Narcissa Rostand's Journal - The Rostand

Extract of Viana Rostand nee Winkle's Diary

The Carnet Empire was prevalent in practically all the known world before it's fall and subsequent divide. At least, that's what the old tales say. There isn't left any real source of trust, so actually much of our knowledge is pretty hush-hush, if not forgotten straight. Not that I could fault any of my peers for their disinterest on that part of the past, when the present is ever-full of duties.

I was called Princess Viana of the Winkle name, third child of my parents and younger twin of Princess Vinca of the Winkle name. Our life was a pampered one, if filled with obligations and expectations.

I had thought in my youth, naïvely, that it would remain so. Vinca and I would leave the Royal Family once our older brother Victor was crowned King, and life would go on.

Sadly, it was not to be. Our little Kingdom fell; our home destroyed, my people dead. Mother fell in battle and Victor was beheaded in front of us by the other army's General, Vinca and I unable to do anything.

Maybe it was cowardly, but at the time, barely nine and terrified, I was glad I didn't share my mother and older brother's colouring. Their blue hair offered a magnificent contrast to their dark skin, just like their golden eyes, while Vinca and I favoured our late father's colouring, his paleness characteristic of red-heads washing out our skin tone enough to cover many of our similarities with mother and Victor in the eyes of the enemy when it came looking for the Royal Family.

We had seen them coming through the streets, our maids procuring us clothes to disguise ourselves once they arrived. We cut our hair as much as we could, not wanting to bring attention upon us, and left our tear-tracks where they were, uncaring for once of our appearance. We weren't the only ones crying, as the sight of our mother's head as their banner had filled with dread many hearts.

I was unable to watch my brother's end, Vinca relayed it to me later, once we left our Kingdom behind, and were on the road as any other traveler. I would spend the next decade traveling, first with my sister and her maid, and on my own once Dayana passed away, letting Vinca mourn her as per her petition.

It was then, exploring on my own, that I arrived to Elnea. It was -it is- a peaceful place that gave me some semblance of the childhood I had lost so many years before, to the point I resolved myself to establish my Household there. I looked around for a respectable family, enough to be recognizable but not one that was big enough to generate problems without easy resolution, and procceeded to start business talks with the Family Heads.

In the end the one who came through was Hilda Rostand, Imperial Knight of the Roselle Imperial Army, sole survivor of the Rostand Family and the one who wanted to rebuild her family.

I understood her plight, though I didn't know how much courage would I have had in her place; all the more for the fear I harboured about mybrother's murderers finding me, even all the way to Elnea.

I took instead my husband's surname, and ended being the Family Head myself on a technicality -that, and that little Zoe, whom I had watched grow into a beautiful woung woman, wanted to be a priestess, disliking conflicts and preferring to avoid fighting. Since the Rostands had been a family with a tradition of Knightwomen, that would have made her uneligible for the Headship.

I changed that, by becoming the Gurú of the Scholars before taking up Heiress training under ma'am Hilda, and that was that.

My sister still traveled for several years, until she got to visit the Kingdom of Devon. There she met the man she would love the rest of her life. He was far older than her -42 to her 21 years-, a nice gentleman that treated her as she deserved, as far as I was concerned, that left behind his Captaincy to follow her instead, since Vinca had loved traveling far more than the idea of establishing herself.

Sometimes I wonder if our surname bore a curse after the demise of our family; it certainly would explain the life of sadness that followed my sister after she married. She didn't deserve any of it, to die alone without a place to call her own, her family dead many years before herself.