Abandoned Bastard of the Royal Family Volume 5 Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Chapter 17 – The Family that Forms Harmony

“What is going on here, mother! Tell me!”

Cymbium spoke aloud, demanding an explanation from the woman before her in a fury.

They are now inside a room far away from the “king’s reception room” earlier.

While many of her cousins remained in the innermost room, all prepared to be “devoured” by Schild, Cymbium was separated from them by her own mother because she would just be a “hindrance” to them.

Naturally, this left the first princess fuming.

“Why, mother, why!? I asked you to provide reception to Schild, but not this kind of reception! And choosing queen among those women right after? Why are you doing this! Without any word from me even!”

Cymbium shouted her lines, to which First Queen Petrome responded in a calm tone.

“Calm down, Cymbium. Ryngbergs don’t raise their voices like that. But, then again, you also possess the royal blood, so maybe that’s where you’re getting this behavior from.”

“Who cares about that, mother! More importantly, why are you making Schild select his queen from them? Especially when there is already me! If there’s going to be a Queen among the Ryngbergs, it has to be me! Or is the Ryngberg House doubting my abilities to carry the role of the queen?”

“You…”

“I love Schild, mother. More than as a brother. I love him as a man. And that can never change.”

(Besides, if father is right, then we aren’t really…)

Cymbium spoke while keeping the last line in her mind.

But even after hearing her complaint, Queen Petrome just rolled her eyes away.

She did this very slowly.

“So that’s why you are angry. But you already understand, right? You are a princess, which makes you and Prince Schild siblings of half-blood.”

“So? What of it? Even in our history, there are already precedents of kings marrying their own sisters as their wives!”

Cymbium is correct. It usually happens when the male heir to the throne has a weak power base. The goal of this is to strengthen the base power of the male heir by bringing in a sister or sisters with influential backgrounds to provide more connections to him, just like what Schild’s situation is now.

Schild had no political background because of his humble upbringing of coming from a village in the borders. As such, the conditions for an incestuous marriage with Cymbium are not entirely wrong, at least when viewed politically.

“By marrying me, Schild will gain the powers of the Ryngbergs that will strengthen his royal authority! I will also be by Schild’s side, supporting him the closest! I will not give up that role to some cousin I barely know!”

“Oh, my poor Cymbium……”

As if she was not the least perturbed by her daughter’s rage, Petrome rebuked her daughter once again.

“It seems that you have overlooked the most important thing – the most important thing for a queen of this country to have. Power? Intelligence? We don’t need either of that.”

“What do you mean, mother?”

“The Lioness Aura. There is no other absolute necessity for a queen of this country other than that.”

The “Dignity of the Lioness”.

The “Harmony of the Lioness”.

The “Mystique of the Lioness”.

The three “auras” above are said to be supernatural traits emitted by the daughters of the three great noble houses. And the ones which the royal family greatly sought from them.

Without them, these great noble houses wouldn’t be any different from the other nobility.

The characteristics of the three auras are slightly different, but they are all with one most significant trait – and that is it would amplify the “Majesty of the Lion” emitted by the king many times over with their auras serving as a catalyst.

“Prince Schild is radiating a rare and powerful “Majesty of the Lion”. To serve this heroic king, we must also offer him a fine female who emits our corresponding “female aura”.

That is, among the Ryngbergs, the “Harmony of the Lioness”.

“Up to this day, it has always been the family motto of the Ryngbergs to prosper and increase the number of their brothers and sisters. Their only goal is to produce a queen among their offspring that will emit the “Harmony of the Lioness”.

They have not sidetracked in this goal, not even once, unlike the Oscars and the Leschbein Houses.

Seeking only the harmony of the nation. Without going astray and without getting buried deep into it. By faithfully fulfilling the most basic of duties, the Ryngbergs have maintained their status as one of the three great noble houses.

“For us, the Ryngbergs, it doesn’t matter if we are first, second or last. It is just a coincidence that I became the first queen of this generation and that you, my child, became the first princess.”

Existing solely to protect the continuation of the kingdom’s existence. All for the kingdom to survive another day. That is the Harmony of the Ryngbergs.

“I understand now, mother… The beliefs of my backers, the Ryngbergs.”

Cymbium calmly and softly spoke. But her next lines were no longer amicable.

“So basically, you are saying that I am not suitable because I don’t have this “Harmony of the Lioness”, is it? But I am one of the Ryngbergs too, mother! I have that same blood in my veins! Which means I, too, can emit the Harmony of the Lioness for my beloved Schild!”

“There’s a reason I’m telling you this, my poor Cymbium.”

The mother then changed her tone into a heartfelt pity, towards her daughter whom she gave birth to through a lot of pain in her own belly.

“You cannot emit the “Harmony of the Lioness.”

“What? Why?”

“We don’t really know the exact reason. But we do know that if a woman possesses even a drop of the royal blood in her veins, no matter how great a part of her blood is of the great noble family, she and the generations after her will not be able to emit the female aura of that house.”

“…!!”

Cymbium felt as if her whole world had been shattered by those words.

“Again, we don’t know why. But the proof is already here. After all, the king’s family has been marrying the daughters of the three great nobles for dozens of generations. Not to mention we’re also monitoring the family tree this whole time, as we value the “Lioness Auras” the most.”

“That… is the first time I’ve ever heard of such a thing!”

“Because I didn’t say it. Or rather, I didn’t have to tell you in the first place.”

Until recently, when Schild emerged, the common understanding of all nobility in the kingdom was that there was no male royalty in the current generation.

But who would have thought a male heir would pop up later and Cymbium would take a liking to him?

“You are right, dear. There had been cases of princesses marrying their brother kings in the past. However, all of these cases were completely political marriages, and there was no conjugal love at all. So even if they have the first born child, the heir to the throne would usually be chosen from a prince born of another consort.”

“……”

“Not only that, the child born from the product of their love would always have a hard time. Because they have the royal blood in their veins, their female offspring will never have the house’s “lioness aura”, and because they are not the heir, they wouldn’t have much backing either. They would even be subjected to ridicule behind their backs because they are born from an incestuous relationship, even though they are still a member of the royal family.”

“……”

“Most of all, I am worried about you. Getting yourself pregnant only for the sake of connection, then being set aside afterward with your child after they finished its use. Most of the princesses who marry like that usually find themselves having miserable lives in the end. Thus, as a mother, I cannot bear my child to have such a predicament. You are still my daughter, and it’s a mother’s duty to provide her daughter her future happiness.”

“……”

Cymbium was silent.

Or rather, she had already lost the strength to say anything.

After all, to her man, whom she thought had every qualification to rule the country, she never expected that it would be she who will be the one lacking the qualifications to be with him.

It was nothing but shocking.

“The fact that the Ryngbergs will support the royal family will never change. However, the role of the queen will be filled by one of your cousins, which, around this time, should be entertaining Prince Schild in that room right now…”

“……!!”

All of a sudden, Cymbium stood up.

“Cymbium? Wait, where are you going!?”

Then, she burst into a run, towards the direction of her beloved man.

The prince who is her brother, her lover, and her unyielding master.

(Am I no longer necessary to him?)

To find out the answer to this question, Cymbium ran to the innermost room, the chamber which they had left Schild with her cousins.

And then…

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