Narcissa Rostand's Journal - The Rostand

Ch 53

The Wilson Heir, my Dana's firstborn, was born on the day of the Wheat Harvesting, the same day my mother celebrated her own birthday.

I took that as the sign that my grandson would be as great as she had been - as driven to perfection, unable to accept the meaning of the world 'failure'.

Following that tradition I had created several decades ago, Dana named him Nivyen. It also had a sound similar to "Viana", reversed, so she was happy with that too.

I had been pondering for a time whom could I betrothe him to: it had to have a close blood-relationship with him and the Rostand family without carrying that name; close in age so they could meet and get to know each other with time, none of that rushed nonsense.

I did not connect the dots for a time, until after my Wedding Anniversaire - at the time I shared a pot of tea with my cousin Vicky. Not even then the idea came to me; it was after visiting Grisam and his family, holding little Ramona in my arms, that inspiration came to me, remembering Vicky's own engagement.

Vicky Rostand had been the first daughter born to my uncle, Milo Rostand, and his wife, Jolene Rostand nee Rolfo.

Aunt Jolene had had an older brother, one Gorka Rolfo I never got to meet properly, that married one Roswitha Romanenko and took her surname. In other words, their surname, their bloodline, had been lost with both of them married to other families and the sudden death of their older sister, whom should have inherited the Headship.

As the Rolfo had been matrilineal, aunt Jolene would have had inherited, had she not been already married. Instead, to strenghten their bloodline cousin Vicky was betrothen to my then friend Austin Romanenko, second son of Gorka, and upon marriage he took the Rostand name.

At first I had considered a betrothal between that branch of the family for Nivyen, if not of Vicky's line from one of her siblings; maybe a daughter of Valerie Menchel nee Rostand if she were to ever have one.

But after placing my eyes over little Ramona the light came to me: we already had a precedent for first cousins marrying in order to fortify a bloodline, so it wasn't out of the realms of possibility.

Ramona Otanyo was perfect: carrying a different surname, so it wouldn't be scandalous when any of her children married back into the Rostand; coming from my line, so the blood relation was undeniable; different enough to my other grandson not to bear little clones: she possesed her parents' black hair, reminiscent of my father's, and showed also the blues from Godwin's line - in other words, she was an adorable little lady.

I didn't expect opposition from Dana: she herself had been under such kind of contract and was very happily married, besides the fact that she knew what were the stipulations signed.

No, if there was to be a problem, I expected it to come from my darling Grisam.

My boy was inquisitive, always looking around to notice the little details. He would have been a free soul, probably tied to his friend Lot Stolypin, if not for him meeting Minnie Otanyo.

She was the first girl -and not even that, since she was a grown woman already when she came to the Kingdom- my darling ever showed an interest on.

Had Dana not esponsored her to live in Elnea I would have done so, and damn the shame I could have felt, not being more than an acquaintance to her at the moment, because her presence could open a new door.

Minnie was a stronghead, too independent and even masculine to ever settle down for any of those men with inferiority complexes; she would have felt stiffled by them before slamming them with the door.

My son adored all of that in her, stars shining in his eyes whenever he told me about whatever stunt she would have pulled in a dungeon, feeling prouder of her than she herself.

He admired all of that in myself and his little sister too, but he also admitted to me that he was grateful for having been born a boy since he wanted no part in Heiresses' Matters - at the time Dana was already betrothed and keeping steady relations with her future family-in-law, and he thought it bothersome.

I could not predict how he would take my proposition of engaging his daughter to Dana's son in order for their children to take on the mantle of Head of the Rostand Family.

I breached that first with Minnie and my daughter, which proved helpful; not only were they very good friends, and therefore looking to such an union with good eyes just for that, but that selfish glint I had noticed in my son's wife played in my favour: her daughter being the mother of the future Head of Family would bring her honour, especially since they would be my succesor and, while I certainly hadn't yet reached my mother's level, I was already a very important figure of the high society by my own merits; I was close friends with the Queen and her daughters; I was the Dragoon and I had also maneuvered my family into well-off positions.

That had been my trap, and as I laid it off I could see how she was already hooked up on it: I would face no opposition from her.

A/N: As I've mentioned in the past, Narcissa is a manipulative, controller woman. Not only that, one could ever say of her that she is bigoted and homophobic, in case I was too subtle in my writing. As I've mentioned also in the past, many of these things will be adressed in the future, but I still wanted to let this written.

Not only that, what she does in this very chapter is defend marriage between first cousins (which one can do in-game) which is basically incest. I do not condone it, not out of a moral sense (rather, not only because of it), but because its genetical implications: endogamy will translate into future problems for any offspring, since their genetical code repeats itself, perpetuating the presence of weaker alleles that could represent illness.

I won't really get into details right now about that, unless someone wants me to - in which case I will brush up my biology books and also translate concepts from Spanish into English (the real reason I'm not explaining myself much more than this right now).