Word Count: 78,023
Summary of Events:
Éoin wanted to talk to Viceroy Báld about his desire for an audience with Alina and found Viceroy Báld trying to get an audience with King Siegfried, who was resting; it required a lot more force than Éoin was comfortable with to get Viceroy Báld to leave King Siegfried alone. Alina went to visit her mother and, as usual, it turned sour quickly, especially when her mother called her a silly girl . . .
Excerpt of the Day:
"Alina, I am your mother," Mother said. "Surely I needn't call you Your Majesty all the time."
"You will refrain from calling me a girl, and especially a silly one, and that not only because I am the Queen, but because the law recognises me to be an adult, therefore I am a woman, and I am not a silly one," Alina replied.
"Why are you so disagreeable Alina?" Mother asked. "You're hardly in here for a few minutes and already your upset at me, why?"
"Because I have little patience with your delusions," Alina replied. "They aren't charming, they aren't funny, they aren't endearing, they are proof that you can easily be told what to believe, will believe it without question, and will staunchly defend it no matter how ludicrous it may sound, until that wretched snake who told you it was true tells you otherwise. Why can't I tell you otherwise? I know the truth!"
"I am not deluded," Mother said. "And I don't believe a single ludicrous thing. I also don't talk to snakes, and you are young, you don't have full knowledge of the world yet."
"You have less knowledge than I do!" Alina snapped. "You weren't part of a royal household, and above all, even if you were, it would never have come upon you to reign; as Queen-Princess I was given a thorough and rigorous education more akin to that of a boy than yours so that I might rightly and wisely run this country as it ought to be run. Your lack of education in how to run a country was clearly and brutally evident throughout your tenure as regent. You know nothing about politics, and what little knowledge you might have comes from the most dubious of sources."
"Alina, I am older, and being older, I am wiser," Mother said.
"No you're not," Alina said. "You are not wiser. Any wisdom you may have possessed has been stripped away from you by the reprehensible Viceroy Báld. I may've argued with you less if Father hadn't died. He would've kept you intelligent, as opposed to stripping away all confidence you had in your own knowledge of things and making you dependent on him for any knowledge of anything, which would allow him to feed you whatever falsehoods he so wished to."
"Gîorge is not reprehensible," Mother said.
"He is infinitely reprehensible," Alina spat.
"Alina, you really need to spend more time with him," Mother said. "You need to see that he is the most honourable and wonderful man in the whole world. If only he had a son to whom you could be married."
"I have spent enough time with him to realise that he is the most dishonourable and reprehensible man who has ever borne the title of viceroy," Alina spat. "He is a disgrace to all of Aifos, and doubly so because the snake seeks to marry you all the while deluding you and turning you into a raving lunatic."
Pronunciation:
Gîorge: zhahrzh
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