On the third Monday after the winter solstice came Fox Hunt Day, a traditional holiday among Toussaint's nobility. Legend had it that Queen Isabella's favorite pastime had been fox hunting. First, foxes were beautiful. Queen Isabella was an absolute looks fanatic—no matter what it was, she liked it beautiful. Even when hunting, she only liked hunting beautiful foxes.
Second, foxes were not particularly dangerous. Though they were carnivores, they had little offensive capability. While Queen Elizabeth was talented and ambitious, she was not a professional, so asking her to hunt dangerous animals would have been asking too much.
Thus, putting those factors together, foxes became the ideal prey. It was said that the queen loved making clothes from the foxes she caught and rewarding those garments to ministers she favored.
However, by now, the festival had become something more symbolic than practical. The nobles no longer enjoyed wasting an entire day just to catch a few foxes.
So now, Fox Hunt Day had become a day for nobles to socialize and hold banquets.
At present, a grand banquet was also being held at the Toussaint royal palace. The banquet took place in the palace gardens, which covered a vast area of three qing and even contained a sizable artificial lake—enough to accommodate all the dignitaries and nobles of Beauclair.
"Do you want to go down and have some fun with them? I remember you used to love this sort of game." In an openwork garden pavilion, Yetana sat languidly upon a gilded throne, watching the cheerful crowd below with apparent distraction as she spoke to Isabella beside her.
Isabella sat in a chair not far from Yetana, staring blankly at the artificial lake in the distance as though her mind had wandered far away. She did not hear Yetana at