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

18 July, 1371. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

Celia could feel herself drifting into despondency each day, little by little. It was like slowly sinking into a pit of sticky mud.

The mud will eventually drag me under and choke me. I don't know how to stop it from happening. I don't even know if I have the strength to fight it anymore.

Not physically, of course. She still made all her usual appearances around court as queen, attended every banquet with poise, walked in the gardens with her ladies trailing behind her in a giggling clump.

But in her mind, she'd withdrawn. The only place she felt a spark of life was the time spent in her sons' nurseries.

Outside of that, she felt hollowed out. Empty and useless.

Backbone