Prologue
The Pertinent Background Information
Once upon a time there was a handsome elven prince…
Just kidding. I’m not an elven prince. But I am a prince. And I do belong to a royal line that has some, ah, we’ll call them peculiarities.
You see, it all goes back to an ancestor that actually was an elven prince. He married my great-great-great-etc grandmother Eliza. She was, of course, human and as royal as he was. Various factions of many races got angry. Challenges were made. So forth and so on.
Anyway. He, his name was Jasper by the way, had a few tricks so everything was fine until after he died of alarmingly old age. His great-grandson, Eric, inherited. (Did I mention the alarmingly old age?) Everything stayed fine for a while. Such a long reign, when done well, tends to lead to stability, after all. Unfortunately, the court finally realized that Eric had a bit of magic he’d inherited from dear old grand-dad.
Apparently this was a problem. I’m still not sure why. I mean, one would think this would be a logical conclusion right?
After about twenty people tried to assassinate Eric, the relatives became a little annoyed. I’m rather thankful I wasn’t there. I’ve seen angry elves, and they are scary, scary folk.
So what did the magical, angry, scary people do? They cursed us. I mean, they blessed us. And then they sent Eric out into the middle of nowhere to find a dragon lady to fall in love with.
Don’t look at me like that. It’s complicated, alright?
What it comes down to, is that every heir since Eric has this magical shape-shifting mate that will show up or be found or some such before the current ruling pair kicks the bucket.
The idea is that this partner acts as a sort of built in bodyguard for the royal couple. It’s much harder to kill someone when their bodyguard is disgustingly besotted with them and sharing their bed.
It works sufficiently well, actually.
We’re still magic. We’re still rulers, and competent ones at that. Every once in awhile a purist faction tries to kill us and gets important parts bit off by a pissed off dragon or wolf or griffin or whatever.
It used to happen a lot more frequently, but the shock’s kind of worn off at this point. That, and there are enough people in the general population with…interesting quirks handed down from royal bastards that we’re all kind of over it. Now if people try to kill us, it’s usually politics or money or something much more traditional.
Every now and then the royal couple winds up with a younger child that can also critter out. It’s not really a problem. Usually, the extended royal family is like Oooo bonus. Do you think you would like the militia? How about a life of intrigue and spydom? My younger brother is currently trying to convince everyone that a flying cartographer is a really good idea. Apparently he doesn’t like violence or intrigue.
But I’m getting sidetracked. Because all of that is fine. It’s good. The family had some issues. So we got this blessing. All done. It’s awesome. I’m the crown prince and I get to find some amazing magical creature to fall in love with.
There’s just one problem. I’m totally not interested in the opposite sex. At least…not in the way that one should be interested in one’s spouse. I mean, women are great. But I don’t want to marry one and try to procreate. And that hasn’t happened before. Siblings, cousins and what not, sure. But not the heir. We’re not really sure how this is going to go.
I broke the news to my parents a while back. They’re a little concerned, but fine with it. They can’t make my brother or sister heir because the blessing has already kind of adhered to me. There’s a tattoo type thing that randomly appears during puberty on one of the royal offspring. Because you need something else to obsess over when you’re that age, right?
It’s not always the oldest kid, either. Sometimes it’s even a niece or nephew. That’s why we’re not really worried about the whole producing heirs issue. My sister is really excited about doing the kid thing and my brother has his sights set on a pretty little librarian princess a kingdom over, so we’re probably all set there.
Really, we’re just hoping the spell didn’t dictate a member of the opposite sex. It was a while back. We’re not sure if they went with the soul mate type of phrasing or the person of opposite gender that will complete you type of phrasing.
The theory is that the blessing knows what it’s doing and wouldn’t have stuck itself to me it if wasn’t willing to cough up a male partner. That has to be the theory, because if not this is going to be really unfortunate. Hi. I’m your future husband. You get to be queen, but it’s really only an on parchment type of relationship. Is that alright? Yeah…no. A world of no.
So here we go. I get to wander off on a tour of the countryside and we’ll all wait and see who I come back with. If I even come back with anyone at all. Fun times.
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