gave no reason. The courtiers were astonished, but since whichever faction brought in a new Grand Duchess would be seen as taking sides, they merely exchanged guesses that the Grand Duke, weary of court intrigue, sought a cooling-off period.
Four years passed with everyone watching carefully after the Grand Duke’s edict, and then suddenly Delphine appeared, her origins obscure.
Those who first saw Delphine were often disconcerted. It was difficult to discern where her eyes were looking. Some said she had strabismus, but it was more that she did not focus well on those before her. She seemed to wander in a dream known only to herself.
She was a beauty—pale as a river sprite from legend, with hair black as pitch grown past her waist, tall and slender, with eyes that gleamed an icy blue. Yet Delphine was clumsy at everything. That she, having been raised as a commoner, did not know court etiquette was understandable. But she knew neither the stories nor the songs that everyone knew, could wield neither needle nor sword. She rarely smiled and spoke almost not at all. She claimed her father was a Mage and had taught her magic, yet she was never seen using it. Some whispered she could not even read.
Kindly, she was called a river sprite, but in truth many saw in Delphine the sinister water nymph Nix, who dragged people into murky depths. She was undeniably beautiful, but it was an inhuman beauty that displaced human order.
Yet when the Grand Duke announced he would marry her, no one dared openly object. To have opposed would have meant enduring decades without a Grand Duchess, and the Grand Duke seemed entirely capable of such patience.
The Grand Duke never revealed where he had met Delphine or why he had decided so swiftly to marry her. He simply had her stay in the Palace, and after some time announced he would marry her. Yet people did not think the Grand Duke had fallen in love and forced through the marriage. The Grand Duke they knew was cold as a reptile, and such a thing seemed utterly impossible. The Grand Duke falling in love? It was like roses blooming in the Wasteland.
So people concluded that Delphine had been chosen as Grand Duchess precisely because she was from a faction unconnected to any other, from a house whose line had ended. Well, her beauty may have had some small influence.
Thus becoming Grand Duchess, Delphine bore Charlotte, and three years later, she vanished.
She disappeared as mysteriously as she had appeared, leaving people unable to grasp what had happened, where to begin investigating, or whom to suspect. But such concerns proved pointless—Delphine was never found. The Grand Duchess had not died; she had disappeared. And it seemed she had simply run away. The affair itself was too scandalous, so officially Delphine was declared dead.
Charlotte, barely two years old, grew up with no memory of her mother. By the Grand Duke’s command, all trace of Delphine was removed from the Palace, even her portrait, and people did not so much as mention her name.
So until she turned five, Charlotte believed her mother was Marguerite, the previous Grand Duchess. When she first learned that her Older Brother and she had different mothers, she was deeply shocked—but not because of a mother she had never seen. It was because of her Older Brother. My Older Brother and I are not full siblings!
But soon that shock faded, and Charlotte resolved to understand only the plain facts: she had never had a mother, and she never would. After all, the Grand Duke had never remarried.
It was only as she grew older that she dimly understood what her mother had been, and what that meant. It became clearer after Bernard disappeared. It was simple: it was an obstacle. Those who had not opposed Delphine becoming Grand Duchess had never thought it acceptable for Delphine’s child to become Grand Duke. That fact became more evident with each passing year.
After standing on the Terrace in Etoile’s ceremonial uniform without the insignia, Charlotte did not appear on the Terrace again from the following year onward—as if to say she should not be regarded as the heir. Instead, she shut herself away in the Practice Room in the basement of the Separate Palace. No one knew precisely what the Princess did there. Only speculation circulated that she devoted herself to swordsmanship. She appeared at gatherings scarcely more than on the Grand Duke’s birthday, and marriage proposals did not even come her way.
That a Princess of the realm and first in the line of succession should receive no marriage proposals at her age provoked all manner of conjecture. The Princess ignored such rumors without so much as raising an eyebrow. And remarkably, even the Grand Duke seemed not to hear the concerns his ministers expressed.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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