Book 2: Chapter 41: Side Story: A maiden in love is unstoppable
My name is Alicia. I am the daughter of Viscount Lindberg. I was raised to be quite carefree, but that day, I was very nervous. It was because I was attending the First Prince’s birthday party.
“Alicia. We’re going to go greet everyone, so go wait for us somewhere. You mustn’t act carelessly towards other nobles, do you understand?”
As a reminder, my mother repeated these words to me once more at the entrance of the dazzling birthday party venue. Normally, a child such as myself wouldn’t attend any big parties like this. However, the First Prince’s birthday party was an exception, and many other children like me were in attendance as well.
But it was essential for a child of a Viscount, such as myself, to behave prudently, precisely for that reason. This was because a Viscount was considered a low-ranked noble. How big the gap between a high-ranked noble and low-ranked noble was could be explained by pointing out that many of the servants that accompanied high-ranked nobles were from low-ranked noble families.
In other words, they couldn’t oppose the others, no matter the reason. If I were to get in an argument or something of the sort, it would cause my father and mother a great deal of trouble. Since I had already been warned of this many times, I understood it well at this point.
“I will quietly wait in a corner somewhere, it will be alright.”
“That’s not ideal either but… in your current situation, that might be a good solution.”
From what my mother told me, it was very important to acquire a high-ranked noble’s patronage. She said that, if this patronage were attained, your world would change all at once, because other nobles wouldn’t be able to just lay their hands on you anymore. However, my etiquette skills were still poor and I was more likely to anger a high-ranked noble instead, so it seemed like the safer choice was for me to stay quiet. Since my private tutor had told me the same thing over and over as well, there really was no room for me to object.
Given that, I went to stand in a corner of the venue quietly so that I wouldn’t make any careless mistakes. When I looked around me, I saw that there were a few children who seemed to feel as out of place as I was. Likely, they were all children of low-ranked nobles like myself. When I made eye contact with them, they gave me awkward smiles.