-He said I don’t feel it when I think of the queen.
-I’ve felt it with a woman.
‘Hmmm, there was a woman that you liked. I didn’t even know that.’
She thought, peeking at the pretty and peaceful face of her sleeping husband.
‘I thought he had a harsh tone for some reason. Well, anyone would be offended by that kind of misunderstanding.’
Even if we are married, it was awkward to receive sex education together when we’re like brother and sister. They had gotten married when they were 7 years old and now, it was the first time they were looking at each other as people of the opposite sex. Julia just treated it as any other subject to study, but she often felt like Endimion was reluctant.
She thought it was because it is uncomfortable to sit with a girl during class, but it was actually because he had a different girl in his heart. Since it was sex education for couples, it had a clear purpose.
‘Then again romance novels are filled with protagonists having skinship with the woman they like.’
If you look at the aristocratic couples who have children early, some are even younger than them. It means that 16-year-olds know a lot of these matters. We are even receiving sex education, so he can’t not know anything. But Endimion had never even tried to give Julia a light kiss.
‘If he thought of me as someone of opposite sex, he would have done something already. We even sleep in the same bed like this every night.’
Julia thought as she tried to substitute her husband for the male protagonist of a red-labeled novel she got by begging her maid. A kiss with Endimion, rather than making her heart beat faster, it seems awkward, I think I would laugh.
Julia, who had become curious, showed Endimion the book the next day and told him to replace the heroine with herself. And so, when she saw Endimion touch her forehead with a stiff face, she was convinced.
Endimion doesn’t think of her as a woman.
This intense memory from when she was a 16-year-old was stuck in Julia’s mind, as though it was official. In the present, at the age of 19, before her coming-of-age ceremony, the duty to give birth to a successor presented itself.
……Of course, it was Endimion’s secret that the blanket was unseemly crumpled in his hand every night.
***
So, the cause of this commotion goes back to the day before. To be precise, for tea time before lunch.
Julia had received a call from the Grand Duchess Miladi, who wanted them to have lunch together, since last time had been so long ago.
“Mother-in-law? Yes, tell her that I’ll meet her soon.”
Miladi was Endimion’s mother. Upon the death of the former king, she, who was the former Queen, became a grand duchess and stayed in her villa.
In Semele, after the husband’s death, it was a tradition that for the former Queen received the title of the grand duchess, that is passed down the royal family from generation to generation, when her son becomes king. This was to prevent the former Monarch from challenging the kingship with her royal blood bearing relationships.
Fortunately, Miladi has a royal palace so there is little traffic, and she made no interference because she didn’t covet power, unlike the dowagers Julia had read about in her novel. Rather, she was a pretty open-minded mother-in-law who likes playing with fair-minded servants.
Twelve years ago, she accepted Julia, who arrived as though she was sold, as her daughter-in-law and treated her like an actual daughter, revealing her cool personality.
Semele was a powerful country located in the middle of the continent and Julia’s motherland, Amethrin, was a kingdom settled at the edge of the continent.
The crown prince of a country who built a tremendous wealth through a long history, vast territory, and prosperous trade. The princess of a rural, agricultural kingdom, whose lives were built upon agricultural exports. No one could grasp just how those two countries would even match.
However, when Julia was 5 years old, there was suddenly a harsh famine on the continent. No matter how much money they earn from trade, there was no country that could salvage their farming. Semele and other countries in danger were puzzled and wandered in search of the cause.