Ah, the Elysian Kingdom, where it took nothing short of a series of tragedies for royal daughters to finally get a bit of respect. How progressive!

Once the calamities piled up sufficiently, the kingdom had an epiphany: perhaps these princesses were good for more than a tool for the prince to shine—or a target of abuse and humiliation.

With this newfound enlightenment, they started marrying them off to great families—not just any high-born buffoon with a title, but GREAT families.

Dukes, Marquis, no less.

This was, of course, advertised as giving them a chance for a good life, because what more could a princess want than a splendid marriage alliance?

Well! In special cases, they even handed them the throne.

These instances became frequent enough that power slowly shifted, and lo and behold, the princesses started to accumulate real influence.

Over the years, these princesses, once mere black sheeps, became preferred as the independent rulers.

Who would have thought?

It wasn’t a problem then.

The sky didn’t fall, the realm didn’t descend into chaos, and dragons didn’t start running the banks.

The kingdom thrived, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Not.

In reality, the princess catalog was a bit more varied than the fairy tales would have you believe.

Not every princess was a carbon copy of the 'original saint,' the illustrious seventeenth princess who ascended to power after her predecessors' unfortunate penchant for untimely demises.

Indeed, not every princess was the embodiment of purity, filial piety, and forgiveness. Oh no, the royal lineage also boasted its share of bad apples—princesses who were cruel, selfish, and arrogant.

Some even embraced the hedonistic lifestyle with the enthusiasm of a cat at a cream festival, and yes, a few were blessed with the intellectual brightness of a particularly dim candle.

Worse, some princesses were just plain evil.

Not the charming kind of evil that might win you a cult following, but the sort that made you double-check whether your royal lineage hadn't accidentally been crossed with that of a villainous overlord from a neighboring kingdom.

These were the princesses who skipped the whole 'happily ever after' and went straight for the 'what in the seven kingdoms were they thinking?' kind of reign.

Thus, under the noble banner of halting villainy in its tracks, the royal princes were put under the kind of surveillance that would make a paranoid dictator blush.

The mantra around the castle was clear: "Princes tend to pop out as evil reincarnates, so let’s ensure only the delightfully mediocre ascend to greatness!" A foolproof plan if ever there was one.

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So, what was the fate of those unfortunate lads who dared to exhibit a spark of talent at a tender age?

Well, not much to write home about.

Initially, they’d be gloriously dubbed 'royal helpers'—a title just glamorous enough to not sound like 'royal scapegoats'.

Soon after, these promising princes were packed off to the kingdom's scenic borders as military advisors. Here, they could use their sharp minds, just not within sniffing distance of actual power.

Their royal blood was treated like last season's fashion—acknowledged but decidedly passé.

And then, the tables turned.

The princes, once potential tyrants in the making, found themselves the favored targets of abuse, humiliation, and the kind of bullying that would make even a schoolyard tough think twice.

It seems the royal family had swapped one extreme for another—trading potential despots for princely punching bags.

The recent decades, though, had been a bit of a dry spell for the princess production line in the royal family.

For reasons unknown, the princess birthrate had plummeted—not just in quantity, but also in quality. It seemed the royal gene pool needed a bit more chlorine.

As time marched on, the royal cradle saw only baby boys.

No matter how enthusiastically the royal family engaged in the business of heir production, daughters were as elusive as a five leaf clover.

This peculiar trend left the duchesses and marchionesses—the previously exported princesses and their descendants—in quite a tizzy.

Imagine palaces filled with little princes running amok, and not a tiara in sight. The noble ladies were agitated, their dreams of tutu-clad grandchildren twirling through the halls dashed. It was a blue-only baby shower, century edition.

In the end, Yvain came to know about this.

The fact that many princes had been discreetly 'relocated' over the years, or worse, disposed of, had come to his knowledge.

Some of these princes were out there in the wild, persecuted and abused, wandering about and probably wondering, "What did I do to deserve this?"

It became like this—a kingdom with more discarded princes than a fairy tale could shake a scepter at, and not a princess in sight to save the day.

If she returned, could the tides turn? Would the kingdom once again reach heights that now seemed buried in the sands of time? Perhaps the solution was simple: produce more heirs, kill more princes!

More, always more!

Oh, where art thou, 'original saint'?

Why do you forsake us in our hour of need? Why won't you grace us with your rebirth and rescue this floundering royal lineage?

Now, even the princes were also praying for her to be born. These poor little boys, royal blood coursing through their veins—

So when Yvain entered the palace just to see ‘that’, he was disgusted.

It was a repulsive sight.

Akin to a macabre and twisted ritual, oozing with gruesomeness, the scene unfolded before the boy king, evoking a sense of sheer horror that surpassed even the most depraved acts committed by the evil he knew.

The young prince—the last crown prince, infamous for his mediocrity alongside his father, was surrounded by a line of noblewomen: adult, young, and younger.

All ordered to harvest his seed in the hope of birthing the ‘Princess’.

It seemed that, after realizing they had no chance of winning the war, their desperation had pushed them to the brink of insanity.

For Yvain, witnessing a boy his age in the middle of that traumatic, hopeless situation, and the empty glance the crown prince shot at him...

Rampage.

At the time, it seemed like the best decision. To end it all. So Yvain wanted everything to just… perish. Maybe it would be the best end for everything—a swift and painless death for the crown prince, and death for everyone around, who were abusing him.

No one escaped, no one knew what truly happened. And Yvain decided to shoulder the truth alone.

Yet, how lonely it was.

The crown prince—

BLAAAAAAAAAAST!

The capital, in flames.

***

“A—n!”

“—n!”

“AIN!”

“WAKE UP!”