"What about Gawain, then? Does he have these 'qualifications to be King' you speak of?!"
Mordred did not understand the deeper meaning behind Artoria's words. She simply wanted desperately to know where she fell short of that gorilla Gawain.
"Yes, he does. But you don't."
Although Mordred had developed some resistance to Artoria's occasional "blunt honesty" back when she was alive, no amount of resistance could make her completely immune.
The moment Artoria finished speaking, blood-red lightning began flickering faintly around Mordred.
But just before she could explode, Artoria added the rest:
"The reason is that you are my son."
"???"
Afterward, Mordred admitted that her brain must have crashed for a fraction of a second at that moment-what did she mean, being her royal father's son was precisely why she lacked the qualifications to become King?
How could those words possibly form a sentence? (SpongeBob flipping through a dictionary.jpg)
To Mordred, her identity as "King Arthur's son" mattered more than anything.
It was not that those words gave her some particular reason to be proud. Rather, what lay behind them was the core that allowed "Mordred," as an individual, to maintain a lasting place in this world.
-Precisely because she was King Arthur's son, she was stronger than the vast majority of people in this world.
-Precisely because she was King Arthur's son, she believed herself to be King Arthur's rightful heir.
-Precisely because she was King Arthur's son, she worked so hard to prove that she could become a worthy Crown Prince.
-Precisely because she was King Arthur's son yet could not win King Arthur's approval, she chose rebellion and destroyed Camelot, earning the world's condemnation for a thousand years.
But.
Here and now.
King Arthur herself sat before her, answering her questions. Not only that, King Arthur