Fantasy Medieval Setting w/ Time Travel [doubling up plot]

[The Witch Son]

Time Travel with a Medieval Setting

Hi! My name is Em, I'm looking for someone advanced/novella literate - literate to roleplay with.

Anyone who can comfortably write 800 words is fine by me! I write anywhere from that to 2k depending on context. I also like collaborating on posts and writing it like a scene. Usually using google docs so we can collaborate on the post, and then posting the finished product up on rpn. This doesn't require we be online at the same time, despite the style - but it certainly is satisfying to finish a whole scene/post in one go. I love multiple genres in all my rps I always think there's room for drama, action, mystery, thrill, romance in everything we write. Being detailed and creating a nice setup is fun for me! I won’t require full blown character profiles from you or anything but at least small ones with some nice pics so I can get the gist would be nice.

I personally love doing pinterest boards for my main characters and even one for the aesthetic of an rp so if you're addicted to pinning like me lol we can bond on that.

I am more than willing to play more than one character as mains. I usually like to play men as mains but do both genders. I like using real people or actors for character images but illustrations are fine, just nothing anime styled please. I do love anime but I don't like the images for rp purposes. Currently I'm interested in medieval type rps, lots of world building and political intrigue involved, that sort of thing. I'm full of ideas on directions and things do with these settings but would love for the both of us to create the rp in terms of setting and characters and direction. So I expect my partner to be just as interested in plotting as I am. I think of this as a two-way street. That said I totally understand needing breaks or having a schedule, I don't expect to put a post up every day necessarily and I don't expect that from my partner either. As long as we keep communication steady it should be fine for either of us to just chill and not write if need be.

I'm honestly pretty chill and I do work full time so I understand that life requires ppl to be present. If you want a strict writing schedule I'm probably not for you.

I prefer to use discord as our chat (i love to chat and be friends with who i'm rping with! Discuss life and all that.) and donation for our rp. Plots are below. Please be 18+, I don’t do smut but I prefer rping with someone older.

Spoiler: Discord Handle

Emorandum#8688

Spoiler: Plot I'm currently interested in.

This particular rp will be a doubling up one. It's based in a medieval feudal setting. If you've seen game of thrones those mechanics are a lot of what I'm borrowing from. Though instead of seven Kingdoms it's just called an Empire and there's 10 Great Houses instead of 7.

My mains will be a brother and sister from the northern Great House, House Grimald, Rhory and Veora. Yours would be the ward from House Day of said House Grimald, and possibly a Lady who in the past life became the leader of a troupe of rogue bandits. Your female character is up to you and actually changeable depending on how we want to mess with the new timeline. She can be a totally different Lady altogether if you'd rather play a Ladylike character to a more warrior-like one. Whomever you play, the goal is to make her Queen of the North.

Rhory and Veora throughout their lives ended up A King and a prisoner of war respectively, and Rhory dies and Veora is rescued and made Queen of a war ravaged and starving people by the end of it all. It's a miserable an undesirable future for all involved.

But everyone is given a second chance when Veora is sent back in time to before the series of unfortunate events leading to war happened. There's a past timeline now that I've already written out, and a future one that we get to write. I would still like for the war to happen, and for Rhory to be made King. of the north. But the rest is up for plotting between us both. Give the past timeline a read and let me know what you think or any questions you have.

Spoiler: List of The 10 Great Houses

• Brooke: Big lake.
  • Sigil: White Swan on Blue
  • Castle: Brightwater
  • Motto: Truth Clear As Water

• Stryder: Lots of forest.
  • Sigil: Grey Wolf on Green
  • Castle: Greenden
  • Motto: Howl Together

• Woodville: Lots of forest.
  • Sigil: Purple Griffon on Red
  • Castle: Greenperch
  • Motto: Fly High

• Day: Family is into Astronomy.
  • Sigil: Yellow Sun on Purple
  • Castle: Starsight
  • Motto: There Is Always Light

• Corbyn: Agriculture hub
  • Sigil: White Lion on Black
  • Castle: Whitehall
  • Motto: Noble Are We

• Stoneway: Mines.
  • Sigil: Blue Eagle on Red
  • Castle: Deadstone
  • Motto: Steady As The Mountain

• Goodwyne: Agriculture hub.
  • Sigil: Black Unicorn on Yellow
  • Castle: Rosehall
  • Motto: Reap What You Sow

• Rowen: Founded by the seventh son of a seventh son. That quality is thought to produce luck.
  • Sigil: White Rowan Tree on Grey
  • Castle: Seventhson
  • Motto: Never Forget

• Grimald: Northernmost House, most land
  • Sigil: Black Bear on Blue
  • Castle: Mountainkeep
  • Motto: Together We Are Warm

• Drakan: Royal family, biggest city in Dorelith located near castle.
  • Sigil: Red Dragon on Black
  • Castle: Blackgate
  • Motto: Pride Honor Justice

Spoiler: Bannermen of The Great Houses

• Brooke Bannermen
  • Harte
  • Mollen
  • Reed
  • Waynwood
  • Westbrook
  • Risely
  • Appleton

• Stryder Bannermen
  • Graves
  • Holt
  • Jordyn
  • Moore
  • Mertyn
  • Selmy
  • Vance

• Woodville Bannermen
  • Groves
  • Hayford
  • Redding
  • Sharpe
  • Shepherd
  • Pryor
  • Mooton

• Day Bannermen
  • Robinport
  • Merway
  • Blacktyde
  • Cole
  • Fenn
  • Fisher
  • Hardhome

• Corbyn Bannermen
  • Flint
  • Greenhill
  • Haigh
  • Hewet
  • Knott
  • Mandrake
  • Penrose

• Stoneway Bannermen
  • Brightstone
  • Darke
  • Fell
  • Garlen
  • Justman
  • Kenning
  • Ladybright

• Goodwyne Bannermen
  • Sweetwood
  • Ambrose
  • Briar
  • Buckwell
  • Cassel
  • Caldwell
  • Dalton

• Rowen Bannermen
  • Hammel
  • Hardyng
  • Hawthorne
  • Thornberry
  • Kyndall
  • Longhall
  • Mallory

• Grimald Bannermen
  • Blackfoot
  • Warwick
  • Bracken
  • Thornwell
  • Dustin
  • Albion
  • Oakheart
  • Darkwood
  • Brune
  • Corbray
  • Rayne
  • Nightsong
  • Foxglove
  • Gaunt
  • Harlaw

• Drakan Bannermen
  • Wynn
  • Farrow
  • Graceford
  • Harroway
  • Hastings
  • Ironsmith
  • Keath

Spoiler: The Past Timeline Lore

Past Timeline That Lady Veora is Aware of

• A coup for the throne happens, House Grimald takes a side. Lord Giles Grimald and House Drakan’s Lord Erasmus become comrades in arms, bonding over being Lords of a house at such a young age. They win, but the newly made Emperor Erasmus hates seeing his brother in arms return to the north after he wins the throne, so he gives him leave to go home reluctantly. The Emperor gives the hand of his sister, Princess Carina, to Lord Grimald to wed before Lord Grimald leaves.

• The marriage is very sweet, but lasts only a few years. Lady Carina gives birth to a son, Rhory, but dies from childbed fever soon after giving birth to her second child, a daughter named Veora. The Emperor himself visits to take his sister's bones back south. He stays for a month to comfort Lord Grimald.

• About another decade passes before Lord Grimald marries again, at the insistence of his bannermen.

• A coastal Great House, House Day, rebels against the rule of the Emperor Erasmus. The Great House Grimald is tasked with crushing the rebellion. They do, and take House Day’s only son as a ward (a nice way of saying hostage) to keep the peace.

• 10 years of peace pass. A letter arrives with the Emperor's seal, notifying the steward of the north Lord Giles Grimald that House Day has rebelled once more. It is now Lord Grimald’s duty to behead his ward from House Day, making good on the threat that should House Day rebel again they will lose their heir. The family, Lord Grimald included, is extremely upset. But Lord Grimald does his duty.

• Lord Grimald sends a letter to House Day to let them know it is done. House Day responds, enraged, that they had not rebelled at all. As they had promised they would keep the peace 10 years ago. But now, in revenge, the north would suffer a war from them in retaliation.

• A war ensues, House Day is less strong than they were 10 years ago and do not stand a chance. It is short, only two years, nonetheless they weaken the north. Burning a lot of cropland and destroying a castle or two.

• The Emperor summons Lord Grimald to discuss what transpired and why down in the south in person. Lord Grimald takes his 3 daughters to court with him, and reveals the sealed letter he received in person. The Emperor is shocked, as he never had such a letter sent. But Lord Grimald should stay awhile and investigate in secret with his help.

• The eldest daughter of Lord Grimald, Lady Veora, is popular in court and the Emperor's son, the Prince Tristan, takes a liking to her. They become engaged to be married.

• On Lady Veora’s wedding day the Emperor Erasmus is assassinated and Lord Giles Grimald is framed for it. Lord Giles is given little warning, but just enough to act before it's too late. He tries to flee with his daughters. His youngest daughter, Gyda, is accidentally killed during the arrest. The next youngest, Dhara, escapes with the help of a few men. And the eldest, the new Princess Veora, is arrested after it's all over. Princess Veora had refused to flee and stayed behind with Prince Tristan, her husband, tattling on her father in the process. (Yes, she would always hate and blame herself for this grave mistake.)

• Lord Grimald is to be beheaded for treason, and asks for pardon of Princess Veora’s life in exchange for the full (false) confession of his crimes. Which is better than Lord Grimald shouting some conspiracy about being framed, and is why the Lord Chancellor had Princess Veora arrested in the first place. To use as leverage against Lord Grimald. Princess Veora is pardoned but her marriage is dissolved and she becomes a prisoner of war as the north declares rebellion. Prince Tristan, now made Emperor Tristan, goes along with all of this, leaning on the Lord Chancellor’s council. He fights in the war himself and brings his former wife, Lady Veora, with him. She is kept in his tent and made to serve him hand and foot. Lady Veora is silent and submissive during her prisonership. But She listens intently to everything going on around her.

• The north is united under House Grimald and its new Lord, but what the south didn't expect was for Lord Rhory Grimald to declare himself a King and begin uniting the midland Great Houses against the south too. King Grimald is a brilliant military strategist and wins every battle he fights. If only politics were half so easy as battle were.

• In particular, an allyship is made with the Great House (up to you, your main female character hails from here possibly), which holds a geographical advantage between the north and south. It is to be sealed with marriage.

• The night before the wedding, Lady (up to you) escapes with a number of her sisters into the forest. She takes with her horses, supplies, and weaponry. Nobody is able to retrieve them, they cover their tracks too well and the forest hides them effectively. They become a rogue band of bandits that allies with commoners and uses guerilla tactics to fight both the south and north armies that encroach upon their territory.

• The allyship between House (up to you) and King Grimald dissolves as Lord (up to you) decides to ally himself with the south instead. King Grimald finds this out after a betrayal on the battlefield earns him his first loss.

• King Grimald, using a white flag to show surrender, attempts to ally with the rogue bandits. But her father sets fire to the forest with them both in it and they both die a fiery death.

—---idk what happens here but things happen—---

• Emperor Tristan dies in battle, The Lord Chancellor takes over the front lines and Princess Alegra is declared Empress.

• Idk who but SOMEBODY rallies the northern forces and retreats but holds the border in the midlands successfully. The Lord Chancellor is unsuccessful in getting that border to budge.

• An entire year of volcanic winter over the continent blackens out the skies, and crops suffer because of it.

• In a surprise attack, the Lord Chancellor's camp is attacked and he is slain. Lady Veora is rescued and she is crowned Queen. She marries her rescuer since he has been the default leader of the north since her brother's passing. He dies in a border skirmish at some point, but Empress Alegra and Queen Veora come to a peace treaty. As neither can afford a war while famine affects the entire continent.

• Queen Veora is sent back in time after being approached in a dream by a northern god, Odin. Which she finds strange given that due to her mother’s heritage, she’d always practiced the southern religion. In exchange for strengthening the worship of his pantheon she will get a chance to change the past. She's sent back in time, before the ward of House Day is beheaded.

Past Timeline That Lady Veora is Not Aware of

• The Emperor Erasmus and Lord Giles Grimald were “greek comrades”. As in they were banging but not in a way that was considered gay and submissive by people back then. Apparently so long as you were not being penetrated it wasn't considered shameful or even odd. They don't really have a concept of gay in medieval times, and mostly you were considered to “prefer the company of men” over women sometimes. Which we now know is code for gay. The Emperor Erasmus is very gay. Lord Giles Grimald is not really (maybe situationally bi) but he looked up to The older Drakan heir when they were fighting a war together and if they were a little too close during, well oops. Emperor Erasmus gave Lord Grimald his sister to marry so that they would be related by blood. It was the Emperor’s way of holding onto Lord Grimald even though he must go live on the opposite end of the continent now.

• The Emperor became very depressed after Lord Grimald left, and even more so after hearing that the marriage was going well and his sister, Princess Carina, was pregnant. He spends a lot of time drinking, jousting and whoring. The Empress, his wife, is unable to cheer him up. And she resents that, but maintains her dignity and is widely considered a good and wise Empress.

• Princess Carina dying actually cheered Emperor Erasmus up because it gave him an excuse to go north (a selfish dick I know). Where he stayed way longer than he should've or was appropriate. But it's not like Lord Grimald minded. He needed comfort at the time because he really loved his wife, her passing affected him deeply.

—---------skipping a lot of time

• The Lord Chancellor and Princess Alegra (the Emperor's daughter) are in love. And very ambitious people by nature. The Lord Chancellor is a self made man who rose from a position of peasantry to where he is now, the first man in history to do so. Princess Alegra is smarter than Prince Tristan, and she's always resented that she's a pawn while he is heir to the throne. She resents her destiny to be married off and plots with the Lord Chancellor to put herself on the throne, later to crown him as her consort. But this plan requires both her father and brother to be dead, and for the Lord Chancellor to be seen as worthy of marrying her. As it stands now, though powerful, the nobility resent the low birth of the Lord Chancellor.

• They decide upon a course of action, the Lord Chancellor will lead a war against northern rebellion to raise his reputation. First though, they want to weaken the northern forces to ensure victory and a good way to kickstart a rebellion and get Lord Grimald in the southern court to frame him is to trick him into conflict with Lord Day. They steal the Emperor's seal and use it to send the letter to Lord Grimald that House Day has rebelled. It works. And once the Day rebellion is quelled Lord Grimald is summoned south as predicted.

• The Lord Chancellor and Princess Alegra frame Lord Grimald. However Lord Grimald has more proof than either of them wanted him to have of their treachery. Lord Grimald also knows they are an item. To shut him up Princess Veora, Lord Grimald’s eldest daughter, is arrested too. They threaten her life to Lord Grimald and he agrees to recite a script they write for him in exchange for sparing her life.

• The Lord Chancellor convinces the Emperor Tristan he needs to be on the front lines when war with the north breaks out. Emperor Tristan agrees of course, his death on the front lines is not an honest one.

In the Empire of Dorelith, you live and die by your House name.​

 

[The Witch Son]

my characters for this rp. you DO NOT have to make cs for your mains like I did lmao. mine contain a lot of lore and insight so I felt it was important but I don't actually require things like this from my partner.

Spoiler: Rhory

Lord Rhory Grimald

Age:
24

Height:
6'

Eye Color:
light blue

Hair:
Black

Gender:
Cis Male

House:
Grimald

Coat of Arms:
Black Bear on Blue

Personality:

vices: cocky | arrogant | whiny | egotistical | dismissive | blunt | proud | annoying (to his siblings)

virtues: compassionate | honorable | loyal | pragmatic | strategic | leader | honest | thoughtful

Bio:
Rhory can’t really remember his mother, which is awful, and he wishes he did. After all, he's the only one of her children who spent any time with her. Veora never got the chance. For reasons that, at first, infuriated him. That he does remember.

Rhory would go searching for snakes and toads to put in her crib, thinking she’d be poisoned or get warts like a witch from the stories his nursemaid told him. One time he even tried to take her outside, to leave her in the forest, hopefully be taken by a wolf and eaten. He was caught before he could exact his master plan. Didn’t even make it out of the nursery. His nursemaid, now a much older woman than she was before, loves to tell him that story.

He also remembers that when his father finally asked him why in the world he was bringing strange creatures inside the castle and putting them in his sister’s crib he didn’t get angry. The conversation that followed was perhaps too adult for him, for much of it went right over his head. But what he took away from it was that if he wanted to grow up into a valorous knight then he needed to protect the weak, not pick on them. And that he needed to help his father protect the family, he didn’t have to like his sister, but he did have to protect her from harm.

Turns out disliking your sibling is pretty hard to do once you start looking out for them, no doubt a thing his father knew very well. He maintains to this day that he’d been hoodwinked into brotherhood.

It’s customary to send a noble boy to squire with other notable houses, this ensures a worldliness and familiarity with connections that need to be maintained into adulthood for nobility. But Rhory has always been keenly aware that his father was anxious about sending any of his children away. He didn’t like to spend time away from them, and read to them every night no matter how tired he was. As he turned thirteen it was expected that he would spend a few years away from home to squire for a knight, and he began to beg for it. Insisting that he’d never become a knight if he didn’t squire, and that his father was holding him back and he was indeed old enough to squire. But instead his uncle and his family came to them, and he squired begrudgingly for his uncle instead of for some faraway knight in a region he’d never been to.

The bruises he received in his training taught him to be grateful instead of impertinent at his lot in life. Just because his father refused to send him away to squire like every other noble boy got to do didn’t mean he was going to allow Rhory to take it easy. His uncle, as it turns out, was very skilled in running Rhory ragged so that he didn’t have the energy to complain. The man simply had no pity for Rhory, and any praise he received he had to earn the hard way, the very arduous and gruelingly hard way.

He didn’t get to leave Mountainkeep, not even at the age of fifteen when House Day rallied the coastal region into rebellion against the Emperor. Rhory should have been old enough to ride to battle with his father at that point, to at least clean his armor and stay behind in the tents. Anything! But his pleas fell on deaf ears. Instead he stayed behind with the women, his father’s new wife, the babe in her belly, his aunt and her little ones, and his little sister.

When the rebellion has been quashed and his father brought with him House Day’s heir, Rhory didn’t fully grasp why he’d been taken as a ward till a few years later. He just knew that he wanted to know everything about the other boy’s home and life. Which was annoying, apparently, at first. Their relationship went through periods of being awkward, to attached at the hip, to being annoyed with one another until finally they settled upon a sworn brotherhood. Different parents they might have, but they chose to be brothers nonetheless. It was a whole ceremony involving a fire and vows and cuts on their palm. Their secret pact.

That Veora walked in on and ruined at the end but oh well, a vow is a vow and it was done, bossy little sisters notwithstanding. They got her back by hiding a snake in her bed anyway.

Rhory was finally knighted at the age of eighteen. When his father and his uncle judged he was good and ready for it. This also meant his uncle and all his cousins would leave Mountainkeep, and he’d grown attached in the time they’d lived together. So much so that Mountainkeep felt a bit desolate with them gone. And his frustrations at having never left the region before grew again. It became his favorite thing to complain about.

Fate is cruel, and one day too soon in another life Rhory would be eating those complaints bitterly. For although he has no recollection of it, Rhory did live this life once before, and here’s how it went.

It all started with the letter from the Emperor, informing them that House Day had rebelled. For some reason, they had all thought that would never happen. That it would be impossible for such a thing to come to pass. And that if it ever did. His father would never…

Do his duty as steward of the north and Lord of one of the Great Houses of the Empire.

He’d never cursed his father so hard for being the honorable and duty bound man everyone knew him to be before. Couldn’t his father bend the rules this once? Had he no heart? Had he no pity? Hadn’t he raised the ward of House Day as if he were his own all this time? Was that all a lie?

To say Rhory was devastated would be an understatement. He had to stand by while his brother lost his head. At least it was quick. Father’s aim and swing was swift and true.

Rhory hadn’t forgiven him by the time he left for the south with the girls. He had to stay behind in Mountainkeep as regent, his stepmother helped him manage things while he learned how to rule a region.

He rallied the north’s forces when he was informed of his father’s imprisonment and Gyda’s death, they marched remarkably quick, but everyone knew that no matter how quick they were there wasn’t any possibility that they would make it in time to stop the execution from taking place. Maybe the threat of rebellion from the north would make them hesitate a little, but no one was naive enough to think that Lord Grimald wasn’t doomed.

They declared war and independence after it happened, knowing he was condemning his remaining sisters as he did so. Letters informing him that Veora and Dhara were now prisoners of war remained unread by him. His stepmother would read them and inform him of anything that was important.

It was a shock to them all when Dhara turned up safe and sound, having found their camp. A couple of his father’s men had escaped with her in tow, and she hadn’t been held as a prisoner all this time. He thought that maybe that meant that his other sister wasn’t a prisoner too. But no such luck was to be had. At least he had one. At least one of them was safe.

They decided to keep it a secret that Dhara was alive and well, if the south thought that they were under the impression that they had two prisoners when they only had one that was a small advantage they could take.

He should have sent Dhara away to Mountainkeep with her mother. But selfishly, he gave in to her pleas and kept her by his side for the rest of both of their lives.

For Dhara would perish too when the forest went up in flames. Marking the end of King Rhory’s reign.

Spoiler: Veora

Lady Veora Grimald

Age:
19 (mentally 29)

Height:
5' 10"

Eye Color:
Light Blue

Hair:
Black

Gender:
Cis Female

House:
Grimald

Coat of Arms:
Black Bear on Blue

Personality:

vices: calculating | manipulative | bossy | jaded | paranoid | a liar | two-faced | perfectionist

virtues: intelligent | kind | competent | humble | pragmatic | thoughtful | studious | patient

Bio:
The first time around…

Lady Veora was born in the spring, and though her coming meant the going of her mother, she was never made to feel as though it was her fault. In fact, she probably ended up more spoiled than she would have had her birth mother been there to properly tell her no. As it was, her father was, though very involved in her upbringing, very weak towards her many requests. She was from the start every inch a proper Lady, and enjoyed all the things ladies of her station do. Pretty dresses, songs, ribbons, dancing, and being rescued by a dashing knight that her brother would pretend to be to amuse her.

When her father remarried she did her utmost to emulate her new mother figure, who was a particularly elegant person, and the two grew close. She became a very talented embroiderer, her eye for detail and need for perfectionism a perfect match for the skill, and neglected horseback riding or archery. Not really feeling as though she needed to learn those things and insisting that when she grew up she would marry a southern lord anyway, and southern ladies didn’t hunt or ride around on horseback. They rode in carriages and had tea while they embroidered.

Her birth mother and her new mother were both from the south, and this suited her fascination with the region growing up. She wanted nothing more than to be a proper southern lady in silks. Rather than a sturdy northern woman in wools. A thing that, later on in life, she came to regret. There was so much she came to regret

She used to despise how much her siblings would make fun of her for being fussy and obsessed with the south and they used to despise how she always had to be a bossy know it all. How could she help it if she knew for a fact that if they climbed that tree with weak branches they’d fall in that brook and hurt themselves? Well she was right, that’s exactly what her siblings did and that’s exactly what happened and she’d give anything at all in the entire world to go back to those moments after… after.

Veora had been so happy, euphoric even, about going south with her father. And the flattery and joy of being popular in the capitol and courted by the imperial Prince had rivaled nothing else in her inexperienced life. For all of it to go up in flames on her wedding day. Her happiness turned to ash. Was the accutest sort of pain. She had felt betrayed by the circumstances and horrified at the prospect of losing her husband’s affections and made a grave mistake.

Her father had come to her and told her they had to leave, that it wasn’t safe anymore in the castle and she’d refused to leave. Only acquiescing after he explained to her in frustration that the Emperor was dead and that they’d all lose their heads for it if the Lord Chancellor had his way. In her panic Veora had agreed to go get her Gyda, her youngest sister, and meet him at their rendezvous point. But thought better of it and decided to go to her husband, hoping he would protect them and understand.

Tristan ensured her he would take care of everything and kept her in their rooms until it was over. Informing her of her father’s arrest and the death of Gyda later that night, before placing her under arrest too. They made her watch her father be beheaded on his execution day. She wished more than once that she had been executed with him.

Regret and guilt became Veora’s closest friends, ever present and ever haunting. She felt she deserved whatever she suffered next but felt that perhaps it would have been better had her torture been physical. Instead it was social and emotional. Whatever flattery and social elevation she’d felt before was gone in an instant as she became a prisoner of war. Stripped of her title as Princess and her marriage dissolved, she went from the very top of society to less respected than a chambermaid.

For her brother’s victories she was made to apologize before the whole of court and beg forgiveness for her house. To wear a false face and parrot words that were desired of her to appease her captors. She was coached by the Lord Chancellor in this, as he was the only other person who would really speak to her and not at her or behind her back. She formed a strange friendship with him wherein he would advise her on what to do and offer his sympathies, and she would ask questions here and there about how court worked or why a certain course of action was being taken. Ever careful of their respective positions. She thinks he might have felt sympathy for her, or perhaps he was simply invested in her playing her part as the humble and submissive disgraced lady. Who knows. But it helped keep her sane, and taught her a lot.

When it came time for the Emperor to join the war effort more directly and she went with him she was worried about how she might be treated by her former husband. He, instead of the worst things she could imagine, used the opportunity of being in tents out on the land to try to connect with her emotionally again. He made his excuses at first, explained to her that she couldn’t be an Empress if she was a traitor’s daughter and all the obvious things she already knew. But soon became frustrated with her expressionless indifference to anything he said.

Veora waited on him hand and foot, but never again would she give him so much as a reassuring smile. Not even their nightly games of chess could induce her to converse much, games that she always won and that he used to find charming became equally as frustrating to Tristan.

When news of her brother’s death reached her she cried tears that she didn’t know she still had in her, but was made to recite a script of how happy she was for the Emperor first. She thought of killing him in his sleep. But she didn’t have the nerve or the means. A butter knife wasn’t going to slit his throat.

She had always found it strange that he never remarried despite the many ladies at court tripping over themselves to be his Empress. He had taken mistresses, but nothing ever came of them. And one night, she, under some strange insanity, asked why.

This must have offended him a great deal because for the first time since being held captive he finally hit her. She had to admit she was shocked, and at the same time wasn’t. But either way she wouldn’t accept his apology the morning after. He became angrier with her somehow icier silence.

But that was alright, because he died in the war soon after. She must have hated him at that point because she did not shed any tears for the fallen Emperor. Nor was she sent back to the capitol like she thought she would be. Instead the Lord Chancellor kept her there with him. She didn’t wait on him hand and foot like she had Tristan, he seemed more keen on discussing who she should marry to tie the north back to the south after the war was won. He was even allowing her input and opinion on the matter.

Her rescue was everything a bright eyed little girl with romance in her head had hoped for, but came far too late for her to truly enjoy it the way that bright eyed little girl might have. Still, she had a rescuer, a leader amongst the northmen who had rallied their forces and launched a rescue for her. He was the bastard son of a minor Lord, and a very talented swordsman and leader. She vaguely remembered him from her younger days in the north but apparently she’d left more of an impression on him. He rescued her and made her Queen.

Veora would claim to everyone who listened that she married her hero as reward for his valour, but in truth marrying him had been all cold calculation. The northmen followed him and were loyal to him, meanwhile she had spent years as a prisoner and could claim loyalty only through her father’s name. A thing that, if she had been a son, might be effective, but as a daughter would be dubiously followed by accusations of being a traitor to the north. After all, hadn’t she married the Emperor? And hadn’t she. As rumors insisted, warmed his bed thereafter as his mistress? Untrue though those rumors were she could silence them more easily by marrying a beloved war hero than she could be refuting them verbally.

That’s not to say she didn’t care for him, he was a gruff sort of man, but he was so gentle with her. She thought he might melt the icy block her heart had become but then he had to go and die too. Leaving her with a pregnant belly to remember him by and a famine to find a way to lead her people through.

That’s probably the only thing she regrets about her decision to enter into the pact that Odin, the god of gods, offered her. She would never see her child born. It would never be. It couldn’t. Not when the future it would be born into was horrible and doomed. She had to try for a better one and sacrifice that unborn life in her to do it. Odin’s magic ran deep, but he did require sacrifice. All magic requires sacrifice. Even when a god performs it.

It will be worth it. She’ll sacrifice whatever else she has to in order to make it worth it.

 

[The Witch Son]

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