The Forgotten Descendants

The Uncrowned Empress

Athanasia stared intently at her reflection on the mirror.Her eyes roamed every inch of her face as she inspected her big eyes,the gentle slope of her nose and her heart-shaped chin.The woman took the brush on the table and parted her bangs in the middle.This time she saw another person's reflection rather than hers.

Diana.

She never met her mother as she had passed away not long after she welcomed Athanasia into the world.The princess only knew and learnt about her birth mother from Lily's stories on how beautiful she was during her life.How everyone around her was enchanted by her exquisite beauty when she entertained the Emperor and his audience.How the noble ladies, including Lily, admired the most free-spirited person who ever graced the imperial grounds with her presence.How lovely she was compared to the arrogant female aristocrats who wished to compete with a woman beyond their league.

Athanasia grew up with people often noting the uncanny resemblance of her and her mother.Other than the imperial jewelled eyes of the Emperor, everything else screamed that she is Diana's biological daughter.From her shiny, shimmering wavy platinum blonde hair to her mature, feminine body in her adulthood-she inherited all of Diana's physical traits.

However, even with the many stories of Diana, her daughter could never truly imagined how her mother look like during her life.There are no memory stone of her and the massacre of the Ruby Palace soon after her death wiped all traces of her existence from the earth.Only Lily, the only survivor of the incident aside from herself, cherished the sweet memories of Diana and keeps it safely locked inside her to pass it on to her only legacy.Other noble ladies who had loathed Diana for bearing the throne's heir, described her as a slut, an ambitious bitch who tainted the imperial bloodline with those of the commoners and they never failed to rub it on the outcast princess' face whenever she attended any balls or parties pathetically without a proper escort.

Until Lucas came barreling into her life without a warning that she finally knew how her mother really look like.

It was one of the gloomy days where she desperately tried to appeal herself to her father and the Emperor had harshly and coldly dismissed her from his sight to dote on his new daughter in the second princess' newly gifted garden.She walked back to the Ruby Palace with a broken heart filled with sorrow.Lily and Lucas were waiting for her with worry in her room,with the latter hid his concern with a blank expression.

The princess doesn't know why but she was greatly hurt by the incident that day.She was crying in Lily's arms when she abruptly mentioned Diana amidst her sobs.The blonde girl wailed that none of her parents love and care for her.Her father barely acknowledged that she existed and her mother probably leave her alone in this world because she was a pathetic excuse of a daughter.Her latter statement greatly shocked Lily, who had tears brimming in her cerulean eyes at her ward's accusation at her late mother.Her nanny gripped her shoulders and look determinedly at the blonde.

"Princess.I can swear it in my name that Lady Diana loves you very much and she would never considered that you are a pathetic daughter.She loves and cherishes you so much that she was willing to sacrifice her own life to give birth to you even though she knew it would kill her."

The princess blinked through her tears. "B-but..."

"Please.Let me prove it to you.Sir Lucas?"

Then Lucas flicked her forehead and the golden-haired princess easily eased into a slumber.Her tears streaked across her cheeks the evidence of her emotional anguish.She secretly feared every time she went to sleep because she will see Claude's sweet smile only directed to the brunette in his arms and his eyes when he noticed her presence became so enraged and so coldcoldcoldcold—