A normal life

My peasantry upbringing

I would much rather be in the training yard than running this place.

I do not doubt that Nessy will be a brilliant queen one day. She has the leadership skills needed for the job. As well as organisational skills. We are both in charge of keeping our own rooms clean, making the beds, and sorting out our cupboards and hers is immaculate. All her clothes are packed according to season and colour. I have no idea how she gets her bed as neat as she does. It looks like a hospital bed, well no, not really, her bed makes a hospital bed look messy whereas mine is hardly ever made.

We have staff that keeps the castle clean, but our rooms are once again one of those famous Jouberten life lessons.

Our parents, well that is an entire story on its own. Allow me the opportunity to elaborate: They both had very hard lives. Separate but equally as terrible. Being born of royal blood is not exactly a fairy tale, it is made out to be. Not that I really understand that reference. Have you ever met a fairy? For one, they are not very nice, and their lives are not exactly one of those I would personally like to live up to. (To be explained at a later stage).

The king and queen got married at a noticeably young age. I think they were in love once. They had to be. They produced us as offspring after all. Then there is the fact that dad still admits that mom is one of the most beautiful women he had ever met, even though they fight all the time. It might be that the stress of running the kingdom is getting to them, creating friction with disagreements on how things should or in most cases should not be run. You would think that living in such a big place you would not hear them arguing constantly and to be honest, I do not think they even realise it anymore.

My theory is that they just fell out of love. Grew apart as some might say.

They might still love each other but there is no way that they are still in love with each other and that, my friend, is a big difference.

These days it's more like a "let's stay together for the kid's sake" kind of love, not the, let's arrange a romantic date night for just the two of us type.

My sister and I have a bet going on how long they will stay together after we leave home. Once we get married or start our own kingdoms somewhere else. We have plenty of options of where we would like to go thanks to our grandparents.

As mentioned before my parents had a tough upbringing. My dad spent most of his childhood in a boys-only boarding school during the war, and no the fancy expensive kind either. For his own protection, no one could know who he was. He was forced to live like a peasant, and only on what was provided by the staff of my grandparents, as they would sometimes sneak all sorts of things through to him under a false name pretending to be his relatives. When my grandparents could sneak some things through to him such as new clothing, he would guard it with his life. As if it were the last thing, he would ever get from them. See the truth is he never knew if it was. Every letter, every knitted sweater was a proof of life and one he anticipated and prayed for daily.

My grandfather was a very hands-on king that took charge of every battle, frontman. He never relied on a war commander to lead his army into battle. I do not know if something happened during his childhood, but he was a firm believer that they were untrustworthy and unreliable.

He claimed that his reason for doing what he did was to set an example. Because how can you expect soldiers to put their lives on the line and fight for a cause if you, you as their leader, would not be willing to do the same.

A fight you are not willing to die for, is one not worth fighting, according to him. We came from a long elven line of incredibly strong-willed and respective leaders.

My dad's mother had her own inner demons she had to fight on a daily basis. She struggled with depression after the birth of my aunt. Always locking herself up in her room. One cannot really blame her as that was around the same time the war started. The goblins have been trying to take over our land for the last 500 cycles or so. My grandfather returned victoriously by taking over theirs. Now we own 85% of the continent. All except the small piece of forest that was left for the woodland creatures out of respect. It is their holy ancestral ground. We never go near there, and they do not bother us. They do come to visit on the odd occasion but other than that we stick to our own.

My mother's backstory, well that is one too long to fit in this one book. Who knows perhaps one day I can revert back to this topic.