Usually, there had to be a very unusual event for a ruler to leave his capital. War, for example. Or a rebellion. And now it seemed that both were present in Elur, and there was no reason to worry. Except for one thing. The son's words have been completely confirmed. His younger sister is traveling with the king. And according to reports from acquaintances in the capital, she is not traveling for the beauty of the north.
Duke Kass was the most eligible suitor in the kingdom. Of course, his majesty was a better match for any girl, but kings do not take any girl as a wife. So the numerous aristocrats of Elur were left to intrigue whether their next queen would be Princess Shorez, or whether it would be Princess Sahia.
Both girls suited the southern dukes perfectly, but as usual, each had their own preferences. Usually rooted in business connections, but sometimes just paid for by a trivial gift. Because of this unresolved fuss over the figure of the future queen, the king of Elur, Gordon the Second, was still single.
But the lord of the north, Duke Kass, could take any girl of noble birth as his wife. The intrigue around the future wife of the richest and most influential man in the kingdom, surpassed in intensity even the underhanded struggle for the bride of the king. Many influential families wanted to get a young and inexperienced duke as a relative. And undertook for this sometimes very significant efforts.
Duchess generally suspected that the death of her sister and niece at the hands of bandits, was not accidental. The woman had little understanding of warfare, but the guards assigned to escort her bride-to-be seemed too weak. And once again, the woman left a notch to ask Knight Blood's opinion on the matter.
After the bride's death, the passions around her son had run high. It seemed that such a disgrace as death at the hands of brigands, which happened in the lands of the Duke, should have deterred potential wannabes to marry him. But it was exactly the opposite. The duke had to simply fend off the emissaries, and his secretary composed the same type of polite refusals to letters with appropriate proposals. And even the king took advantage of the situation! And by his power had fitted his younger sister to be the bride of an old friend.
The girl was frankly ugly. Masculine facial features and sparse hair, scared away potential suitors from other countries. Even the flattery of painters and court artists, could not hide the obvious shortcomings of the princess. That's the way it is in life. Both the daughters of kings and the daughters of pig herders are sometimes born equally ugly. Although with regard to Ilana of Elur there were not unfounded rumors that she was not the daughter of the king at all.
The duchess was also nervous about the fact that both royal and ducal families were descended from the same man and their founders were brothers, but since then the families had never related to each other. Now, in the case of a son marrying the king's sister, the Kasses had no phantom rights to the throne and the crown!
But many generations of dukes, well aware of the importance of their position, chose their wives in the southern lands of the Empire or at least among the nobility of the Unruly Kingdoms. A chain of small states stretching from north to south, along the western border of human domains. In short, the farther away his wife's family's holdings were from Kass, the better!
Only her husband had broken that rule by marrying the daughter of an Elurian baron, and she had tried to break it. But all efforts had failed. The last Duke was neither married nor betrothed. And now they took advantage of the situation, in fact, forcibly intending to marry her son and tie their family to the royal power! And the rumors about the princess' origins were not important - the Kass family was gaining too serious rights to the throne. Dangerous. Very dangerous.
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