[WP] You have avenged your father and restored the family name. In truth, it was not your family. You are not the rightful heir. He died, years ago, but his quest was righteous and you had to follow it through to the end.

Sometimes history gets it wrong. The winner becomes just, the loser becomes a villain. Even if that is the very opposite of the truth. The same happened during the rebellion from a few decades ago. There was a tyrant, who was fortunate enough to become emperor. In our land, the emperors are second to the gods. Myth spoke of the gods choosing who rules us, and to question an emperor was to question the will of the gods.

My father still questioned. He questioned why the taxes rose each year even as the people suffered outside the capital. He questioned how the emperor’s harem grew each year, how there were celebrations within the castle every fortnight even when there was nothing to celebrate. He questioned until he realized that asking was doing anything, and then he acted. He became the rebellion, the driving force acting against the tyranny, until his dying breath.

I made a promise to myself then, that the rebellion would not end with him. I was young, I was inexperienced, and for a few years I was capable of doing nothing. People did not want to follow a pimple-faced girl into war. They did not trust a child to know the value of life or losing a loved one, even though I had just lost a loved one and had learned very clearly how valuable life was.

I suppose though, they had another doubt. My father trusted me, but the others did not. He was only my father because I called him that. In their eyes, it was no different than the children who confused their nursemaids with their mothers. He was my father, despite him telling me time and time again that he was only my teacher.

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Children gravitate towards those who love them, who see them as individuals. My father saw me as me, and loved me for me. The emperor saw me as an extension of himself. So did other people. How could a seed grow into anything different than the tree it had fallen from? It was a valid question. But trees did grow differently. A tree in the shade of another never grew, or it grew crooked. If you planted the seed far enough away, in different soil, with different water, it could grow to be something different. Perhaps something better.

So the emperor was the one who was responsible for my creation, but my father was the one who was the earth who I stood on, for years. He was a lord of the realm, but he was also my fencing teacher. Even after he left me to go to war against the emperor, I did not shift my allegiances. His leaving me was not a betrayal, but a duty.

When I was old enough, I gathered those in the court who supported me. I ousted the emperor from his seat, because people had grown tired of his cruelty. He had become an old man in the years since my father died, and the fear he instilled had worn away to a resignation. I had a brother I’d never met, and he inherited father’s title and lands. Father’s name and all his past glory was rewritten into the history books.

To many, it made no difference what I did. In their eyes, I was still the daughter of an evil man. I saw the doubts they had, fearing that my rule would just be a continuation of the emperor’s. The emperor had been banished to a palace at the border, under constant guard, with no hope of a return to the capital. It wasn’t often that daughters were so cruel, and they reasoned that if I were that cruel to my own, it would be nothing to be cruel to them.

I learned another thing from my father, though. Family was what you chose. Sometimes they were your blood, and sometimes they were more.