Ⅴ
Windsor, as a girl, you shouldn't spend so much time on flintlocks and blades.
Windsor, no matter how good a girl is at riding, she still has to marry.
Windsor, that was a good investment. What a shame you're a girl.
Windsor, you've actually awakened your bloodline! If only you weren't a girl!
Ever since Windsor was little, her father and mother had said things like that whenever she accomplished anything.
Those words of praise laced with regret...
They would have been better left unsaid!
What she wanted was genuine praise!
And so, she became fiercely competitive.
She wanted to be stronger than men.
In strength, intellect, and influence alike.
The results were naturally striking.
She won everyone's recognition.
Except her parents'.
Her parents still "praised" her with those words of approval laced with regret-praise that was nothing short of torment to her.
Her mother, especially, hated herself beyond measure.
She hated herself for not having given birth to a boy.
Yet when she saw Windsor, she showed no real resentment. She simply looked at Windsor with loving eyes, asked after her well-being, and then sighed again.
That only made Windsor's torment worse.
She even felt she was on the verge of going mad.
And just then-
Her mother died.
Publicly, it was called an accident.
In reality, it was...
Suicide!
Under the crushing pressure of failing to give the Windsor Family a male heir, she had chosen to take her own life.
Back then, Windsor could not understand why her mother hadn't simply become pregnant again and given her a younger brother. Only when she accidentally discovered her father weeping with his lover before her mother's grave did she begin to understand-her father's lover was the son of the Windsor Family's old steward.
That discovery made her