Of course, the King knew his daughter's name, though he didn't use it much. Mostly he would call her "stupid girl," or just "girl" when he was in a hurry—really in the warrior nation of Remno "girl" was a far greater insult than "stupid" anyway. But mostly he just ignored her.

The first child born to the Remno King was Valentina, a girl—a disappointment for sure, but the King knew there would be other children, so his anger and, disappointment over the birth of his first child was mostly contained. "The next one," he thought, "The next one will be a boy."

Except the next one wasn't a boy. It was Clarissa. So, Clarissa was an even greater disappointment. For a year-and-a-half, the King cursed the child who wasn't a boy. Then Gain was born, and Abel after that. So, there was no need to curse Clarissa, really there wasn't any need for her at all. So, she was trained to serve the King his food (and taste it for poison), rub his feet, and perform any other task expected of a servant of the King. A beautiful, but quiet girl, it was assumed that she would be married off by her sixteenth birthday, but she was almost nineteen now, and it seemed as if the King had forgotten her entirely.

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Clarissa's world was tiny. She was rarely allowed to leave the city and had never been allowed to visit outside the Kingdom of Remno. Her mother and her brothers did their best to give her an idea of what the world was like outside of the borders of the Kingdom. But, the stories she heard were just that—stories—none of it seemed real to her.

Her favorite story was about the Tearmoon Princess— an unstoppable force of nature, known to be as wise as she was compassionate, strong as she was brave—and she was a princess!

Before hearing of Princess Mia, most of what Clarissa had known about princesses came from books that she had read, silly romances where a handsome prince would save the princess. These faerie tales were so foreign to her that she asked her mother why anyone would bother writing something so strange. Claudia tried to explain to her that little girls of neighboring lands dreamed of being princesses.

Clarissa softly laughed at the thought. Clarissa dreamed that one day her father would call her by her name.