Gabrielle_Johnson_6482

“You must bear a child, Celia. what good is a woman who isn’t a mother? What good is an empty womb?”

“Especially when it’s a foreign womb, like yours…”

It’s not an easy life when you’re watched month after month, when all the blame is placed at your feet for your young husband having no heir. 

Celia Devon Tralhamir, Crown Princess of Havietten, waits every month with hope mingled with fear. 

A child will secure her future. But it will also bind her for life to a husband she neither loves or respects, who refuses to see her abilities. Is that what she wants?

Is she content to prioritise security over happiness, and be a wordless decorative vessel all her life?

Or is she brave enough to try to forge her own path and seize fulfilment on her own terms? Even in a society that cannot recognise individual brilliance in a mere woman.

A sequel to the WEBNOVEL book “Earning the Love of a Princess”, this novel follows another woman born into the Royal House of Devon, trying to fight the confines that threaten to stifle her happiness.

The Loneliest Ballad

3 January, 1371. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

Celia eyed her reflection critically as she stood in front of the magnificent full length mirror in ger bedchamber. Three ladies-in-waiting, all wearing identical black satin gowns and capes, were attending to her. It meant there were three pairs of hands adjusting the young queen's skirts and gently smoothing down her veil.

What Celia really wanted to do was swat away all the well meaning but ultimately annoying hands from her body. She already felt over touched and would've much preferred to get ready alone.

But it wasn't the done thing. If princesses were never alone, then queens definitely weren't.

So she focused on her reflection instead.

Her sumptuous black damask gown made her already fair skin look pallid. The cut of the dress clung to her fuller breasts and gently curved belly, as if it had been designed to flaunt her fertility. Perhaps it had.

Those Doors