Looking at Xianna before him, even Alfred, whose heart was as hard as iron, felt that the world had been far too cruel to her!
Alfred knew what she had been through.
Back then, she had been secretly kidnapped by Elro and the others, then sent out of Marienburg! The witness at the time had been Yalt, the knight closest to her! While serving in Marienburg, that knight had met Xianna as a child.
Thus, the neglected princess had come to know an upright knight, and they had gotten along well. Xianna had even jokingly told him that he would be her guardian knight from then on. Every princess should have her own knight, shouldn't she?
Yet that knight had done nothing. He had merely watched as his princess was taken away amid sobs and pleas, standing by with folded arms!
Then, at the age of twelve, the princess had been sent away from her homeland to Waterdeep, where she became a minor noble. Not wealthy, but able to live without worrying about food or clothing. No knight or maid remained by her side—only a kind-looking old maidservant and a one-eyed coachman.
They had been sent by her mother to care for her.
Little Xianna gradually came to understand that she could not go back! Yet with two kind old people by her side, along with the letters and affection her mother constantly sent her, she slowly adapted and accepted it. After all, compared to Toussaint, where her father had loathed and despised her and often berated her for no reason, life here was not luxurious, but it was warm.
She had originally thought that spending her whole life this way would not be so bad!
But everything began to change when her mother died! She lost the mother who