Everyone Was Obsessed With Me After I Became the Youngest Princess Favourite - Chapter 195

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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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‘I came just in case, but am I still trapped within the Imperial Palace?’
However, everything fell apart the moment the Second Prince Nicholas appeared unexpectedly.
When Nicholas spotted the Previous Marquis, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, and Duke Elrad, he greeted them, and the Grand Duke immediately searched for Adriana.
Everyone else did the same.
No one had any interest in me.
In the meantime, Nicholas recounted every detail of what had transpired at the Emperor’s Palace, and the Grand Duke fixed me with a cold expression I had never seen before.
Clara felt the sky crashing down as the truth finally dawned on her.
The Grand Duke was not her father.
‘Clara, why would you do such a thing?’
At that moment, the Previous Marquis asked Clara.
Clara, forgetting her usual fear of the Previous Marquis, cried out desperately.
“Grandfather! Please help me. There was some kind of misunderstanding… a misunderstanding occurred.”
“A misunderstanding?”
“Yes! I made a mistake, and it was all an error!”
“…So you’re saying you falsely accused Adriana of theft.”
The Previous Marquis clicked his tongue with an incredulous expression. Then he spoke.
“His Majesty the Emperor has shown great mercy.”
How could he say such a thing!
Clara’s eyes widened in shock.
However, to the Previous Marquis, who had spent his entire life on the battlefield following military law, the confinement to Amber County imposed upon Clara was far too merciful a punishment.
Of course, for Clara, even being dragged away by the Imperial Knights was tantamount to a death sentence.
“Mother, please…”
After a brief recollection, Clara murmured with her face buried in her two bandaged hands.
Unlike my irresponsible father, who did nothing for me and left the house in anger, my mother immediately headed to the Marquis’s Residence.
My mother had always been so unreliable, but… wouldn’t something change if a blood daughter and blood sister appealed to her?
The Emperor would listen more to the Grand Duchess than to Adriana, so if she would just step forward…
Clara, who had been comforting herself with hopeful thoughts, felt an inexplicable sense of foreboding and shook her head urgently.
Then, steeling herself, she thought.
‘Yes. No matter what happens, things cannot possibly get worse than this.’
But it did not take long for her to realize that was a mistake.
* * *
“Aren’t you listening to me? I said we should go to the Imperial Palace at once!”
Countess Amber burst into the already ominous Diapel Marquis Estate.
The Countess seized the Grand Duchess’s arm and insisted that she go meet the Emperor immediately to request that the punishment imposed on Clara be withdrawn.
The Grand Duchess, with an incredulous expression, uttered “Why would I?” and then completely ignored the Countess.
Under normal circumstances, the Grand Duke, unable to bear such an awkward atmosphere, would have stepped in to mediate between the Countess and me.
But perhaps because his daughter was involved, the Grand Duke simply watched in silence.
Eventually, the frustrated Countess shouted at the Previous Marquis.
“Father, don’t just sit there! Say something! Is Adriana the only granddaughter? Clara is your granddaughter too!”
“Yes, both are my granddaughters. And had their positions been reversed, I would have done nothing either. The Emperor’s decree has been issued, and in my judgment, mercy has already been shown in abundance.”
“What did you say?”
“So you should stop as well and return home to reflect on your actions. Go down to your Territory with Clara. And who knows—perhaps His Majesty will forgive you if he sees you exercising restraint.”
Reflect? Restraint?
The Countess cried out in bewilderment.
“What on earth did our Clara do wrong? From where I stand, it’s Adriana who’s the problem! If she hadn’t made such a spectacle of this whole affair, it could have been swept under the rug quietly!”
“Are you quite finished speaking?”
In that moment, the Grand Duchess interjected with a chilling expression.
“Your daughter created this mess in the first place! How dare you accuse Adriana of theft!”
“That… that was merely a misunderstanding…”
“Be silent.”
The Grand Duchess’s voice cut through the air like a blade.
Ever since hearing the full account from the Second Prince, her heart had been wracked with pain beyond words.
Not just any accusation—but one of theft.
My daughter, whom I cherished more than my own life, had endured a similar ordeal at the Duke’s Mansion before even meeting her parents.
Though I had only heard it secondhand, the thought of my young daughter facing such circumstances alone, without a single soul to help her, filled me with rage even in sleep, my body trembling with fury.
And now the same thing had happened again.
How deeply wounded she must have felt, how furious she must have been, to rush to the Imperial Palace without even telling her family.
When Lia had returned collapsed, the Grand Duchess had believed it was because her heart had been gravely wounded.
Yet even as she was trying to soothe that pain, listening to her sister’s words rekindled her fury anew.
“Your daughter may be unable to come here by imperial decree, but you—now that you’ve come this far, you should apologize first!”
“Why should I?”
“To raise a child so poorly and yet remain so shameless!”
“Did you just call me shameless? This is truly too much! Isn’t family supposed to cover for each other’s mistakes and show understanding? How can you all be so heartless!”
The Countess struck her chest as though she were the world’s greatest victim.
She believed that if she wailed and threw tantrums as always, everything would be resolved as it always had been.
But.
“It’s because I covered for you unconditionally and showed you understanding as family that I’ve ruined you so completely. Must I ruin your daughter in the same way?”
The Grand Duchess spoke with cold derision, not even raising an eyebrow.
“How… how could you say such a thing…”
“Be grateful that an opportunity to set things right has presented itself. Thank my daughter that you’re only being sent to your Territory for self-reflection, not to a Convent!”
“Grateful? What on earth should I be grateful for! There are limits to how much one can be disrespected!”
All it would take was a single word on behalf of my niece.
It wasn’t as though I lacked the means, and the Emperor would surely grant it willingly—yet to see her turn away like this only confirmed that she had always looked down upon me.
The Countess, bound together by a lifetime of inferiority and self-doubt, shrieked convulsively.
“I knew it would come to this! I knew your daughter would block my daughter’s path! I should have died then! What good was revealing when the Castle would be empty if she came back alive like this…!”
In that instant, an eerie silence fell over the hall.
“What did you just say?”
The Grand Duke, who had remained silent until now, rose abruptly from his seat and approached the Countess.
The Countess looked in panic toward the Grand Duchess and the Previous Marquis, but both stood rigid as statues.
Only then did the Countess realize she had misspoken in her agitation.
“I, I was just….”
“You told them the day the Castle would be empty. Surely you’re not saying it was about me?”
Veins bulged across the Grand Duke’s clenched fists.
Though he was known as the gentlest person in this world, even he possessed a reverse scale that could not be tolerated.
As uncontrolled fury leaked mana from him, the Countess gasped for breath.
“Speak truthfully. Did you aid in my daughter’s abduction? What is your connection to the Demon Worshippers!”
“Ah, Demon Worshippers? I know nothing of them!”
The Countess cried out, her face drained of all color.
“I merely accepted money and told you that she had gone to the End of the Continent. I never dreamed the child would be kidnapped!”
“…Money?”
At that moment, the Previous Marquis asked in a trembling voice.
“Regina, are you truly saying you sold information about your family for money?”
Seeing the Previous Marquis’s face turn ashen in an instant, the Countess opened her mouth in excuse.
“Many people are interested in the Archmage, so I thought I’d just earn some pocket money….”
And before she could even finish speaking, the Countess’s cheek snapped sharply to the side.
It was the Grand Duchess.
The moment the startled Countess lifted her head, the Grand Duchess struck her cheek again with a sharp slap.
“How…. How can a person be so selfish and cowardly?”
“Oh, sister….”
“Don’t you dare call me sister! I’ve lived my entire life thinking of you as my younger sister, and it’s too horrible.”
The Grand Duchess staggered backward, shaking her head with a bewildered expression.
“My lady.”
The Grand Duke quickly steadied her, and the Grand Duchess burst into tears.
“What do I do? How can I face our Lia? It’s because of me….”
“It is not your fault, my lady.”
“No, it’s not your fault. This is… all my fault.”
The Previous Marquis spoke in a voice heavy with deep remorse as he witnessed the Grand Duchess’s self-reproach.
His eyes now bloodshot, he could not bear to look at the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, so he squeezed them shut.
“I told Regina… I was even pleased, thinking it remarkable that she was curious about her older sister. I did not know my own child was worse than a beast.”
It is all my sin. My sin.
Tears that he had held back even when finding his granddaughter streamed down the Previous Marquis’s cheeks as he murmured his words like a sigh, laying bare his anguish.
Suddenly, the image of little Lia in a maidservant’s uniform, whom I had first met at the Marquis’s Residence, came to mind.
Not only had I failed to protect that small, young child, but unknowingly, I had contributed to losing her.
“Ah, Father.”
Only then did the Countess, grasping the gravity of the situation, call out to the Previous Marquis in a terrified voice.
A firm voice came back immediately.
“Leave now. I will henceforth consider myself never to have had a child like you. Never show yourself before me again.”
“!”
Despite all her misdeeds, he had never spoken of severing ties so decisively.
The Countess instinctively knew the Previous Marquis meant every word.
Simultaneously, the monthly allowance that the Previous Marquis sent and the Amber Count Family’s business ventures sponsored by the Diapel Family flashed through her mind.
The Countess’s face drained of all color as she contemplated the immediate future bearing down upon her.
* * *
“Mm.”
I felt a stinging sensation at the top of my head as I forced my heavy eyelids open.
The familiar ceiling of the Marquis’s Residence came into view. Given the dimness surrounding me, it appeared to be nighttime… wait?
“Gasp!”
“…Adriana?”
“Mother?”
I jolted upright with a sharp intake of breath, startled twice over by my Mother sitting beside the Bedroom.
“Are you alright? Are you coming to?”
Cold sweat beaded across my skin at her tender inquiry.
The final scene before I lost consciousness came rushing back with vivid clarity.

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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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