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

  Ohe camities piled up suffitly, the kingdom had an epiphany: perhaps these princesses were good for more than a tool for the prio shine—or a target of abuse and humiliation.

  With this newfound enlighte, 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 ce food life, because what more could a princess want than a splendid marriage alliance?

  Well! In special cases, they even hahem the throne.

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

  Over the years, these princesses, once mere bck sheeps, became preferred as the indepe rulers.

  Who would have thought?

  It wasn’t a problem then.

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

  The kingdom thrived, and everyone lived happily ever after.

  Not.

  Iy, 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 'inal saint,' the illustrious seveh princess who asded to power after her predecessors' unfortunate pent for untimely demises.

  Indeed, not every princess was the embodiment of purity, filial piety, and fiveness. 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 particurly dim dle.

  Worse, some princesses were just pin 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 actally been crossed with that of a vilinous overlord from a neighb kingdom.

  These were the princesses who skipped the whole 'happily ever after' a straight for the 'what in the seven kingdoms were they thinking?' kind n.

  Thus, uhe noble banner of halting viliny in its tracks, the royal princes were put uhe kind of surveilhat would make a paranoid dictator blush.

  The mantra around the castle was clear: "Priend to pop out as evil reinates, so let’s ensure only the delightfully mediocre asd to greatness!" A foolproof pn if ever there was one.

  So, what was the fate of those unfortunate ds 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 gmorous enough to not sound like 'royal scapegoats'.

  Soon after, these promising princes were packed off to the kingdom's sic 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 st season's fashion—aowledged but decidedly passé.

  And then, the tables turned.

  The princes, oential 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 sed oreme for arading potential despots for princely pung bags.

  The ret decades, though, had been a bit of a dry spell for the princess produ 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 produ, daughters were as elusive as a five leaf clover.

  This peculiar trehe duchesses and maresses—the previously exported princesses and their desdants—in quite a tizzy.

  Imagine paces filled with little princes running amok, and not a tiara in sight. The noble dies were agitated, their dreams of tutu-cd grandchildren twirling through the halls dashed. It was a blue-only baby shower, tury 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 e to his knowledge.

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

  It became like this—a kingdom with more discarded prihan 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, 'inal 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 c through their veins—

  So when Yvaiered the pace just to see ‘that’, he was disgusted.

  It ulsive sight.

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

  The young prihe st 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 ce 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 ghe 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 prince, ah 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 prince—

  BLAAAAAAAAAAST!

  The capital, in fmes.

  ***

  “A—n!”

  “—n!”

  “AIN!”

  “WAKE UP!”