A Lovely Princess and her Faithful Servant

Prologue: A Lonely Girl

I wonder when my love for that character began. I've never actually grown attached to characters in books. Be it the main character or the villain, I've never actually come to love them. Perhaps it was because I saw them as nothing more than that. Characters in a book, fictional people in an imaginary world.

It wasn't the story that interested me. Reincarnation. A person dies in a modern world and finds themself in another, less advanced yet magical world. A common concept that was so overdone it had gotten boring and repetitive. The art was certainly beautiful, which was most likely how it caught my eye in the first place.

And yet, I just couldn't bring myself to actually become attached to the characters. Athanasia was just a bit reckless, confident, and sometimes sarcastic. In her previous life she had lived to adulthood, so her mannerisms, while childish, had a strange elegance. She was careful, because any wrong move in front of the emperor could literally send her head flying.

She was humorous, appalled and shocked at things she couldn't foresee. Her interactions with the other characters, minor or major, was a sight to behold. Athanasia was careful, because she read [A Lovely Princess]. She knew how terrifying her father was. The Princess also knew that she was only pretending to be a child, to earn her father's affections in order to survive. She built those walls between her and the other characters because she knew that at any moment, it could all fall through.

It was only when an unfortunate accident had befallen her father when she realized those walls she built had slowly crumbled on their own. She realized she had come to love that tyrant emperor like a real father, and lamented over it as his memories and his love for her seemed to vanish.

Athanasia was a very humane character. Mature in some situations, immature on others. Usually the latter.

And yet, and yet—I wonder, why was it that I just could not for the love of me, come to love her? I understood her. I analyzed her character. We followed her journey, [Who Made Me A Princess] was her story for heaven's sake!

But I couldn't help but notice that lonely little girl. The Lovely Princess, the main character of the novel Athanasia read.

Jennette Margarita, from the beginning, was bound for misfortune. She was never meant to be happy, and was never meant to make others happy. Her creation was for the sole reason of causing harm to the one person she wanted the most—her family, her father, the tyrant emperor Claude de Alger Obelia.

From what Athanasia had told us, the viewers, Jennette was created with black magic. Her father was not even Claude, but Claude's elder brother Anastacious, who was a twisted man who reveled in his younger brother's pain. She was a chimera created with black magic through the conceiving of Anastacious and Claude's ex-fiancé, Penelope.

Pitiful. She was pitiful. Her greedy mother wanted more, wanted things she could not have. She wanted power, wealth, so she couldn't just settle for the 'crippled' younger brother. Oh no, she approached the to-be emperor at the time, Anastacious. She promised happiness with Claude, yet snickered and cackled to herself while calling him a fool.

The woman tried to seduce Anastacious, but see, Anastacious didn't care for her. In actuality, he went along because he knew he would be stealing something from his younger brother. He was stealing his younger brother's oh so cherished fiancé, and my. What face would Claude make when he witnesses his fiancé dirtying herself with his damned elder brother's scent?

They were perfect for one another. A crooked man and a crooked woman. Together, they created the child called Jennette.

So what was it, just what was it that made me love that supposed abomination that was meant to cause Athanasia's precious father's doom?