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

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

Tobin took to his bed that week, complaining about a stomach ailment. For days, there was no sign of him.

Instead, the court's physicians and healers swarmed in and out of his room at all hours, carrying poultices. Celia even saw Master Noem a couple of times, though both of them were careful to never acknowledge each other.

She didn't know what treatments Tobin was being subjected to. She only knew when the physicians were bleeding him because he'd roar and complain about the cuts made into his flesh.

Celia didn't really know how to reply to the courtiers who asked her about the king's health. It wasn't a great look for the queen to admit she knew almost as little as they did about what was going on.

The physicians had been commanded to stay tight lipped. Tobin had also told the guards at his door that his mother could visit him but his wife couldn't.

Overindulging